Part III. The Recalcitrant Social Forces
Chapter VII. Leadership For Service
Ambition Must Get Its Satisfaction by Serving Humanity
The Kingdom of God was an ideal. If it was to be turned into concrete realities, it would encounter the recalcitrant and stubborn instincts of human nature and the conservative forces of society. Where did Jesus locate the obstacles? At what points was he aware of resistance? Did he realize the force of ambition and the love of power? Did he gauge the pull of the property instinct? Did he feel religion as a help or a hindrance in realizing the Kingdom of God? These questions we shall follow up in three lessons.
Daily Readings
First Day: The Trustee
The preceding verses (v. 35-40) dealt with the faithfulness of the rank and file; this parable deals with the responsibility of official position and sketches the alternative of selfish and serviceable leadership. The head steward had charge of a great estate, directing the labor of workmen and maids, dealing out supplies, and controlling the welfare and happiness of all. The absence of the master made his authority for the time absolute. Would he use it for the good of all? If so, wider scope and higher honor would come to him. Or would he become intoxicated with power, take things easy, boss his fellow-servants around, and become a petty tyrant? If so, he would get what was coming to him. Every man's duty is measured by his knowledge and by his power. If, therefore, a man rises to leadership, and finds his elbow-room enlarging, let him stiffen his sense of duty to correspond, or there will be trouble. Degeneration by power is written all over history.
The functions of a head steward belong to the age of great landowners. How would you modernize this parable to express the same ideas?
Second Day: Preparing for the Use of Power
Then was Jesus led up of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil. And when he had fasted forty days and forty nights, he afterward hungered. And the tempter came and said unto him, If thou art the Son of God, command that these stones become bread. But he answered and said, It [pg 099] is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God. Then the devil taketh him into the holy city; and he set him on the pinnacle of the temple, and saith unto him, If thou art the Son of God, cast thyself down: for it is written,
He shall give his angels charge concerning thee: and,
Jesus said unto him, Again it is written, Thou shalt not make trial of the Lord thy God. Again, the devil taketh him unto an exceeding high mountain, and showeth him all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them; and he said unto him, All these things will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me. Then saith Jesus unto him, Get thee hence, Satan: for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve.—Matt.4:1-10.
The baptism of Jesus was an act of dedication to the coming reign of God, and it brought him a deep spiritual experience. He came out of it with the sense of an immediate mission, of being called to a supreme leadership, and with the consciousness of power to correspond with his destiny. At once he confronted the question: How would he employ his Messianic power? By what means would he obtain leadership? In the desert his mind was concentrated on these problems. This story displays the temptations of a leader, and sums up his settlement on three points: first, he realized that he must not swerve aside for personal gratification, but must serve the will of God only; second, he must not debase his power by playing for popularity by means of spectacular, miraculous display; third, he must not win his leadership by methods that would mortgage him to the prince of this world, for instance by the use of force.
How would these points apply to a young man seeking political office, intellectual eminence, or artistic achievement?
[pg 100]Have we ever had a time of religious concentration to consider the problems of our future leadership?
Third Day: The New Principle of Leadership
This passage is fundamental for our subject. It is the clearest formulation of the social principle involved in leadership. It contrasts two opposite types of leadership throughout human history. Salome and her sons thought Jesus was going to Jerusalem to inaugurate his Kingdom. They asked for an advance pledge assuring them of the chief place. Jesus replied that that place would not go by favoritism. There is a price to be paid for leadership in his reign, and God alone will allot the final honors. He felt in their request a relapse into conceptions that he detested. In all political organizations he saw the tyrannical use of power over [pg 101] the people. There must be an end of that in the new social order. Ambition must seek its satisfaction by distinguished service, and only extra-hazardous service shall win honor. He himself proposed to be a leader of that new type, and to give his life as a ransom for the emancipation of the people.
Our Master here offers each of us the conscious choice between two principles of action. Have we made our choice?
He offers a norm for estimating the real value of men in public life. Have we ever tried to apply it?
Fourth Day: The History of a Governing Class
Hear another parable: There was a man that was a householder, who planted a vineyard, and set a hedge about it, and digged a winepress in it, and built a tower, and let it out to husbandmen, and went into another country. And when the season of the fruits drew near, he sent his servants to the husbandmen, to receive his fruits. And the husbandmen took his servants, and beat one, and killed another, and stoned another. Again, he sent other servants more than the first: and they did unto them in like manner. But afterward he sent unto them his son, saying, They will reverence my son. But the husbandmen, when they saw the son, said among themselves, This is the heir; come, let us kill him, and take his inheritance. And they took him, and cast him forth out of the vineyard, and killed him. When therefore the lord of the vineyard shall come, what will he do unto those husbandmen? They say unto him, He will miserably destroy those miserable men, and will let out the vineyard unto other husbandmen, who shall render him the fruits in their seasons. Jesus saith unto them, Did ye never read in the scriptures,
And it is marvellous in our eyes? Therefore say I unto you, The kingdom of God shall be taken [pg 102] away from you, and shall be given to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof. And he that falleth on this stone shall be broken to pieces: but on whomsoever it shall fall, it will scatter him as dust. And when the chief priests and the Pharisees heard his parables, they perceived that he spake of them. And when they sought to lay hold on him, they feared the multitudes, because they took him for a prophet.—Matt. 21:33-46.
A delegation of the chief priests, lawyers, and elders challenged the authority of Jesus to act as he did. He replied by challenging their authority to act as they did. The vineyard parable sums up his view of the moral history of the governing class in his nation. It was like a group of men who had rented a vineyard on shares, but took advantage of the owner's absence to embezzle his share, insolently to beat up his representatives, and to put themselves in possession of the farm. Every demand of God for righteousness in the history of Israel had been resisted by those in power. What title, then, did they have to the rights they claimed? Unless they fulfilled the function of true leaders, why should they not be put out of power and brought to justice? In this passage, then, we have a characterization of leaders who take the profits and honors of leadership, without performing its higher duties to God and humanity.
Is there any connection between this challenge of Jesus, and the functional theories of society and the evolutionary conception of history?
Fifth Day: An Indictment of a Governing Class
Then spake Jesus to the multitudes and to his disciples, saying, The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses' seat, all things therefore whatsoever they bid you, these do and observe: but do not ye after their works; for they say, and do not. Yea, they bind heavy burdens and grievous to be borne, and lay them on men's shoulders; but they themselves [pg 103] will not move them with their finger. But all their works they do to be seen of men: for they make broad their phylacteries, and enlarge the borders of their garments, and love the chief place at feasts, and the chief seats in the synagogues, and the salutations in the marketplaces, and to be called of men, Rabbi. But be not ye called Rabbi: for one is your teacher, and all ye are brethren. And call no man your father on the earth: for one is your Father, even he who is in heaven. Neither be ye called masters: for one is your master, even the Christ. But he that is greatest among you shall be your servant. And whosoever shall exalt himself shall be humbled; and whosoever shall humble himself shall be exalted.
But woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! because ye shut the kingdom of heaven against men: for ye enter not in yourselves, neither suffer ye them that are entering in to enter.—Matt. 23:1-13.
The invective against the scribes and Pharisees (Matt. 23) is a characterization of selfish leadership in the field of religion. Its fundamental elements have remained the same in all religions and through all history: fine talk and little action; religion turned into a law and a burden, in order to hold the people in obedience to the interests of the leaders; pride and ambition exploiting religion to get honors. Jesus tells the people to revolt against the titles in which this domination had found decorative satisfaction. He demands democracy, humility, brotherliness.
Does this description justly apply to the Christian ministry today, or has there been a great historical change by which that profession has become a profession of service?
Where in modern social life would the invective of Jesus against selfish leadership still be true?
Sixth Day: The Lost Leader
And in these days Peter stood up in the midst of [pg 104] the brethren, and said (and there was a multitude of persons gathered together, about a hundred and twenty), Brethren, it was needful that the scripture should be fulfilled, which the Holy Spirit spake before by the mouth of David concerning Judas, who was guide to them that took Jesus. For he was numbered among us, and received his portion in this ministry. (Now this man obtained a field with the reward of his iniquity; and falling headlong, he burst asunder in the midst, and all his bowels gushed out. And it became known to all the dwellers at Jerusalem; insomuch that in their language that field was called Akeldama, that is, The field of blood.) For it is written in the book of Psalms,
and,
The character and motives of Judas remain an unsolved riddle. The Gospels leave no doubt that money played a part with him. But could a man whom Jesus selected and trusted be actuated by so sordid a motive alone? Was he perhaps embittered because he had staked his ambition on the Galilean Messiah and Jesus failed to act the part assigned to him? Was he hoping to force him to revolutionary action? We may be sure that Judas was no slinking thief only. In Rubens' picture of the Last Supper at Milano Judas has a strong and noble face, but troubled and restless eyes, telling of a hurt soul. The other disciples were deeply impressed by his betrayal of the Master and of the common cause. Judas is the type of the lost leader. “Just for a handful of silver he left us, just for a ribbon to stick in his coat.” Some leaders blunder and learn better; some sag to lower levels but plod on; some sell out. Judas could not bear to live. Read James Russell Lowell's “Extreme Unction.”
Have you known of cases today of men who have abandoned or betrayed a cause to get office or income? Any [pg 105] who abandon humanity itself to get thirty pieces for themselves?
Seventh Day: The New Order of Leaders
And Jesus went about all the cities and the villages, teaching in their synagogues, and preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing all manner of disease and all manner of sickness. But when he saw the multitudes, he was moved with compassion for them, because they were distressed and scattered, as sheep not having a shepherd. Then saith he unto his disciples, The harvest indeed is plenteous, but the laborers are few. Pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that he send forth laborers into his harvest.
And he called unto him his twelve disciples, and gave them authority over unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to heal all manner of disease and all manner of sickness.
Now the names of the twelve apostles are these: The first, Simon, who is called Peter, and Andrew his brother; James the son of Zebedee, and John his brother; Philip, and Bartholomew; Thomas, and Matthew the publican; James the son of Alphæus, and Thaddæus; Simon the Cananæan, and Judas Iscariot, who also betrayed him.—Matt. 9:35-10:4.
We have studied part of this passage before as an expression of the social feeling of Jesus. Note now that it was their leaderless condition which impressed him. Plenty of priests, lawyers, and experts on the Bible, but no friendly shepherds for the people. When he created the apostolate, he initiated a new order of leadership, a band of men who would serve and not exploit. Read the instructions he gave them (Chap. 10), and see how carefully he fences out selfish gain. Service versus exploitation, that is one of the tests of all who claim leadership in his name. We realize that in the field of religion. But why should not the same test be [pg 106] made in professional, political, and business life? Predatory action may not be as glaringly shameful there, but is it any the more moral?
Now what about you and me?
Study for the Week
I
The desire to lead and excel is natural and right. Because men are gregarious, they need leadership for their social groups, and social progress depends largely on securing adequate leaders. Those who have the natural gifts for leadership—and also those who merely think they have—usually have a keen desire for its satisfactions. College life is a miniature world of criss-cross ambitions and of contrivances for trying out leaders.
Jesus did not demand self-effacement and the suppression of ability. He welcomed evidences of noble self-assertion. His own Messianic call was a summons to the highest leadership. His temptations were the settlement of leadership problems. His final lament over the city of Jerusalem was a burst of sorrow because he had failed to win his people to follow him.
Now, in moving about among men to win them for the Kingdom, Jesus encountered the leaders who were on deck before he came—the wealthy men who controlled the economic outfit; the official groups who held what political power was left to the Jews; and the lawyers, theologians, priests, and zealots who dominated the religious life of a very religious people. These classes overlapped; together they constituted the oligarchy of his nation. Both sides soon realized that there were fundamental antagonisms between them. The conflict grew acute, until it headed up in the great duel of the last days at Jerusalem. His experiences in this conflict with hostile leadership are recorded in the passages which we have studied and others like them.
II
In the fundamental reply to James and John he formulated his observations in a great political generalization: “Ye know that the rulers of the nations lord it over them and their great men hold down the rest by force.” In its earlier and cruder forms, the State is a contrivance of a victorious group to hold down the conquered, and exploit them. If anyone has not yet read political history as an account of systematic exploitation of nation by nation and class by class, he has some education still coming to him.
Even where political leadership has not been plainly predatory but rested on real service, humanity has often had a heavy price to pay for it. Successful military leaders were able to perpetuate a royal dynasty and perhaps fasten a race of hereditary incapables on a nation, to be maintained in royal splendor. The feudal nobility performed useful work in the earlier, turbulent times, but it continued to take rent and tribute for centuries after its useful functions had lapsed. Modern business men who have organized public service corporations have often served the nation well, but they now own the highways and fundamental outfit of the nation, and if their descendants or assignees collect tribute, perhaps on inflated capitalization, for generations to come, it looks like rather costly service. The obligations of power have a curious way of getting lost in the shuffle of time, but titles, rank, legal privileges, rent, and interest are carefully groomed. If one man loses them, some other man nurses them, and the people always pay.
The Kingdom of God sets a fraternal and righteous social order against the predatory and unrighteous order which humanity has inherited from the past. The new order must have a new dynasty of leaders, for every social order has its own kind of aristocracy. Jesus does not propose to abolish leadership, but he proposes a new basis for greatness which is sharply opposed to the old: “Whoever has ambition to be a great man among you, let him be your servant; and whoever [pg 108] is ambitious to rank first among you, let him be your bondservant. Just as the Son of Man did not come to have others serve him, but to render service and to give his life as a ransom for many.” Ability and ambition are still to lead, but they are to be yoked to the service of all. Not he who kills and subjugates, but he who makes life safe and happy, shall have the statue set up in his honor. Not the great warrior and killer, but the great healer and the man who multiplies the blades of grass and the ears of wheat and the size of potatoes shall be the great names treasured. The higher the honor craved, the more strenuous must be the service; if a man wants first prize, he must get down to voluntary slavery. The old way to leadership was to knock others down and climb up on them; the new way is to get underneath and boost.
III
Jesus put himself under this law of leadership. We see from his words that the cross was the outcome of a consistent principle adopted by him. The rules he laid down for his apostolate were meant to bar out selfish acquisition: “Freely ye received, freely give. Get you no gold, nor silver, nor brass in your purses; no wallet for your journey, neither two coats, nor shoes, nor staff; for the laborer is worthy of his food.” It is a significant fact that again and again religious leaders who really cared for the condition of the people, have tried to create a genuine leadership for them along the same lines; Francis of Assisi gathered his “little brothers”; Peter Waldus his Bible teachers; Wycliffe his “poor preachers”; John Wesley his local preachers and itinerants; William Booth his ensigns and captains with the big bass drum; and the entire foreign mission propaganda calls for leaders who will go to the people and offers them nothing but enough to live in health. Today practically the entire Christian ministry, one of the most important bodies of men, has come under the law of leadership for service. It was once, at least in its upper-class sections, rich with unearned [pg 109] incomes, pervaded by graft, and domineering in spirit; it is now a clean and plain-living profession; whatever its shortcomings, graft and extortion are not of them.
The question is now, whether other professions will go through the same historical process of cleansing. The religious spirit has pioneering qualities; under its impulse men blaze the trail which broad social movements or historical developments follow later. Greedy leadership first seemed intolerable in the Church; after a time it may become intolerable in politics and business. The trend of civilization is toward intelligent service on plain pay. Educators, judges, scientists, doctors are on that basis now. It has become dishonorable for them to use their positions for a holdup. The great discoverers in the line of sero-therapy might have taken toll in golden streams, but they did not. It would have been contrary to the ethics of their profession. That means that their profession is on a Christian basis. Where graft is taken out of politics, officials become devoted public servants. The reproach has been made against a man of great ability that at the end of his life his name is not connected with any great cause or measure for the welfare of the people. Whether the judgment was just or not, that point of view is the one to take.
Can business be brought under the law of service? Or is commerce constitutionally incapable of it? There are many indications that a conscious spiritual change is coming over those men in business who have enough intellect and character to look beyond immediate needs. The type of business leadership which took millions out of filthy factory towns, wore out women and took the youth out of children, cleared twelve per cent from slum tenements, kept men and women from marriage by underpayment, and kept the cradle empty by high prices and fear of the future—this type of leadership is antiquated. It belongs to a pre-Christian and pagan age. It is only a question whether business leaders will voluntarily turn their back on such misuse of power or have a change forced on them. Those who mark time on the old [pg 110] methods will become moral derelicts, and their wealth will not forever screen their moral obtuseness.
The nation needs leaders who will persuade conservative farmers to use scientific methods; who will teach our wasteful people the value of self-restraint, and the beauty of cooperative buying and selling; who will teach our communities that it is a sin to rob our own children by leaving soil, water, and forests poorer than we found them; who will give the people good housing without taking the unearned increment; who will organize the dangerous industries for safety; who will place the relations of leaders and workers in industry on a basis of justice and goodwill so that industrial peace can be attained. Is such an object satisfying to a young man of business capacity, or does he want to build a million dollar house and populate it with one child? It is confessed that civilization has been succeeding on the technical side and failing on the ethical. The more the machinery of life is concentrated in the hands of a limited group of business leaders, the more important does the social enlightenment and moral objective of these leaders become to society. To which of the two types do we belong?
IV
Will a life of service satisfy the capable and call out their best powers for the service of humanity? Men will play the game according to the rules of the game. If humanity changes the rules, its strong men will still let out their energies, because they can not help it, and they will like themselves all the better for being on the side of their fellow-men. There is no pleasure in being isolated, eyed with resentment, and conscious of hardness. If ten per cent net means long hours, low wages, and repression, and if six per cent would mean good will and contentment, it might pay the leaders of industry to take less in dividends and take it out in the higher satisfactions.
For men of great ability this is the chance for enduring [pg 111] fame. Who will remember the men that did nothing but amass wealth? Who of our presidents are remembered and loved? Those who suffered with and for the people.
The leadership of service validates its rightness by its intellectual results. Predatory and parasitic classes become intellectually sterile and ignorant of real life. A man who wants to serve men, must get close to them. If we carry a load uphill, we have to choose our footing, and will perforce become intimately acquainted with the law of gravitation. Nothing develops the intellect like heading a just cause and fighting for it.
Here, then, we have another social principle of Jesus. The ambition of the strong must be yoked to the service of society. Power and honor must be earned by distinguished and costly service. Progress along this direction marks the progress of the Kingdom of God. Extortionate and domineering leadership must be superseded where the Kingdom of God moves forward.
V
Does the life of our colleges and universities square with this principle? College men and women crave honor from their fellows, or their fraternities crave it for them vicariously. How do the “big men” in college win it? Do they win it by raising the standards of intellectual work for all? By making fun clean and honorable through the power of a clean public opinion? By creating a college spirit which will put manhood into every generation of Freshmen that plunges into it? Or do they win honor by organizing parties, by intoxicating themselves and others with frothy “social” successes, by acting for the gallery to see and applaud, and by wasting the dynamics of youth on shooting rockets that look like stars and come down like sticks? Such men are essentially selfish; even their service is self-seeking and deserves no honor from others. The more talented and attractive they are, the more damage do they do. They perpetuate [pg 112] their kind. If fraternities or honorary societies honor and reward that sort of leadership, they force individuals into futility, and reenforce the natural temptation to shallow work and display by the powerful pressure of socialized public opinion.
What has just been said applies to the inner life of the college group during its brief command over young men and women. But meanwhile the outside life is waiting for them. Society creates and finances the colleges and universities from the social fund created by those who work. A college man who toys with his work and fights those who want to make him work, ought to be demoted and his chance given to some workingman who has intellectual hunger and would use it. But even of the able and efficient college men society has a right to inquire whether it is training enemies and exploiters or friends and leaders. This question will be asked more and more insistently by democracy as it becomes intelligent. Christianity anticipates this inquiry by its appeal to the individual conscience. Every college man and woman should choose the principle on which he proposes to exercise leadership in case he wins it. Are we willing to gain wealth by impoverishing others? Are we willing to get pleasure by degrading others? Are we willing to gain power and freedom for ourselves by making others powerless and unfree? Jesus distinguishes three kinds of men who are interested in the sheep—the robber, the hireling, and the shepherd. You can tell the presence of the robber by the death of the sheep; the hireling by his cowardice; the true leader by his valor and love.
A special word should be said to college women. In her book on “Woman and Labor,” Olive Schreiner has pointed out that as families rise to wealth, the women slip into parasitism more readily than the men. They cease to do productive work, accept the luxuries of life as their right, and fall in with upper-class pretensions. The means of leadership—time, wealth, social resources—are at their command. How will they use them? The number of women [pg 113] with unearned incomes is increasing rapidly in America. Now, if much is given them, much will be required. Can they produce enough social values to justify what they consume? The least we can do is to give as much as we get. Anything less is immoral.
What kind of influence do college girls exert on able young men who turn toward them in love? Nothing will shrivel the idealistic conceptions of life in a young man as thoroughly as love for a selfish woman. The world is full of eyeless Samsons, grinding the money-mills, and whipped to a quicker pace by smiling grafters—who would not recognize this description of them if they saw it.
Suggestions for Thought and Discussion
I. The Need of Leadership
1. Does the need of leadership diminish with the spread of democracy? With the growth of education?
2. Do we need leadership more or less in America today than fifty years ago?
II. Jesus on the Problems of Leadership
1. Give proof that Jesus consciously confronted the problem of social leadership.
2. What elements did he condemn in the old leadership of his nation?
3. What principle of leadership did he lay down for the new social order?
4. What body of leaders did he create, and what standards of special honor did he impose on them?
5. What do we think of the historic effectiveness of the leadership he created? What is the true interpretation of Judas Iscariot?
6. What evidences are there in Jesus' career that he was true to his ideals of leadership?
[pg 114]III. The Problem of Leadership in History
1. How have the great leaders in the field of religion attacked the problem of leadership in the Church? What does the Protestant Reformation signify from this point of view?
2. How have the landed aristocrats of the past met the Christian test of leadership?
3. Give examples from history and from modern life of men who exercised power in the way Christ condemned. Give examples of others who exercised it according to Christ's law.
IV. The Problem of Leadership in Modern Life
1. In what professions is ambition now securely tied up with service, so that a man must serve well in order to rise?
2. In what positions can a man still gain power and wealth by exploiting society?
3. Is the consciousness that they are public servants spreading among business men? If so, to what is this due?
4. Is society paying too big a price for the leadership of the industrial aristocracy today?
5. When the interests of the stockholders are set over against the health of women and children, and the safety of employes, which consideration determines the wages paid?
6. How have the social leaders of the past mortgaged the economic resources of nations to their own families? To what extent is this true of our country?
7. How can society protect itself against exploitation under present conditions?
V. For Special Discussion
1. A corporation has averaged 24 per cent to its stockholders. It pays twelve dollars a week to its ordinary [pg 115] workmen. Would you call this predatory leadership? Where do you draw the line?
2. Does the salary of teachers in our country indicate that we give honor according to service rendered?
3. How does the increasing size of business undertakings and their importance for public welfare emphasize the ethical importance of right leadership?
Chapter VIII. Private Property And The Common Good
Private Property Must Serve Social Welfare
A glance across history or a simple acquaintance with human life in any community will show us that private property is at the same time a necessary expression of personality and stimulator of character, and, on the other hand, a chief outlet and fortification of selfishness. Every reformatory effort must aim to conserve and spread the blessings of property, and every step toward a better social order will be pugnaciously blocked by its selfish beneficiaries.
What were Jesus' convictions about private property?
Daily Readings
First Day: The Rival Interest
This parable was intended to explain to the disciples why the Kingdom was not coming with a rush, as they expected. The story embodies the practical experiences of Jesus in his propaganda. He saw his work as a duplication of the sower's work on a higher level. The success of both depends on the receptiveness of the soil. The sower encounters hard trodden ground, rocky patches, and spots where hardy thorns or thistles drain the soil and where his work produces only empty ears and futile beginnings. So Jesus met the stolid conservative and also the emotional type. But the climax of his difficulties was a mind preoccupied by property worries, or lured by the illusions of wealth. He early found, then, that devotion to property is likely to be a rival to the higher interests and the common good.
How do modern social groups line up when measured by spiritual receptiveness?
Second Day: The Accumulator
Most men today would have no fault to find with this man. He was only doing what the modern world is unanimously trying to do. Having made a pile, he proposed to make a bigger pile. Meanwhile he slapped his soul on the back and smacked his lips in anticipation. To Jesus the fat farmer was a tragic comedy. In the first place, an unseen hand was waiting to snuff out his candle. To plan life as if it consisted in an abundance of material wealth is something of a miscalculation in a world where death is part of the scheme of things. In the second place, Jesus saw no higher purpose in the man's aim and outlook to redeem his acquisitiveness. The man was a sublimated chipmunk, gloating over bushels of pignuts. If wealth is saved to raise and educate children, or achieve some social good, it deserves moral respect or admiration. But if the acquisitive instinct is without social feeling or vision, and centered on self, it gets no respect, at least from Jesus.
Unlimited acquisition used to be considered immoral and dishonorable. How and when did public opinion change on this?
Third Day: Quit Grafting
The social teachings of John the Baptist were so close to those of Jesus that we can safely draw on them in this passage.
John told the people that a new era was coming and they would have to get a new mind and manner of life as an outfit for it. The people asked for specifications. John's suggestions ran along two lines. He encouraged the plain working people to be neighborly and friendly, and share with a man who was hard up. With powerful individuals, like hired soldiers and Roman tax-farmers, he insisted that they must quit using their physical force and legal power as a cinch to extort money. In other words, they must quit grafting. In the Kingdom of God the “big, black book of graft” will be closed, and men will no longer eat their protesting fellow-men. The more we realize that some form of graft is at the bottom of most easy incomes, the more good sense will we see in this kind of evangelism.
Have we ever been a victim of extortion? How did it feel? Did it sour the milk of human kindness in us?
Fourth Day: God versus Mammon
Acquisition may operate on different planes. A man may accumulate material stuff, or he may acquire spiritual faculties, memories, and relations. In a balanced life the two work side by side in peace, and each may aid the other. But the experience of all spiritual teachers shows that practically the acquisition of property often becomes a passion which absorbs the man and leaves little energy for the higher pursuits. Most men who have used up their life to acquire wealth look back with homesickness to some idealistic aspiration of their youth as to a lost Edenland. Jesus felt the antagonism of private wealth and the Kingdom of God so keenly that he set God and Mammon over against each other, and warned us that we must choose between them. Placed in this connection, the saying about the darkening of the inner light seems to refer to the influence of money-getting on the higher vision of the soul. This entire passage is fundamental and will explain other sayings which follow.
Do God and money come into flat collision in college life?
Fifth Day: The Divisive Influence of Riches
Why does Jesus send the rich man to hell as if it were a matter of course? No crimes or vices are alleged. It must be that a life given over to sumptuous living and indifferent to the want and misery of a fellow-man at the doorstep seemed to Jesus a deeply immoral and sinful life. Jesus exerted all his energies to bring men close together in love. But wealth divides. It creates semi-human relations between social classes, so that a small dole seems to be a full discharge of obligations toward the poor, and manly independence and virtue may be resented as offensive. The sting of this parable is in the reference to the five brothers who [pg 122] were still living as Dives had lived, and whom he was vainly trying to reach by wireless. See verse 14 in explanation.
Is it fair to call the relations between the selfish rich and the dependent poor “semi-human relations”?
Sixth Day: Get a Plank for the Deluge
This is one of the wittiest stories in the Bible and must be read with some sense of humor. The tenant farmers of a great estate paid their rent in shares of the produce. This elastic system offered the steward a chance to make something on the side. He was found out and discharged, but while he was closing up his accounts he still had a short spell [pg 123] of authority. Things looked dark. He did not care to blister his white hands with a hoe-handle, nor his social pride by begging. So he grafted one last graft, but on so large a scale that the tenants would be under lasting obligations to him. The scamp was a crook, but at least he was long-headed. Jesus wished the children of light were as clever in taking a long look ahead as the children of this world. In that case men would get ready for the new age, in which mammon loses its buying power, by making friends with it now, and their friends would take them in as guests after the great reversal.
How do you like the humorous independence of Jesus?
Seventh Day: Stranded on His Wealth
A fine young man, of clean and conscientious life, but with unsatisfied aspirations in his soul. Jesus invites him to a more heroic type of excellence, cutting loose from his wealth and devoting himself to the apostolate of the Kingdom of God. It was a great chance for a great life. He [pg 124] might have stood for God before kings and mobs, and ranked with Peter, John, and Paul as a household name. He did not rise to his chance. What held him? Jesus felt it was his wealth. A poor man would have had less to leave, and might have left it cheerfully. So Jesus sums up the psychological situation in the saddened exclamation that it is exceedingly hard for a rich man to enter the Kingdom where men live in justice, fraternity, and idealism.
Have you noticed that in recent years an increasing number of this man's grandsons are trying to cut loose and find the real life, eternal life? Can you name any?
Study for the Week
Evidently the dangers connected with property were much in the mind of Jesus. He seems to have emphasized them more fully and frequently than the evils of licentiousness or drunkenness. The modern Church has reversed the relative emphasis. Why?
Of course we must not look for the methods or viewpoints of political economy in his teachings. His concern was for the spiritual vitality and soundness of the individual, and for the human relations existing among men. He was interested in property only in so far as it corrupted the higher nature or made fraternity difficult. But let no one underestimate the importance of these considerations. These things are the real end of life. All the rest is scaffolding. We should be farther along if the economic and social sciences had kept these fundamental questions more sternly in sight.
I
Plainly Jesus felt that the acquisitive instinct, like the sex instinct, easily breaks bounds and becomes ravenous; there is even less natural limit to it. It absorbs the energies of intellect and will. As with the rich fool, the horizon of life is filled with chances to make the pile grow bigger. Life seems to consist of money, and the problems of money.
[pg 125]People are valued according to that standard. Marriages are arranged for it. Politics is run for it. Wars are begun for it. Creative artistic and intellectual impulses are shouldered aside, fall asleep, or die of inanition. Property is intended to secure freedom of action and self-development; in fact, it often chains men and clips their wings. This is what Jesus calls “the deceitfulness of riches” and “the darkening of the inner eye.”2
In addition to the blight of character, wealth exerts a desocializing and divisive influence. It wedges apart groups that belong together. Dives and Lazarus may live in the front and rear of the same block, but with no sense of solidarity. Dives would have been deeply moved, perhaps, if one of his own class had punctured a tire in the Philistian desert and gone for two days without any food except crumbs. The separation of humanity into classes on the lines of wealth is so universal and so orthodox that few of us ever realize that it flouts all the principles of Christianity and humanity.
In the case of the young ruler Jesus encountered the fact that wealth bars men out of the world of their ideals. The question was not whether the young man could get to heaven, but whether he could have a share in the real life, in the kingdom of right relations. It is hard to acquire great wealth without doing injustice to others; it is hard to possess it and yet deal with others on the basis of equal humanity; it is hard to give it away even without doing mischief.
We have seen that Jesus believed profoundly in the value and dignity of human life; that he sought to create solidarity; that he was chiefly concerned for the saving of the lowly; and that he demanded an heroic life in the service of the Kingdom of God. But wealth, as he saw it, flouted the value of life, dissolved the spiritual solidarity of whole classes, and kept the lowly low; the wealthy had lost the capacity for an heroic life.
[pg 126]This is radical teaching. What shall we say to it? Jesus is backed by the Old Testament prophets and the most spiritual teaching of the Hebrew people, which condemned injustice and extortionate money-making even more energetically than did Jesus. Medieval Christianity sincerely assented to the principle that private property is a danger to the soul and a neutralizer of love. Every monastic community tried to cut under sex dangers by celibacy, and property dangers by communism. This was an enormous misinterpretation of Christianity, but it shows that men took the teachings on the dangers of private property seriously. The modern Christian world does not. It has quietly set aside the ideas of Jesus on this subject, lives its life without much influence from them, and contents itself with emphasizing other aspects.
Has the teaching of Jesus on private property been superseded by a better understanding of the social value of property? Or has his teaching been suppressed and swamped by the universal covetousness of modern life? “Our moral pace-setters strike at bad personal habits, but act as if there was something sacred about money-getting; and, seeing that the master iniquities of our time are connected with money-making, they do not get into the fight at all. The child-drivers, monopoly-builders, and crooked financiers have no fear of men whose thought is run in the moulds of their grandfathers. Go to the tainted-money colleges, and you will learn that Drink, not Graft, is the nation's bane” (Edward A. Ross, “Sin and Society, an Analysis of Latter-day Iniquity,” p. 97—the italics are his).
II
The machinery for making money which Jesus knew, was simple, crude, and puny compared with the complicated and pervasive system which the magnates of modern industry have built up. There was probably not a millionaire in all Palestine. What would he have said to our great cities?
[pg 127]We need a Christian ethics of property, more perhaps than anything else. The wrongs connected with wealth are the most vulnerable point of our civilization. Unless we can make that crooked place straight, all our charities and religion are involved in hypocrisy.
We have to harmonize the two facts, that wealth is good and necessary, and that wealth is a danger to its possessor and to society. On the one hand property is indispensable to personal freedom, to all higher individuality, and to self-realization; the right to property is a corollary of the right to life; without property men are at the mercy of nature and in bondage to those who have property. On the other hand property is used as a means of collecting tribute and private taxes, as a club with which to extort unearned gain from laborers and consumers, and as the fundamental tool of oppression.
Where do we draw the line? Is it true that property created by productive labor is a great moralizer, and that property acquired without productive labor is the great demoralizer? Is it correct that property for use is on the whole good, and property for power is a menace?
What is the relation between property and self-development? At what point does property become excessive? At what point does food become excessive and poisonous? At what point does fertilizer begin to kill a plant? Would any real social values be lost if incomes averaged $2,000 and none exceeded $10,000?
To what extent does a moral purpose take the dangers out of acquisition?
Is any life moral in which the natural capacities are not sincerely taxed to do productive work? If a man's wealth is destined to cut his descendants off from productive labor, is it a blessing? What is the moral difference between strenuous occupation and labor? How large a proportion of our time and energy can be devoted to play and leisure without softening our moral fiber?
At what points does private property come to be anti-social? [pg 128] If we could eliminate the monopoly elements and the capacity to levy tribute, would there be much danger in the remainder?
Does private property, in the enormous aggregations of today and in control of the essential outfit of society, still correspond to the essential theoretical conception of private property, or have public properties and public functions fallen under private control? “Much that we are accustomed to hear called legitimate insistence upon the rights of property, the Old Testament would seem to call the robbery of God, and grinding the faces of the poor” (The Bishop of Oxford).
III
The religious spirit will always have to call the individual farther than the law can compel him to go. After all unjust and tainted portions have been eliminated from our property, religion lays its hands on the rest and says, “You are only a steward over this.” In the parables of the talents, the pounds, and the unjust steward, Jesus argues on the assumption that our resources are a trust, and not absolute property. We manage and control them, but always under responsibility. We hold them from God, and his will has eminent domain. But the will of God is identical with the good of mankind. When we hold property in trust for God, we hold it for humanity, of which we are part. We misuse the trust if by it we deprive others of health, freedom, joy, hope, or efficiency, for instance, by overworking others and underworking our own children.
Suggestions for Thought and Discussion
I. The Love of Money
1. Define graft. What is wrong in it? Where do we see it? Where are we myopic about it?
2. Why did Jesus have so much to say about money and so little about drink? Why does Paul call the love of money “the root of all evil”?
[pg 129]II. Jesus' Fear of Riches
1. On what ground does Jesus fear the influence of riches and of their accumulation?
2. Summarize Jesus' teachings regarding wealth.
3. In what respects is his attitude different from the ordinary viewpoint of the modern world?
4. Was Jesus opposed to the owning of farming tools or fishing smacks? Where would he draw the line between honest earnings and dangerous wealth?
5. Was his teaching on wealth ascetic? Was it socialistic?
6. To what extent should we recognize his insight on this question as authority for us?
III. The Problem of Wealth in the Modern World
I. Are the "master iniquities" of our age located in sex life, politics, or business?
2. Distinguish between “property for use” and “property for power.”
3. What are the moral evils created by mass poverty? By aggregations of wealthy families?
4. Why has the modern world set aside Jesus' teachings about wealth? To what extent have we substituted a better understanding of the social value of property? How far should we be satisfied with our present adjustment of the property question?
5. What methods of money making are condemned by the common sentiment of the Church? Is there anything which ought to be included in this condemnation? If so, what?
IV. The Christian Attitude Toward Property and Wealth Under Modern Conditions
1. At what point does the amassing of private property become contrary to the principles of Jesus?
[pg 130]2. What legalized property rights are antagonistic to Jesus' principles?
3. How can society accumulate wealth without the injustice and social divisions which now accompany the amassing of private fortunes?
4. If a man has an invested income, has he the right to live a life of leisure? When is it right to be a non-producer?
5. How rich has a Christian a right to be? In a Christian society what is the minimum limit of income?
6. Would economic democracy eliminate or enforce the doctrine of stewardship?
7. How can we pluck the sting of sin out of private property?
V. For Special Discussion
1. Are millionaires a symptom of social disease or a triumph of civilization?
2. Should social science reckon with the influence of wealth on personal character?
3. What moral conviction is expressed in the condemnation of usurious interest and of rack-rent? Should excessive profit be included?
4. How could industry be financed if there were no wealthy investors with accumulations?
5. When is a college student a parasite?
6. If college communities had less money would they breed better men and women?
7. How have the successes of predatory finance affected the outlook and morality of college students?