James L. Price, Jr. - "On Losing Sight of God's Reality" (January 13, 1963)
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Transcript
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- | "I suppose I'd be called religious", he said, | 0:06 |
"but honestly, I don't know that I am. | 0:11 | |
"Somehow the reality of God has faded out of my life." | 0:16 | |
This student represents a state of mind among us, | 0:23 | |
more common than is confessed. | 0:27 | |
One may not recall when prayer, public worship, | 0:31 | |
or Bible reading, ceased to satisfy an inner personal urge | 0:37 | |
to acknowledge God and to seek his help. | 0:44 | |
But often looking backward, we must confess a withering | 0:48 | |
away of something that flowered earlier in our experience, | 0:54 | |
a cooling down of the intensity of religious feeling, | 1:00 | |
or even an eclipse of the reality of God. | 1:07 | |
Early adolescence is often accompanied | 1:13 | |
by religious awakening. | 1:16 | |
A child's view of religion as something external | 1:20 | |
to be accepted along with the other mores of family | 1:24 | |
and society give place to an inner experience. | 1:28 | |
The awareness of God becomes quite personal, | 1:33 | |
a personal relation of communion of dependence and trust, | 1:37 | |
exerting a pull from the very center of our beings, | 1:43 | |
so to speak, and received as a call to life commitment. | 1:47 | |
Yet within a few years, a reaction often sets in. | 1:53 | |
As a conclusion of a survey on the religion | 2:00 | |
of college students, one prominent social scientist reports, | 2:02 | |
there is reason to suppose that the early 20s | 2:08 | |
is the least religious period of life. | 2:13 | |
Some students are perplexed, if not disturbed, | 2:18 | |
by this loss of joy and peace in believing. | 2:22 | |
Various types of emotional and aesthetic excitements | 2:26 | |
are not sufficient substitutes for the religious experience. | 2:31 | |
Rationalizations may not quite dispel the feeling | 2:37 | |
that something of value has been lost. | 2:41 | |
The young boy, Thomas Hood, expressed the pathos | 2:45 | |
of this loss in the following lines. | 2:50 | |
I remember, I remember the far trees tall and high. | 2:54 | |
I used to think their tenders tips | 2:59 | |
were close against the sky. | 3:03 | |
That was a childish ignorance, but then this little joy | 3:06 | |
to know I'm farther off from God than when I was a boy. | 3:11 | |
The story of Jacob in the book of Genesis shed some light | 3:19 | |
upon this experience, common to so many young persons, | 3:24 | |
but surely not limited to them. | 3:28 | |
This fading vision of God's reality. | 3:31 | |
Before turning to Jacob's narrative, | 3:37 | |
a few words need to be said about its nature. | 3:40 | |
Old Testament scholars tell us | 3:44 | |
that Genesis contains a manifold tradition concerning Jacob. | 3:46 | |
Several of the episodes reflect the beliefs | 3:51 | |
and customs belonging to the period | 3:54 | |
of the Hebrew patriarchs, roughly from 2000 to 1700 BC. | 3:56 | |
Yet these stories or sagas as they are often called | 4:05 | |
originated in many different times and places | 4:09 | |
and were remembered for a variety of reasons. | 4:13 | |
Soon after 1,000 BC, probably during King Solomon's reign, | 4:18 | |
a skillful narrator composed a single story | 4:25 | |
out of these manifold traditions, | 4:29 | |
giving them a unity of theological understanding | 4:32 | |
as well as dramatic movement. | 4:36 | |
Still other persons at a later time added other traditions | 4:38 | |
associated with Jacob. | 4:43 | |
Nevertheless, the portrait of this man | 4:46 | |
drawn by the master narrator of Solomon's period | 4:49 | |
remained the luminous image, which for generations | 4:53 | |
has drawn the attention of readers. | 4:58 | |
Now, obviously we cannot interest ourselves here | 5:02 | |
in the theories concerning the composition of the narratives | 5:05 | |
of Genesis, but several important conclusions | 5:09 | |
concerning their interpretation should be drawn | 5:13 | |
from an impressive consensus of scholars. | 5:18 | |
It is perhaps illegitimate for us to ask, | 5:22 | |
"what were the personal experiences of Jacob, | 5:25 | |
"the grandson of Abraham?" | 5:29 | |
Or even of the ancient tribes of men whose beliefs | 5:33 | |
and customs may be reflected dimly in his story. | 5:36 | |
But what is at first sight and irreparable loss, | 5:41 | |
may be seen as an immense gain. | 5:46 | |
In their present form, | 5:51 | |
the Jacob sagas reveal a wisdom of the ages, | 5:53 | |
not the witness of one man, his experience alone. | 5:57 | |
Not the witness of several reporters, | 6:02 | |
these stories proclaim Israel's self understanding, | 6:06 | |
a peoples Testament of faith concerning the need | 6:11 | |
and promise of man's existence before God. | 6:15 | |
A need and a promise deep rooted in the sagas | 6:19 | |
of their forefather. | 6:23 | |
Reaching back to the very beginning of recorded time. | 6:25 | |
For Jews and for Christians as well, | 6:30 | |
Jacob's story tells of things that may happen | 6:32 | |
in any man's experience. | 6:36 | |
May still continue to happen, | 6:41 | |
however much they seem only to tell of once upon a time. | 6:44 | |
One finds in these sagas, | 6:49 | |
something of the story of every man. | 6:51 | |
If not of every man in the absolute sense, | 6:54 | |
then every man who calls himself a Jew, or Christian, | 6:57 | |
who receives this spiritual heritage and either appropriates | 7:01 | |
or rejects the view of reality, | 7:06 | |
which Jacob's story proclaims. | 7:10 | |
It is necessary that I assume some knowledge | 7:16 | |
of the Jacob sagas at this point, | 7:19 | |
since many of you have studied at Duke, a course, | 7:22 | |
which you read the Genesis narrative, | 7:26 | |
I proceed hopefully on this assumption. | 7:29 | |
But certainly you remember, do you not? | 7:33 | |
How twins were born into the home of Isaac and Rebecca, | 7:35 | |
very different they were from the beginning, | 7:40 | |
and the parents had their favorites. | 7:42 | |
The beginning of the narrative rings true to life. | 7:45 | |
So many of its elements of so like life, as we know it | 7:48 | |
within the family circle. | 7:52 | |
But one feature of this opening tale predominates | 7:54 | |
and deserves now our attention. | 7:59 | |
The concern for the birthright, | 8:02 | |
everyone's concerned it seems, accepting Esau | 8:06 | |
to whom by custom it especially belonged. | 8:10 | |
Here a man's birthright is conceived | 8:14 | |
as something more than the family fortune. | 8:18 | |
The promise of responsible adult status | 8:22 | |
inclined in community. | 8:25 | |
Jacob's family believed that man is given | 8:27 | |
a spiritual birthright, a privilege to be a servant of God | 8:30 | |
throughout his life, and to become as a witness | 8:35 | |
to his reality, a blessing to all the families of the earth. | 8:40 | |
Remember how Jacob took advantage | 8:49 | |
of his brother's indifference, | 8:51 | |
equally desiring this birthright, which Esau despised. | 8:54 | |
Perhaps the detail of the deceitful scheme, which Rebecca | 9:01 | |
and Jacob perpetrated upon the blind eyes, Isaac. | 9:04 | |
And by which Jacob stole the blessing | 9:10 | |
which belonged to Esau. | 9:12 | |
Escape you now? | 9:15 | |
Yet the story as it began in the scripture with blessing | 9:17 | |
brings us to a critical point in the life of this man. | 9:23 | |
Family conflicts behind him and desperately lonely. | 9:30 | |
This mixed up kid became convinced | 9:36 | |
that God was concerned about his life, | 9:40 | |
that in the wilderness of his experience | 9:45 | |
the God of his fathers had assured him personally, | 9:47 | |
intimately of his own reality and of his presence. | 9:51 | |
Jacob became convinced that this birthright, | 9:57 | |
which had been so little understood, | 10:01 | |
but for which he had grasped with deceit and selfishness | 10:04 | |
was indeed a real inheritance. | 10:08 | |
That God's future held for Jacob some great | 10:12 | |
and useful purpose. | 10:16 | |
Does not this vessel saga hold for each of us | 10:19 | |
an incredibly wonderful promise? | 10:24 | |
Jacob was not only a lonely wanderer, | 10:27 | |
but a guilty, perplexed, burdened man. | 10:31 | |
He deserved no vision of God, no assurance | 10:37 | |
of divine blessings and of gardens for the days ahead. | 10:40 | |
But Jacob needed these assurances | 10:45 | |
as he faced the imponderable and foreboding future. | 10:48 | |
And in his groping and grasping and unworthy manner, | 10:52 | |
he had desired these assurances. | 10:56 | |
Perhaps Jacob speaks from the distant past | 11:00 | |
to our more recent past, surely the Lord is in this place | 11:04 | |
and I did not know it. | 11:12 | |
Did some such conviction accompany | 11:16 | |
our own religious awakening? | 11:18 | |
Have we experienced such moments of transcendence brief | 11:21 | |
or a longer-lasting when the brokenness of human existence | 11:24 | |
merges into a hole and our life seems to become | 11:28 | |
profoundly meaningful in its relation to God. | 11:34 | |
If so we read with sadness the sequel to the story. | 11:42 | |
What happened next in Jacob's life may well happen in ours. | 11:51 | |
Do you remember some of the events of Jacobs years | 11:58 | |
in uncle Laban's home? | 12:02 | |
We are told of his great intent to love for Rachel, | 12:05 | |
which made the years pass as though they were a day. | 12:08 | |
Of Laban's treachery in giving Leah instead of Rachel | 12:10 | |
to Jacob, an ironic twist in the story, | 12:15 | |
the deceiver himself now being deceived. | 12:20 | |
But details aside, it is obvious | 12:24 | |
that during the next few years a change took place in Jacob. | 12:28 | |
This man's awareness of God's reality | 12:38 | |
and his relation to God faded. | 12:41 | |
There are no signs that Jacob reasoned himself | 12:46 | |
out of his position, that he consciously despaired | 12:49 | |
of the hiddenness of God's ways. | 12:53 | |
Instead self-reliance and will to power | 12:55 | |
and the attraction of immediate goals blinded Jacob | 12:59 | |
to his earlier vows of reliance upon God, | 13:04 | |
find God's help and his promise. | 13:07 | |
Jacob's family increased the necessity of making provisions | 13:11 | |
for their security pressed upon him. | 13:15 | |
"When shall I provide for my own household?" | 13:18 | |
became his cry to Laban. | 13:20 | |
And more and more we see Jacob absolved in material things. | 13:23 | |
More and more he comes to resent any people | 13:27 | |
who seem to stand in the way of his progress. | 13:29 | |
And more and more his native ingenuity for cleverness | 13:32 | |
turned into trickery and sharp dealing and revenge. | 13:36 | |
God was crowded out of Jacob's experience. | 13:41 | |
And how easily this pattern | 13:48 | |
becomes the pattern of any man's life. | 13:50 | |
Some words of Charles Darwin come to mind. | 13:53 | |
Up to the age of 30, Darwin wrote, poetry of many kinds | 13:57 | |
gave me the greatest pleasure, and then as a school boy, | 14:02 | |
I took intense delight in Shakespeare. | 14:06 | |
Pictures gave me considerable joy and music, great delight. | 14:09 | |
But now for many years, I cannot read a line of poetry. | 14:14 | |
I've almost lost my taste for pictures and music. | 14:20 | |
There is a law of spiritual atrophy. | 14:25 | |
My mind seems to have become a kind of machine | 14:32 | |
for grinding general laws out of large collections of facts. | 14:35 | |
The loss of these tastes is a loss of happiness | 14:41 | |
and may possibly be injurious to the intellect | 14:46 | |
and more probably to our moral character | 14:49 | |
by enfeebling the emotion of our natures. | 14:53 | |
Jacobs sagas draw attention to a far more serious loss | 14:58 | |
than the aesthetic sense of appreciation. | 15:03 | |
The loss of one's consciousness of the reality of God, | 15:06 | |
of a loss whose tragic consequence in any man's life | 15:13 | |
can wreak untold suffering in the lives of others. | 15:19 | |
Yet Darwin and Genesis testify to the same fact, | 15:26 | |
the law of atrophy in the spiritual world, | 15:33 | |
to use Darwin's phrase. | 15:37 | |
However worthy a man's preoccupations may be, | 15:39 | |
however exciting the things that attract him most, | 15:43 | |
the loss of some valuable parts of his humanity is tragic, | 15:50 | |
however we look at it. | 15:56 | |
And have a fraught with danger to himself and to others. | 15:58 | |
There was however, one era to which Jacob did not succumb. | 16:05 | |
He never supposed that his condition of unawareness | 16:09 | |
denied the reality of God, that his own blindness | 16:15 | |
or near sightedness proved the non-existence of the light. | 16:20 | |
Time and again, Jacob acknowledges that God is at hand, | 16:27 | |
a present help in time of his trouble. | 16:31 | |
Yet his ideas of God remained much too small | 16:35 | |
to become the controlling reality of his life. | 16:41 | |
But the pace off is that Jacob, more often than not, | 16:45 | |
trusted in his own scheming rather than in God's Providence | 16:50 | |
and stumbled blindly forward, bringing tragedy | 16:55 | |
into the lives of those nearest to him | 16:58 | |
and into whatever community he moved. | 17:02 | |
Nevertheless, Jacob never lost sight completely | 17:07 | |
of God's reality. | 17:10 | |
His Bethel experience remained the kind of lodestar, | 17:12 | |
shielding him from total loss of man's birthright. | 17:16 | |
In this thought lies both the hope and the peril | 17:22 | |
of these periods through which we pass | 17:28 | |
when the reality of God fades from our life. | 17:31 | |
CS Lewis calls attention to the fateful character | 17:39 | |
of such periods in his penetrating Screwtape letters. | 17:42 | |
Some fanciful correspondence between a satanic being | 17:47 | |
and his agent on earth called Wormwood. | 17:52 | |
In the following excerpt, it should be remembered | 17:58 | |
that the enemy is God. | 18:01 | |
My dear Wormwood, I note what you say | 18:05 | |
about guiding your patients reading and taking care | 18:09 | |
that he sees a good deal of his materialist friend, | 18:13 | |
but are you not being a trifle naive? | 18:18 | |
It sounds as if you supposed that argument | 18:22 | |
was the way to keep him out of the enemy's hands. | 18:26 | |
Your man has become accustomed since he was a youngster | 18:31 | |
to have a dozen incompatible philosophies | 18:34 | |
dancing around in his head. | 18:36 | |
He doesn't think of anything as primarily true or false, | 18:38 | |
even as real or unreal, | 18:44 | |
but rather as outworn or contemporary, | 18:47 | |
as traditional or modern. | 18:51 | |
Jargon, not argument, is your best ally. | 18:55 | |
But this, Wormwood, is more important, | 18:58 | |
teach your man to fix his attention upon the stream | 19:03 | |
of immediate sense experiences. | 19:09 | |
Teach him to call this real life, | 19:12 | |
and don't let him ask what he means by real. | 19:16 | |
I once had a patient, a sound atheist, who used to read | 19:20 | |
in the British museum. | 19:23 | |
One day as he sat reading, I saw a train of thought | 19:25 | |
beginning to work in his mind | 19:29 | |
and going in the wrong direction. | 19:31 | |
The enemy of course was at his elbow, | 19:33 | |
but I struck instantly at the part of the man | 19:37 | |
which I had best under control | 19:39 | |
and suggested that he had better get some lunch. | 19:42 | |
And once he was in the street, the battle was won. | 19:46 | |
I had got into him the alterable conviction, | 19:49 | |
that whatever odd ideas might come into a man's head | 19:53 | |
when he was shut up alone with his books, | 19:58 | |
a healthy dose of real life was enough to show him | 20:01 | |
that all that sort of thing couldn't be true. | 20:06 | |
Wormwood, he is now safe in our father's house. | 20:12 | |
Happily, the Jacob sagas reach another ending. | 20:19 | |
Yet it took many experiences of real life, so called, | 20:24 | |
to convince Jacob that his religious awakening | 20:29 | |
was the most real moment of his life. | 20:34 | |
That the whole of his experience, his sadness and his joy, | 20:39 | |
his era and his vision must be viewed | 20:44 | |
in the light of this ultimate reality. | 20:48 | |
And so we read at long last, | 20:53 | |
Jacob said to his household and to all who were with him, | 20:57 | |
put away the foreign gods that are among us | 21:02 | |
and let us purify ourselves and arise and go up to Bethel, | 21:07 | |
that I may make there an alter to the God who answered me | 21:14 | |
in the day of my distress and has been with me | 21:18 | |
wherever I have gone. | 21:25 | |
In these words, Jacob, an old man, expresses the tragedy | 21:29 | |
and the ultimate truth of his life's story. | 21:37 | |
The trouble had been in Jacob himself. | 21:43 | |
He had persisted in ignoring the reality | 21:46 | |
of the most real moment in his life. | 21:50 | |
Yet, even though Jacob persisted in leaving God out | 21:55 | |
of his personal plan, Jacob was not abandoned by God. | 22:02 | |
As I have pondered these experiences of Jacob, | 22:13 | |
remembering what this ancient story has meant | 22:16 | |
to innumerable people of Israel through the many centuries | 22:19 | |
of their history, some words of a new Testament writer, | 22:24 | |
the author of the letter to the Hebrews | 22:30 | |
take on fresh meaning. | 22:33 | |
"And what of ourselves?" he asked. | 22:37 | |
With all these witnesses to faith around us like a cloud. | 22:42 | |
We must throw off every encumbrance and the sin which clings | 22:48 | |
so closely, and run with perseverance | 22:54 | |
the race that is set before us. | 22:58 | |
And for the Christians among us, | 23:02 | |
his conclusion loses nothing of its original urgency. | 23:05 | |
Our eyes must be fixed on Jesus on whom our faith depends | 23:11 | |
from start to finish. | 23:18 | |
Jesus, who for the sake of the joy that lay ahead of him | 23:21 | |
endured the cross, made light of its disgrace, | 23:25 | |
and has taken his place at the right hand | 23:30 | |
of the throne of God. | 23:34 | |
Let us pray. | 23:39 | |
Oh God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, | 23:49 | |
in whom we live and move and have our being, | 23:54 | |
whose presence is often hidden from us by our sins, | 23:58 | |
whose daily mercies we forget in the selfish preoccupations | 24:02 | |
of our lives. | 24:06 | |
Reopen our eyes to be healthy in all thy faithfulness | 24:08 | |
and grace towards us, | 24:14 | |
that we may here renew our fellowship with thee. | 24:17 | |
And may this knowledge, which passes our understanding, | 24:24 | |
keep our hearts and thoughts. | 24:30 | |
Through Jesus Christ, our Lord. | 24:34 | |
Amen. | 24:38 | |
(slow music) | 24:42 |
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