BEAU T IFU L G IRLS & my unde Charlie
Uncle Charlie was an independent critter. And a wonderful fellow. He ran a small general store up in the Sierras. But he never let business interfere with living. He liked to fish and hunt and roam those vast and beautiful mountains. He liked the high country. Up around the glacial cirques and treeless ridges. The booming of a grouse or the lazy circling of a giant hawk was an endless joy to him. But then most things were a joy to Uncle Charlie. Take girls. A beautiful girl to Uncle Charlie was sort of a combination of the pleasures of nature. He saw in a young woman the gracefulness of a circling hawk and the gaiety of a blue jay on a sunlit morning and the innocent shyness of a yearling doe. Somehow even though he wasn’t an artist or a philosopher I think he understood beauty the way God meant it to be understood. And understanding it Uncle Charlie knew how to appreciate it. I learned a lot from Uncle Charlie. And I admired him. But not everybody admired him. Over the years Uncle Charlie built up an aversion to church going. This aversion coupled with his admiration for beautiful women marked him as pretty much of a sinner in the eyes of his wife. It’s against this background that I’d like to pin down an item or two about this thing called Christianity. A lot of women (and a lot of sermonizing men for that matter) seem to have the idea that everyone should have an identical religious experience. And usually this experience is the same as theirs. But the truth is that most men don’t want a well- meaning wife -— or anyone — pushing them around. Usually when someone starts pressuring another person into becom ing a Christian the real issues are lost in some pretty illogical arguments. It seems to me that most men I know are well equipped to think spiritual things out for themselves. The trouble is that most men just aren’t given the chance. As long as Uncle Charlie’s wife was banging away on her personal campaign to eradicate sin in his life the old fellow didn’t have a very good chance to get his relationship with God into proper perspective. Admiring beautiful women isn’t keeping a man from a right relationship with God. O f that I’m certain. Look at it this way. If there is something that keeps a man from God then it must be a fairly universal thing (unless we want to attribute favoritism to God). And if it’s universal that means we’re all in the same condition. Which doesn’t leave much room for stone tossing according to my book.
The Bible has the answer. It goes something like this. Sin (not sins) keeps all men from having a proper relation ship with God. The items we often hear cataloged as "sins” are but mere derivatives of sin. What is sin? According to the Bible it is the refusal to submit our will to the will of God. Not so complicated. But it is a problem. A problem we all share. If we’ve arrived at the problem (according to the Bible) then what is the solution? I imagine you’ve already come up with the answer. The solution is to bend our will to the will of God. An easy solution. But one that is difficult almost beyond imagination to put into practice. If God had told us to walk on hot coals or lounge around on a bed of spikes or give 10 percent of our money to the church in order to be right with Him then our problem would be almost ridiculously simple. These are all external and relatively painless items (as are all such items in this catagory). But to give up our will is entirely another thing. This is crushingly painful. Frankly I don’t think any man is about to make such a drastic commitment unless he’s overwhelmingly convinced of a great need. You know this. And because this is true it’s pretty foolish to think that everytime a Christian suggests to a non-Chris tian that he should join up he’ll do it. He’ll do it if he feels a need. If there is no sense of a need then all the persuasion in the world would be wasted. I’ve always had a hunch, however, that at some point in every life the sense of this need for God comes to the surface. It may come many times . . . and it may come only once. But I think it always comes. There may be one man who is reading this page that has that sense of need. If this is so, and he wishes to become right with God, I would suggest a reading of the Gospel of St. John in the New Testament of the Bible. Read it through several times. Note such absolute statements as these about Jesus Christ: But as many as received him to them gave he pow er to becom e the sons o f G od, even to them that believe on his name. H e that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life : and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life ; but the wrath o f G od abideth on him. I am the bread o f life : h e that cometh to m e shall never hunger; and h e that believeth on m e shall never thirst. I f anyone wills to do his will he shall understand the teaching. . . . If you are interested, why not make the experiment of committing your will to God through Jesus Christ?
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FEBRUARY 1957
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