VOLVEMENT but not IDENTIFICATION, not ISOLA TION but INSULATION, becoming involved with the world’s need but not with its way of life. INSULATED INVOLVEMENT! In the Middle Ages, Florence was a most religious city. The rulers, the Medicis, claimed to be Chris tians. Everything was tolerant and ecumenical. But there was one man, Savonarola, who was narrow and exclusive and intolerant as every prophet of God should be. That fiery preacher stood single-handed against the luxury and debauchery of his time. Of course they killed him. John the Baptist is always beheaded when he reproves Herod, when he clashes with the System and the Establishment. His head is not brought in on a platter these days but he is decapitated with more finesse! We need an Amos in religious Bethel today to the consternation of its Jeroboams and Dr. Amaziahs, the court preachers who resent the prophet when he disturbs the status quo. My Lord met His worst op position from organized, institutional religion. We need a Luther, a Calvin, a Knox, a Wesley, to regain the churches’ lost identity. We need a prophet who will walk into our magnificent sanctuaries and our august conventions, unawed and unimpressed, aflame with the message of repentance. I see no such prophet on the horizon but I pray God that, while four hundred priests bid Ahab go up against Ramoth-gilead, some where a Micaiah will rise to be the lone dissenter. The four-hundred-and-first prophet is always hated both by the church and the world. Somehow the heresy has spread that the church should sponsor the projects of government, of soci ologists, of political reformers, giving a touch of sanctity to unregenerate man’s efforts to build heav en on earth by technology, by education, by legisla tion. God never meant that His church should be the handmaiden of the reforms of this age, riding every bandwagon bound for some man-made Paradise, try ing to bring in a counterfeit millennium. The church is a soloist, not an accompanist, and her program from start to finish is utterly counter to every scheme of this world. When she gets in step with “progress,” she gets out of step with God. Her business is to practice and promote what the New Testament calls “the foolishness of God.” The natural man cannot receive the things of God; they are foolishness to him and all efforts to accommodate them to his under standing is to cast pearls before swine. In doing so, the church does him no good and loses her own dis tinctiveness, swallowed up in the world she was meant to permeate as the salt of the earth. When the salt loses its saltness, it is GOOD FOR NOTHING but to be cast out and trodden under foot of men. Now if our problem is lost identity, then our big gest business is to regain it. If we are to regain it, we must get back to the three marks of identification that establish our identity. First, we must return to IDENTIFICATION WITH THE PERSON OF CHRIST. We become identified with plans and programs and pro-
means, we have become so identified with the world that we have lost the very thing we started out to promote. As Christians and as the church, we have lost our IDENTITY today because we have lost our three fold IDENTIFICATION. There is nothing distinctive about us. We have been assimilated, amalgamated and homogenized into the age in which we live. Black and white have become a smudge of indefinite gray. We are no longer pilgrims and strangers, exiles and aliens on the earth. In Pilgrim's Progress the Chris tian travelers and the people of Vanity Fair seemed as barbarians to each other. Today we have become part of Vanity Fair. We have joined its clubs and endorsed its culture. We are both in the world and of it. The early Christians were different. They were regarded as the scum of the earth and a spectacle to the world for the scandal of the cross. Now we belong to the “ in” crowd; we believe in “getting with it"; we have been brainwashed and streamlined. We are supposed to be able to talk intelligently about modern art and literature, the new music and the latest Broadway plays. But for all our new emphasis on "involvement,” our new beat, our new angles on communication, the world sinks lower and lower in degradation and despair. We are having less effect on our society than ever since we began sipping ginger ale at its cocktail parties. There is a new Gospel abroad giving the impression that God wants us all to be millionaires — a new affluent, de luxe country-club Christianity. Laodicea has become rich and increased with goods, needing nothing, and our Lord is about to spew it out of His mouth. Of course, a rich man can be a Christian but our Lord indicates that heaven will not be overcrowded with the wealthy. Paul gave the same impression about three other categories, the wise, the intelligen- sia; the mighty, people of high position; the noble, the bluebloods. The early church was, like our Lord, despised and rejected of men, but when Constantine became a church member, it became fashionable to profess Christianity and the church lost her simple faith, her pilgrim character and her blessed hope. From that day to this, Christianity has regained pow er only when a faithful minority has come out of Babylon, has gone to the Lord without the camp bearing His reproach, regaining its identity by iden tification with Christ and separation from the world. Even H. L. Mencken said, “Religion has become frankly worldly.” Albert Schweitzer felt that “because religion has joined forces with the spirit of the world, it has lost its purity and authority.” Arnold Toynbee sees the day coming when religion will be "safe" because “harmless.” “ If the Christians commit them selves to making their peace with Leviathan, who can save us?” There is a popular notion that the more like the world we are, the more we can influence it. But the church has moved the world most when least like it. You cannot pull somebody up very well if you are standing on the same level. There must be IN
THE KING'S BUSINESS
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