|
 I
was impressed by the analysis of world conditions by a noted
historian (D. J. Boorstin, Reader’s Digest, Sept. , 1970; p.
92-f) who said that our up-to-the minute society “makes it
harder every day for us to keep our bearings in the larger
universe, in the stream of history.” He thinks. “This
imprisonment in the present tempts us to a morbid preoccupation
with ourselves... We think we are the beginning and the end of
the world; as a consequence. we get our nation and our lives
quite out of focus”
“in
our schools today, the story of our nation has been displaced by
“social studies” — which is the study of what ails us now.
In our churches, the effort to see the essential nature of man
has been displaced by the “social gospel”-— which is the
polemic against the supposed special evils of today... In a
word, we have lost our sense of history.... Obsessed by where we
are, we forget where we came from and how we got here.”
This
is precisely our reason for continuing a “quote” page (p.6)
that delves into the past, and endeavors to keep us aware of the
fact that today’s problems in the church are but current
versions of earlier counterparts. A “cloud of witnesses”
watch us struggle with today’s issues. We must not go to past
solutions as having “authority” — but it does
|
|
seem we
should “scout” their struggle, and seek to learn something
of this game from their experiences.
In
this issue we publish the first of three “quotes” from a
sermon of the last century. The writer was a
popular
preacher of his day, who had accepted mechanical instruments of
music in the worship, and the missionary society. He did not
consider himself “liberal” — (he deplored the rising
liberalism among brethren, and struck out against “modern- ism”)
yet, he had adopted the very course of lax interpretation, and
“speaking where the Bible was silent” that brought about
conditions he deplored.
Many
“good” men today are doing exactly the same thing. They ring
the same “orthodox” bell, and think they can dispose of the
opposition to inter-church activities, benevolent organizations,
etc., by belittling the size of that opposition.
Are
we so brilliant, so complete, that we can learn nothing from the
past? To think so is to doom our generation to repeat the
mistakes of the past. Our “one-in-twenty” ancestors avoided
digression by following God, not majorities. The same God rules
our “act” in the drama of history.
[Previous
Article] [Next
Article]
|
