The Call to Enlistment
He . . . sets us to the tasks which He has to fulfil for our
time. He commands.
— Albert Schweitzer
The Church of Jesus Christ is a sleeping giant. Its unrealized potential is almost staggering to contemplate. There exists in people today a vast amount of goodwill; there is genuine desire to be used. This desire has been revealed, in a most dramatic way, by the multitude of volunteers for the United States Peace Corps. The desire is real and the resources are rich, but we have not found the right combination. The harvest is plentiful, and there are potential harvesters, but the effective call has not yet been made. J.H. Oldham stands nearly alone in that he has provided a reappraisal of what the Church might be, in a mood that is at once candid and hopeful. His remark to Paul Tillich states the paradox of faith and frustration. "You know, Tillich," he reports himself as saying, "Christianity has no meaning for me whatsoever apart from the Church, but I sometimes feel as though the Church as it actually exists is the source of all my doubts and difficulties."1
While there is a reservoir of goodwill, there is also increasing
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resistance. The resistance to the gospel in America is not dissimilar to that generally observed in Europe some years ago and may be understood as part of a cultural phase. According to the calm appraisal of a number of acute observers, the resistance to any Christian message is greater in the sixties of our century than it was in the fifties. This is seen not only in the writings of self-styled intellectuals, but also in the expressed judgments of the rank and file, particularly of the young. We have to understand, then, the paradox of simultaneous goodwill and antagonism if we are to have any clear notion of the scope of the Christian task, the possibility of its achievement, and its probable price in human effort or courage. The perfect text is that of I Corinthians 16:9: "A wide door for effective work has opened to me, and there are many adversaries." This double truth is especially obvious now, when many people refuse to listen long enough to know what is said, and when the forces arrayed against us are truly formidable. We must find ways to make the contemptuous listen, and this will not be easy.
The value of knowing that the situation of the committed Christian is hard — and getting harder each day — cannot be overestimated. When we know this thoroughly we realize that we cannot win or even survive with the attitude of business-as-usual. It is wholly possible that our situation is harder, in some ways, than was that of the early Christians who operated in the dying culture of classical Greece and Rome, for, though we have the advantage of a supposed general acquaintance with the gospel, we have also the enormous disadvantage that millions of people look upon it as the wave of the past. People who feel our spiritual predicament naturally look for something fresh and new, but, for the most part, it does not occur to them that this may be found in a rediscovery of Christ, who is actually far ahead of us so far as the vitality of culture is concerned.
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True recovery is never a matter of going backward for the sake of re-establishing an older pattern, but rather of uncovering what has been hidden or overlaid and therefore forgotten. The purpose of such uncovering is the potential effect upon the present and the future. We go back to the New Testament, therefore, not as antiquarians and not as mere historians, but in the hope of finding hints of vitality of which our time is relatively unaware. We ought not, for example, to speak of recovering the lost provinces, if this means an attempt to return to the pattern of an earlier day, partly because this is an effort which never succeeds. We should speak, instead, of occupying the lost provinces in new and creative ways and of making spiritual strides which no previous generation has known or even imagined. Commitment is never real unless it leads to mission, and the mission of Christians is always one which points forward. If we are to go forward we must rid our minds of accepted ideas of what a true Church is, or ought to be, much as the research scientists of great industries, when they seek to make radical improvements, find it necessary to free their minds of current conceptions of what manufactured products ought to be like. In some industries, notably in the production of film, radical improvement has resulted from such total reappraisal, which begins by a new hard look at the original experiment.
As we try to follow a good scientific procedure — going back to the original reaction and looking at it afresh as far as possible — we must make a conscious effort to disabuse ourselves of views which are so widely held that they are assumed without argument or even unconsciously. One of these views is that the Church of Jesus Christ is primarily a hierarchy of professionally religious men. That this is assumed to be the truth is shown by the way in which current religious scenes in news photographs are supposed to include, whenever possible, representatives of the various hierarchies.
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The religious pages of the newspapers are mostly about clergymen. It cannot be too strongly pointed out that there was no Christian hierarchy when Christ gave the Sermon on the Mount and told the little group that they could be the preservative to keep civilization from decay. Our common mistake is to read back into the original what we experience. This is why, in medieval paintings, the original apostles tended to look like Italian priests.
Another pattern, against the domination of which we must be eternally on our guard, is that of the Church as the authoritarian repository of truth. When this conception is accepted uncritically it is almost impossible to avoid thinking of the Church as something on the defensive, like a castle being besieged, but being miraculously unhurt and always holding its store of truth unsullied by attacking heresies.2 There are many reasons why this conception is inadequate, one of them being that a successful holding operation is something which no person can perform. If we are not advancing we are already retreating. Another reason is that no inerrant body of truth exists or can exist, so far as mortal men are concerned. We can be grateful to Paul Tillich for his unrelenting insistence on "The Protestant Principle" — that man's involvement in the finite predicament renders every claim to infallibility suspect. What the Church represents is not a repository of unchanging truth, but an open-ended search for God's will in our lives, both individually and in the redemptive fellowship. Instead of an unchanging certainty of the kind presumed by those whose faith is a collection of infallible proof-texts, finite men have the awesome responsibility of sharing in the possession of the liberating keys. What is laid upon us is neither a peculiar wisdom denied to others nor a doctrine in which we can take pride, but a
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responsibility to share in a difficult task.
There can be no better starting point for a radical reappraisal of the nature of the Church than a sustained effort to rediscover the secret of the amazing vitality of early Christianity. Every thoughtful person, as he considers the victory of the early Church against apparently insurmountable odds, is deeply moved. Once the Church was represented first by a little band of dejected fishermen going back to the Sea of Galilee, and later by one hundred twenty people gathered in a simple upper room in Jerusalem. Even to the eyes of the neutral but fair observer, Gamaliel, the movement seemed likely to collapse.3 It went on from weakness to strength; it survived; and finally it provided the center of an enduring civilization when the dominance of Greece and Rome had come to an end. If we are wise, we shall view this story not only with reverential gratitude; we shall also — with the eyes of those who seek a true pattern of the Christian movement — view it as perhaps applicable to the needs and problems of our own day.
It is well known that various Christian groups have claimed to make the standard of their own work and organization nothing more and nothing less than the New Testament standard. William Penn's famous slogan, "Primitive Christianity Revived," has been the inspiration of various denominations since the phrase was first coined in the seventeenth century. Sincere as this effort has been, however, we must recognize the justification of cynical observers who have noted the great variety of the supposed New Testament patterns in modern Church life. Some have made the New Testament Church idea the basis for the necessity of immersion, some for the denial of the requirement of any physical baptism at all, some for the prohibition of instrumental
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music and others for Christian communism. This variety of judgment, and consequent controversy, about the nature of the early Church should be a sufficient warning against supposing that there is any single detailed pattern which can provide a test of ecclesiastical validity. The truth is that the New Testament does not record any single, wholly consistent pattern of the kind usually sought.
Another important consideration, which bears upon the effort to recover the primitive Christian pattern, is that the first way is not necessarily the best. There is no reason why the Christian society might not be able to improve through the centuries. The principle of development, so well supported by John Henry Newman in the days when he was part of the Oxford Movement, is wholly intelligent and intelligible. The Church ought to be able to grow as science or politics can grow. The primitive Church had no popes, but this is no clinching argument against the wisdom of having popes later, providing there is some good reason for having them. In the same manner the early Church owned no buildings, but this does not mean that it was wicked or unchristian for later generations to erect ecclesiastical structures. If anyone says that we ought not to have organs because we have no evidence that early Christians used them, we should by the same logic, be forced to avoid steam heat, Sunday Schools, Christian colleges, publishing houses, and a thousand other features of contemporary Christian life. We need not go back to the original pattern with superstitious obedience, but we are wise, when we see some central feature of early Christianity which helps to account for its success, to ask whether this can be incorporated into our present practice. What we want is not slavish adherence to a supposedly perfect and changeless pattern, which is in fact nonexistent; rather, we want the humility to re-examine our own conventional expectations and standards in the light of something
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which succeeded — in sharp contrast to our own mixed record in contemporary life.
One of the most surprising facts about the early Church was its fundamental similarity to a military band. This is hard for us to recognize today because the ordinary successful church of the twentieth century is about as different from an army as anything we can imagine. Instead of being under anything resembling military discipline we pride ourselves on our "freedom." We go and come as we like, as no soldier can do; we give or withhold giving as we like; we serve when we get around to it. Obedience is considered an irrelevant notion, and the theme of "Onward Christian Soldiers" is so alien to our experience that some churches avoid the hymn entirely. A few avoid it on the mistaken assumption that it glorifies killing, which of course it does not. The military metaphor seems strained when it is applied to smartly dressed men and women riding in air-conditioned cars to air-conditioned "churches."
Far from thinking of the Church in military terms, we think of it as a civil society which people join freely and leave freely, though they often seem, oddly enough, to be born into it. It is a society which makes mild claims, even in regard to attendance at its meetings, which appear to be its most important functions. In this regard it is in sharp contrast to the luncheon clubs which have attained great importance in current civilization, partly because they have strict attendance requirements. Clubs normally demand that failure to attend be made up by attendance at other units, but churches are more tolerant on this point. While soldiers are specifically under authority and may, consequently, be sent anywhere without the right of refusal, most people would smile at the idea of the Church sending them on missions which they could not refuse. A slight approximation to the military pattern is exhibited by the Mormons, whose young
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men normally donate a year or two of their lives to missionary duty, but the idea has not been generally adopted by other groups. The notion of enlisting Church members as recruiters sounds very strange to modern ears. This reaction tells us something significant about the Church of teh twentieth century; it tells us how far we have drifted!
The idea of the Church as a military company was by no means strange to early Christians. Indeed, military language can be found in various parts of the New Testament. It need hardly be said that this language had no reference to killing, or preparation for destruction, but rather to the mood of men and women whose responsibilities were of the same demanding character as those of enlisted persons. Thus it seems wholly natural to read of "Epaphroditus my brother and fellow worker and fellow soldier" (Philippians 2:25); of "a good soldier of Christ Jesus," with his share of suffering (II Timothy 2:3); of "Archippus our fellow soldier" (Philemon 2); of "the whole armor of God" (Ephesians 6:11). It is perfectly clear that Christians considered Christ their Commander-in-Chief, that they were in a company of danger which involved great demands upon their lives, and that to be a Christian was to be engaged in Christ's service. It cannot be too emphatically pointed out that such "service" was not remotely similar to what we call a "service" today, a polite gathering of auditors, sitting in comfortable pews listening to a clergyman and a choir.
We do not know as well as we should like to know what the meetings of the first Christians were like in detail, but we have in the New Testament some extremely helpful indications. In any case we know enough to realize that these meetings were not at all what we think of as characteristic Christian gatherings in our own day. The probability is that there was no human audience at all and not the slightest thought of a pattern in which one man is expected to be
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inspired to speak fifty-two times a year, while the rest are never so inspired. A clear indication of procedure is provided by Colossians 3:16 where we read "as you teach and admonish one another in all wisdom." The most reasonable picture which these words suggest is that of a group of modest Christians sitting in a circle in some simple room, sharing with one another their hopes, their failures, and their prayers. The key words are "one another." There are no mere observers or auditors; all are involved. Each is in the ministry; each needs the advice of the others; and each has something to say to the others. The picture of mutual admonition seems strange to modern man, but the strangeness is only a measure of our essential decline from something of amazing power. The contemporary Communists have taken over the essentials of this pattern for their own dissimilar purposes, but we must remember that they did not invent it. They took it over after Christians had largely abandoned it. Their doing so may constitute a justified rebuke to those who take their Christianity so lightly that they never see themselves as members of a task force.
That early Christians, when they met, expected general participation in vocal expression is the whole point of I Corinthians 14:26-33. Indeed, the expected participation was so nearly universal that rules had to be made to avoid consequent confusion. If there had been the expectation of only one speaker, as in the characteristic contemporary Christian service, it would have been pointless to warn that "you can all prophesy one by one, so that all may learn and all be encouraged" (I Corinthians 14:31). It is obvious that women spoke. Otherwise the Apostle Paul would not have made a rule against it, a rule which he seems later to have abandoned when he wrote Galatians 3:28. Rules are not made to prohibit what no one ever does.
Important as are these evidences which the Epistles provide
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concerning the character of the early Christian movement, the evidences gleaned from the words and actions of Christ Himself are even more important. Of special significance is Christ's contact with two Roman soldiers who were centurions. One of these military officers appears near the beginning of the Gospel, and the other appears near the end. The first centurion, whose confrontation with Christ is recorded in Matthew 8:5-13,4 asked Christ to heal his servant who was suffering from paralysis. Christ offered to go to the sufferer, but the Roman officer replied quickly that this would not be necessary. He pointed out that he understood about commands and obedience because he was a soldier and therefore, like Christ, was also under authority. We are told that Jesus "marveled" and gave this Roman the greatest praise which the Gospel records in connection with any historical figure. "Not even in Israel have I found such faith," He said.
This is the sort of account on which we ought to meditate in depth if we are really serious in our effort to understand the nature of the movement which Christ was instituting. There was an obvious kinship of mind between the officer and Christ, and kinship which led to mutual understanding. It seems paradoxical to us that a military officer would understand Christ better than did the apostles, but that is only because we have constructed our own version of what was going on. If we were to realize the fundamentally arduous character of the original Christian movement we should be less surprised at what the story of the centurion reveals. It would seem less paradoxical. We should see the significance of the word "also."
The evidence given by Christ's encounter with the first centurion is corroborated and strengthened by his encounter
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with the second, the one who stood by the cross. This man, we are told, "stood facing him" as "Jesus uttered a loud cry, and breathed his last" (Mark 15:39). His duty as a soldier kept him there when most of the disciples were conspicuously absent. The great fact about the occasion is that the scene which the officer saw made him understand. As Christ's physical life ebbed away, the soldier was heard to say, "Truly this man was the son of God!" The fact that it was a soldier who had this revelatory reaction is highly significant. He understood that the suffering he observed was really that of a military prisoner from a new kind of army, an army not for destruction but for redemption.
If we realize that Christ was organizing a genuine "company" many points immediately become clear. Herein is the significance of the cryptic "Follow me." He was not advising people to go to church, or even to attend the synagogue; He was, instead, asking for recruits in a company of danger. He was asking not primarily for belief, but for commitment with consequent involvement. It is significant that the first of those who answered this call to enlistment followed Him before they knew who He was. The recognition of Christ's true character, in Matthew 16, comes long after the successful appeal of Matthew 4:19. The well-known words are far more understandable if we see them as the call of a recruiting officer, "And he said to them, 'Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.' Immediately they left their nets and followed him." The fact that the responsive fishermen did not know who He was is what gives such enduring appeal to the words with which Albert Schweitzer concluded his greatest book:
He comes to us as One unknown, without a name, as of old, by the lake-side, He came to those men who knew Him not. He speaks to us the same word: "Follow thou me!" and sets us to the tasks which He has to fulfil for our time. He commands.
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And to those who obey Him, whether they be wise or simple, He will reveal Himself in the toils, the conflicts, the sufferings which they shall pass through in His fellowship, and, as an ineffable mystery, they shall learn in their own experience Who He is.5
Such recruitment led inevitably to the close fellowship of a company. The more genuine the commitment, the more necessary the fellowship of mutual concern and support became. There is no suggestion that the early Christians wore a uniform or had any other external marks of a separate order, but they traveled back and forth between particular companies with a tirelessness that amazes us if we are willing to reflect upon the expenditure of energy which was involved. When one sector was hard pressed, reinforcements were rushed in from another. Thus, in the earliest book of the New Testament, I Thessalonians, we find the Apostle Paul keeping in touch with the little bands quite as though he were a general. In order to check again on the development of the fellowship in Thessalonica, Paul stayed in Athens alone and sent his lieutenant right back to the northern front. "We sent Timothy, our brother and God's servant in the gospel of Christ, to establish you in your faith" (I Thessalonians 3:2). The fact that the demands of the Company of the Committed — such as constant travel under arduous conditions — were accepted without argument and without complaint provides one of our best insights into "the way." It was not a bed of roses, but it was not supposed to be. What else were they to expect, since their Leader had been crucified? It seemed normal for Paul to charge Timothy to "wage the good warfare" (I Timothy 1:18).
Whenever the original pattern of the company has been tried, great results have followed. The two most conspicuous
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efforts in Christian history have been the organization of the Society of Jesus in the sixteenth century and the organization of the Salvation Army in the nineteenth century. Both experiments have involved failure as well as success, but their total effect has been so remarkable that we neglect them at our peril. Though Ignatius Loyola had no specific design of opposing the Reformation when he wrote his Spiritual Exercises and founded his famous Society, it is nevertheless true that the Jesuits were effective in producing a genuine historical change of direction. They were instrumental, through their missionary and educational activities, in saving great sections of northern Europe for the Roman Catholic Church and in regaining lost territory. Loyola's success is in large measure due to the fact that he organized his followers, with hard demands, after the fashion of a military company. His first desire was to use the phrase "The Company of Jesus" because he envisaged a campaign. The key to his entire enterprise is found in his terse reference, "Christ, our Commander-in-Chief." Loyola combined two elements of success which went together perfectly: his own soldierly experience prior to his commitment, and his recognition of the militant character of original Christianity.
The only language Loyola could speak was the language of a warrior; it was always the banner and the battle, obedience and command, company and militia . . . He demanded the virtues of a soldier but renounced the conditions that fostered them.6
An important step in modern history was made in March 1539 when the men who had been influenced by the dream which possessed Loyola met and unanimously decided to remain united and to "organize a new campagnia which
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will not end with us." This particular use of words is instructive, for it helps us to remember that the only purpose of a company is a campaign. Many people have written of the early Jesuits, in praise or in condemnation, but all agree that they made a difference. Heinrich Boehmer has provided, in his great book on the movement, one of the clearest explanations of Loyola's method:
Finally, as a matter of principle, he avoided obligating himself to any permanent service at a particular place or to any definite form of activity. His one desire was to awaken, evangelize, organize, assist, everywhere; but never bind himself to any one thing or place permanently. He even retired from the direction of the new institutions which he had founded as soon as he was completely assured of their continuance.7
The fact that Loyola's movement is not adequate for the needs of our own day should not blind us to its fundamental strength. It is inadequate because it is fundamentally denominational in purpose, being concerned with the militant recovery of one church rather than the whole Church of Christ; it is limited to those who have some degree of separation from the common life of marriage and secular work. But those limitations are not intrinsic to the idea of a company enlisted in Christ's cause. What we must form, unless we are to go into decay, is a company which includes representatives of all denominations, which understands fully that in Christ there is neither male nor female, which expects commitment to Christ in common life rather than in separation from it, and which is infused with the sense of urgency possessed by those who are fully involved in a campaign. The strategy of renewal lies not in organizing a militia Christi within the Church, but in recasting the entire conception of the Church in the light of Christ's call to enlistment.
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The Church so remade will be as different from the conventional organization with which we are now familiar as Christ's band of the crusading Seventy was different from the synagogue of the first century A.D.
In leaving the synagogue and concentrating upon the explosive band, Christ was not renouncing the fellowship of the devout but was, instead, giving it a new and virile character. Emphatically, we must note that He was not rejecting the synagogue or meetinghouse version of religion in favor of mere individual commitment. Instead, He was making the social character of this commitment far more obvious and demanding. The early Christians did not seek God's will in individual isolation. Instead, they found a fellowship so intense that it was of a wholly different character from that of people who happen to sit in the same room listening to a homily. Instead of being an audience they were actors! This is why, though the word "synagogue" had come to refer to a building, the word "Church," for the early Christians, could not possibly have done so.
We cannot understand the idea of a company apart from the concept of involvement. What we seek is not a fellowship of the righteous or of the self-righteous, but rather a fellowship of men and women who, though they recognize that they are inadequate, nevertheless can be personally involved in the effort to make Christ's kingdom prevail. Perhaps the greatest single weakness of the contemporary Christian Church is that millions of supposed members are not really involved at all and, what is worse, do not think it strange that they are not. As soon as we recognize Christ's intention to make His Church a militant company we understand at once that the conventional arrangement cannot suffice. There is no real chance of victory in a campaign if ninety percent of the soldiers are untrained and uninvolved, but that is exactly where we stand now. Most alleged
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Christians do not now understand that loyalty to Christ means sharing personally in His ministry, going or staying as the situation requires.
The churches which are succeeding best are those in which the involvement of the rank and file of the members is most nearly complete. This means a general acceptance, on the part of the total membership, of the responsibility of being official representatives of Jesus Christ in daily life. It means a fundamental denial of that kind of division of labor in which the majority have a secular responsibility and a minority have a Christian responsibility. There is always some need of a division of labor in life, partly because people have radically different gifts, but a division of labor is damaging and vicious when it leaves the promotion of the gospel to a few, while the others merely support them in such work. The easiest way to undermine Christian responsibility in a college, for instance, is to appoint one man chaplain, if the consequent understanding is that the other professors, in the supposedly secular departments, are thus set free from real responsibility for the Christian cause on the campus.
It is strange to see how slow we are to understand what the acceptance of the idea of a Christian company entails. Thus, when we organize a commitment service, we tend, unless we make a conscious effort at involvement, to have the familiar pattern of the single performer. If, by contrast, many share in the observance — whether in reading Scripture or in public prayer or in admonition — there are two enormous gains. One is that even those who do not participate vocally begin to have a sense that they are more than audience; the other is that the commitment of those who do participate vocally is normally made deeper and more genuine. Preaching may not, in some instances, be helpful to those who listen, but it is almost always helpful to those
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who speak. This is partly because expression deepens impression and partly because the speaker immediately achieves a public identification with the cause, from which he is consequently less likely to turn back. Since commitment is strengthened by public involvement, the more involvement the better. Therefore the Christian ideal must always be the complete elimination of the concept of the laity in favor of the exciting concept of the universal ministry.
If we are to take seriously the transformation of the Church as we know it into a genuine order, we must voluntarily accept an agreed discipline. Once a Christian has become a member of Christ's company he must be ready to give up some of his personal freedom, much as any soldier — and even as any Communist — does. He may, for example, no longer be the sole arbiter of his own time and energy; and he cannot be free to use all of his money on his own self-indulgence. He may have to give up his own personal plans in order to engage in a contemporary equivalent of Timothy's hurried return to Thessalonica. He is almost certain to give up some connections with clubs and societies which, though they may be innocent or valuable in their aims, are far too numerous in most modern lives. There will always be a sense in which a person who takes seriously his commitment to Christ will have to learn to travel light, giving up some particular involvements in order to make other involvements more truly revolutionary.
One of the areas of experience in which the acceptance of discipline is most important for modern man is that of the right use of time. Our relation to time is highly paradoxical in that, though we live in an age marked by time-saving devices, we seem to be ever more hectic in running from appointment to appointment. Because we do not have to use precious time, as all of our ancestors did, in carrying water, grinding flour, and weaving cloth, we should, theoretically,
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have more free time available, but we do not. The trouble seems to be that we presume on the advantage of our inventions by deliberately adding to the number of our engagements until our lives are fragmented. Too many commitments amount virtually to none. The only commitment which is significant is that which has about it a certain singularity or even priority.
Acceptance of discipline is the price of freedom. The pole vaulter is not free to go over the high bar except as he disciplines himself rigorously day after day. The freedom of the surgeon to use his drill to cut away the bony structure, close to a tiny nerve without severing it, arises from a similar discipline. It is doubtful if excellence in any field comes in any other way. John Milton was revealing something of his own creative power when he wrote, "There is not that thing in the world of more grave and urgent importance, throughout the whole life of man, than is discipline."
One of the best secrets of the discipline of time is the fuller date book. This seems, at first, like a gratuitous paradox but appears, upon reflection, to be most reasonable. If a man will go through his date book and fill in empty places with really important commitments, including those to meditation, to solitude, to prayer, and to writing, his temptations to scatter his energies will be more ably resisted. The temptation to waste an evening in shallow talk or in watching a succession of television westerns can be better handled if a decision has already been made to read a great book or to engage in the arduous task of recording one's reflections. In the same way, much of the problem of time can be met by including, in the year's program, engagements with one's family and friends — for they deserve attention also. Thus, the prior engagement, whatever its character, is a practical way of avoiding the constant necessity of making little
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decisions at the moment and thereby it achieves liberation.
Of course, no decent person will be so hard with himself, or others, that a planned use of time will be inflexible. It is obvious that in any life real emergencies may arise, and we must, consequently, be ready to change our plans when there is a sufficient reason for doing so. There is a third way, better than either the inflexibility of a machine or the emptiness of the unexamined life. Dr. Samuel Johnson, after referring admiringly to the methodical life of John Milton, without which the blind man would certainly never have produced Paradise Lost, went on to say, "He that lives in the world will sometimes have the succession of his practice broken and confused."8 This we know and this we need to know, but a man cannot even change his plan unless he has one. Certainly one cannot be in the Company of the Committed unless he has a rule by which he tries to live. It is a great mistake to suppose, as some do, that the acceptance of such a discipline, as an alternative to empty freedom, will make Christians into overmeticulous and self-righteous Pharisees. This may have been the danger once, but it is certainly not the primary danger now. The primary danger now is that of those who, in Eliot's strong phrase, suppose that they are emancipated because they are merely "unbuttoned."
The discipline we need is not something which we can learn alone. We become trained and disciplined for service only as we are yoked together. Thus, significantly, it is in Christ's clearest call to personal commitment — that in which He says, "Come to me" — that He also says, "Take my yoke upon you." The Company of Christ is tied together by Christ's yoke. That is why "yokefellow" is a synonym for committed Christian.9 Though the younger generation does
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not understand it now, every farm child of the early part of our century understood very well that no colt is normally trained alone. It is "hitched" with one already well trained. Herein lies the powerful significance of the idea that only the meek — i.e., the disciplined — will ever occupy the land.10 Gerald Heard has rendered good service in explaining meekness in a way that is very different from the popular one. For what, he asks, did the Greeks use the word praos?
They used it for wild animals which had been tamed, trained, for wild horses which had been made able to work with men. There is then in this definition, nothing weak or spiritless but rather the description of an energy which, instead of exploding, is now channelled and directed. The tamed are not the tame . . . . The trained are those whose powerful impulses have been put into understanding service.11
One rare but powerful item of discipline is the requirement that the recruit of the company undertake a personal experience of solitude at least once a month. This is patterned consciously on the experience of Christ who periodically went alone, even at the price of temporary separation from the needs of His fellows. The justification of aloneness is not that of refined self-indulgence, but rather a consequent enrichment of one's subsequent contribution. A person who is always available is not worth enough when he is available. Everyone engaged in public life will realize the extreme difficulty of getting away each month for a period of five or six hours, but the difficulty is not a good reason for rejecting the discipline. It is the men and women who find it hardest to get away who need the redemptive solitude most sorely. They need to be where they are free
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from the compulsion of chit-chat, from the slavery of the telephone, and even from the newspaper. A Christianity which understands itself will make ample provision for retreat houses in which such solitude is expected and protected.
At the very time when we are beginning to realize how formidable are the forces arrayed against Christianity in the modern world, an old yet new conception of the fellowship of those enlisted in Christ's cause is re-emerging. This may be one of the times when the greatness of the need may be matched by the vitality of the response. There is no real hope of such vitality unless and until we understand what Christian enlistment means. Because the trouble we face is more serious than we ordinarily suppose, the solution of our problems will likewise lie along deeper lines than those to which we are accustomed.
Chapter 3 || Table of Contents
1. J.H. Oldham, Life Is Commitment (New York: Association Press, 1959), p. 85.
2. Even the passage about the Church and the Gates of Hell (Matthew 16:18) presents the Church as on the offensive. Thus the clear implication of Christ's own words is exactly the opposite of what we tend to assume.
3. See Acts 5:33-39. The Jewish leader is remembered for the fact that he was wise enough to recognize the possibility of enduring success for the new movement.
4. And in a slightly different form in Luke 7:1-10. Both Matthew and Luke represent the centurion as using the crucial Greek word gar, "also."
5. The Quest of the Historical Jesus (New York: The MacMillan Company, 1936), p. 401.
6. Ludwig Marcuse, Soldier of the Church, A Life of Ignatius Loyola (London: Methuen & Company, Ltd., 1939), p. 215.
7. Heinrich Boehmer, The Jesuits, An Historical Study (Philadelphia: The Castle Press, 1928), p. 73.
8. Samuel Johnson, Lives of the Poets, essay on Milton.
9. See Matthew 11:29 and Philippians 4:3.
10. See Psalm 37:11 and Matthew 5:5.
11. Gerald Heard, The Code of Christ (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1941), pp. 63-64; see also Heard's Appendix, "On the Use of the Word Praos," pp. 169 ff.