10.19.2018 LOVING GOD by Charles Colson

Chapter 2 - The Russian Doctor

no reporters have visited the prison camps of Soviet Russia, unless they have gone as prisoners. so to this day we have little information about the millions who have lived, suffered and died there, especially during Stalin's reign of terror. most will remain nameless for all time, remembered only in the hears of those who knew and loved them. but from time to time, scraps  of information have filtered out bout a few . one of those few was Boris Nicholayevich Kornfeld.

K was a medical doctor. from this we can guess a little about his background, for in post-revolutionary Russia such education never went to families tied in any way to czarist Russia. probably his parents were socialists who had fastened their hopes on the Revolution.  they were also Jews, but almost certainly not Jews still hoping for the Messiah,  for the name Boris and the patronymic Nicholayevich indicate they had taken Russian names in some past generation. probably K's forbears were Haskalah, so-called  'enlightened Jews', who accepted the philosophy of rationalism, cultivated a knowledge of the natural sciences and devoted themselves to the arts. in language, dress and social habits they tried to make themselves as much like their Russian neighbor as possible.
it was natural for such Jews to support Lenin's revolution, for the

*28  czars' vicious anti-Semitism had made life almost unendurable for the prior 200 years. socialism promised something much better fro them than 'Christian' Russia. 'Christian' Russia had slaughtered the Jews, perhaps atheistic Russia would save them.
obviously D had followed in his parents' footsteps, believing in Communism as the path of historical necessity, for political prisoners at that time were not citizens opposed to Communism or wanting the Czar's return. such people wee simply shot. political prisoners were believers in the Revolution,  socialists or communists who had, nevertheless, not kept their allegiance to Stalin's leadership pure.

we do not know what crime Dr. K committed, only that it was a political crime. perhaps he dared one day to suggest to a friend that their leader, Stalin, was fallible; or maybe he was simply accused of harboring such thoughts. it took no more than that to become a prisoner in the Russia of the early1950s; many died for less. at any rate, K was imprisoned in a concentration camp for political subversives at Ekibastuz.
ironically, a few years behind barbed wire was a good cure for Communism. the senseless brutality, the waste of lives, the trivialities called criminal charges made men like K doubt the glories of the system. stripped of all past associations, of all that had kept them busy and secure, behind the wire prisoners had time to think. in such a place thoughtful men like Boris D found themselves reevaluating beliefs they had held since childhood.
so it was that this Russian doctor abandoned all his socialistic ideals. in fact, he went further than that. he did something that would have horrified his forebears.

Boris Kornfeld became a Christian.

while few Jews anywhere in the world find it easy to accept Jesus Christ as the true Messiah, a Russian Jew would find it even more difficult. for 2 centuries these Jews had known implacable hatred from the people who, they were told, were the most Christian of all. each move the Jews made to reconcile themselves or accommodate themselves  to the Russians was met by new inventions of hatred and persecution. as when the head of the governing body of the Russian Orthodox Church said he hoped that, as a result of the Russian pogroms,  'one-third

*29  of the Jews will convert, one-third will die and one-third will flee the county'.

yet following the Revolution a strange alignment occurred. Joseph Stalin demanded undivided, unquestioning loyalty to his government, but both Jews and Christians knew their ultimate loyalty was to god. consequently people of both faiths suffered for their beliefs and frequently in the same camps.
thus it was that Boris K came in contact with a devout Christian, a well-educated and kind fellow prisoner who spoke of a Jewish Messiah who had come to keep the promises the Lord had made to Israel. this Christian -whose name we do not know -pointed out that Jesus had spoken almost solely to Jewish people and proclaimed that He came to the Jews first. that was consistent with God's special concern for the Jew, the chosen ones and, he explained, the Bible promised that a new kingdom of peace would come. this man often recited aloud the Lord's Prayer and K heard in those simple words a strange ring of truth.
the camp had stripped K of everything, including his belief in salvation through socialism. now this man offered him hope - but in what a form!
to accept Jesus Christ - to become one of those who had always persecuted his people -seemed a betrayal of his family, of all who had been before him. K  knew the Jews had suffered innocently. Jews were innocent in the days of the Cossacks! Innocent in the days of the czars! and he himself was innocent of betraying Stalin; he had been imprisoned unjustly.

but K pondered what the christian prisoner had told him. in one commodity, time, the doctor was rich.

unexpectedly, he began to see the powerful parallels between the Jews and this Jesus. it had always been a scandal that god should entrust Himself in a unique way to one people, the Jews.  despite centuries of persecution, their very existence in the midst of hose who sought to destroy them was a sign of a Power grater than that of their oppressors.  it was the same with Jesus - that God would present Himself in the form of a man had always  confounded the wisdom of the wold. to the proud and powerful, Jesus stood as a Sign, exposing their own limitations and sin. so they had to kill Him, just as those in power had to kill the Jews, in order to maintain their delusions of omnipotence. thus, Stalin, the new god-head of the brave new world of the Revolution, had to persecute

*30  both Jew and Christian. each stood as living proof of his blasphemous pretensions to power.

only in the gulag could Boris K begin to see such a truth.  and the more he reflected upon it, the more it began to change him within.
though a prisoner,  K lived in better conditions than most behind the wire, other prisoners were expendable, but doctors were scarce in the remote, isolated camps. the authorities could not afford to lose a physician, for guards as well as prisoners needed medical attention.and no prison officer wanted to end up in the hands of a doctor he had cruelly abused.
K's resistance to the Christian message might have begun to weaken while he was in surgery, perhaps while working on one of those guards he had learned to lathe. the man had been knifed and an artery cut. while suturing  the blood vessel, the doctor thought of tying the thread in such a way that it would reopen shortly after surgery. the guard would die quickly and no one would be the wiser.

the process of taking this particular form of vengeance gave rein to the burning hatred K had for the guard and all like him. how he despised his persecutors! he could gladly slaughter them all!

and at that point, Boris K became appalled by the hatred and violence he saw in his won heart. yes, he was a victim of hatred as his ancestors had been. but that hatred had spawned an insatiable hatred of his own. what a deadly predicament! he was trapped by the very evil he despised . what freedom could he ever know with his soul imprisoned by this murderous hate? it made the whole world a concentration camp.
as K began to retie the sutures properly, he found himself almost unconsciously, repeating the words he had heard from his fellow prisoner.  'forgive us our trespasses. as we forgive those who trespass against us'. strange words in the mouth of a Jew. yet he could not help praying them. having seen his own evil heart, he had to pray for cleansing. and he had to prayer to a God who had suffered, as he had: Jesus.
for some time. Boris K simply continued praying the Lord's Prayer while he carried out his backbreaking, hopeless tasks as a camp doctor. backbreaking because there were always far too many patients. hopeless because the camp was designed to kill men. he stood ineffectively

*31  against the tide o death gaining on each prisoner: disease, cold, overwork, beatings, malnutrition.
doctors in the camp's medical section were also asked to sign decrees for imprisonment in the punishment block. any prisoner whom the authorities  did not like or wanted out of the way was sent to this block - solitary confinement in a tiny, dark, cold, torture chamber of a cell. a doctor's signature on the forms certified that a prisoner was strong and healthy enough to withstand the punishment. this was, of course, a lie. few emerged alive.
like all the other doctors, K  had signed his share of forms. what was the difference?  the authorities did not need the signatures anyway; they had many other ways of 'legalizing' punishment. and a doctor who did not cooperate would not last long, even though doctors were scarce. but shortly after he began to pray for forgiveness, Dr. K stopped authorizing the punishment;  he refused to sign the forms. though he had signed hundreds of them, now he couldn't . whatever had happened inside him would not permit him to do it.

this rebellion was bad enough but K  did not stop there. he turned in an orderly.

the orderlies were drawn from a group of prisoners who cooperated with the authorities. as a reward for their cooperation, they were given jobs within the camp which were less than a death sentence. they became the cooks, bakers, clerks and hospital orderlies. the other prisoners hated them almost more than they hated the guards, for these prisoners were traitors; they could never be trusted. they stole food from the other prisoners and would gladly kill anyone who tried to report them or give them trouble. besides, the guards turned a blind eye to their abuses of power. people died in the camps  every day; the authorities needed these quislings to keep the system running smoothly.

while making his rounds one day, K came to one of his many patients suffering from pellagra,  an all-too-common disease in the camps malnutrition induce pellagra which, perversely, made digestion nearly impossible. victims literally starved to death.
this man's body showed the ravages of the disease. his face had become dark, one deep bruise. the skin was peeling off his hands; they had to be bandaged to staunch the incessant bleeding. K had been  giving the patient chalk, good white bread and herring to stop the diarrhea and get nutrients into his blood, but the man was too far gone. when the doctor asked the dying patient his name, the man could not even remember it.
*32  just after leaving this patient, K came upon a hulking orderly bent over the remains of a loaf of white bread meant for the pellagra patients. the man looked up shamelessly, his cheeks  stuffed with food. K had known about the stealing, had known it was one reason his patients did not recover, but his vivid memory of the dying man pierced him now. he could not shrug his shoulders and go on.

of course he could not blame the deaths simply on the theft of food. there were countless other reasons why his patients did not recover. the hospital stank of excrement and lacked proper facilities and supplies. he had to perform surgery under conditions so primitive that often operations were little more than mercy killings. it was preposterous to stand on principle in the situation,  particularly when he knew what the orderly might do to him in return. but the doctor had to be obedient to what he now believed. once again the change in his life was making a difference.

when K reported the orderly to the commandant, the officer found his complaint very curious. there had been a recent rash of murders in the camp; each victim had been a 'stoolie' (def - a person hired or acting as an informer). it was foolish - dangerously so at this time -  to complain about anyone. but the commandant put the orderly in thee punishment block for 3 days, taking the complaint with a perverse satisfaction. K's refusal to sign the punishment forms was becoming a nuisance;  this would save the commandant some trouble. the doctor had arranged his own execution.

Boris Kornfeld was not an especially brave man. he knew his life would be in danger as soon as the orderly was released from the cell block. sleeping in the barracks, controlled at night  by the camp-chosen prisoners, would mean certain death. so the doctor began staying in the hospital, catching sleep when and where he could, living in a strange twilight world where any moment might be his last.
but paradoxically, along with this anxiety came tremendous freedom. having accepted the possibility of death, K was now free to live. he signed no more papers of documents sending men to their deaths. he no longer turned his eyes from cruelty or shrugged his shoulders when he saw injustice. he said what he wanted and did what he could.  and soon he realized that the anger and hatred and violence in his own soul had vanished. he wondered whether there lived another man in Russia who knew such freedom!
*33  now K  wanted to tell someone about his discovery about this new life of obedience and freedom. the Christian who had talked to him about Jesus had been transferred to another camp, so the doctor waited for the right person and the right moment.

one gray afternoon he examined a patient who had just been operated on for cancer of the intestines. this young man with a melon-shaped head and a hurt, little-boy expression touched the soul of the doctor. the man's eyes wee sorrowful and suspicious and his face deeply etched by the years he had already spent in the  camps, reflecting a depth of spiritual misery and emptiness. k  had rarely seen.

so the doctor began to talk to the patient, describing what had happened to him. once the tale began to spill out, K could not stop.
the patient missed the first part of the story, for he was drifting in and out of anesthesia's influence, but the doctor's ardor caught his concentration and held it, though he was shaking with fever. all through the afternoon and late into the night, the doctor talked, describing his conversion to Christ and his new-found freedom.
very late, with the perimeter light in the camp glazing the windowpanes, K confessed to the patient: 'On the whole, you know, I have become convinced that THERE IS NO PUNISHMENT THAT COMES TO US IN THIS LIFE ON EARTH WHICH IS UNDESERVED.  superficially, it can have nothing to do with what we are guilty of in actual fact, but if you go over your life with a fine-tooth comb and ponder it deeply,  you will always be able to hunt down that transgression of yours for which you have now received this blow'.
imagine! the persecuted Jew who once believed himself totally innocent now saying that every man deserved his suffering, whatever it was.
the patient knew he was listening to an incredible confession. though the pain from his operation was severe, his stomach a heavy, expansive agony of molten lead, he hung on the doctor's words until he fell asleep.
the young patient awoke early the next morning to the sound of running feet and a commotion in the area of the operating room. his first thought was of the doctor, but his new friend did not come. then the whispers of a fellow patient told him of K's fate.
during the night, while the doctor slept, someone had crept up

*34  beside him and dealt him 8 blows on the head with a plasterer's mallet. and though his fellow doctors worked valiantly to save him, in the morning  the orderlies carried him out, a still, broken form.
but K's testimony did not die.
the patient pondered the doctor's last, impassioned words. as a result, he too, became a Christian. he survived that prison camp and went on to tell the world what he had learned there.

the patient's name was Alexander Solzhenitsyn.

*35  Chapter 3 - Faith and OBEDIENCE

Boris Kornfeld is the great paradox personified.
a Jew who betrayed the faith of his fathers.
a doctor whose years of training were senselessly wasted.
a political idealist whose utopian vision led only to a barren Siberian prison.
a prisoner who gave up his life for nothing more than a loaf of stolen bread.
in every one of these areas, K was a failure - at least in the world's system of values.
yet God took that failure of a man and through his singleminded obedience
used him to lead to Christ another
who would go on to become a prophetic voice and one of the world's most influential writers.

for K's words did their convincing, convicting work, touching what Sol later called 'a sensitive chord'.
that was his moment of spiritual awakening;
'God of the Universe, I believe You again! though I renounced You, You will be with me, '  he cried out....

and in his conversion Sol saw clearly the kingdom paradox. for in the emptiness of that Russian gulag, he perceived what pleasure-seeking millions in the abundance of Western life cannot. he wrote later, the meaning of earthly existence lies, not as we have grown used to thinking, in prospering, but in the development of the soul.'

*36  K's brief Christian life was lived in circumscribed circumstances, almost in isolation. in many ways it would seem that his decision not to sign the medical forms, his reporting of the corrupt guard,  even his few hours of testimony to a perhaps terminally ill  patient were futile, would gain him nothing but that which came to an end - a brutal death at the hands of his captors. yet K's faith was strong, sure, and sincere. and somehow his fellow Christian  and the Holy Spirit had communicated one fact to him: what God demanded of him was obedience. no matter what. singleminded obedience in faith.
 and that lesson of the Russian doctor's life was my lesson....
what God wants from His people is obedience, no matter what the circumstances, no matter how unknown the outcome.
 it has always been this way. God calling His people to obedience and giving them at best a glimpse of the outcome of their effort.
most of the great figures of the Old Testament died without ever seeing the fulfillment of the promises they relied upon. Paul expended himself building the early church, but as his life drew to a close he could see only a string of tiny outposts along the Mediterranean, many weakened by fleshly indulgence or divided over doctrinal disputes.
in more recent times, the great colonial pastor Cotton Mather prayed for revival several hours each day for 20  years; the Great Awakening began the year he died. the British Empire finally abolished slavery as the Christian parliamentarian and abolitionist leader William Wilberforce lay on his deathbed, exhausted from his nearly 50 year campaign against the practice of human bondage. few were the converts during Hudson Taylor's lifelong mission work in the Orient;  but today millions of Chinese embrace the faith he so patiently planted and tended. 

....the very nature of the obedience He demands is that it be given without regard to circumstances or results....

*37  ..maturing faith - FAITH which deepens and grows as we live our Christian life - is not just knowledge,  but KNOWLEDGE ACTED UPON. it is not just belief, but belief lived out.. James said we are to be doers of the Word, not just hearers.  Dietrich Bonhoeffer...martyred in a Nazi concentration camp, ..stated this crucial interrelationship:  'Only he who believes is obedient; only he who is obedient believes'....
..Job lost has home, his family (except for a nagging wife).. his health, even his hope ..no matter where he turned, he could find no answers to his plight. eventually he stood alone. but though it appeared God had abandoned him Job clung to the assurance that God is Who He is. ..he confirmed his obedience ...'Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him'. (13.15)

this is real faith: believing and acting obediently regardless of circumstances or contrary evidence. after all, if faith depended on visible evidence it wouldn't be faith .  'We walk by faith, not be sight', the apostle Paul wrote...
*38  ( note- after His resurrection...when Jesus came to His disciples on the Sea of Galilee...) 'one of them burst out with the question they all wanted to ask: Lord, are you at this time going to restore the Kingdom to Israel?
Jesus was sharp, rebuking in His reply. 'It is not for you to know the times or dates the Father has set by  His own authority'. he had already

*39  commanded them to wait in Jerusalem, now He told them that a power would come to them there. 'And you will be My witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to the ends of the earth.'
then...He was gone...they were left alone, outcasts in their own land. they had few human resources. and on top of all that, they had been commanded to go back and wait - the hardest thing of all for strong-willed men to do.
...Christianity rests on historic truth. Jesus lived, died,

*40  and rose from the dead to be Lord of all - not just in theory or fable,  but in fact. with that understood, Christianity must evoke from the believer the same response it drew from the first disciples:  a passionate desire to obey and please God - a willingly entered-into discipline. that is the beginning of true discipleship. THAT IS THE BEGINNING OF LOVING GOD.

...a lawyer, a Pharisee  attempting to trick Jesus, put a similar question  to the Master centuries ago.
Teacher,  he said 'which is the greatest commandment in the Law? Christ's response has been engraved in the memories of believers ever since:  'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. this is the first and greatest commandment'.

'But how do we love the Lord?' we ask. Jesus answered this in a discussion with His disciples: 'IF YOU LOVE ME, YOU WILL OBEY WHAT I COMMAND' (john 14.15) or,  as the apostle John wrote later,  'this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments'. (I john 5.3)...

*45    Chapter 4 - Take Up and Read

Monica  was a protective mother, strong-minded, practical, utterly determined that her beloved son become a Christian. she prayed for him daily and had since he was a small boy. but while Aug loved his mother, he paid no attention to her.

*46  Mon had hardly let her son out of her sight since she was widowed in North Africa While Aug was a teen..he had had to trick her to come to Italy alone, lying about his departure so he and his mistress and their illegitimate child could sail off without her. but before long Mon had followed him to Milan. she had even succeeded in getting him engaged to a good Christian girl and in sending away his mistress of 15 years. but his fiancee was very young and his marriage 2 years off; so Aug was again sleeping with a woman. sex was necessary to him, he said, for he had no power to resist his natural desires.
Mon could not understand her son's strange ideas about right and wrong. he indulged in such licentiousness without, apparently, a pang of conscience, but lamented the time when he had stolen fruit from a neighbor's pear tree with a gang of youthful rowdies. Aug dwelt on this mere childish prank as though it were the great evil of his life while practicing habits much more sinful in his mother's eyes.
yet she had never stopped hoping for his conversion and lately her hope had been stronger than ever. Aug had recently broken with his religion, a strange cult following the teachings of a Persian named Mani who claimed that powers of darkness controlled every physical being. Aug had quit astrology, too , and had been going to church. perhaps the bishop aright, Mon thought.

she had visited an African bishop many years earlier, pleading with him to talk with her son. but the churchman refused, telling her that Au was not ready to talk.

'let him be, the bishop had advised.  'Only pray...she had taken his parting words, it is impossible for the son of such tears to perish' as a promise from heaven and had often reminded Aug of them, triumphantly.
but Aug could not become a Christian just to please his mother.

In the garden, Aug's visitor, idly looking about him as he contemplated his departure, picked up a book lying on a small table nearby. a puzzled smile crossed his face.

*47  'The apostle Paul, he said.  'are you reading this, Aug?

his host nodded. 'not only am I reading it. I have been wearing it out. and wearing myself out trying to grasp the meaning of the Christin faith'. he looked around, making sure his mother was not lurking within earshot.

'Did you know i am a Christian? Ponticanus smiled hesitantly.
Aug and Alypius nodded. they had heard this rumor.
'But I thought this would be one of your philosophical books',  Pont said.  ''I never dreamed I would find You reading the Bible'
'The philosophers have helped me understand the Bible, Aug admitted. he explained that until recently he had believed that only what he could see, measure, rationally and systematically prove could be real. the idea of an invisible, spiritual God seemed just talk. but studying Plato and his followers had convinced him that the real things were invisible, spiritual.

'this has helped me a great deal.  Aug was candid to a fault. yet he watched Pont carefully, his posture tense. 'But there is a major difference. to follow Plato, one merely thinks like Plato.  to follow Christ is something much more. you must put your whole life into it and leave behind whatever  hinders you from following Him. I don't know what it is exactly that enables a man to give himself to God -to commit himself to a life of sacrifice and faith. that's more than adopting a particular point of view, isn't it?
Pont nodded, as did Alypius. Aly, younger than Aug, practically worshiped the scholar.

wrapped in his won thoughts, Aug went on speaking, almost as though working out a problem for himself. 'Plato takes you up on a high mountain peak where you can see the land of peace. but you do not know how to get there. there must be a highway leading straight to that land, but you can't find it'. he shook his had wearily.
Aug had few illusions about himself. he knew how easily his mind fell into habits and was chained by them. His women. His pride.  I AM UTTERLY DEPRAVED,  he thought, and the mind alone is no match for the seduction of evil pleasure.
as Aug spoke, Pont had grown excited. now he jumped up, paced briskly in front of his host for a moment, then whirled to point a finger at him.
'Have you heard of Antony?
well, Aug drew back a bit, startled at his visitor's abruptness. 'I do know several Antonys, but none worth mentioning in the context of this discussion'.

*48  'no-no-Antony the monastic - the one Athanasius wrote the biography of. Many Christians have been greatly influenced by it'. to Pont's astonishment, neither of his listeners had heard of this Antony.
'I must tell you then...Antony was a rich young fellow,  born into a Christian family in Egypt. his parents died when he was just entering his teens; their large estate fell to him. he grew up fast, carrying that responsibility. he had all the money in the world and all the cares, too.

in church one Sun the Scripture reading came form Christ's reply  to the rich young ruler:  'If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor and you will have treasure in heaven . then come, follow Me'.
something in that familiar passage hit Antony. it was as though Jesus had given those words directly to him, personally, that very moment. Ant didn't even wait for the service to end. he rushed out of the church and set about preparing his records so that his property could be sold and the profit distributed to the poor.
from that day, Antony devoted his life to prayer. he went to live in a hut on the edge of town, farming to keep himself alive. 15 years later he moved into the desert. he wanted to show that the power of god would supply living water in an arid land, that from little or nothing He could bring forth the fruits of the Spirit.'
Pont then dramatically described the miracles of Antony's life, telling how though he sought complete obscurity, he became famous, even living in the desert. people traveled great distances to meet with him. and as a form communes devoted to prayer.
to me, Antony is a sign that God will meet us wherever we are.  Pont concluded, looking directly into Ag's eyes.  even in the wasteland of our lives.
Aug now rose to stand beside his guest, placing his had briefly on his forearm. he was clearly moved.  'I can hardly believe I've never heard of him, he said. 'Nor any of his followers. are there any in Italy?

'In Italy? Pont was astonished.  'Why, right here in Milan there is a small community of such men. they live outside the city walls. Ambrose has charge of them'.

'Ambrose!' he was the pastor whose preaching Aug had been hearing, originally our of curiosity about the man's style, for Aug had a professional interest in any good speaker. but Ambro's substance

*49  had made a deeper impact than his style. Because of him, Aug mused,  I have grown interested in the Scriptures again.'
Aug had first tried reading the Scriptures while a teenager but was not impressed.  at that time he had been in love with beautiful language and the language of Scripture had seemed dull and plain,  far inferior to that of the great Roman writers.  but years had passed since then. great rhetorical flourishes seemed less important than they once did. Under Ambrose's influence, the simplicity of Scripture has begun to sound like the simplicity of profundity.
already Aug was ready to concede that what the sacred writings said was true. but he could not do anything halfway. he knew the truth of Scripture demanded a commitment to Christ and commitment to Christ meant total change. he would have to give up misusing sex.  more, he would have to give up all his dreams of success and glory. he would have to please God and not the world around him. Part of me wants to, he said to himself; part is Unable to.
Pont interrupted Au's thoughts. 'when I think of Antony, of his immediate obedience  to the Word of God that morning,  ow what he left without looking back, I am moved to tears'. he reached out to grasp his host strongly by both shoulders. 'When God calls someone, Aug, nothing on earth can stop him'.
Outwardly Aug carried on politely, thanking Pont for coming,  saying his farewells. inwardly his disturbed thought traveled elsewhere. after his guest left, he paced across the terrace, lashing himself mentally. 
As Pont spoke, you turned me back upon myself, O Lord. You took me from behind my won back, where I had placed myself because I did not wish to look  upon myself. you stood me face to face with myself, so that I might see how foul i am,  how deformed and defiled,  how covered with stains and sores. I looked and was filled with horror, but there was no place for me to flee to get away from myself.
he thought back bitterly to the day 12 years before when, after reading Cicero, he had decided to dedicate his life to search for wisdom - to prefer to know the truth over Any other pleasure in life. but he only talked about it;  he never did  it. he drifted along in life, living for success and anything that made him happy for a few hours.
You know. O Lord, how during my university days at Carthage I found myself in the midst of a hissing cauldron of lust. I was in love with the idea of love. although

*50  my real need was for You,  I placed my hopes in what was merely human and often enough in the bestial as well.
still, I thought of my Christian upbringing and determined to read the Scriptures, inflamed with self-esteem I judged the but a hash of outmoded Jewish superstition and historical inaccuracies.

Aug had been frustrated with himself before, but never to this point.

I remember how one day You  made me realize how utterly wretched I was. I was preparing a speech in praise of the emperor, intending that it should include a great many lies, which would certainly be applauded by an audience that knew well enough how far from the truth they were. I was greatly preoccupied by this task.  as I walked along one of the streets in Milan. I noticed a beggar who must, I suppose, somehow have had his fill of food and drink since he was laughing and joking. sadly I turned to my companions and spoke to them of all the pain and trouble which is caused by our own folly. my ambitions had placed a load of misery on my shoulders and the further I carried it the heavier it became, but the only purpose of all the efforts we made was to reach the goal of purposeful happiness. this beggar had already reached it ahead of us.

perhaps I shall never reach it.

Alypius looked in astonishment at this friend. he had heard Aug talk about his misery, of course, but now he seemed to be in true anguish. his face was flushed, his eyes darting frantically.

'what is the trouble with Us? Aug asked aloud in a strangled voice.  'What is this? What did You hear?  the uneducated rise and take heaven by storm and we, with all our erudition but empty of heart, see how we wallow in flesh and blood. are we ashamed to follow them? isn't it shameful for us not to follow them? ' he could not continue, but turned and ran into the garden beyond the wall.

really alarmed now, Alypius followed his mentor closely, afraid of what Aug might do to himself. he also had to know how this struggle would end, for whatever Aug became, he wanted to become also.

getting as far from the house as he could in the little garden, Aug slumped onto a bench, his body showing the struggle within. scarcely conscious of what he was doing, he tore at his hair,slapped his forehead, locked his fingers together and clasped his knees.

'I know I have a will, as surely as I know there is life in me. when I choose to do something or not to do it, I am certain that it is my won self making this act of

*51  will. but I see now that evil comes from the perversion of the will when  it turns aside form you, O God. I can say with your apostle, the good I would I do not.

You have raised me up so that I can now see you must be there to be perceived, but i confess that my eyes are still too weak. the thought of you fills me with love, yet,  but also with dread. I realize that i am far from You.
Aug continued to think of his life - his hopes for a good position, a comfortable home,  for admiration and fame as a thinker and writer. he thought of the women in his life and something whispered,  'From the moment you decide, this thing and that will never be allowed to you, forever and ever'. his habits spoke up insistently, 'Do you think you can live without us?


so he sat in the garden, his friend nearby, utterly silent in the stillness of the summer heat.  only inside did the storm rage. misery heaped up, until finally it seemed his chest would burst. he threw himself under a fig tree,sobbing, unable to stop.
O Lord, how long? will I never cease setting my heart on shadows and following a lie?  How long. O Lord? will you be angry forever?  How long? How long? tomorrow and tomorrow?  Why not now? why not in this very hour an end to my uncleanness?

then...a voice.
he heard a voice....
a childish, piping voice so high-pitched he could not tell whether it was male or female.
the voice seemed to come from a nearby house.
it chanted tunelessly,  over and over...'Take up and read. Take up and read.  Take up and read'.
what did the words mean? were they part of some children's game?
Take up and read. Take up and read.
were the words for him?
Alyupius, do you hear that? he called . his friend stared back  in silence.
'Read What? Aug shouted into the sky.

the letters of the apostle Paul were nearby. they had, in fact, started the conversation about Antony. like Antony, was he hearing God's words to him?  was he to take up the Scriptures and read?

Aug ran and snatched up the book Ponticianus had noticed and began reading the page to which the book was open - Romans 13.  the words burned into his mind:  'Not in orgies and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and debauchery,  not in dissension and jealousy.  rather clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ and do not think about how to gratify the desires of the sinful nature'.

*52  instantly, as if before a peaceful light streaming into his heart, dark shadows of doubt fled. the man of unconquerable will was conquered by words from a book he had once dismissed as a mere fable lacking in clarity and grace of expression. those words suddenly revealed that which he had so long vainly sought. now he knew with assurance he had confronted truth.  those very words, 'clothe yourself with the Lord Jesus Christ', had settled it; whatever it cost, he would give his life to Christ.

putting his finger in the book to mark the spot, Aug told Alypius what had happened inside him. thrilled at his friend's joy. Aly said he would join him, he, too, would follow Christ. the 2 then called Aug's mother.
Monica's joy was even greater:  'Praise god, she said,  who is able to do above that which we ask or think'.  shortly thereafter, she and Aug enjoyed together a great mystical vision. 9 days later Monica, her lifelong prayers answered, passed peacefully from this world.

take up and read'. for the next 44 years Aug did just that...

Chapter 7 - Believing God

*71  as and attorney, I have always believed strongly in the importance of precedents;  that's how lawsuits are decided - on the basis of what courts have decided in the past, the body of common law developed over the years through careful deliberation. so naturally as I examined the case for the authority of Scripture, I looked to the evidence of the centuries.  there I found a consistent flow subscribing to the authority and infallibility of the Word from Jesus Himself down through the early church and throughout church history.
St. Paul, the first church theologian, resoundingly affirmed the truth of Scripture. Irenaeus, brilliant second century apologist whose writings stemmed the early tides of heresy, argued that the Scriptures were 'perfect since they were  spoken by the Word of God. Augustine wrote,, 'I have learned to hold the scriptures alone inerrant...

*72  if Jesus,  the Head of our church and the weight of precedents point so clearly to a wholehearted acceptance of and subscription to the Scriptures, why does 20th century culture manifest a steady decline in biblical belief? Gallup reports that in 1963, 65% of all Americans believed the Bible to be infallible; that number dropped to 37% in  1982.  why?

I believe it is because the prevailing attitudes of the  culture have thoroughly infiltrated the ranks of faith and belief. the relativism of the modern mind-set is loathe to subscribe to the absolute authority of anything and that attitude has seeped into Our perspective, resulting in a barrage of questions, attacks and rewrites of the Scriptures.
so, though evangelicals say they hold fast to their orthodoxy,  in truth they are succumbing to relativism and modern cynicism. it is no wonder really, for millions sit in church pews Sunday after sun never bothering to think about  what they believe or why; thus they are easy prey for the trendy cliches that dismiss Scripture as the 'legends' of unenlightened ancients. (how semantics influence our values! words like 'progressive' can reverse the rules of logic.that is, the longer historical evidence persists, the less reliable it becomes; the newer the conclusion, the less proven by history, the more 'progressive' and presumably, more appealing it is.
in such a climate, commonly voiced objections insidiously become accepted as facts that no one bothers to challenge. and if many were honest they would have to admit that these objections also provide a convenient rationalization for not picking up a Bible and wrestling with its hard and convicting truths.
what are some of these objections?
one we often hear is  THE BIBLE IS UNBELIEVABLE.  the parting of the Red Sea, the raising of Lazarus, the visitation of angels and the like confound our natural senses and reason. of course they do. they are Supernatural.

*73  but that is the essence of what God is - super-natural. beyond the natural senses.

if there is no supernatural, there is no God.
Second:  THE SCRIPTURES DON'T REALLY MATTER.  going to services, being faithful to family and operating ethically in one's dealings - these are the 'Christian' standards, reason many churchgoers.  after all, God knows we are doing our best.
this is an echo of a widespread belief in our country - a form of civil religion - that says it doesn't matter what you believe so long as you believe in something. this kind of thinking,,  by doing away with individual responsibility, ignores a central truth of our Judeo-Christian foundation.

third:  IT'S OUT-OF-DATE.  the events in Scripture took place thousands of years ago when shepherds tended flocks and primitive tribal customs prevailed. times change, says this modern relativist; ancient ritual is irrelevant to today's morality.

yes, the biblical account deals with ancient times, for ancient Israel  was the particular place God chose to covenant with His people and some 1200 years later to enter time and space through Jesus Christ. but God's truth is eternal.
time passes. customs change. truth remains. absolute objective truth  can never depend on custom, common perceptions or changing trends and it remains true whether believed or not.

though it is sometimes difficult to understand the cultural backdrop of the biblical drama, the play remains unchanged.

fourth, WE LIVE UNDER THE NEW COVENANT SO WE NEEDN'T BOTHER TO READ THE ARCHAIC, OUTDATED LAWS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT.

it is impossible  to appreciate Jesus apart from the historical context in which he lived. without understanding the Old Testament covenants between God and His chosen people and humanity's consistent failure to adhere to them, God's grace and the supreme atonement of the cross lose their significance. the Old Testament, as well, is indispensable in teaching us about the character of God and the promises fulfilled in Christ.
fifth:  THE RED LETTERS COUNT MORE THAN THE BLACK. an astonishing number of Christians accept Jesus' teachings as the Word of God but reject the writings of 'Paul and all the others' as human opinions.
but were do we find Christ's words?  he didn't write them down Himself. his words are reported by the Gospel writers. so is Luke more believable than Paul? we have no indication that Luke met Jesus face

*74  to face,  but we know Paul did. in a court of law, therefore, Luke's red letters would be hearsay; Paul's black letters direct evidence.
ultimately,if we believe all Scripture is inspired by God,  all must be given equal weight.

sixth  THERE ARE SO MANY CONTRADICTIONS AND DIFFERENT INTERPRETATIONS THAT I CAN'T ACCEPT THE BIBLE AS LITERALLY TRUE.
 confusion over how to read,interpret and understand the Bible is the single greatest cause of biblical illiteracy and skepticism.
though it is unique, in a structural sense the Bible must be read like any other book: metaphor is metaphor, poetry is poetry, parables are parables. scripture must be read in context and according to its literary genre (the technique of communication the author selected).

remember, too,that any author writes so his readers can understand. when critics attack the literal truthfulness of Scripture by citing language like 'the sun rose', they are ignoring basic rules of literary communication. of course, the sun does not rise; the writer  is simply communicating in terms he and his contemporaries understand.  (even in our enlightened age,of course, TV weather forecasters still give the times each day for SunRise and SunSet.)
by applying the basic rules of logical interpretation, examining historical narratives in the light of didactic teaching, taking the explicit over the implicit, we can clear up much of the ruckus over the Bible's seeming contradictions.

and seventh: I JUST DON'T GET ANYTHING OUT OF THE BIBLE.

these critics expect the  Bible to be the ultimate quick-fix, self-fulfillment manual, in the same category as all the how-to books crowding our bookstore shelves, intended to fulfill our every need and desire. of course, we find spiritual fulfillment in reading the Scriptures, but the holy Word of God is intended to do much more than that: it is to satisfy the believer's deepest hunger for knowledge about acceptable living and service for his sovereign King.

objections like the above reveal why the family Bible is more often used to adorn coffee tables or press flowers than it is to feed souls and discipline lives. they also reveal why Christians do not know how to love God. for we should read God's Word not for what we can get out of it,

*75  not for what it will do for us, but for what it will teach us to do for our God.

*75  'Your word is truth, Jesus said.  nothing less than knowledge of that truth is demanded of Christ's disciples. that knowledge comes only from fervent study of truth, that is, study of His Word. this is indispensable to genuine discipleship.  IT IS INDISPENSABLE TO LOVING GOD.

by perhaps the real reason we do not pursue that radical discipleship rooted in the Word of God is that we have not recognized the clear choice before us. perhaps we believe In God - as 96 of all Americans say they do - but we do not Believe God, that is OBEY HIS WORD. that choice is most clearly illustrated for us in the sharp contrasts of 2 biblical accounts:  first, Eve in the Garden of Eden and then Christ in the wilderness of Judea. consider the responses of each when confronted with Satan's challenge regarding the Word of God.
Satan came to Eve as a serpent, asking with beguiling innocence,  'Did God really say,  'You must not eat from any tree in the garden?
If Eve answered yes, she would be lying;  God hadn't forbidden All the trees. but a straight no wouldn't be truthful either. so, unaware of the trap being set, Eve replied, 'We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, but God did say, you must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden and You Must Not Touch it or you will die'.  (in her answer Eve demonstrated that she knew god's Word, though she elaborated by adding the words, 'you must not touch it'.  adding to Scripture is as dangerous as taking away from it - and this perhaps was part of Eve's undoing.)

'You will not surely die,  the serpent reassured her. surely a loving God would not mean anything so cruel as that. no, the beguiler continued,  'God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened and you will be Like God, knowing good and evil'.
what an irresistible proposition - as it is today. after all, Eve was made in God's image; shouldn't she know what he knew? and be Like Him?  the serpent was simply helping her interpret what God had meant to say in the first place.
so Eve succumbed, probably believing she was doing the right thing. Adam immediately joined her. and this temptation has plagued humanity ever since: the desire to Be Like God. simply put, it is humanism, man's

*76  ultimate arrogance - his pretension that he can be his own Lord.and it began in the Garden.

Satan continued enticing humanity with that same lure, as the history of the Old Testament bears witness. and 75 generations later the beguiler appeared to Jesus Christ with the same temptation.

the Devil's first challenge was simple:  'If you are the Son of God, tell this stone to become bread'.  (a minor thing for One who would later multiply a few loves and fish to feed 5,000) but Jesus understood this was not only a challenge to His authority, but a temptation to choose the material over the spiritual. so he relied solely on the Word of God, answering:  'It is written: 'Man does not live on bread alone'.
a pause... and then a second attack: the tempter offered Christ the kingdoms of this world.  (this temptation has cause power-hungry men from Alexander to Hitler to cut a bloody swathe through history. but again Jesus answered from the Word of God:  'It is written:  'Worship the Lord  your God and serve Him only'.
finally,  the Devil played his trump.  'If you are the Son  of God', prove it.  'Throw yourself down from here'. then Satan quoted from Psalm 91:  'he will command his angels concerning you to guard you carefully.

 but once again Christ stood on the firm foundation of the Word. unlike Eve, he quoted Scripture precisely:  'it says:  'do not put the Lord your God to the test'. 
these 2 great confrontations with Satan present us with the clear contrast. Eve knew shat God said, but when put to the test, she disobeyed his Word. her disobedience caused the fall of humanity.
Jesus also knew what God said. Put to the test, he obeyed and trusted His whole life to the Word. his obedience - even unto the death of the cross - is the way of our redemption from the Fall.

if presented with the choice,to be like Eve or be like Jesus, most of us would hasten to line up with Christ. we Christians are usually quick to say we want to 'be like Jesus'. but if we are honest about what those familiar sunday school words really mean, we'll see they compel us to adopt his attitudes and that means belief In and submission to, the Scriptures.instead, we find  1000 ways to resist their truth, to rationalize their calling on our lives. for deep inside we know that obedience to the Scriptures without concern for consequences is penetrating and painful. it requires us to die to self and follow Christ. it demands that we recognize the sin in our lives and that we acknowledge and repent of that sin.
this is the first major intersection on the spiritual pilgrimage. many

*77 prefer to turn off at this point, or think they can live the Christian life on their own terms - that is without the conversion in attitude and action that must follow the conversion of heart....

Chapter 10 - It is in Us

*101... Augustine saw in the pear incident his true nature and the nature of all mankind: IN EACH OF US THERE IS SIN - not just susceptibility to sin, but Sin Itself. Aug's love for sensual pleasure could be explained as the natural arousing of his human desires, proving inner weakness or susceptibility to sinning. but he had stolen those pears for the pure enjoyment of stealing (he had an abundance of better pears on his won trees). Aug knew his act was more than weakness: it was sin itself - sin for the sake of sinning. 
Alexander Solzhenitsyn discovered the truth of This Individual  and universal human Condition following his remarkable encounter with Boris Kornfeld.

during his pain-wracked days and sleepless nights in the grim prison hospital following his cancer surgery, Sol reviewed the strange turns his life had taken. the words of Dr. Kornfeld  had reawakened in him a hunger for the God he had once known and renounced. thus, even him a hunger for the God he had once known and renounced. thus, even in his agony Sol could rejoice, for he was spiritually reborn. but

*102  Korn's words also made him restless as he tossed about on his narrow cot. the remarkable statement,  'No punishment comes to us in this life which is undeserved',  lingered in his mind.

it was an unsettling thought coming from a man who had been unjustly imprisoned and from a Jew, whose race had been mercilessly persecuted. the extraordinary words forced Sol to look back on his own life. and so it was that the then-unknown prisoner saw how he really was and could write,  'In the intoxication of youthful successes I had felt myself to be infallible and I was therefore cruel. in the surfeit of power I was a murderer and an oppressor. in my most evil moments i was convinced I was doing Good'.
a bright shaft of light shone into the recesses of his soul and Sol came face to face with his true self - a sign of genuine conversion.
and it was only when i lay there on rotting prison straw,  he continues, that i sensed within myself the First stirrings of Good. gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not through states,  nor between classes, nor between parties either - but right through every human heart - through all human hearts...

RC Sproul sums it up well:  'we are not sinners because we sin; we sin because we are sinners'.  we are not theoretical sinners or honorary sinners or vicarious sinners. we are sinners indeed and in deed. 
man goes to great lengths to avoid his own responsibility. many blame Satan for every imaginable evil - but Jesus states clearly that sin

*103  is in Us.  others recoil with horror at the sins of the society around them, smugly satisfied that sinful abominations are not of their doing - not realizing that God holds Us responsible for acts of omission as well as acts of commission.  still others believe, as did Socrates 2000 years ago, that sin is not man's moral responsibility,  but is caused by ignorance. Hegel, whose philosophy so enormously influenced 19th and 20th century thought, argued that man is 'evolving through increasing knowledge to superior moral levels.
but what do we see around us in the last third of this 20th century that has produced such advances in knowledge, technology and science? soaring crime rates countless shattered families. a globe scarred by continual wars and oppression. all our knowledge has not ushered in a brave new world. it has simply increased our ability to perpetrate evil. history continues to validate the biblical account that man is by his own nature sinful - indeed, imprisoned by his sin.  and we are not reluctant prisoners. like Aug,  we actually delight in sin and evil.
what else explains our secret delight in another's fall?
what else accounts for our morbid fascination with violence on TV...
Alypius, Augustine's friend and student who shared his experience in the garden, learned this lesson well.
Aly was addicted to his day's popular form of entertainment,  the bloody gladiatorial games. frightened by the grip these had on him he vowed passionately to break  his addiction. after avoiding the games successfully for some time. Aly one day met several friends who, knowing his weakness, dragged him to the arena. forced into the crowded coliseum, Aly determined He Would Not Watch.  so he hunched  in his stone seat, jammed among screaming, frenzied fans, his eyes screwed shut and his hands over his ears.
suddenly, with a single voice, the crowd sent up the loudest blood-curdling cry of delight he had ever heard. curiosity gripped him. he opened his eyes in time to see one of the fighters fall, covered with blood. he drank in the insane violence. '
and i fell more miserably that that gladiator',  he confided to Aug later.

though Aly thought himself above the enjoyment of such bloodshed, his will was no match for the evil thrill it brought. he became 'drunk on blood and pleasure' and he was again one with his friends and the evil he abhorred.
who has not found himself at some point slyly boasting of his sins, as Aug confessed, to earn the 'praise it brought'? ...

footnote -...consider this example of man's cruel violence toward helpless animals from an account...(note - instead of the book's example I share the incident when I was young. we had a very nice little dog named Tigger.  I don't remember if this happened more than once...maybe I have just blocked the magnitude of it and the horrible glee with which I repeatedly kicked Tigger for...not reason in particular...my God what a wicked person I am...)

Chapter 12 - We Were There

*120  ...if there is anything worse than our sin, it is our infinite capacity to rationalize it away. the Bible tells us this is a fearsome thing. during the period of the divided kingdom, Ahab, described as the most corrupt in a long line of corrupt leaders, became king of Israel. and he 'considered it trivial to commit the sins' of his predecessors. this man who angered god more than all the evil kings considered his sins Trivial (def - of very little importance)

Ahab was not unique. so powerful is the human tendency to trivialize sin that only the Holy Spirit can open our eyes. as John and other writers of Scripture point out, the Spirit must convict us of our sinful nature.I remember this vividly from my own conversion.

*121  I wasn't sure what caused me to visit my old friend Tom Phillips that Aug night in 1973.  I had been impressed by what he told me about his conversion to Christ and by his demeanor;  I wished I had what he did. so i suppose I was seeking spiritual answers , but not for any escape from my sin.  for despite the daily bombardment of Watergate charges, i saw nothing particularly wrong with myself. i knew what i had done was at least no different than what everyone else had done. right and wrong were not determined by absolute standards, but were relative to people and situations. people in politics played dirty; it was all part of the game.
but that night when I left my friend and sat alone in my car, my own sin - not just Watergate,, but the evil deep within - was thrust before me by the conviction of the Holy Spirit, forcefully and painfully. for the first time in my life i felt unclean. yet I could not turn away.  i was as helpless as the thief nailed to that cross and what i saw within me was so ugly i could do nothing but cry out to God for help.
without the conviction of the Holy Spirit and the repentance that must follow,  there is no way out of our predicament, we have the capacity to change anything about our lives - jobs, homes, cars, even spouses - but we cannot change our own sinful nature....

*122  ...weary  and frustrated prison psychiatrists are not the only ones who cry out in despair over the human condition. years after his personal encounter  with Christ, the apostle Paul posed the eternal question:  'What a wretched man I  am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? he saw that moral precepts could not free him; in fact, paradoxically they made matters worse while convicting him.  'I would not have known what it was to covet if the law had not said, 'Do not covet'.  but sin seizing the opportunity afforded y the commandment, produced in me every kind of covetous desire'.
what  a desperate plight. trapped in and by our own sin. thankfully, there is an answer to the wrenching dilemma. Paul described it in the next chapter of his letter to the Romans:  'there  is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus...for what the law was powerless to do in that it was weakened by the sinful nature. God did by sending His own Son...to be a sin offering'....that took place that momentous day on Golgotha nearly 2000 years ago.

and how is all this part of loving God?  well, when we see the reality of our sin, when we come face to face with it and look into the raging fires of hell itself and when we hen repent and believe and are delivered from that plight, our entire being is filled with unspeakable gratitude to the God who sent His Son to that cross for us. we must express that gratitude. but how?  simply stated by living the way He commands. by Obedience.  that is what the Scriptures mean by holiness of sanctification - believers are set apart for holy living. therefore, holiness is the only possible response to god's grace. Holy living is loving God.
however, as I began to learn not long after my conversion and as everyone who has tried to live a holy life knows, holiness is the toughest, most demanding vocation in the world.

our progress in holiness depends on God and ourselves - on God 's grace and on our will to be holy. Mother Teresa

Chapter  13 - Be Holy Because I Am Holy

*126  ...since Mother Teresa wouldn't come to them, the power brokers had come to her. the mayor and city officials  trailed the press into the stark church  hall with its chipped  and cracked plaster walls. the press , which cultivates its irreverence for politicians, were more restrained with this little woman from the streets of Calcutta. still, she had to dodge the boom mikes coming at her like spears.

what do you hope to accomplish here? someone shouted.

the joy of loving and being loved',  she smiled, her eyes sparkling in the face of the camera lights.

that takes alot of money doesn't it? another reporter threw out the obvious question. everything in Washington costs money and the more it costs, the more important it is.

Mother Teresa shook her head.  'No, it takes a lot of sacrifice.

the press was bewildered. everyone who comes to Washington has grand plans,  usually involving the creation of agencies with armies of bureaucrats.  that's what  the city is for: setting agendas, passing laws, organizing departments - and trumpeting it all to the press. but this woman with her heathery, wrinkled face talked about 'sharing suffering' and 'caring that people can live and die with dignity'.

no grandiose scheme, her message:  do something for someone else... for the sick, unwanted,crippled, heartbroken, aged or alone.  strange words indeed for Washington's sophisticated commentators who left the conference shaking their heads. 
like the, the world cannot understand the source of Mother Teresa's power.  though her wards sound naive, something extraordinary happens wherever she goes. for What Mother Teresa does, whether in Washington or Calcutta, is what the Bible calls 'religion...pure and faultness' but Why she does it is our point here.
a few years ago a brother in the order came to her complaining about a superior whose rules, he felt, were interfering with his ministry. 'My vocation is to work for lepers, he told mother Teresa.  'I want to spend myself for the lepers'.
she stared at him a moment, then smiled. 'Brother, she said gently, your vocation is not to work for lepers, your vocation is to belong to Jesus'.
Mother Teresa is not in love with a cause, noble as her cause is. rather , she loves God and is dedicated to living His life, not her own.  this is holiness. it is the complete surrender of self in obedience to the

*127  will and service of God.  or as Mother Teresa sums it up , complete 'acceptance of the will of God'.
Mother Teresa's definition may sound rather nebulous to many Christians who have from childhood associated holiness with a long string of dos and don'ts. but seeing holiness only as rule-keeping breeds serious problems:  first, it limits the scope of true biblical holiness, which must affect every aspect of our lives. Second, even though the rules may be biblically based, we often end up obeying the rules rather than obeying God; concern with the letter of the law can cause us to lose its spirit.  Third, emphasis on rule-keeping deludes us into thinking We can be holy through out efforts. but there can be no holiness apart from the work of the Holy Spirit - in quickening us through the conviction of sin and bringing us by grace to Christ,  and in sanctifying us - for it is grace that causes us to even Want to be holy. and finally, our pious efforts can become ego-gratifying,, as if holy living were some kind of spiritual beauty contest. such self-centered spirituality in turn leads to self-righteousness - the very opposite of the selflessness of true holiness.

no, holiness is much more than a set of rules against sin. Holiness must be seen as the opposite of sin. sin, as the Westminster Confession defines it, is 'any want of conformity to , or transgression of, the law of God'. holiness, then, is the opposite:  'conformity to the character of God and obedience  to the will of God. (precisely Mother Teresa's point to the recalcitrant brother ). conforming to the character of God -separating ourselves from sin and cleaving to Him - is the Essence of biblical holiness and it is the foundational covenant,  a central theme running throughout Scripture...

Chapter 14 - The Everyday Business of Holiness

*131  when we think of holiness, great saints of the past like Francis of Assisi or George Muller spring to mind - or contemporary giants of the faith like Mother Teresa. but holiness is not the private preserve of an elite corps of martyrs, mystics. and Nobel prize winners. holiness is the everyday business of every Christian. it evidences itself in the decisions we make and the things we do, hour by hour,  day by day...

*132  when  Orv Krieger, a hotel broker with a friendly midwesterner's grin, received a call about a choice piece of property for sale in Spokane, Washington, he was thrilled. he knew the 140 unit Holiday Inn - minutes from the airport and perched on 13 acres of firry hillside overlooking the city - was a buy, despite its multi-million -dollar price tag.  so instead of listing it for sale to someone else, Orv took the plunge and bought it himself.
only one problem. the Inn's restaurant was the big money maker and no wonder - the bar grossed an average of $10,000 a month. but Orv wasn't going to keep the bar, not that he wanted to impose his won views on others, but as a Christian he chose not to run a business subsidized by alcohol sales.

the motel manager argued that if guests couldn't get a drink at the

*133 Inn they'd be out the door to a competitor in a flash.  he also gave Orv some convincing statistics that showed the motel couldn't make it without the bar. Orv listened politely - and closed the bar. he must stick to his convictions.  the manager promptly quit.

Orv continued with his plans.  he remodeled the hotel. lobby and replaced the bar area with a cozy coffee shop brimming with greenery . in his first 5 years in business, food sales went up 20%,  room bookings up 30%.  still, profits aren't what they could be. if the bar were open, the hotel would be a real money machine.
but, as Orv says, his grin as big as ever, 'Beliefs aren't worth much if a fella's not ready to live by them'.
Holiness is obey God - even when it's against our own interests.

when she arrives at the prison gate each weekday at noon, the guards wave her through. Prison officials stop to ask how her kids are doing or about her worked at the office. after all, Joyce Page is family;  she's been spending her lunch hour at the St. Louis County Correctional Institution just about every weekday since 1979. 
Joyce began going to the prison with her supervisor, also a Christian concerned for prisoners. when the supervisor was transferred,  Joyce continued by herself, leaving her office alone with a peanut butter sandwich while other secretaries bustled off in clusters for the cafeteria.

each day Joy meets with a different group of inmates,  from the men in isolation and maximum security to a small group of women prisoners. 'What we do is up to them, she says. 'sometimes we have a worship service or a time of testimony and singing, or in-depth Bible study and discussion. it depends on their needs'.
when she slips back to her desk at one o'clock, one of her co-workers is usually already bemoaning her lunchtime excesses and loudly proclaiming that she really will have the diet plate tomorrow. Joy laughs to herself. she knows exactly what she'll have for lunch tomorrow - another peanut butter sandwich at the wheel of her car on the way to prison.
for many, meeting with inmates every day in the middle of a hectic work schedule would be an unthinkable  chore. Joy, in her matter-of -fact way, sees it differently.  'For me it's a real answer to prayer...you see, I don't have time to go After work - I  have 6 kids of my own that I'm raising by myself'.

*134  Holiness is obey God - sharing His love, even when it is inconvenient.

no one in his right mind would pick the village of Duvalierville on the island of Haiti as the location for a factory, especially if he lived in North Carolina. but retired businessmen Kenneth Hooker and Donald Adcox did just that.it all began in the mid-1970s when Don  was contacted by a Haitian pastor for help; the pastor had found Adcox's name  in a magazine article about Chirstian laymen.  as a result,  Don and several other Christin businessmen visited Haiti and were appalled at what they found. entire villages subsisted in huts with barely enough to eat;  disease was rampant and medical care scarce.
Don enlisted the help of his long-time associate, ken Hooker and some other businessmen. government aid, they discovered, was a slow and cumbersome process and might never reach those it was intended to help.  and they realized that the people in Haiti wanted opportunity more than welfare. so they linked up with the pastor of the Duvalierville church and got to work.

along with 2 other Christian businessmen, Robert Vickery and Don Crace. Ken and Don bought a small rug factory in Pennsylvania and shipped the machinery and supplies to Haiti to set up the plant. this completed, they brought 2 young leaders, chosen by the Haitian church,  to North Carolina for training.
today the Duvalierville plant is the center of a thriving community of 1000 people. the church consists of 600 people and the church school enrolls 700 children.  Don, Ken and others have helped the Haitians  build a clinic and guesthouse on the factory grounds and are setting up a program for Christin doctors and dentists from the States to donate their services.

the busy factory is a tangible encouragement and the villagers' pride in their plant comes from a sense of ownership, for the plant Does belong to them. Don and ken and the other businessmen who participated quietly gave the business to the church a few years ago.
the establishment of the Haitian plant has also brought new hope to another unlikely place - North Carolina prisons.  when Don and Ken set up a prototype factory to learn the rug business, they needed a few people to run it. Ken had been volunteering with Prison Fellowship for several years, so he and Don began hiring prisoners of work release to

*135  run the rug-braiding machines. in fact, several inmates had their sentences shortened because they had the promise of a steady job. the factory isn't large, employing only 3 or 4 at a time, but a nearby plant has followed their example by providing work for prisoners on work release and for ex-offenders.
meanwhile, Ken Hooker and Don Adcox are busy cooking up other ideas to expand the Haitian Ministry and are working with Christian laypeople in other projects. they still claim they're retired, but the past few years have been their busiest.
'we try  to put people and available resources together,  Ken says,.  'We just do what we can,  adds Donald.
Holiness is obeying God - finding ways to help those in need.

heroism is an extraordinary feat of the flesh, holiness is an ordinary  act of the Holy Spirit. one may bring personal glory;  the other Always gives God the glory.

these illustrations can be helpful as practical examples, but the sure standard for holiness is Scripture.  there God makes clear what He means by holy living or, as theologians call it, the process of sanctification.
the 10 commandments, from which all other commandments flow,  are the beginning;  they apply today as much as they did when God engraved them on tablets of stone for Moses. nest, the life of Jesus provides holiness in the flesh;  in His persevering self-denial,  his unqualified obedience of the Father's will and the fullness of the Holy Spirit in His daily life, Jesus remains our example.

then Paul gives explicit guidelines. consider just this sampling of injunctions:
Lay aside falsehood and speak the truth.
Do not let the sun go down on your anger.
let him who steals, steal no longer but work
let no unwholesome word come from your mouth.
be rid of bitterness and wrath and malice.
be kind to each other, forgiving.
walk in love.
be careful so you will not even be accused of immorality, greed or any impurity.
engage not in silly or coarse or filthy talk.
do not practice idolatry in any form  nor associate with those who do.
abstain from sexual immorality and conquer lustful passions.
do not lead weaker brethren to sin.

*136  in Galatians 5, paul gives a summary of the fruit of the Spirit along with the contrary sins of the flesh.  what a check list. 
love            immorality
joy              impurity
peace          sensuality
patience      idolatry
kindness     sorcery
goodness     strife
faithfulness outbursts of anger
gentleness   drunkenness
self-control jealousy

the apostle's picture of life by the Spirit versus desires of the sinful nature is graphic. having set forth the contrast, he exhorts the faithful  not to 'become weary in doing good.  a man reaps what he sows.

the quest for holiness, then, should begin with a search of the Scriptures. (the few verses above are by samples of the rich treasure that awaits.) we next begin applying what we find, seeking His will for our lives. as the 19th -century Scottish theologian John Brown put it:  'Holiness does not consist in mystic speculations, enthusiastic fervors or uncommanded austerities;  It Consists In Thinking As God Thinks And Willing As God Wills.
that thinking and willing is a process requiring discipline and perseverance and is a joint effort: God's and ours. on the one hand , the Holy Spirit convicts of sin and sanctifies.  but that doesn't mean that we can sit back, relax and leave the driving to God. God expects - demands - that we do our part. as Mother Teresa  says,  'Our progress in holiness depends on God and ourselves - on God's grace and on our will to be holy'.
understanding this joint responsibility makes clear what is otherwise one of the most troublesome areas for many Christians, found in Paul's letter to the church at Rome  where on one hand he says we are dead to sin and in the next verse exhorts us not to let sin reign in our mortal bodies.

why should we turn away from sin that is already dead? the answer to this seeming contradiction underscores the joint responsibility for sanctification. we are dead to sin because Christ died to sin for us. He settled the ultimate victory. but as we live day by day, sin still remains a constant reality. though God gives us the will to be holy, the daily fight requires continuing effort on our part.

in his marvelous book, Pursuit of Holiness,  Jerry Bridges likens this to

*137  nations at war:  one defeats the other, as at Calvary Christ defeated Satan.  but the losing army, though vanquished,  then takes to the hills and fights on as a guerrilla movement. fighting off sin, he says, is like beating back continuing guerrilla attacks.
holy living demands constant examination of our actions  and motives.
but in doing so we must guard against the tendency to focus totally on self, which is easy to do - especially as the culture's egocentric values invade the church. in fact, this self-indulgent character of our times is a major reason the topic of true holiness, is so neglected today by Christian teachers, leaders, writers, and speakers. we have, perhaps unconsciously, substituted a secularized self-centered message in its place. for when we speak of 'victory' in the Christian life, we all-too-often mean personal victory -how God will conquer sin For Us (at least those sins we'd like to be rid of - those extra 10 pounds, that annoying habit, maybe a quick temper).  this reflects not only egocentricity but an incorrect view of sin.
sin is not simply the wrong we do our neighbor when we cheat him,  or the wrong we do ourselves when we abuse our bodies. sin all sin, is a root rebellion and offense against God, what R.C. Sproul calls 'cosmic treason'.
we must understand that our goal as believers is to seek what we can do to please God, not what He can do for us.  personal victories may come, but they are a result, not the object. true Christian maturity - holiness, sanctification - is God-centered.  so-called 'victorious Christian living' is self-centered. Jerry Bridges puts it well:
it is time for us Christians to face up to our responsibility for holiness. too often we say we are 'defeated' by this or that sin. no, we are not defeated; we are simply disobedient. it might be well if we stopped using the terms 'victory' and 'defeat' to describe our progress  in holiness. rather we should use the terms 'obedience' and 'disobedience'.
so we have come full circle -back to where we started. the Christian life begins with obedience, depends on obedience and results in obedience. we can't escape it.  the orders from our commander-in-chief are plain:  'Whoever had My commandments and obeys them, he is the one who loves Me.

Loving God - really loving Him - means living out His commands no matter what the cost.

a young woman in a suburban Washington church recently demonstrated this truth.

*138  no one was surprised when Patti Awan stood during the informal praise time at the Sun evening service.  a young Sunday school teacher with an air of quiet maturity, she had given birth to a healthy son a few months earlier, a first child for her and her husband Iavy. the congregation settled back for a report of the baby's progress and his parents'  thanksgiving.  they were totally unprepared for what followed.
hanging onto the podium before her, Patti began.  '4 years ago this week, a young girl sat crying on the floor of a New Jersey apartment, devastated by the news of a lab report. unmarried and alone, she had just learned she was pregnant'.
the congregation grew completely quiet; Patti's tear-choked voice indicated just who that young woman was.
'I considered myself a Christian at the time, she continued. .  but I had found out about Christ while in the drug scene. after I learned about Him, I knew I wanted to commit myself to Him, but I couldn't give up my old friends or my old habits. so I was drifting between 2 worlds - in one still smoking dope every day and sleeping with the man  who lived in the apartment below mine;  in the other, going to church, witnessing to others and working with the church youth group.

but being pregnant ripped through the hypocrisy of my double life.  I had been meaning to 'get right with God', but i kept slipping back. now I couldn't live  a nice, clean Christian life like all those church people.
I felt the only answer was to wipe the slate clean. I would get an abortion; on one in the church would ever know.
the clinic scheduled an abortion date. I was terrified, but my boyfriend was adamant. my sister was furious with me for being so stupid as to get pregnant. finally, in desperation I wrote my parents. they were staunch Catholics and I knew they would support me if I decided to have the baby. my mother called me:  'If you don't get an abortion, I don't want to see you while you're pregnant. your life will be ruined and you'll deserve it'.
I had always been desperately dependent on other people. but I knew this was one decision I had to make alone. I was looking out my bedroom window one night when I thought clearly for the first time in weeks. I realized i either believed this christianity or I didn't believe it. and if I believed in Christ, then I couldn't do this. god Is Real, I thought, Even If I've Never Lived Like He Is.

that decision was a point of no return. I put my faith in the god of the Bible, not the God I  had made up in my head. I was still everything I never wanted to be  - pregnant, alone, deserted by family and rejected

*139  by the one I  had loved. yet for the first time in my life I was really peaceful, because I knew for the first time I was being obedient.
when I went to an obstetrician and told him of my decision to have the baby and why I  had made that choice. he refused to charge me for the pre-natal care and delivery. I confessed my double life to the church and through the support of Christians was able to move away from my old friends to an apartment of my own. I began going to a Christian counseling agency and felt god leading me to give the baby up for adoption.
I had a beautiful baby girl and named her Sarah. she was placed with a childless Christian couple and we all felt god's hand in the decision.
and so that's why I  praise God this evening, I  thought in the depths of my despair that my life was ruined, but I knew I  had to at least be obedient in taking responsibility for my sin. but today, because of that very despair and obedience,  i have what i never thought I could  - a godly husband and now a baby of our own. but what matters more than anything is that i have what I was searching for so desperately before - peace with God.

Holiness is obeying God.

Chapter 15 - And His Righteousness

*141  William Wilberforce, 18th century slave trade abolitionist, wrote in his diary:  'God Almighty has set before  me 2 great objects, the suppression of the slave trade and the reformation of manners'.  the latter did not refer to table etiquette, of course, but to the moral standards of professing Christians.

Wilber believed holy living, what he called the reformation of manners',  would inevitably foster righteousness in the land and end the injustice of slavery; conversely, the end of slavery would uplift the moral injustice of slavery;  conversely, the end of slavery would uplift the moral character of the nation.
that is precisely what happened. Slavery was abolished as a great spiritual awakening swept England clean of its indulgent apostasy.
if only  that lesson of interdependence could be leaned today! churches, particularly evangelical ones,  are packed with people attempting to practice personal piety,  to establish moral lifestyles and  'to witness'. yet they seem oblivious to the need to work for those same standards in their society and world. at times the church seems schizophrenic: pious and righteously aroused in the safety of pews and prayer groups, but indifferent  in the world outside.

from the beginning God made plain the standard He demands of His people. following His commission to Moses that Israel was to be a

*142  kingdom of priests and a holy nation, God carefully prescribed the just way the affairs of this nation were to be managed. Exodus 21 through 23 set forth standards for
justice for individuals,
personal injury claims,
rights of private property,
 restitution and
care for the poor,
orphaned,
widowed
and foreign.

for god holds man responsible not only for his individual sins but for the corporate sins of society. wrongs such as
aggression,
inflation
injustice
racism and
economic oppression
are manifestations of man's sin just as much as our individual transgressions. the great impersonal entity called 'society' is not responsible for these sins - we are.  these conditions grieve the heart of God and He clearly calls us to account for them and to repent.*
*footnote - examples of responsibility and repentance for corporate sins are found throughout Scripture. Moses often went before god in earnest repentance for the sins of his people. Moses might have counted himself blameless; after all, he had told the people the right thing to do. they were the rebels. yet Moses repented for the corporate sins of his people. see also Nehemiah 1.6. throughout the prophetic literature, there is consistent call by God for his people to repent for the sins of their nation.
in Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy the pattern for God's people is established: repentance and restitution prescribed for offenses against God and society, cities of refuge ordered to protect those who had committed manlaughter; strict safeguards for imposition of capital punishment.
*footnote -many christians cite Genesis9.6 as the biblical justification for capital punishment but fail to cite the protection for the accused that God Also demanded -such as 2 eyewitnesses and the requirement that an accuser participate in the execution (Deuteronomy 17.6-7) nothing comparable to those biblical safeguards can be found today in any of the state statutes that call for the death penalty.

following David came his son Solomon whose wisdom has become a political cliche.at every swearing in, from county dog-catcher to president, someone ritualistically prays  that the newly elected one be endowed with 'the wisdom of Solomon'.  unfortunately, few bother to look up the source of their quote. it they did, they would probable be startled to find that when God asked Solomon what one thing he wanted, the young man replied, 'give your servant a discerning heart to govern your

*143 people and to distinguish between right an wrong.  God was so pleased with Solomon's request - not for himself, but in order to dispense justice to others - that he rewarded him with wisdom never given before or since.
however , following this bright spot the record descends into one of shameful apostasy. King after king committed idolatry and did evil in the  sight of God.  Judah was divided from Israel  and both became weaker as justice disappeared.
since the kings could not be trusted to do justice, god raised up a new breed of servant: the prophets. the line began with Elijah and Elisha, through the great evangelical prophet Isaiah,  to Jeremiah and Ezekiel.  each repeated the same 3-pronged message:
condemnation of unrighteous kings and people;
 a call to justice and holy living and
the promise of miraculous intervention of god in history to bring judgment to the wicked and blessing to the obedient.
....justice is seen not through the eyes of the powerful  but through the eyes of the powerless.
(in fact,  many of the prophets wee men God raised up from among the peasant class..)
the moral worth  of  society, the prophets declared, is measured not by life in the palace but by life in the streets.
for the former to prosper at the expense of the latter violates God's standard for the humanity He created in His image.
To Know The All-Powerful God, One Must Know The Powerless.

the angriest judgments come from the lips of the men we call the Minor Prophets. one of these, the prophet Amos,  brought a message that was particularly devastating to the powerful elite  of Israel. every time I read and study Amos, i am chilled by some parallels with today's culture; it is a book with special and powerful insights for 20th century Christians, for it reveals a view of god's justice that today's society often ignores to its peril.
Amos was a shepherd living in the rugged terrain south of Jerusalem. one day while about the regular duties of sheep-tending, he was dramatically confronted by a vision of God's fearsome judgment.  knowing this vision was from God, Amos left his flock to deliver the stinging rebuke to Israel.

he was received as a pariah -an occupational hazard for prophets.  for like a doctor ripping gauze bandages off a putrid sore, Amos laid bare Israel's ugliest sins, including pagan rituals and immoral sexual practices such as temple prostitution.
blatant as these sins were, Amos exposed something even more offensive. under Jewish law, a man's coat might be held as collateral for

*144  his debts during the day when the temperature was usually warm, but had to be returned in the evening for protection against the cold night air. however, the wealthy were ignoring this and were keeping the pledged coats. and heaping sin upon sin, they were then using the coasts as bedding for sex acts in the temple, thus desecrating the temple twice by sexual immorality and by flaunting God's law intended to protect the poor.
Amos also exposed the practice of selling wheat on the Sabbath, cheating with dishonest scales and selling the refuse of wheat remaining after the harvest which under Jewish law was to be left at the edges of the field for the poor. this was God's welfare plan, but the Jews had become o greedy profiting at the expense of the poor and powerless that they wee depriving them of the crumbs needed to stay alive.
(footnote -  it should be noted that god does not attack the rich for being rich but rather fro being unjust in the use of their riches. for example, all these offenses cited  had to do with profit, but there's nothing wrong with making a profit -elsewhere it can be argued the Bible legitimizes it. but profit must be made honestly and in accordance with God's standards. the problem here was the method and the motive,materialism had become Israel's God.)
let those who believe that 'god helps those who help themselves'  read Amos. the Bible teaches exactly the opposite of that hallowed American maxim: God cares Especially for those who can't help themselves - the poor and needy, the forgotten and helpless. Amos warned that the nation whose vested interests manipulated power structures for their won gain, at the expense of the poor, must face the judgment of an angry God.

*145 that's why a leading Christian lawyer, Jay Poppinga, writes:  'when

we speak of justice in the biblical sense we...are talking about meeting need wherever it exists and particularly where it exists most helplessly.
some will say, however, that these standards for corporate holiness are no longer in force. applicable to Old Testament times, yes. in force today , no.
that is tempting to believe - tempting, but not biblical. for while it is true we now live under grace since Jesus came to fulfill the law, Jesus did not real the law. (Matt. 5.17) a perfect, just god cannot change His perfect standards of justice.
Jesus/ first sermon reflects this: walking into the synagogue, He picked up the parchment with the words of the prophet Isaiah and read.
The Spirit of the Lord is on me,
because he has anointed Me
to  preach good news to the poor.
he has sent Me to proclaim freedom for the  prisoners
and recovery of sight for the blind,
to release the oppressed,
to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.
Jesus put down the scroll and said, 'Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.

Jesus went on to demonstrate in His ministry a deep compassion for the  suffering and forgotten. he fed the hungry, healed the lame, gave sight to the blind. he was concerned not only with saving man from hell in the next world, but delivering him from the hellishness of this one. thus, the Son reflected the Rather's passion for mercy and justice. and His message of social justice was just as unsettling and convicting as it was in the time of Amos - and as it is today.

consider just one of Jesus' last admonitions to His disciples and to us. the setting is the Mount of Olives and Jesus is giving His followers a glimpse of the future - his eventual return and the faithfulness expected of them in the meantime. then He describes the final judgment before the throne of the Lord, where with a wave of His hand the righteous and unrighteous will be separated.  with terrifying finality, Jesus says, the unrighteous will hear God's final judgment:
'I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat,
I was thirsty and you gave me noting to drink,
I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, 
I needed clothes and you did not clothe me,
I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.

this is not hell fire and brimstone evangelism. THIS IS JUSTICE.

*146  and, yes, this is love as well.
God loves us so much that He holds us accountable,
for by judging us according to ow well we live out His holy standards of justice and righteousness,
He ascribes meaning to our daily actions.
He ensures what we do matters...

...as  a politician I not only  believed that, but fervently worked for it and in the Korean War I would have laid down my life in its defense. but that is not the way of the kingdom of God.
because something is legal  does not make it right.
nor can the will of the majority be confused with the will of God.
they may be very different;  in fact, they often are...

*165  Chapter 17  THE RADICAL CHRISTIAN

 whenever old-timers -lawyers, court officials and reporters - gather around the Elkhart County Court house, it is not unusual for the conversation to turn to Bill Bontrager. (note: the state court governmental official who suffered greatly and often for his attempts to work for justice to those who were not receiving it) some understand what he did ; other still can't and wonder why the judge got so worked up over 'the kid who just got what he had coming'. old political cronies have the hardest time, for they can't figure out why a conservative Republican would go against his fellow conservatives on the State Supreme Court. 'Bontrager', one office holder shrugs, sighing in resignation, 'well, he's just gone radical, that's all'.
Gone Radical.  what a great term for it. unfortunately, 'radical' has taken on unpleasant, even nasty connotations in modern times. it suggests something un-American, like the violent protesters of the 1960s who blew up campus buildings or fiery-eyed extremists of the right.  but the word 'radical' comes from the Latin radix meaning 'the root' or 'the fundamental'.  so it simply means going back to the original source or 'getting to the root of things'.
indeed, in a world where values are being shaped by the fleeting fantasies of secular humanism,  it is radical to stand for the fundamental truth of god, to go  to the 'root',  the Word of God.

believers today have many ancestral radicals in their family tree. in fact, the kingdom of God is full of them.
*166  John Wesley passionately argued that there could be 'no holiness but social holiness...(and) to turn (Christianity) into a solitary religion is to destroy it'.  Wesley was branded a radical for his famed St. Mary's speech, an angry, but accurate denunciation of his fellow Oxford faculty members for their weak-kneed faith (he was never invited to speak there again).later he captured the essence of radical holiness when he wrote:  'Making an open stand against all the ungodliness and unrighteousness, which overspreads our land as a flood, is none of the noblest ways of confessing Christ in the face of His enemies'.
anyone who has read my books or heard me speak knows the profound impact William Wilberforce has had on my Christian life. that's why i refer so consistently to his radical stand for Christ in his culture and why i quote so often from a letter written by John Wesley to Wilberforce - then a recent convert. Wesley, who was to die only days later, commissioned Wilberforce to lead the radical campaign against slavery. i've carried this excerpt for Wesley's letter in my Bible for the past 7 years:

unless the Divine Power has raised you up to be as Athanasius,  contra mundum  (note- against the world)  I see not how you can go through your glorious enterprise in opposing that execrable villainy which is the scandal of religion, of England and of human nature. unless god has raised you up for this very thing, you will be worn out by the opposition  of men and devils,but if God be for you, who can be against you? are ll of them together stronger than God? Oh,be not weary in well doing. Go on, in the name of God and in the power of  His might,  till even American slavery,the vilest that ever saw the sun, shall, vanish away before it.

Wilb took his stand,at first but a single,lonely voice against a business that was the mainstay of the lucrative West Indies trade, employing some 5500 sailors and160 ships worth 6,000,000 pounds sterling a year. for 20 years the radical Wilberforce, later joined by a small group of Christian friends known as the Clapham Sect, fought the economic and political might of the British Empire. in the end righteousness prevailed and for the next half century a mighty revival swept across England and the Western world.
Contra mundum. against the world. Radicals.
certainly that describes believers like Dietrich Bonhoeffer and other German Christians who had the audacity to stand against Hitler and his super-race monstrosity and whose stand led many of them to imprisonment and death. and certainly it describes Bill Bontrager.

*167  Radical stands do, however, lead us into the briar patch of thorny questions about the Christian's role in government and politics.
first comes the issue of civil disobedience.
the Bon case suggests that Christians must disobey their government when it directs them contrary to God's law. yet Scripture plainly commands us to obey civil laws and to be in subjection to governing authorities. Isn't this a clear conflict?
No. but to resolve it requires understanding a major biblical purpose of government.  the origin of government goes back to humanity's first sin, when to keep rebellious Adam and Eve away from the Tree of Life, God stationed an angel with flaming sword at the entrance to the Garden;  this was, so to speak, the first cop on the beat. thereafter the Bible makes clear that government was established as God's means for restraining man's sin
(*foot - Avaricious as it is by nature, government has today strayed far from its biblical purposes;  it is hard to imagine how subsidizing college professors or controlling tobacco crops, laudable though such ventures may seem, can be considered as necessary for preserving order and maintaining justice. so the Christian,  when weighing his biblical  responsibility toward governments, may draw ethical distinctions between a government's exercise of a clear biblical mandate and the exercise of some illegitimate function.)
God's people are enjoined to submit to those in authority not because governments are inherently sanctified, but because  governments are inherently sanctified,  but because the alternative is anarchy. in its sinfulness, humanity would quickly destroy itself.

government, then, is biblically ordained for the purpose of preserving order, but, as Francis Schaeffer writes.  'God has ordained the state as a Delegated authority; it is not autonomous'.  so when government violates what God clearly commands, it exceeds tis authority. at that point, the Christian is no longer bound to be in submission, but can be compelled to open and active disobedience. Dr. Carl Henry sums up the Christian duty:  'If a government puts itself above the norms of civilized society, it can be disobeyed and challenged in view of the revealed will of God; if it otherwise requires what conscience disallows, one should inform government and be ready to take the consequences'.
John Knox, the great Scottish lawyer and theologian, advocated Christina revolution under such circumstances - to the shock of the Christian world of the 16th century.

furthermore, the Bible provides clear precedence for civil  disobedience. Moses' parents are cited approvingly for their decision to hide their decision to hide their child from Egyptian officials, as are Daniel and his friends for their

*168  refusal to bow before the statue of Nebuchadnezzar. in the days following Pentecost, Peter and John defied the orders of the Sanhedrin, the Jewish governing body, who ordered the disciples to stop speaking of Jesus.
most cases are not this clear-cut, of course and therefore the Christian's response can never be made lightly or automatically.  only after seeking every other remedy, after prayer, consultation with Christian brothers and sisters and a thorough search of Scripture should civil disobedience be employed.
the second thorny question is whether men and women who  seek to be faithful to Christ can serve in public office.
my answer is yes. for if Christ is not only truth, but The truth of life and all creation, then Christians belong in the political arena. just as they belong in all legitimate fields and activities, that 'the blessings of God might show forth in every area of life',  to quote the great puritan pastor Cotton Mather, indeed, it is the Christian's duty to see that
god's standards of righteousness are upheld in the governing process. this may be accomplished from within the structures themselves or from the outside by organizing public pressure to influence the system.
or, it may have to be done as Bontrager did by taking a stand in open defiance of the system.

this, then, leads us to the third and perhaps the thorniest question:  cam Christians be vigorous advocates for justice and morality without destroying the separation of church and state?

the New Testament is clear:  there is to be no merger of church and state until Christ returns and the kingdoms of this world become 'the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ'.  as Schaeffer writes, we must not 'confuse the Kingdom of God with our country...or wrap Christianity in our national flag'.

yet Christians sometimes do just that, using God to sanctify their own political prejudices, becoming arrogant and divisive and equating their favorite form of government or their political hobbyhorse with Christianity.
....or as one clear-sighted writer warns:  'History has shown that when society embraces religion, religion usually hugs back. accommodation

* 169 is often followed by assimilation and amalgamation. we accept some popularity and, craving more, we discard the convictions we have that might be unpopular...our identity as Christians is threatened'.
the key to answering this question is to understand that the Christian's goal is not power, but justice. we are to seek to make the institutions of power just, without being corrupted by the process necessary to do this. it requires a delicate balance and Deity is our role model:

God in his sheer power could have crushed Satan in his revolt by the use of that sufficient power. but because of God's character . justice came before the use of power alone. therefore Christ died that justice, rooted in what God is, would be the solution....Christ's example, because of who He is, is our standard, our rule, our measure. therefore power is not first, but justice is first in society and law.

but, some say, it's just common sense that to be in a position to exercise justice one must acquire power first. how often that rationale has been used to justify the most awful abuses committed in the name of religion. though it is one of the most baffling paradoxes of the
Christian faith, often precisely the opposite seems true. Malcolm Muggeridge helps explain it:  'It is in the breakdown of power rather than in its triumph that men may discern its true nature and in an awareness of their own inadequacy when confronted with such a breakdown that they can best understand who and what they are.
Bontrager learned that lesson. so did I ...in prison.
all my life i sought wealth, success and fame because they were the keys - or so I thought  - to security and power. I was influenced, like most children  of the Great Depression, by memories of breadlines and parents worrying whether there would be enough money for food and rent. the vision of the American dream drove this immigrant's grandson,  and I believed with determination and hard work I could make it to the top. money and property were the keys to the kingdom where i could lock the door against want, fear, and insecurity.
law school only deepened my convictions about the importance of private property.  (in the post-war era, property courses in law school outnumbered courses about individual rights by at least 4 to 1; there were, incidentally, no courses on ethics.)
then, I discovered that practicing law was like most businesses: the most desirable clients were those able to pay the most. so i began to spend my time almost exclusively with corporate executives or individuals with resources.  (like 98% of all lawyers, my only brush with

*170  criminal law or the poor and disadvantaged were those dreaded occasions - once or twice a year at most - when my number was called in one of the local courts and i was assigned an indigent client'.
I became convinced that law -justice, that is -when my number was called in one of the local courts and i was assigned an indigent client'.
I became convinced that law - justice, that is - functioned to protect the individual's property and to act as the ultimate arbitrator in a mercantile society.  thus i saw my mission to be one of using my persuasive abilities in Congress or in the courts on behalf of those whose economic interests i represented (and by whom, not incidentally, I was very well paid). justice was, in short, the sum of the rules and policies I tried to shape.
when I moved into politics, my task was not really any different,except that my clients became the politicians i served, the political convictions I had formed, the party platform and those whose campaign contributions or influence could get them through the imposing security of the White house gates. (I used to scoff at the protesters who couldn't get through those gates.  'Law is not made in the streets but in the halls of government',  was a favorite expression. a nice way of saying that justice was determined by those of us who controlled the levers of political power.)

ultimately, of course, I saw justice as the instrument for removing from society and punishing, those who refused or were unable to live by the rules people like myself made. to be sure I had fundamental convictions about individual liberty and, as a student of Lock and Jefferson, believed  deeply in man's inalienable rights and the preservation of individual freedoms. but my basis for judgment (as well as the causes and individuals i fought for) was almost entirely subjective, hence dangerously vulnerable to every whim and passion. the brighter i became the more dangerous I was; the more power I acquired, the more power acquired me.
I was blind. indeed, only in the 'breakdown of power' did I finally understand both it and myself. for my view of life was through such narrow openings as the elegantly draped windows of the White House and my vistas were of lush green lawns, manicured bushes and proud edifices housing the corridors of power. but looking at the world from the underside through the bars of a dark prison cage and the barbed wire of forced confinement, I could, for the first time, really SEE.

lying on the next cot, 3 feet away in the crowded, noisy dormitory, was a former small-town bank president doing 3 years for a first offense conviction of $3000 tax fraud. so deep were wounds of years of fruitless appeals that his face was drawn and gaunt. he was the

*171  first flesh and blood casualty I met of the great economic wars I  had fought. Maybe, I thought , He Ran Afoul Of One Of Those Quirks Or Loopholes I'd Engineered In The Internal Revenue Code.  (prison was full of people prosecuted under laws i had written or enforced; that's why my life was threatened during those first days in prison.
next I encountered a man in his 20s whose face reflected perpetual pain. a filling station owner,  he was doing 6 months for having cashed a customer's $84.00 check which later proved to be stolen. first offense, too. his harsh sentence was the result of some ambitious prosecutor making a name of r himself and a judge with a mean streak and a reputation for impulsiveness.

a moon-faced black lad with doleful eyes came to talk with me insisting he did not know what his sentence was. certain he was playing dumb to win my sympathy and legal assistance, i brushed him aside.  some days later, to my astonishment, I discovered he was sincere. a court-appointed lawyer had given him 20 minutes, persuaded him to plead guilty to a charge of knowingly purchasing stolen property and marched him terrified and handcuffed before a judge who mumbled something about 4 years and cracked the gavel with that sound no defendant ever forgets. this ;young man, who had never been in jail before, had spent the next 30 days fending for his life, crouched in the corner of a holding cell in a Tennessee jail. for weeks after arriving at our prison he cowered like a dog who had been beaten.
these men were not exceptions most of those in prison with me were poor or if they had had any money, it had been wiped out by their enormous trial costs. though folklore has it that minimum security prisons,  like the  one I was in, are full of wealthy 'white-collar criminals' doing a few months of 'easy' time,  I met but a handful who could have afforded to hire me as their lawyer only a year earlier.
so it was there, surrounded by such despair and suffering, that I began to see through the eyes of the powerless. I began to understand why God views society not through the princes of power,  but through the eyes of the sick and needy, the oppressed and downtrodden. I began to realize why in demanding justice god spoke not through easily corrupted kings, but through peasant prophets who in their own powerlessness could see and communicate god's perspective. as a result, I learned to say with Sozhenitsyn, 'bless you, prison' for coming into my life. for only in the breakdown of my own worldly power did I see what power is, what it had done to me and what it had done through me to others. I learned that power did not equal justice.

*172  but the Christian who breaks radically with the power of the world is far from powerless - another kingdom paradox. for example, some might think that in surrendering the power of his judgeship, Bill Bontrager forfeited any chance to influence the justice system in his state. but the verdict on that is not in yet and reform efforts are actively underway in Indiana. at  the very least, his move revealed a system of injustice to eyes that might never otherwise have seen it. in my own life it is certainly clear that my powerlessness has been used by God to influence the criminal justice system far more than anything I did from my office of worldly power.

if we would love God, we must love His justice and act upon it. then, taking a holy, radical stand - Contra Mundum if need be  - we surrender the illusion of power and find it replaced by True Power. that was certainly one of Alexander Solzhenitsyn's greatest discoveries in the Soviet gulag.

like other prisoners. so worked in the fields,  his days a pattern of backbreaking labor and slow starvation. one day the hopelessness  became too much to bear. Sol felt no purpose in fighting on; his life would make no ultimate difference. laying his shovel down, he walked slowly to a crude work-site bench. he knew at any moment a guard would order him up and , when he failed to respond bludgeon him to death, probably with his own shovel. he'd seen it happen many times.

as he sat waiting, head down, he felt a presence. slowly he lifted his eyes. next to him sat an old man with a wrinkled, utterly expressionless face. hunched over, the man drew a stick through the  sand at sol's feet, deliberately tracing out the sign of the cross.

as Sol stared at that rough outline, his entire perspective shifted. he knew he  was merely one man against the all-powerful Soviet empire. yet in that moment, he also knew that the hope of all mankind was represented by that simple cross - and through its power, anything was possible. Sol slowly got up, picked up his shovel and went back to work - not knowing that his writings on truth and freedom would one day enflame the whole world.
such is the power God's truth affords one man willing to stand against seemingly hopeless odds. such is the power of the cross.

*175  Chapter 18 - The Holy Nation

at the height of the energy crisis in 1977,  the governor of Virginia ordered energy use restricted in non-essential buildings. no one seemed particularly surprised that churches headed his list in the eyes of the world, as well as many church-goers,  the church is only a building and an expensive, under-used one at that, except for a few hours on sun and an occasional mid-week service or function, the building sits empty. so why use scarce resources to heat it?

these same people consider the church just another institution with its own bureaucracy, run by ministers and priests who, like lawyers and doctors, are members of a profession (though not so well-paid). and while this parochial institution fulfills a worthwhile social and inspirational function,  rather like an arts society or civic club, most people could get along fine without it.

in many ways, of course, the church has allowed itself to become what the world says it is. (this seems to be a common human bent  - to become what others consider us to be.)  but that sad fact has not dulled or changed God's definition of an intention for, His church. for biblically the church is an organism not an organization - a Movement, not a monument. it is not a part of the community; it is a whole new community. it is not an orderly gathering; it is a new order with new values, often in sharp conflict with the values of the surrounding society.

*176  the church does not draw people in; it sends them out. it does not settle into a comfortable niche, taking its place alongside the Rotary, the Elks and the country club. rather, TO MAKE SOCIETY UNCOMFORTABLE. like yeast, it unsettles  the mass around it, changing it from within. like salt, it flavors and preserves that into which it vanishes.

but as yeast is made up of many particles and salt composed of multiplied grains,  so the church is many individual believers. for God has given us each other; we do not live the Christian life alone. we do not love God alone.
to believe Jesus means we follow Him and join what He called the 'kingdom of God' which He said was 'at hand'.  this is a 'new commitment... a new companionship, a new community established by conversion.
consider how Aristides described the Christians to the Roman Emperor Hadrian:
'they love one another.
they never fail to help widows;
they save orphans from those who would hurt them.
if they have something they give freely to the man who has nothing;
if they see a stranger, they take him home and are happy, as though he were a real brother.
they don't consider themselves brothers in teh usual sense, but brothers instead through the Spirit, in God.
Aristides was describing the kingdom of God made visible by believers.

paradoxically, it was peter, the most Jewish and parochial of all the apostles - the one who argued with paul over circumcision and who was reluctant to preached the Good News to the Gentiles at Caesarea - who grasped most clearly this vision of a new kingdom. he addressed the young church, made up of believers of every country, race and language of the then-known  world as 'a holy nation'.

this was no catchy phrase peer thought up to describe the church;  he took the words from the Scriptures - from the words God spoke to Moses when He called the Israelites to be His 'holy nation'. in those days God literally pitched his tent and lived among His people. now the kingdom is evidenced through those in whom Christ dwells.  as John Calvin said, it is the first duty  of the Christian to make the invisible kingdom visible.
can it happen? can we be not only a holy people but a holy nation. yes, we Must be. but to do so requires an understanding and practice of certain truths - what might be considered basic principles for the church. I have found some of these best illustrated by a church in what might at first seem an unlikely place - Seoul, Korea.

*177  the Republic of Korea, a country of 37,000,000 people, is predominantly Buddhist;  there are only 7,000,000 Christians, of which perhaps 2,000,000 are evangelical. yet I was astonished during my first visit to Seoul in 1981 to see signs of Christian influence everywhere :  thriving churches, Christian values and complete openness to the Gospel. I was given access to the prisons, even those with political prisoners, preaching 3 times to packed prison halls, where many inmates made profession of faith. I was permitted to meet with American inmates held on Korean charges and was even allowed unmonitored visits with leaders of dissident groups.

the highlight of the trip was a Sun morning service at the Full Gospel Church in Seoul - again to my astonishment.  I was wary.  I had read about this church's phenomenal growth from a tiny mission with a handful of members in the early 1960s to the largest congregation in the world 20 years later. - over 150,000 members.
I  have never believed growth should be the prime goal of the church and certainly not proof of its spirituality. so I mumbled a bit to myself about super-hype when I arrived and saw the mobs being herded in and out, buses lined up for blocks, TV cameras and technicians everywhere  They Must Not Preach The Gospel I  thought, judging that only Madison Avenue and Holywood transplanted to Seoul could do this - not the Holy Spirit.  I was also apprehensive because i'd heard the crowd was even more demonstrative than most Pentecostal churches in the US. I like amen corners, but....

though I've spoken to large crowds many times, it was electrifying to look out over the more than 10,000 people packed wall-to-wall and be told there were 15,000 more in overflow watching on closed-circuit television. and this was only one of 6 Sunday services!

as I began to preach,  the Senior Pastor Cho at my side translating rapidly, I sensed a genuine warmth radiating from the congregation, a powerful surge of the spirit. my speaking became effortless. the language barrier, often evident though even the best interpreters, vanished as the pastor and I developed immediate rapport. and though I couldn't understand the words during the rest of the service, there as excitement and to my delight, real reverence. it was a holy time.

afterward, I emt with pastor Cho in his study. a pale and slender man, the pastor seemed shy and withdrawn until he began to speak ; then there was a fire about him.

'fantastic church you lead, Pastor, I said.
'Oh, no',  he waved aside the compliment.  'this is not the church

*178 this is only where we all come together once a week. the church is in the home - 10,000 cell groups which meet regularly all around this city'.

my mistake was a natural one. I figured a church so phenomenally successful must be the result of the leader's charisma and personality,  for so often our American churches and parachurch movements grow because of the personality of the pastor or leader. this pattern is merely another Christian adaptation of the celebrity cultism of our society. 
but a charismatic leader is not the secret of the vitality and size of the Full Gospel Church in Seoul. Cho Is dynamic and brilliant; but the growth of the church resulted from his brokenness, not his strength. Cho has been ill most of his life, has had TB diagnosed in its terminal stages, has suffered a nervous breakdown from fatigue and has had repeated severe ulcer attacks.the cell concept was developed as necessity because Cho was so weak he couldn't manage the church; thus, he commissioned elders to take responsibility for the people in each of their neighborhoods. (breaking custom deeply rooted in his Oriental culture. Pastor Cho named many women to head cell groups.)

those cell groups, really home churches, evangelized their neighborhoods, provided a way neighbors could help each other, encouraged spiritual discipline and began to mushroom. (def - rapid growth...and often brief duration...)
I silently chastised myself for my judgmental attitude as pastor Cho told me that though he had a carefully organized system for maintaining appropriate pastoral authority and providing structured sermons and teaching materials for the groups, from 1964 to 1973 he never once totalled the membership of the church. when he finally discovered hat through the quiet evangelization of the home church the membership had jumped during that time from 8,000 to 23,000, Cho was stunned.

this raises what I believe is the first principle for the church:  the body of believers called the church is to grow from the inside out in response to the Spirit. built that way, the church prevails against anything.
...what would happen if your pastor was removed and your church building closed or destroyed? most  churches are totally dependent on the pastor and church staff. Youth for Christ president, Jay Kesler, sometimes quips,  'The western church is like a pro football game on Sunday afternoon:

*179  100,000 people sitting in the stands watching 22 men knock their brains out on the field'. take away the 22 and there is no game. beloved pastor and Chaplain of the Senate, Dick Halverson, agrees that 'equipping the saints' - which of course means all believers  - is the central thrust of any pastor's calling. 'Nowhere in the bible...is the world exhorted to 'come to church'.  but the church's mandate is clear: she must go to the world... the work of ministry belongs  to the one in the pew, not the one in the pulpit'. so he says, the church comes together on Sun mornings principally to be prepared to carry out its ministry the rest of the week in every walk of life.

and that is the second principle for the church: it must equip the laity to take the church into the world.
if practiced, this principle would cure the schizophrenia so many Christians have. ask a church layman,  'what is your ministry? and the reply is invariably the same: 'oh, I'm a computer programer by day, but every Thursday night i work with the Gideons. that's my ministry'. Halverson calls this a false dichotomy between the sacred and the secular. the believer's ministry is being Christ's person right where he or she is ,  in the marketplace or the home, every moment of every day. this is part of the everyday business of holiness. this is the very nature of loving God.

the church in Korea has problems, of course - and in some cases the criticism that it is in an unholy league with the government may be valid. despite this, its people are characterized by an intense commitment to spiritual discipline. many of the cell groups from Cho's church and prayer groups from other churches meet in the early morning hours for bible study and prayer. few serious Korean Christians would begin commitment, many employers permit prayer and study groups to meet in factories and office buildings during lunch breaks.
the Full Gospel Church has a retreat center called Prayer Mountain where on any given day 1000 or more believers may be found kneeling on straw mats in tiny caves hollowed out of a mountainside. the overflow fills one of the center's large halls. workers will often take the first half of their 2-week vacation at this place for fasting and prayer.

*180  is it any wonder that though outnumbered 5 to 1 by Buddhists, the Christian church is the most powerful influence in the Korean culture? while in sad contrast, the christian church in America, outnumbering other religions 10 to 1, is far from the dominant influence in our culture.

the third key  principle for the church, then is Spiritual Discipline -Fervent Prayer And Serious Study Of God's Word. this is the life or death principle,  fro churches that neglect the Word and the prayer life quickly wither. but churches that exercise spiritual discipline can be mightily used.

the great revivals have been born in times when Christians were intent on prayer. the lay revival of 1858, which affected the Western world for half a century, began when businessman Jeremiah Lanphier started a weekly prayer meeting with a handful of people in a small room of the old North Dutch Church in New York City. the group grew, then meetings were held daily. several churches followed the pattern and soon all public meeting places in the city were regularly packed. within a few months 10,000 people gathered daily at noon for open prayer meetings in New York streets. in 2 years, 2,000,000 converts entered American churches.

like food waters, the revival spread through the Hudson River Valley and on to Chicago, where Dwight Moody was just beginning his work with young people. then it jumped the Atlantic to Ireland, Scotland, England, Wales and danced like fire across much of Europe, than to South Africa and India.  there was no elaborate evangelistic organization.  south Africa  and India. there was no elaborate evangelistic organization. communication was slow; word  had to spread from one prayer cell to the next, from church to church, form city to city. it was movement inspired by  the fervor of thousands of Christin laypersons.
similar evidence can be found about the other mighty spiritual movements of recent centuries.

this evidence also makes clear that revivals are not confined geographically. for the church of Jesus Christ is not American or Korean or English  or Dutch. it is one church, one body, one holy nation transcending man's arbitrary geographic and political boundaries.

this leads us to the fourth key principle for the church:  As One Holy Nation, We Must Break Free Of  Any Provincialism  And WORK FOR THE UNITY OF CHRIST.

before my conversion, I confess, some ugly prejudices lurked in the darker corners of my heart, particularly toward those nations which America had fought against in the wars of this century. but in my travels as a believer among fellow believers of other races and nationalities. the Lord has given me some of His richest fellowship in those very countries. the Holy Spirit can break down every barrier.

*181  thus, what happens in the church on the remotest continent is as important as the life of our local congregation. the rest of the world is as far away as the nearest fund-starved ghetto church in our town or at close as the underground cell in China.
'If one part suffers, every part suffers with it.
(foot - one simple solution to this problem would be for each suburban church to adopt one center-city church, sharing resources and teaching. the impact can be dramatic and the giving church is greatly blessed. a fine Christina movement known as STEP  is dedicated to this vision: STEP Foundation, 2429 Martin Luther King Blvd., Dallas, TX 75215 (214-421-9210) Prison Fellowship is also working to mobilize inner-city communities, matching need with resources. contact Prison Fellowship, Community Mobilization, P.O. Box 17500, Washington, D.C. 20041)

'If one part suffers, every part suffers with it. the great exodus to the suburbs in the last 3 decades makes this scriptural truth especially urgent in America .  thriving new middle-class congregations now ring center-city ghettos where the older, almost-abandoned churches are starving to death. like an army retreating from the battle field, prosperous suburban congregations have left the wounded to die in the wore of great metropolitan areas. - both physically and spiritually.

congregations that continue to look inward will find their field of vision ever-narrowing. those that recognize, as Peter did , that the church of Christ is one holy nation. will discover unimagined spiritual treasure.
Eastminster Presbyterian Church in Wichita, Kansas, has experienced this. though pastored by a gifted minister, Frank Kik, responsibility for the church is shared by strong laypeople and the saints are being well-equipped. Christian scholars from around the country frequently lecture there;  laypeople are involved in serious theological study; many in the church are involved in prayer groups, and the congregation actively supports overseas missions and mercy ministries around the country.
all this is, I believe, the direct result of the conscious decision at Eastminster to break from its natural provincialism and put the unity of the holy nation principle into practice.

during 1975 the church, then 850 members, had raised $500,000 for an addition to its always-crowded sanctuary. the architect's drawings were nearly completed and the members were excited about the imminent construction.
then a missions conference was held at the church and a missionary from Guatemala showed slides of the terrible devastation from the massive earthquake which had hit that country 2 weeks earlier. villages were totally wiped out; every thing was in rubble, including what had once been small but growing mission churches.

*182  when the slide presentation was over, there was a long, uncomfortable silence, as if each member had been seized with the same thought. one man spoke for everyone; 'all of this has gone on and here we are planning to spend $500,000 on a new building'.

another added in hushed tones, 'How can we build a Cadillac when our brothers and sisters in Guatemala haven't even got a Volkswagon?
Eastminster scrapped its plans and drawings, scaled down its expansion to $100,000 for a multi- purpose fellowship  fellowship hall and voted that the remaining $400,000 be sent to Guatemala along with a credit line for $500,000. Pastor Kik and 2 elders traveled to Guatemala to oversee the building of 26 village churches and 28 parsonages. (note - is this what the Gratemalan church would have decided on their own?)
but the requirement for individual cells within God's holy nation goes far beyond sharing financial resources; the church is called to give itself,  to share in the hunger and pain of those in need.

Jesus Himself shared the pain of the needy; he suffered for the entire world. as God's visible presence in the world  today, should not His people also participate in the suffering of the world?

most emphatically, yes. not until we go where need is and share in the suffering of the poor, alienated , isolated and downtrodden will the holy nation of God's people also become the loving nation...

Chapter 22 - Life and Death

*209  and so the church of Jesus Christ is vital and alive and changing the world - wherever individual believers obey Him, live out His Word and love Him, whether it be in the Hanoi Hilton or in a dreary Georgia nursing home where I met a remarkable woman...

I  had first heard about Myrtie Howell from an inmate in a New Hampshire prison when he wrote to ask those of us at Prison Fellowship headquarters to join in prayrs for her health. the Fellowship had matched this man and Mrs. Howell up as pen pals, something we do with thousands of inmates and volunteers.
'please pray for Grandma Howell'. pleaded his childlike scrawl, 'cause she's sick and may be going to die. nobody has ever loved me like she has. I just wait for her letters, they means so much'.

our office staff began praying for Mrs. Howell. then some months later, I received a letter from the woman herself reporting on inmates she was corresponding with and telling me how each one was doing,  about their morale and their problems.
she concluded:  'Writing to inmates has filled my last days with joy'.  that was a cheerful thought. but then she added the ominous request that I come to speak at her funeral. she had instructed her pastor to notify me when the day came. 'It won't help me,  she wrote, but it will wake up my church to the need of taking part in prison ministry'.

*210  I wrote back to Mrs. Howell, reminding her that the days of our lives are numbered by and known only  to, the Lord.  therefore I didn't feel I could make a commitment to preach at her funeral since nobody knew the date....to say the least, it was a most awkward letter.

over the next year, Myritie's letters kept coming - always upbeat and usually enclosing what was literally her widow's mite )once she simply endorsed over a $67.90 US Treasurer's check that was her supplemental income). in each letter she reported on 'her boys' and frequently asked for more names to add to her correspondence list. at one point we tallied that she was actually writing to 17 inmates. no small task for a 91 year old woman.
no small task for anyone, for just the thought of writing to prisoners scares most people, including Christians, half to death.  they have visions of dangerous criminals getting their names and addresses and, once out of prison, tracking them down for nefarious purposes. why was this elderly, obviously frail, woman different?  why, at 91,  did she care at all, yet alone so much?

I thought i might get my answer when a Prison Fellowship seminar and community rally was scheduled for Columbus, Georgia, in June, 1981.  Columbus was Myrtie's home town. so I wrote and invited her to attend the rally. she replied immediately, explaining that since her hip had never healed from a fall, she couldn't move without a walker and wouldn't dare attempt a crowded auditorium.

but, she wrote,  'I  have a great desire to meet you and I am claiming Ps. 37.4. (delight yourself in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart.)I stuck the letter in my briefcase without looking up the Scripture and kicked myself for being so insensitive as to suggest she attend a big public rally.

the day of the seminar and rally was a full schedule, as always, but that morning I  knew i  had to make time for one more thing. I just had to meet Myrtie Howell, this woman whose letters could call forth such concern from incarcerated men she had never met.

when I tracked her down, I found that Myrtie lived in an old soot-covered brick high-rise  in downtown Columbus, an apartment building converted a few years earlier into a home for the aged. inside, the lobby resembled the waiting room of a hospital, except more depressing. there were no ringing words of encouragement to break the tension of the place, no reassuring banter, no youthful voices, no hopeful expressions.
*211  instead, I saw rows of wheelchairs lined in from of a blaring television set; bodies hunched about on pea-soup green plastic couches and overstuffed chairs with worn  upholstery patterns long since erased. the sit-com soundtrack  bounced harshly off garish yellow walls, most of those turned to the set were either dozing or staring blankly. others thumbed idly through magazines or watched the lobby door like sentries at their post. I felt chilled just walking across  the lobby.

after signing in at the front desk. I  rode the elevator to Myrtie's floor. the hallway was carpeted with a rippling, colorless thread-bare strip that had seen years of scuffling footsteps.

at her door I knocked. 'Come in. Come in.', a fir, strong voice shouted.

as I opened the unlocked door, I was greeted by a broad welcoming smill as Myrtie leaned back in her rocker in satisfactin, her white fleecy hair neatly parted at teh side. her blue eyes sparkled behind thick, balck-rimmed spectacles and her cheeks glowed with life. The Woman Is Not Preparing To Die, I thought.
'S'cuse me for not getting up, she said, gesturing toward the walker alongside her chair. 'Oh, I  don't believe you are really here...I just don't believe it. It's so...the Lord does give us the desires of our heart'. she kept grinning and rocking and i just had to lean over and hug her., experiencing that familial affinity believers so often have on first meeting.

I took the armchair opposite her with its doily-decorated arms. Myrtie's apartment had one window and was no larger than a modest hotel room. it contained a bed, a 12" TV.., a dresser,  a mirror, the 2 chairs we sat in and a fragile desk crowded with Bibles and commentaries and piled high with correspondence. photographs lined the edges of the mirror hanging just above the desk. I'd seen cells with more amenities.
unlike her surroundings. Myritie looked almost regal, her hands folded in her lap and her shoulders proud beneath her shawl.
I started to thank her for her faithful ministry, but before i could finish my firs sentence, Myrtie waved her hand, stared ginning again and interrupted with a protest.

'Oh, no, you've helped me. these last years have been the most fulfilling of my whole life. I thank you - and most of all I thank Jesus', the last word pronounced with great reverence.

and I knew that Myrtie, despite living alone in this dreary place, crippled and in continuous pain, really did mean what she said. I was

*212 already sensing a spiritual depth to this woman that i's not often encountered. . I asked her to tell me about her life and her spiritual journey.
born in Texas in 1890, Myrtie was brought to Columbus, Georgia,  at the age of 3; at 10 she went to work in the mill for 10 cents a day.
'We was raised poor', she said, explaining that she had had only one year of schooling. her parents gave her little in the way of religious education, but from the age of 10 on she knew there was a God, felt he had His hand on her and knew she would 'do best to obey Him'. at the age of 16 she joined a
Christian church.
married at 17,  she had her first child the next year and 2 more in rapid succession. her middle child, a son, died at the age of 2. indeed, the deaths of her closest relatives proved the crucible for Myrtie's faith. during the late 1930s, Myritie's mother and her husband 's father lived with them. in mid-December of 1939, Myrtie's mother died. then in mid-January Myrtie's husband was killed in an accident; her father-in-law died as well.
tears brimmed in Mrytie's eyes she recalled to me,  'I felt like Job.  I just felt like old Satan had a conversation with the Lord and said, if the Lord could just let him get that Myrtie he'd make her give the Lord up. but it only made me lean more closer, more to Him'.

the death of her husband resulted in the loss of her home also, and Myrtie  had to go back to work to support herself. at first she did 'practical work', piece work from the mill and then 'for 2 years i run a dress shop, and then I run a little cafe. I always been doin' somethin' to take care of myself. I didn't want to get on with the children or nothin' like that'. so Myrtie worked until her advanced age and declining health forced her to move into, as she put it, 'this old folk's home'.

the death of her youngest son, her 'baby boy', the declining heath of her oldest and her own move into the home sent Myrtie into a spiritual depression. so many of her loved ones had died and she 'couldn't do' for those who remained;  she felt she had nothing left to live for. she wanted to die.

'LORD, WHAT MORE CAN I DO FOR YOU? she prayed with all her heart one day. 'If You're ready for me, I'm ready to come. I want to die. take me'.

'I knew I was dying, she continued.  'But then He spoke to me as clear as be: WRITE TO PRISONERS. three words: WRITE TO PRISONERS.  imagine that! i want to die, figure I'm about to and the Lord say, 'okay now, Myrtie, you go back and write to prisoners'.

'He couldn't of spoke to me any clearer  if'n He'd been standing

*213  before me. and I was afraid at first. i said, 'Lord, me write to prisoners?  i ain't got no education, had to teach myself to read and write. and i don't know nuthin 'bout prisons'.

but there wasn't no doubt. i would hae squirmed out of His hand if I hadn't obeyed. i had to'.

Myrtie's call became even more miraculous to my mind when she told me that at the time she'd never heard of Prison Fellowship or any other prison ministry. she had never give such a task the merest thought.
but she was faithful to God's command and acted on the best plan she could think of. she knew there was a penitentiary in Atlanta, so she wrote there, the envelope addressed simply, 'Atlanta Pententiary, Atlanta, Georgia'.  inside her message read:

Dear Inmate,
I am a Grandmother who love and care for you who are in a place you had not plans to be.
my love and sympathy goes out to you.
I am willing to be a friend to you in corespondent.
if you like to hear from me, write me. \I will answer every letter you write.
A Christian friend,
Grandmother Howell

the letter must have been passed on to the prison chaplain, for Myrtie received 8 names  of prisoners to whom she was invited to write. Chaplain Ray, who carries on an extensive prison ministry, sent  her additional names, as did Prison Fellowship when we were put in contact with her.

Myrtie has subsequently corresponded with hundreds of inmates, up to 40 at a time, becoming a one -woman ministry reaching into prisons all over America.

her strategy is simple:
'when I get a letter,  i read it and when i answer it, I pray:
Lord, You know what You want me to say.
now say it through me'.
and you'd be surprised sometimes at the letters He writes!

'His Spirit works. I obey. i don't put anything in there that i feel's of self, of flesh.  as He gives me, i write it.
but the real blessings, they're in the answers', she said, reaching over to the stack of letters piled on her desk, within arm's reach of her chair. Just look at these', she said, grinning and handing me a packet.
as i scanned the pages, phrases leaped out at me.
Dear Grandmother... was very happy to get ;your letter...the guys kidded me when they said I  had a letter...I didn't believe them,

*214  but it was true... I don't have anyone to care about e but the Lord and you...I'm in the hole now, that's why i can write letters...why am I so afraid, grandmother? why doesn't God answer my prayers about this?...I am really glad to know that there is someone out there who cares...I will remember you in my prayers every night starting now and for the rest of my life...please write back soon...love, Joe...in the love of Jesus, David...
one letter, signed 'Granddaughter Janice', read:
Dear Grandmother,
I received your letter and it made me sad when you wrote that you think you may not be alive much longer. I thought that i would wait and come to see you and then tell you all you have meant to me,  but now i've changed my mind. I'm going to tell you now.
You've given me all the love and concern and care that i've missed for years and my whole outlook on life has changed. you've made me realize that life is worth living and that it's not all bad. you claim it's all God's doing by I think you deserve the credit.
i didn't think I was capable of feeling love for anyone again but i know i love you as my very own precious grandmother.

'Bless you, Myrtie,  i said, putting the stack of letters back on the desk.
'Oh, the Lord has just blessed me so wonderful, Mr. Colson. I've had the greatest time of my life since I've been writing to prisoners.
 and you know, once I turned over my life to Him - I mean, really did it - He took care of all my needs. things go right before I even think about 'em.

after I asked about the Bible commentaries on her desk, Myrtie told me how she spends her days. she said she doesn't 'do much of anything', but write to prisoners, read and study the Bible, pray watch a few religious programs on TV and 'be carried' to and from the common dining room where she takes her meals. Myrtie insisted that time passed faster and more joyously for her now than it ever did before.
as our time together drew to a close, Myrtie gave me a final bit of advice:  'So, now, Mr. Colson, you just keep remembering the Lord don't need no quitters. once in a while old Satan tells me I'm getting too old,  don't remember things goo... had to agree with him there...but we mustn't listen to him. first thing you know he'll turn us around every which way. so I just keep remembering what the Lord told me and i can't quit', quickly adding with an admonitory gesture toward me, 'and neither can you'.

with that, Myrtie Howell gave e her wonderful grin again, exuding the joy of life lived to the fullest.

*215  we prayed together, hugged one more time and I promised we'd see each other again, holding to that marvelous thought S.C. Lewis was so fond of: Christians never have to say good-by.

2 Prison Fellowship volunteers were waiting at the desk downstairs to take e to my next meeting.as we reached the front door, i felt compelled to turn and take one more look at that lobby. no, the scene hadn't changed.
keeping my voice low, i said, 'Look at that. Nothing left -'
But to wait for the bodies to be carried out, one of my companions added, his expression quickly turning somber as he realized his bad joke was no joke at all.

all at once I was overwhelmed by the sad scene before me - the mirthless pit of depression, despair emptiness. there was no joy in any of their expressions. instead, their sunken eyes seemed to reflect a raging anger;: anger that their families had left them there; anger that fate had dealt  them cruel blows; anger that their minds were weak and their bones brittle; anger that their favorite TV program was interrupted or that someone else was served ahead of them at lunch.  and jealously, too, that someone less deserving  than themselves might survive and watch them being carried off through that lobby door - unless, that is,  they could hold on long enough to relish the sight of that someone being carried out first.
my heart ached for these pathetic figures, clinging so desperately to something they never had, seeking to save a life that for  so many had been only a cruel hoax: 70 or 80 or 90 years of joy, defeat, pain and pleasure and then just sitting, waiting, for darkness to come. waiting. Waiting -for this meaningless existence to end. and what was beyond? Nothing? or more of this hell? if there is no God, or if He can't be known, then why live at all?
meanwhile,  upstairs, sat Myrtie Howell with her wide 91 year old grin of joy and triumph. ready to live. ready to die. by now she was probably back at her desk WRITING TO PRISONERS!

but Myrtie, too, had known the hell this world can be. she had known loneliness, pain, being unloved, loss of home and family,drudgery of menial tasks to survive.
the difference was that Myrtie had recognized the vanity and purposelessness of life without God; teh emptiness of life lived for self.  she

216  understood the futility of being unable to answer the questions:
why was i born?
why have I lived?
where am I going?
so she had cried  out to God to lead her out of that hell in the only way anyone was ever escaped - by giving up her life to gain his life. yes, Myrtie long ago had learned life's central paradox.

I turned away from that dreary lobby and passed through the doors into the warm June day. the air was fresh, clean and I took several deep breathes to clear my head, but i could not clear away the memories of that day - nor would the passage of time. for in that Georgia nursing home God gave me an unforgettable vision of heaven and hell. the heaven of life with God the hell of life without Him.

and God gave me the final link in my search to learn what loving God really means: Myrie Howell. to believe, to repent, to obey,  to be holy, to bind up the brokenhearted and to serve.

Myrtie Howell knew all about LOVING GOD...