Christianity and the Social Crisis; A Theology for the Social Gospel

Again, ye have heard that it was said to them of old time, Thou shalt not forswear thyself, but shalt perform unto the Lord thine oaths: but I say unto you, Swear not at all; neither by the heaven, for it is the throne of God; nor by the earth, for it is the footstool of his feet; nor by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King. Neither shalt thou swear by thy head, for thou canst not make one hair white or black. But let your speech be, Yea, yea; Nay, nay: and whatsoever is more than these is of the evil one.—Matt. 5:33-37.

Current morality had reached the point of insisting on truthfulness when a man was under oath. Solemnly to call God to witness a statement and yet to fool your neighbor by it, was downright wicked. But it was very handy. So they developed a joyful lot of casuistical distinctions as to which kind of oaths were binding and which didn’t count. See how Jesus ridiculed this (Matt. 23:16-22). Here he proposed that the obligation of veracity be extended to all statements. A truthful man needs no oaths to assure a doubting world that this time he is really telling what is so. Oaths are a device of the devil to limit the amount of truth in the world.

How about oaths for legal purposes? Could they be dispensed with? Have they done more good or harm?

Ye have heard that it was said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth: but I say unto you, Resist not him that is evil: but whosoever smiteth thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if any man would go to law with thee, and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloak also. And whosoever shall compel thee to go one mile, go with him two. Give to him that asketh thee, and from him that would borrow of thee turn not thou away.

Ye have heard that it was said, Thou shalt love thy neighbor, and hate thine enemy: but I say unto you, Love your enemies, and pray for them that persecute you; that ye may be sons of your Father who is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sendeth rain on the just and the unjust. For if ye love them that love you, what reward have ye? do not even the publicans the same? And if ye salute your brethren only, what do ye more than others? do not even the Gentiles the same? Ye therefore shall be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.—Matt. 5:38-48.

The Law restricted the natural desire for revenge to the limit of a strict equivalent. If a man knocked out your tooth, you could knock out one for him, but not two teeth, nor all he had. Of course retaliation never heals a feud. Jesus proposes to limit revenge still farther and to retaliate only by acts of kindness. That is, in fact, the only way to end a quarrel completely and victoriously. It reestablishes fellowship and kills an enemy.

The Law called for love for one’s neighbors; the scribes had added the permission to hate one’s enemies. Jesus raises the standards of good-will. The law of love applies to all. There is nothing great in loving those who love us. Anybody can do that. Heroic love begins where no love comes to meet it. Those who can win that triumph show the true family likeness of God, and are now living in his Kingdom.

What are our personal experiences as to the utility of revenge?

What is the difference between the non-resistance which Jesus proposed, and cowardice?

Is there such a thing in fact as loving your enemies?

Study for the Week

The Hebrew religion was an unfinished religion. That is one of the best proofs of its divine inspiration. The prophets had the forward look. Great things were yet to come. As one of the most daring expressed it, the old and hallowed covenant, made by God at the Exodus, would be superseded by a new and higher relation; God would write his law into the hearts of the people; the old drill in outward statutes would disappear, for all men would know God by an inward experience of forgiveness and love (Jeremiah 31:31-34).

Jesus not only shared this expectation of a new religious era, but set it in the center of his teaching. Religion to him was not static. He lived in a moving world. A new age was coming, and he would be the initiator of it. “From the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of God suffereth violence, and men of violence take it by force.” John had been the greatest of the prophets; with him a new swift movement had begun; but something far greater was coming; even the least in the new age would have an advantage over John (Matt. 11:11-19).

The popular conception expected the new age to come by divine miraculous interference simply. The Messiah would descend from heaven with angelic legions, expel the Romans, judge the nation, punish the apostate Jews, and then the new Jerusalem, which was already complete and waiting in heaven, would descend from above. That was the Utopia of Jewish apocalypticism. Jesus never eliminated the direct acts of God and the significance of divine catastrophes from his outlook. But in his parables taken from biological processes (see especially Matthew 13) he developed a conception of continuous and quiet growth, culminating at last in the judgment act of God. The Kingdom of God, he said, is like a farmer who sows his grain and lets the forces of nature work; he goes about his daily tasks, and all the time the tiny blades come up, the ear forms and gets heavy, and then comes the harvest (Mark 4:26-29). Jesus was working his way toward evolutionary conceptions. They were so new to his followers that he put them in parable form to avoid antagonism.

Such a conception of the Kingdom brought it closer to human action. It was already at work; it was in one sense already present (Luke 17:20-21). It was possible then to help it along.

The most obvious duty was for every man to clean up his own backyard and repent of his sins. Every one should approximate the life of the Kingdom by living now as he would expect to live then. But, as we have seen from his sayings, Jesus went far beyond this. He demanded an elevation of the accepted ethical standards. It was not simply a matter of erring and lagging individuals, but of the socialized norms of conduct. He had deep reverence and loyalty for the religion of his nation, and never told his followers to break with it. But he asserted boldly that the customary ethics of Judaism, based on the Decalogue and its interpretation by the Jewish theologians, was not good enough. It was good as far as it went, and he had no destructive criticism of it, but it needed to be “fulfilled” and to have its lines prolonged.

We have studied the six sample instances which he offered in order to explain his principle of moral and social progress. In each case he accepts the law as it stood, but asks for more of the same thing, more respect for personality, more reverence for womanhood, more stability for the home, more truthfulness, more peacefulness, more love. Thus he combined continuity with progress, conservatism with radicalism.

The platform for ethical progress laid down in the Sermon on the Mount is a great platform. When Tolstoi first realized the social significance of these simple sentences, it acted as a revelation which changed his life. Even men who reject the supernatural claims of Christianity uncover before the Sermon on the Mount. Yet its fate is tragic. It has not been “damned with faint praise,” but made ineffective by universal praise. Its commandments are lifted so high that nobody feels under obligations to act on them. Only small sections of the Christian Church have taken the sayings on oaths, non-resistance, and love of enemies to mean what they say and to be obligatory. Yet all feel that the line of ethical and social advance must lie in the direction traced by Jesus, and if society could only climb out of the present pit of predatory selfishness and meanness to that level, it would be heaven.

Do you and I believe in it? Do we believe that it is not enough to keep out of the spiritual hell and damnation of adultery, but that a clean mind would be the most efficient and cheerful mind? Do we believe that a man who forgives and keeps sweet is happier and safer than a man who always resents things and stirs the witches’ caldron of hate in his soul? If a man loved his enemy and turned the other cheek, would he be everybody’s door-mat or everybody’s temple of refuge?

Suppose we mark for the present those parts which we are willing to accept as our own standards of action. If there are portions which do not seem practicable, let us post them in our minds as debatable propositions, as points to be tested by the experience of coming years, or as working hypotheses in the science of living.

But whatever we may think of single points, let us stick to the leading thought of Jesus, that every advance toward the Kingdom of God, that is, toward the true social order, involves a raising of the ethical standards accepted by society. This is a principle of social progress which every leading intellect ought to know by heart.

When Jesus offered his six sample cases of ethical progress, he had no intention of exhausting the principle of advance which he laid down. There was more to say about the Jewish law. It is now for his followers to treat the inherited ethical conceptions of traditional Christianity with the same combination of reverence and courage with which he treated the Jewish law.

From the beginning Christianity taught self-control and the mastery of the spirit over physical desires. It always condemned drunkenness. But ancient Christianity never demanded abstinence from fermented drink. With modern methods of manufacturing alcoholic drinks and modern capitalistic methods of pushing their sale, the danger has become more pressing. With modern scientific knowledge the physiological and social problems of drink have become clearer. Modern life demands an undrugged nervous system for quick and steady reactions. It was said of old time, “Thou shalt not get drunk”; but today the spirit of Christianity and modern life says, “Thou shalt not drink nor sell intoxicants at all.”

In every case in which the interests of woman came before Jesus, he took her side. At that time woman was the suppressed half of humanity. The attitude of historic Christianity has been a mixture between his spirit and the spirit of the patriarchal family. Today Christianity is plainly prolonging the line of respect and spiritual valuation to the point of equality between men and women—and beyond.

From the beginning an emancipating force resided in Christianity which was bound to register its effects in political life. But in an age of despotism it might have to confine its political morality to the duty of patient submission, and content itself with offering little sanctuaries of freedom to the oppressed in the Christian fraternities. Today, in the age of democracy, it has become immoral to endure private ownership of government. It is no longer a sufficient righteousness to live a good life in private. Christianity needs an ethic of public life.

It was said of old “Thou shalt not commit murder.” It is said to us, “Ye shall not wear down life in the young by premature hard labor; nor let the fear of poverty freeze the fountain of life; and ye shall put a stop to war.”

It was said of old, “Thou shalt not steal.” It is said to us, “Ye shall take no unearned gain from your fellows, but pay to society in productive labor what ye take from it in goods.”

This matter of raising the moral standards of society is preeminently an affair of the young. They must do it or it will never be done. The Sermon on the Mount was spoken by a young man, and it moves with the impetuous virility of youth. The old are water-logged physically. They are mentally bound up with the institutions inside of which they have spent a lifetime, and they want to enjoy in peace the wealth and position they have attained. We shall be just the same forty years from now. But while we are young is the time to make a forward run with the flag of Christ, the banner of justice and love, and plant it on the heights yonder. We must not only be better men and women than we are now. We must leave a better world behind us when we are through with it. Whatever we affirm in our growing years will work out in some fashion in our years of maturity and power. If fifty thousand college men and women a year would range themselves alongside of Jesus Christ, look at our present world as open-eyed as he looked at his world, see where the social standards of conduct are in contradiction with his spirit and with modern need, and work to raise them, the world would feel the effect in ten years. And those who would strive in that way would live by faith in the higher commonwealth of God and have some of its nobility of spirit.

I. Living Up to the Old Standards

1. What would happen if a college community began to live up to the standards of work and honor which all acknowledge?

2. Does human nature welcome a moral advance?

1. What advance does Jesus’ program make necessary? State the main principle in Matt. 5:17-48, and the six applications made by Jesus himself. How was this principle connected with his idea of the Kingdom?

2. Can we agree with the principle? How far can we go with Jesus in his application?

3. Would a man get more or less satisfaction out of life if he obeyed these maxims in private life?

4. How far could a man hold his own if he obeyed them in a reasonable way in business or in public life? If a man loved his enemies and turned the other cheek, would he be everybody’s doormat or everybody’s friend and refuge?

1. On what ethical questions have we come to the point where the moral standards accepted by society can be and must be raised?

2. If you could purchase one single advance by your life, what would you choose?

3. How does an expansion of the area of full social obligation operate to raise the standards of conduct? Who is my neighbor, and who is not?

1. A new intellectual age has opened with the rise of modern science; what new moral standards should be the result of our new knowledge?

2. A new economic age opened with the invention of power machinery and the social organization of labor; what new moral standards should have been the result of the new wealth of civilization?

3. A new political era opened with the rise of democracy; what new moral standards should be achieved in the life of States and cities?

4. A new era began in world-wide relations with the beginning of steam-carried commerce; what new standards are needed for international and inter-racial relations?