What Jesus Says About Managing the
Unmanageables
There is nothing from without a man, that entering into him can defile him: but the things which come out of him, those are they that defile the man.
Mark 7:15
We are tremendously concerned these days to find a way to manage a wild and savage world. The beast of war roars in his fragile cage, reaching out a vicious paw to maul the passerby and send frightened keepers scurrying to find stronger bolts and bars lest atomic destruction break out from restraint. There is only one matter of greater concern to many, and that is how to manage ourselves — how to control the wild and willful world within us.
Dr. Alfred E. Luccock calls attention to an Associated Press dispatch of about a year ago which stated that a certain Mr. Solomon A. Stephen had died at the age of one hundred. The principle feature of the story was not the length of his life, but the fact that for sixty-seven years, Mr. Stephen had been manager of the zoo at Cincinnati, Ohio. He had come to that
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city from New York in 1875 to deliver an elephant, and had remained to look after it and the other animals. All of us spend a great deal of time managing a zoo, often without noticeable success — I mean the zoo inside us.
I was introduced to the world of zoo life by our children, who at an early age decided it was time for their parents to be informed about the facts of animal existence. They escorted us to the zoo so often that I became personally acquainted with every parrot and pachyderm in the place. There are beautiful animals in the zoo — deer, zebra, elk, and birds of brilliant plumage. Odd animals are there too — the giraffe, the kangaroo, and assorted varieties of monkeys. Then there are carnivorous beasts, the tiger, the lion, the grizzly bear, well secured behind parapet and bars.
Some years ago, a Chicago newspaper carried on an intensive campaign with the local zoo. The editor declared, "The children of our city know every rare and exotic animal from the remotest places of earth, but many of them have never seen a sheep or looked into the gentle eyes of a cow. Please kind sir, could we not place a cow in the zoo and show our children that milk does not originate in a bottling machine?"
And I have discovered that other zoo — the zoo within myself, filled with all kinds of weird creatures, many of them quite undomesticated, wild and most difficult to handle. Nor do I think I am unique in this. Carl Sandburg in his poem Wilderness writes, "There is a wolf in me." There are other animals of evil to be fought and tamed. Who has not had the lion of temper rage and roar from within? Who has not heard the restless footfall of the tiger of envy pacing up and down the pens of the soul? Who has not caught his jealous snarl? Who has not found within a loathsome jackal of criticism,
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feeding on the carrion of human failure, and biting and tearing at people better than ourselves? Who has not recoiled at the lying serpent of deceit slithering through life and gliding across the tongue?
Barnyard animals are there, too. The peacock of pride struts up and down, preening his plumage. The braying mule of stubbornness that will not be moved, the old swine grunting in the mud and shoving others aside — they are all there.
Robert Browning, looking at the portrait of one of the richest industrial figures of his time, said, "He looks like a retired panther." The man's fierce competitive days of strangling his rivals were over, and he had assumed a look of benevolent kindliness. In me, the old panther never seems to retire but keeps bounding out, just when I think I have him safely pensioned off. I find I need help. I cannot manage the zoo within me. I wonder how you are doing with your zoo — the inner desires and disposition, the selfishness and the sin?
Turning to the Bible, I find some very practical and sound advice on how to handle the heart and manage life's unmanageables. The Bible suggests that we begin by recognizing the animals within and calling them by their right names. "If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness" (1 John 1:9).
Beside every cage in the zoo there is a little sign giving both the Latin and the English name of the animal. Part of the zoo-keeper's job is to make sure that every animal is properly designated and rightly placed. Imagine the confusion and the danger if he did not arrange the animals correctly. He might put the lion in with the lamb or allow children to pet the tiger.
People have long quarreled with the names the Bible gives
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to the issues of the heart. Many violently disagree with the Christian diagnosis of human nature. They take strong issue with what Jesus has to say about the wild things within. Nevertheless, the Word of God clearly teaches that there are wild and savage things in the soul and He calls them sin. "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked..." (Jer. 17:9)
The twentieth century dawned in rosy optimism about man. There is nothing really bad in us, we were told. These snarling moods and wrong motives are just repressions; feed them, give them room, stop calling them such bad names and they will behave themselves. We were almost convinced. Then two terrible world wars broke in fury upon us, leaving humanity maimed and mangled. If we would not face the sin within us, we were compelled to confront it in the world around. We have taken another look at human nature, and we are sobered.
Thomas Beecher, the venerable old preacher, was a great lover of truth. He could not tolerate deceit in any form. Yet, he had in his church a clock which was always too fast or too slow. One day, in desperation, he put a sign over the clock: "Don't blame my hands; the trouble lies deeper." The trouble with humanity lies deeper than circumstances. It lies in the soul, within us.
The press recently carried the announcement of the death of the famous English philosopher, Dr. C. E. M. Joad of the University of London. For years he was a vociferous agnostic and opponent of Christianity. He loved to say, "When the mind becomes old and begins to decay, it becomes matted with God-webs." But as the second World War progressed and became more terrible, he began to doubt that evil was some-
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thing that could be cured by socialism, sociology, and psycho-analysis. He considered again what the gospel of Christ had to say and he began to believe. He said, "When war came, the existence of evil hit me in the face. I see now that evil is endemic in man and that the Christian doctrine of original sin expresses a deep and essential insight into human nature." Of his rediscovered faith he says, "It affords me light to live by in an ever-darkening world."
One of the fundamental fallacies of Marxism is that it will not label correctly the wild things of the human heart. It believes that changed circumstances will change human nature. Marxism does not go deep enough, and hence it is doomed to frustration; it will never arrive. It is tragic that we do not take the word of Jesus seriously when He says to us in Mark 7:15, "There is nothing from without a man, that entering into him can defile him...." That is, circumstances and things around him do not cause the trouble "...but the things which come out of him, those are they that defile the man." ..."For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders, thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lasciviousness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness: All these evil things come from within, and defile the man" (Mark 7:21-23).
Let me begin, then, to manage my unmanageables by calling them by their right names. Let me not evade them. Let me not excuse myself, but in the clear light of God let me say, "These things are evil. They spring from my sinful heart." To confess means "to say with." Let me then agree with God's diagnosis and description of my trouble. We start here.
Next, keep the dangerous animals locked behind bars. I am sure that few of us would enjoy a zoo if we knew that some
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of the lions and tigers were loose. The grounds would quickly empty of people. The roar of the lion in the lion house is rather entertaining, but if you are camping alone on the African veldt, the same sound arouses different sensations. Yet in recent years a very strange code of conduct has been advocated. It says, express yourselves. Let your animal appetites loose. If you know lust, indulge it. If you are angry, go ahead, blow your top! If you don't like social convention, throw it aside. Be yourself, even if it is your worst self. When this happens, the animals run the zoo and the keepers get behind the bars. The law of the jungle takes over. No wonder there are so many confused and chaotic lives, so much unhappiness in our homes, and so much emptiness in our hearts. No wonder young people flounder in conflict of desire and frustration.
Mr. Ted De Grazia, an artist in Tucson, Arizona, has circulated a little advertisement of his studio which says: "A great work of art invites you to renounce the world and embrace yourself, not out of goodness, but because the least impulse or appetite within you may be of greater real consequence than all the weight and import of the world's affairs." There is in De Grazia's paintings the suggestion that if the onlooker will only search out and gratify the hidden wickednesses, the secret lusts that are in him, then that search and that gratification may be of more real importance to man's salvation than all the noble pronouncements and good intentions in the world.
There are few people who are as crude in expressing their philosophy, but I would remind you that it is a current attitude widely held. Express yourself. But you cannot let the wild things loose in your life without experiencing the de-
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struction of all that is high and holy. "For the wages of sin is death..." (Romans 6:23).
Time magazine for August 1952, carried the story of a California lady snake tamer. The article entitled, "Creeping Death" states, "Of all her snakes, sixty-four-year-old Grace Wiley loved the cobra best. He was the most intelligent and most easily tamed. 'It is just that people are afraid to tame cobras,' she said. Grace Wiley had never been afraid. She loved reptiles and handled them patiently and lovingly. She filled her home in Cypress, California with over a hundred of them — King and Queen, the cobras; Roxie, the nine-foot python; Perky, the water moccasin. One day she agreed to pose for a picture with her newest pet, a five-foot cobra just received from India. To get the cobra ready for the picture she patted its head, stroked its back, quietly coaxed it to extend its hood and as the cobra's head bobbed back and forth rhythmically, Mrs. Wiley began to fear that it was not responding well. 'It's getting nervous' she said. 'I had better put it away.' And as she reached for it, the cobra struck. For a full thirty seconds she struggled to get the needle-point fangs out of her middle finger, pressing with all her strength against the cobra's locked jaws. When she had torn the snake loose, she returned it to its cage and calmly instructed the photographer to apply the tourniquet to her wrist and elbow. She told him where to find needles and stimulants. But the needles were rusty and the vials broke in the photographer's hands. 'Take me to the hospital at once,' she said. 'This is serious.' But all the aid at the Long Beach Hospital was of no avail to save this woman. Her throat muscles contracted and she became paralyzed. Just exactly one hour and forty minutes after she had been bitten,
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her body suddenly stiffened and she lay dead on the hospital bed."
You cannot take a lie into your life and fondle it without being bitten. You cannot indulge lust and not have it poison love and destroy decency. You cannot let greed and bitterness twine about your heart and not be hurt. You cannot let selfishness or pride crawl into your life without having them bury their fangs in you. Sin is deadly. The Bible states this very clearly. "...the wages of sin is death." We endeavor to call it by a different name, but its nature remains. "...the soul that sinneth it shall die," because sin does violence to the will of God and sin destroys the life of man.
The first word that Jesus had to say in His public ministry was, "Repent!" Change your attitude! Change your behavior concerning evil. Break with it. Lock it up and put it away. Repent! Man is not made to live like a beast; he is meant to live in fellowship with a Holy God and walk as His son in the world.
In managing your zoo, feed the good animals. A visitor to the Southern Mountains was chatting with an old mountaineer who had two dogs about the same size. The dogs were fighting continually. The visitor asked the mountaineer which dog usually won. The man chewed his tobacco for awhile in silence and then he said, "The one I feeds the most!"
Within the believer there are two natures steadily at war; the new nature by the Spirit of God, endeavoring to make love, truth, purity, humility, and godliness supreme, and the old nature, fighting to place self, darkness, and evil on top. The one that is fed the most is the one that wins. Feed your lower nature by suggestive reading, by tawdry films or T.V. shows, by careless conversation, by loose associations and
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what happens? It is on top. But feed your higher nature, the things of God and goodness, and the higher nature will be on top.
Let us then nourish the mind with the Word of God. "...Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God" (Mat. 4:4). The Bible is food for man's spiritual nature. "Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful. But his delight is in the law of the Lord; and in his law doth he meditate day and night. And he shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water,... his leaf also shall not wither; and whatsoever he doeth shall prosper" (Psa. 1:1-3). Let me put into my mind the truths of the Word of God, meditate on them day and night, feed the spiritual life with a knowledge of God and His will in Christ, and it will grow in strength.
The Chinese Communists, with diabolical cleverness, have developed a technique called "brain washing" to remove the last vestige of "capitalist" or "imperialist" thought from the mind of a suspect. It is not a very complicated process. They simply take the individual and subject him to a steady barrage of indoctrination. They question him. They contradict his answers. They hammer home half-truths, distortions, falsehoods. The principles and dogmas of the party line are ceaselessly sounded, until over a period of time the plastic material of the mind is molded to their pattern. When one is subjected to this process without respite, there often comes a breaking point, a counter-conversion, and one who once hated communism becomes a fanatical follower of Marx.
It is a terrible business! Yet in America today, our minds are being subjected in a real way to "brain washing." It's go-
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ing on all the time, not deliberately or consciously but, nevertheless, truly. It comes over the television sets, through the magazines and periodicals, in the pattern of secular life around us. And if we are not careful, our minds will be just as truly shaped in the materialism and godlessness of American thought as that of the Communist by "brain washing." Rather, let us put into our minds the clear truth of God and His Word — meditating, assimilating, responding, orienting ourselves to God and His purposes and provisions in Jesus Christ.
Jesus said, "Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine; no more can ye, except ye abide in me. I am the vine, ye are the branches: He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without me ye can do nothing" (John 15:4, 5).
That is, continue in this fellowship of truth with me. Paul said, "...be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God" (Romans 12:2). To overcome the effect of non-Christian ideas, let me come to the Bible day by day, prayerfully, humbly, and with real purpose. Let me learn what God wants to say to me, then put it into action.
When our Lord was tempted in the wilderness, three times He answered the Adversary with a quotation, "Thus saith the Lord." He mastered evil through an intimate knowledge of God's Word which He had in His heart. No man can master evil in life until he lets the Word of God feed him. This is not a theory any more than "brain washing" is a theory. It is real.
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We overcome in the Word of truth — the Bible, known, trusted, obeyed.
Let us feed our hearts with Christian fellowship. God has made us to dwell in families in Christ and we need fellowship with other Christians. I believe the hour of worship on the Lord's Day is essential, but we must go beyond that to smaller groups where we share the wonderful things of our Lord and catch from each other the inspiration of godly living. In homes, in small fellowship prayer groups, or in conferences — wherever we are together with Christ at the center we sense our oneness in Him and our hearts are fed.
At any time or place we may feed our souls on Christ. Brother Lawrence, among the pots and pans of the monastery, had such a radiant spirit and godly life that people came from afar to learn the ways of the Lord. He had wanted to be a learned scholar, but that was denied him. He had dreamed of a ministry before the altar but found himself in a kitchen. At first he was discouraged. Then he remembered, "God is here, right here in the kitchen. Let me recognize Him." He practiced the presence of God, and it transformed his life and brought the hungry hearted from afar to learn of Christ in a kitchen.
To manage the wild things within us, we also need a strong Keeper. During my college days, there was a boy whose room down the hall from me was a continual mess. When one's room is branded "messy" by college students, it's really messy. One evening we were endeavoring to crowd into his room, and he said somewhat apologetically, "What I need is a little system." "Oh, no," said one of the boys, "you need a little wife to help you take care of these matters."
Personal endeavor and discipline is essential, but there comes a time when life is more than we can master by our-
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selves. We need a Keeper for the heart. Jesus Christ came to handle the problem of sin and to help us manage our unmanageables. For this purpose He became incarnate and took upon Himself our nature. He lived with us and identified Himself with our needs. He tracked sin down to its lair and uncovered its deadly coils. On Calvary He met the full fury of evil's assault and conquered it by His resurrection. Now He shares His victory with us and He will impart His purity and power to every trusting, yielded life.
Paul writes, "This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners; of whom I am chief." He came to save us not only from sin's penalty, but from sin's power. And if we can take it to Christ, call it by its true name, confess it, turn from it, and surrender it to Him, we can rely upon His grace and power to handle that wrong thing in our life.
The demoniac of Gadara roamed naked and unmanageable among the tombs; no one could bind him. He cried continually, cutting himself with stones, possessed of foul spirits. Then Jesus came. With a word He cast the foul things out the demoniac's life. The man was found seated at the feet of Jesus, clothed and in his right mind.
The poor paralytic in a helpless condition was lowered through the tiles of the roof by his friends and placed before our Lord. Jesus said to him, "Son, be of good cheer, thy sins are forgiven thee. Arise, take up thy bed and walk." And he arose free.
Zaccheus, whose soul was imprisoned with greed for gold, had an interview with Jesus. When he came from that luncheon engagement he said, "Behold, the half of my goods I
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give to the poor and if I have wronged any man, I restore to him fourfold." The wrong things were righted in his life.
When the sinful woman wept at Jesus' feet, bathing them with her tears and wiping them with her tresses, our Lord said to her, "Thy sins be forgiven thee." He had put pure love in her life. Jesus can do this. Make Him the Keeper of your life.
There would be no problem in the zoo at all, if the nature of all the wild animals was transformed. The Prophet Jeremiah raised the rhetorical question, "Can... the leopard change his spots? then may ye also do good, that are accustomed to do evil?" (Jer. 13:23). Can the leopard change his spots? No. But God can, and here is the miracle of His grace and power. He can make our weak points places of strength. "Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new" (II Cor. 5:17). Listen to this. "Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you: but ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God" (1 Cor. 6:9-11). After all, this is the final solution to the problem, changing the nature of the heart, giving new drives and disposition. Christ is not satisfied with keeping bad things in check. He purposes to make bad things good, to take the very areas of our failure and make them places of moral power.
First then, let us face our sins in confession. Second, repent of the sin in our lives. Third, surrender ourselves to Christ
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and His will. There is a last step. Make the wrong right with others.
Is temper your trouble? The next time you injure someone through your expression of temper, go to that individual and humbly say, "I'm sorry that I hurt you with my temper. Forgive me, for Christ's sake." If you do that, I guarantee that quicker than you believe possible, your temper will be tamed.
Are criticism and gossip your besetting sins? When you fail in this way, say to the individual with whom you have spoken, "Forgive me for damaging the reputation of another and pray for me that I may have a sweet and loving spirit." I guarantee that in a matter of weeks your tongue will be tamed.
Is the subtle sin of deception your downfall? Are you not quite truthful? When the lie crosses your lips, track it down and say to the one to whom you have lied, "Forgive me and pray for me that I may be truthful."
If you will deal with the wild things in your life like this in the presence of Jesus Christ, He will transform you at the center and make the point of your weakness the place of spiritual power. For this He has come and for this He is available.
Make me a captive, Lord,And then I shall be free;
Force me to render up my sword,
And I shall conqueror be.
I sink in life's alarms,
When by myself I stand;
Imprison me within Thine arms,
And strong shall be my hand.
George Matheson
