The accomplishment of an intellectually and socially responsible ministry calls for some effort on the part of the local church. In the first place, the minister will have to preach, and teach out of,85 the gospel in its relation to life. Instead of talking so much about religion as an end in itself, he ought to talk about life in the context of the teaching of religion. The content of his sermons and instructions should be the affairs of men, for these raise the questions for which the gospel was given. The discussion of religion apart from life produces a laity who, in their life in the world, are unable to represent the message of the gospel, because they do not know that the message of the gospel has any relation to the affairs of life. Then we hear such laymen say to any minister who might try to speak relevantly to human questions: “Stick to your subject; I don’t think these things are the business of the church.”
Church members, as a part of their devotion to Christ who had love for the world, should try to understand the life of the world in terms of its deepest meanings, and not be content with merely its superficial values. They will read articles and books and editorials, and listen to speeches and forums on television and radio, not only that they may be informed, but also that they may be informed for God and may serve Him better in the world. Religion that seeks escape from the world, and similarly the person who will not assume responsibility for God in the world, is sinful and idolatrous. Protection against this sin and idolatry is partly secured by serving God with our minds and our interests.
Prayer and the Life of Devotion
A second discipline of the responsible Christian is the discipline of prayer and devotion. We cannot live in relation to God and serve Him if we do not communicate with Him. Prayer is one of the indispensable forms of the dialogue between man and man, man and God, and God and the world. Unfortunately, however, many people, including some clergymen, have given up prayer, because it seems unrealistic and unfruitful in this scientific age. A part of our trouble may be that we tend to separate our acts of prayer from our life of devotion. Or, to use a concept we have employed earlier, we separate the forms of prayers from86 the vitality which provides the life of devotion. Both public and private prayer lose their vitality by this separation of form from life, and by the separation of God from the world, so that we make Him the monarch of religion instead of the creator and redeemer of life. Because of our belief in love as God’s chosen relation to the world and in the incarnation of love in the personal, it becomes possible for our prayers and worship to be quickened through our devotion to the purposes of God in the world.
An analogy may help us here. Every relationship has its devotional rituals and observances which are important to it. Husband and wife, for instance, because of their love and devotion to each other, develop little rituals and ways of doing that are designed to express their devotion to each other. They come together for this purpose. There is the kiss, the touch of the hand, the gifts on special occasions and those which come as surprises; their physical union is the symbol and instrument of their spiritual union and becomes the sacrament of their relationship as persons. But these acts of love presuppose and depend upon their over-all and lifelong devotion to each other in everything that they do. Their life of devotion to each other provides the content and drive for their acts of devotion, and their acts of devotion are a means of expressing their life of devotion. Their life of devotion needs these acts of devotion, and without the life of devotion their acts of devotion will dry up and become meaningless.
So it is in our relation to God. We cannot fall on our knees and cry with any meaning: “O God, O Father, O Judge, O Savior,” if our whole lives are not lived in the context of the meaning of these exclamations. Then our words become empty and cannot rise above our lips, and we are overcome by the despair and futility of our prayers. Prayer may not be recovered by going to a school of prayer to learn various techniques and kinds of prayer, but by rekindling our devotion to the people and the world for whom Christ died. Then, by practicing our acts of87 devotion in the context of such a life of devotion, we may rediscover the meaning of prayer. Our acts of devotion cannot be quickened by the intensification of our prayer activity alone. Many people who are frantically trying to whip up their prayer life would do better to get up off their knees and go out and do something about their loveless, purposeless, and undevoted lives. The devotion of the so-called “children of darkness” to the pursuit of their scientific or industrial purposes may be more impressive than the vain babblings of the so-called “children of God” about their souls. The trivial concerns of some religious people stand in uncomplimentary contrast to the heroism of the researcher’s devotion to his project and to the scientist’s devotion to his experiment. Perhaps the purposes of God are more served by them than by us, although by them His purposes may not be served consciously.
How can the life of devotion and the acts of devotion be brought together? When employer and labor leader meet to work out the problems of fair employment, they may do so either as a necessary part of their business, which of course it is, or as a way of expressing their devotion to God. God’s love is concerned with justice between employer and employee, and the employer and the labor leader participate in the work of God in the world by their devotion to these problems. This is both their way of being responsible businessmen and citizens, and their way of loving God and assuming responsibility for Him. To whatever degree they recognize this as being true, they will find satisfaction and meaning in the offering of their effort as an act of reverence to God, together with a private prayer for His guidance that each may be open not only to what God is trying to do through him, but open also to what He is trying to do through the other.
In our acts of devotion, therefore, we pray for a life of devotion in which we may be the instruments of God’s purposes in the incarnations of His Spirit. We pray also for others, for our children, for our pupils, for our associates, whether they be employees, peers or superiors, that they too may be incarnations of88 God’s Spirit and instruments for the accomplishment of His purpose.
Acts of devotion, in the context of this kind of life of devotion, change the whole focus of human relations and get them off their self-centered, competitive, and alienating basis. Acts of devotion are revitalized by being restored to a relation to the life of devotion, and the life of devotion is given an opportunity in acts of devotion to articulate its meaning, and to be guided and renewed in the dialogue between God and man as expressed in worship. And the union of the acts of devotion with the life of devotion will illumine anew for us the meaning of daily life, and our relationship with one another. It will improve our dialogue with one another and with God.