4/23/67

Scripture: Romans 7: 15 - 8: 4.

Text: Romans 7: 19; “For the good that I would, I do not; but the evil which I would not, that I do.”

A little fellow who, like so many other little fellows, occasionally indulged in a temper tantrum would hear his father say to him: “Pull yourself together, sonny.” Perhaps many of us, who have grown beyond childhood, and have run out of patience, have made some sharp or critical speech, or have indulged in self-pity or made cowardly excuses for a moral error, have been told, “Young man [young woman], pull yourself together.” Probably most of us need, at some time, to have some wise and friendly counselor take us in hand and say firmly, “Pull yourself together” .... or it might be, “Put yourself together.”

In other words, we may not scatter ourselves around trying to be several things, or several personalities, without disaster. It is to this fact that we address ourselves when we endeavor to be someone genuine -- an integrated man or woman, a real person.

Ours is an age of extraordinary organization. No matter what you are interested in, the chances are that there is a society or club, or other group, organized to promote that interest in a number of interested people. Many of us find ourselves caught up in the movement of so many organizations that we are ourselves well-nigh disorganized. But it might not be amiss to suggest the need for one more organization for each of us -- that is the organization of our own personalities. Possibly this is what is meant by that inadequate, though suggestive, phrase: “Pull yourself together.”

We are accustomed to the idea that our lives grow under two exacting influences -- heredity and environment. Obviously each of us had inherited certain characteristics of physical appearance, mental bent, and capability from a number group of ancestors -- many of them unknown to us and most of them dead before we were born. And, obviously, we can do nothing much to change this inheritance, since it seems that we do not do the choosing of our ancestors! Much of our environment, likewise, is determined without our choice -- much of it the choices of others -- choices we did not make.

It was not my choice that I began my life on a South Dakota farm. My four grandparents who migrated to that state from farther east, and even from across the sea, had much to do with the circumstances. And my parents, who elected to stay there for a time had something to do with it. But I was just there, with no choice about it. My heredity and my environment have made me a different person from the man who was born in Thailand or in Brazil, or in Ethiopia. We are not the ones who choose the places, or people, where we were to begin life. It was not for us to say what should be our race, sex, or size; whether our first home was to be a cabin, a cottage, or a mansion, whether we should enter childhood in Spain, Iceland, India or the United States -- in Wisconsin or in Alabama.

Without doubt, heredity and environment do have a great deal to do with shaping our lives. And we have little control over some of it, though, later on, we can do something about our environment. At least one more factor, however, goes into the building of our personality. And that is our response to what heredity and environment do to us. Professor William Ernest Hocking once wrote: “Of all the animals, it is man in whom heredity counts for least, and conscious effort counts for most. ..... Other creatures, nature could largely finish; the human creature must finish himself.”

That which really determines one’s personality is one’s response to what is given in heredity and environment. Reaction may be mechanical. A ping-pong ball or a tennis ball reacts, mechanically, to the way it is struck. A lower animal reacts to various kinds of stimuli. A person does more; he responds to the various stimuli. Response is personal. When we respond poorly, we need to “pull ourselves together.” When one responds well, he is more nearly a unified person. Of course the constructive response is not easy job. Paul observed “The good that I would, I do not; but the evil which I would not, that I do.” It was Dwight L. Moody who remarked, “I have more trouble with myself than with any other man I have ever met.”

Here lies the major problem of mankind -- the problem of managing one’s self. Frustrated, disintegrated, unhappy people, unable to match themselves with life’s demands and to become integrated, efficient persons, constitute the great tragedy of the world. How shall I “pull myself together;” become a proper, unified person? How shall you? Consider three steps in the process, namely: (1) blame yourself; (2) discipline yourself; (3) dedicate yourself.

1) We have observed that we are not responsible for our heredity, nor for much of our environment. But we are responsible for our response. Here our sorest temptation is to “pass the buck,” to alibi. This habit is as old as the human race. In the story of the garden of Eden, it was Adam who shifted out from under blame by saying “the woman whom thou gavest me -- she gave me the fruit of the tree.” And Eve ducked also by saying, “The serpent beguiled me.” [Genesis 3: 12,13]. To this day, we mortals try to pass of on someone, or something else, the blame for our bad moral choices.

A requirement for restoration to moral health and integrated personality is that we blame ourselves when the blame belongs with us. Part of the genius of Shakespeare’s writing lies in this realm. The great dramatist saw within man the cause of our own misfortune. “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, .... but in ourselves, that we are underlings.” Hamlet’s weakness was in his own indecisive soul. Macbeth fell because of his own ambition. Othello became a murderer because of his own jealousy. It is a basic principle of life that we become the kind of persons we are by the way that we respond to life’s situations. And character is formed not so much by what is heaped upon us as by the way we meet what comes to us. Sir Walter Scott and Lord Byron were both cripples. Scott refused to blame fate, accepted his lameness, became a radiant person. Byron lamented his fate, became cynical, sour, and surly.

Harry Emerson Fosdick observes the interesting sequence in which our sciences were developed. Astronomy first, dealing with that which is farthest away from ourselves. Geology next, the study of the earth itself. Then Biology, with special attention to the forms of life preceding ourselves. Last of all, Psychology, the study of ourselves. The last person we want to meet, it might seem, is ourselves.

In our time, we have a favorite alibi for what we lamentably are -- it is fatalistic determinism. We say we are surrounded by such powerful forces, playing on life, that we are not to be held responsible. If we are mean, it was just “written in our start” that we should be that way. If somebody turns out to be good, he couldn’t help that either. Such a process of reasoning makes one not a musician, but just a “key on the piano;” not a man but a machine; not a human soul, but a beast. Probably a crocodile has to be a crocodile and nothing else. But by no stretch of reason can we manipulate the idea of responsibility around to the assumption that it was only irresistible forces that made the difference between Judas and Jesus; that shaped the lives of Fidel Castro or Konrad Adenauer. The decisive factor was their own lives!

If we accept responsibility for our lives when we succeed, we can not slough it off when we fail. David was approved by God to be Israel’s king. But when he connived to have one of his subjects killed at the battlefront so that he, David, could have the fellow’s wife, he was held strictly accountable for his serious misdeeds as the prophet said to him in direct accusation, “Thou art the man.” [II Samuel 11: 15; II Samuel 12: 7].

We can be our own best friend or our own worst enemy. Along with accepting credit, we must shoulder the blame due us.

2) A second step, in becoming a unified person, is in self-discipline. Probably the beatitude which troubles so many: “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth,” [Matthew 5: 5] is illuminated if we think of it like this: “Blessed are the disciplined” -- or better yet, “Blessed are the self-disciplined.” A horse, disciplined to the shafts or saddle and bridle becomes not dull, but a more brilliant racer! When Jesus tells us that “narrow is the gate that leadeth to life” and “broad is the way that leadeth to destruction” [Matthew 7: 13,14] he is saying that life must be disciplined, directed; inhibited against evil choices and impelled toward right choices.

Any top-rate musician knows the irreplaceable value of discipline. A great pianist said, “When I miss practice for one day, I feel the difference. When I miss practice for two days, my audience senses the difference. When I miss practice for three days, my critics know the difference.” The great pianist, Paderewski, must have had this in mind when he said, “Before I was master, I was slave.”

We have a great resentment of discipline. We Americans, in very particular, are intolerant of anything like orders and regimentation. We accept them in industrial organization, or under military necessity, or in political expediency with reluctance, with grumbling and regret. We would very much prefer to “do what we want to do when we want to do it.” But history warns that such unrestricted living leads to slavery. Free reign of bodily desires leads to the many lusts of the flesh. Freedom of the mind can as easily lead to the slavery of ignorance and intellectual incompetence.

What we need is discipline -- direction. And if we will not consent willingly to direction by others, we must all the more be self-disciplined. For this kind of vigilance is the conditional price, the continuing price, of the freedom we cherish. If we find ourselves “going to pieces” physically in promiscuity, libertine pursuits and pampering indulgence, we become integrated persons again only by taking our bodies in hand with determination and, in the words of Paul “submitting our bodies as a living sacrifice.” -- our own offering. [Romans 12: 1].

If drink gets the best of some of us, so that the craving for alcohol takes control of us, the only way to recover unity of self is to adhere to the rules of sobriety. One’s heredity cannot make him drink. One’s environment -- taverns, advertisements, social pressures, cannot make him drink. The only power that can make a drunkard is an abandoned will. The final answer is in one’s self. Ask some member of “Alcoholics Anonymous” if you should chance to meet one some day! “But that’s easier said than done!” Granted! And this is true of most worthy achievements. They are not to be had except by the self-discipline which is their price.

When Glenn Cunningham was a boy, he was so severely burned in a fire that doctors believed he would not walk. But he willed to walk; he determined to walk; he learned to walk with great pain and difficulty. Not only that, but he learned to run, and at length to run well. He became the greatest runner of his day.

A manufacturer lost an arm accidentally in the rollers of his mill. As he recovered from the amputation, he looked in the direction of his mill and is said to have remarked aloud, “You’ve deprived me of my arm. I’m going to make you support me and my family” .... and he did.

A poverty-stricken lower-class Japanese boy had his hand nearly destroyed in the fire of a brazier while his mother toiled for their living. That happened while he was a creeping infant. But Noguchi literally fought his way to top preeminence in medical research on spirochetic disease.

If a steady diet of picture magazines and television programs has left our thinking superficial, we may find more of the answers to the world’s problems by digging into the great books --- literature that cannot be taken in at a single glance, but yet yields up the stuff of which life is made. “A good mind is lord of a kingdom.” But we have to pay the price of self-discipline if we are to achieve a good mind --- or a strong body --- or a worthy spirit.

3) And another step is necessary if we would rearrange ourselves into integrated people. The step is self-dedication. Counselors tell us that one very common characteristic of those who seek advice in straightening out the difficulties in their private lives is that many are not motivated by any predominant purpose in life. Nothing unifies a life like dedication to a single, overall, dominating purpose for living. This is partly what we mean when we speak of “salvation” ... we are saved to be saviors; redeemed to be redeemers. Tennyson said, “I doubt not through the ages one increasing purpose runs.” Persons who dedicate themselves to “one increasing purpose” are integrating their lives; “pulling themselves together.”

Florence Nightingale could have grown in the lap of luxury, a prominently innocuous figure in British social circles. Had her parents determined her destination, that would probably have been her life. But the suffering of soldiers in Crimea laid a heavy concern on her heart. And she dedicated her life to nursing when nursing was considered hardly even respectable, let alone the noble profession it has since become.

There was a dapper young Indian student at Oxford University who was not unlike other dashing sons of rich Indian merchants in England. Life appeared promising and could have been rather lush for him. But the cry for help out of the agonizing poverty and need of 50 million “untouchables” in his homeland was too much for him. Henceforth he would not waste his life in boredom --- Mahatma Gandhi belonged to India’s poor.

To what greatness shall we dedicate ourselves? Basically, the Christian answer is plain. We are to dedicate our living and ourselves to the one Person who incarnates within himself all the highest human values. We are to stand courageously for the principles of the Christ. We are to give ourselves for the building of brotherhood, for opening the way to happy and hopeful childhood, for ending human oppression and enslavement in this and every land. We are to labor and pray for peace. We are to climb with Him to our Golgotha, if need be.

The most amazing thing about Jesus is that he seems to incarnate every admirable human virtue. We stand with utmost reverence in his presence. When we commit ourselves to him, he fills our lives with purpose. When that happens -- and it will happen if we kneel in spirit before him -- we understand what Paul meant when he said, “I live, yet not I, but Christ.” [Galatians 2: 20].

One afternoon about three weeks ago, my wife and one of our sons and I visited the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC. Featured at that time was a painting by Leonardo Da Vinci, which had recently been acquired by the National Gallery. The picture, rather small in size, is that of a women named “Ginevra de Benci.” It is not unlike Leonardo’s “Mona Lisa.” We spent some time studying its marvelous detail and its striking lights and shades and coloring. But the picture that took more of our attention that day, than any other, was not Leonardo’s exquisite portrait. We spent more time looking at a large picture by a contemporary twentieth century artist, Salvador Dali. His painting is titled “The Sacrament of the Last Supper,” and it is quite unlike the pictures of the Last Supper to which we became accustomed in our Sunday School days.

It would be useless or impossible for me to try to describe it in any detail. But some features of it may be worth mentioning. On the table is a loaf of bread, broken in two pieces, and a crystal wine cup, partly filled. Twelve human forms appear around the table with heads bowed so that one does not see their faces. Above the men is a floating segment of a twelve-sided geometrical figure which the Greek Pythagoreans had declared to be a symbol of the universe. Two arms reach out above this structure as if to embrace the whole (everybody). Light comes into the picture from land and sea and sky as if to include all of us in the whole of it.

The one face that is not bowed, that is seen, somewhat mystically out of the water and the light -- not exactly beside the table but very near to it -- is the face of Christ, -- strong, not bearded, inviting. It has an air of great integrity.

Though there is so much of symbolism and striking detail to be observed, that one could study the picture without tiring for a long time, the center of attention is that unusual, compelling face of Christ. That is where it belongs in our lives. Nothing will unify your life, or mine, like the long, steady, confident look at the Master’s face. For nothing, and no one, can pull us together, and keep us that way, like his spirit.

Amen.

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Delivered in Wisconsin Rapids, April 23, 1967.

Also at Waioli Church, January 4, 1975.

Also at Babcock-Nekoosa, WI, August 12, 1979.

[The following prayer is attached to the manuscript of this sermon, and apparently was used on the following dates: 7-13-75; 1-4-76; 8-12-79.]

O God, Thou Father of our lives, in whom we live and move and have our being, we worship Thee with prayer and praise and thankfulness. We come into Thy sanctuary to find what is real. Here let small things be small, and great things great. Rearrange the perspective of our lives. Save us from obsession with things visible and tangible and sensual, that we may understand their proper place. Throw such wide horizons around our lives that the eternal may capture our imagination and our faith.

We do not come to urge upon Thee only our small requests, but rather to put our lives at Thy disposal that Thou mayest do to us and through us what Thou dost wish. We are Thy people; make us servants of Thy will; take us in Thy keeping; make us implements of Thy purpose; release Thy power in the world through us, that some great and significant thing may be accomplished because we have helped.

Dost Thou not desire our inward peace? Therefore put us, we pray, in such relationship with Thee that peace may come. Let the anxieties and fears of ordinary days grow dim. Let the affirmations of strong Christian faith be real in our hearts. Blow trumpets in our souls this day!

Dost Thou not desire for us health of heart and mind and body? Therefore take from us all false anxieties and needless tensions which spoil our days. We open our doors; do Thou come in and sup with us and be our life-giving assurance.

Dost Thou not desire for us righteousness? Then grant us honesty with ourselves that we may not evade our sins but, sincerely facing them, be deeply penitent. Especially help us to remember before Thee those things whereby our ill doing has hurt, not only our own lives, but the lives of others. Behold our contrition and drive out the darkness with Thy light.

Dost Thou not desire our Joy? If our goodness can commend itself to others only when it sings, then let it be radiant resilient, joyful. Thou who hast taught us that the fruits of the spirit are love, joy, peace, make us channels of happiness and gratitude; that our lives, being glad, may be strong.

As thus we pray for ourselves, we think of all Thou dost desire to do for all peoples of the earth, across all boundaries of family, nation, clan, race or tongue, do Thou speak through our concern. Bless those whom we love, and those whom we would love in Thee. Open our eyes to brotherly understanding, that Thy family may be one, and Thy kingdom may come upon earth. We ask it in the spirit of Christ.

Amen.

[Silent prayer]. [Lord’s prayer].