Specialties and Attitudes

Important to Christian individuals should be to become the best persons of faith and action they can become.  The only evaluation (judgment) that is of final concern to them is the final toting up that appears after the close of nature’s life – as noted in Scripture.  The great comfort of that firm and just report and consequence is that God is true, without error, and will be merciful with every person (individual).  There will be no complaint against his conclusions.  No one else in the universe has enough information about me to be absolutely just in determining my hits and misses in all of my life.  My friends would permit me to get by: my enemies would pile error on.  My response to God will be: Amen.  Truth always inspires an Amen – the final word.  God is true and holy – altogether.  There is finality in it.  All of that is wrapped in love.

Believing the above I do not want to be the cause of any occasion that would cause another person to be faulted.  I learn something from the Apostle Paul in the matter of my part in seeking human rights for those to whom it has been denied, as in the case of Onesimus.  As I understand Scripture, even in the favorable or unfavorable exceptions made or permitted by God’s equality of human beings is a prevailing truth and that never changed by God.  We have all come from an original pair – our first parents.  The argument could well stop there, but there is more.  The law was clear against Israel yielding to slavery, even to never returning a slave to a master found among them – and making the Jubilee Year a year of freedom.  God hates slavery, if for no other reason than that these are all his creation, not to be owned by anyone else than God.  Slavery was permitted by God simply because mankind did not know how to manage self and the social context.  The errors show in other contexts as well seen in factors like government, economy, even religion that lead to such conduct as warfare – human beings killing human beings, a matter against a nature.

Even Christians often miss the divine truth.  Cotton Mather, a devout and influential Christian, owned a slave.  (He ultimately permitted the fellow to buy his freedom.  Of course he should never have owned a slave, and changing his mind should have released him with forgiveness.  In the increment improvements of history, the slave was made free in society.  The secret to all this business rests in the mystery of love, and love’s expression – one of which is hospitality which is related to the fellowship of all persons in the kingdom of God.  There will be a reality of oneness (unity) to Christians in eternity as there appears in the Trinity of God.  This mystery is beyond our competency to analyze, but there is enough in Scripture to reveal its glory, and inspiration to right conduct.  We are one in the Lord – as the lyric goes in the hymn.

It is important for me to suggest that most eminent persons affecting human culture and improvement are specialists known for their accents on the specialty.  Persons like Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. are known for their non-violent resistance to wrong, and they are to be admired for that, not only for change but for the spiritual meaning of peace.  I heard King twice in person, and followed some of his addresses over the media, especially the I Have a Dream Speech which will remain a classic as are speeches from Pericles, or Lincoln – lasting for world history.  I have books of such speeches, great but may not be redemptive beyond world vision.  From Graham, Sunday, Moody, Finney, Wesley and others the focus was evangelism that did not exclude other human needs, but included them for purpose.  Which is better for society, the accent of the specialist or the life of the generalist?  We need both, of course, and we do not do well in making comparisons/contrasts on some issues when accents do not permit a balanced evaluation.  Having related very directly with persons taken with their callings, I am unwilling to evaluate them on the separate social matters important to society and to God.  King was supreme in his ideas and conduct for justice, but will not be known for evangelism except as a sidebar.  Graham was supreme as an evangelist, but will not be known for his social activism except as a sidebar.  In both King and Graham there was a motivation engendered from God that made two men the prophets of God for differentiated problems – one the failure of mankind for rights of mankind, and one the failure of mankind in advancing the gospel of Christ for the redemption of mankind.  Under God, both did what they felt they had to do.  I respect that.