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Appendix III
“Bound
up with the World”
By Patricia McGarth
Traveling Secretary, ASCM
Underlying all the work of the Nasrapur meetings of the
WSCF General Committee, was the conviction that Christians, singly and in
communities, are called to live in the world, to make their witness in
the very midst of the beauty and terror, the boredom and the mystery of the day
to day life of men and women. This immediately posed the dilemma-how is a
Christian or a group of Christians to maintain his relationship with Everyman
and yet not be conformed to the standards of Everyman? Or, to be rather more
realistic, how is a Christian or a group of Christians to escape his present
imprisonment within those standards and yet not cut himself from those to whom
he must witness. Paul recognized the dilemma at the outset of his Christian
life; long after, he told Agrippa that Christ, on the
From The Australian Intercollegian, June,
1953
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Delegates coming
out of very different situations all helped to make clear to us that
involvement in the world is not an option for the Christian. It is a fact; and
he may choose to act responsibly or irresponsibly in the face of that fact.
This is true whether he lives on the razor-edge that is life in Eastern Europe,
in the midst of the conflicting forces that threaten to tear India apart, in
the welter of superstition, ignorance and oppression that is so much of Latin
America or in the world of hate and fear through which Africans struggle to
attain human dignity. It is equally true for those of us from
"Church" and "World"
Although each of
the Commissions faced the question of the relationship between the Christian
community and the world at large, this was particularly the concern of the Commission,
which produced the report on "The Christian Mission and our Citizenship in
the World". Its useful attempt to define the "Church" and
"World" opens up the whole enormous field of "mission" and
I quote it as a basis for further thinking: "The church is that
part of humanity which is in the act of recognizing the Lordship of Christ and
which is integrated into the Body of which He is the Head. This part of
humanity, through its contact with the living world and its share in the
sacramental life of the Body, is daily renewed so as to live by the spirit, in
love as the world ought to live.
"The World is humanity as
persons in their relations to one another, both within and outside the
congregation of the faithful-Persons loving and hating one another, at work and
play, in marriage, in social institutions and in political structures, thus
belong to the world. These relations and structures and the human
life in thel11 receive their true significance from the Christ to
whom the Church witnesses as Lord of all things. Membership in the Church
enable the Christian to live "worldly" in a positively Christian
sense (that is, "new
worldly") and to share God's love
in which He reconciled the word unto himself."
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This helped us to
get beyond the geographic approach to "mission" and to put content
into the idea of its being the witness of the a/hole Church to the whole world.
At Tambaram, Peter Kreysigg had started us along this line when he examined
with us the world we are to evangelize, and distinguished within it four
"mandates" which together bring the whole of human life under the
sovereignty of God - the four mandates being the Church, Power or the State,
Marriage and the Family, and Work. God's purpose is not that any one of those
mandates should absorb the others, but that within each of them men should
discover right relationships and right patterns of conduct. Now man, wherever
he is, faces the problem of finding a satisfying pattern in each of these areas
of his life, and the problem of integrating these patterns into wholeness.
Temptation and Task
The Church as
institution has to resist the temptation to provide a ready-made
"wholeness" centered in it - it succumbs to this temptation when it
allows a multiplicity of meeting and activities to draw its members away from
those other groups with whom they must establish creative relationships; or
when it presumes to provide ready-made patterns for living within those
groups. At the same time, the Church has to resist the ceaseless encroachment
of the "world", to refuse the invitation to provide the moral flavor
for the thoroughly secular pudding. It cannot be content with a pattern of
external observance superimposed on a world turned away from Christ's lordship
over all that is. The way of that witness is the way of suffering-love and
concern for men in the whole of their lives. Without that, the witness is
unintelligible, for it is only so that men, singly and in groups, begin to
understand the redemption won for them by Christ on the Cross. The way in which
this concern is expressed varies with time and place; but for the people of the
Indian village as of the English mill town, for those of the farming community
as for those of the
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“The devil is
always the angel fallen”, said M.M. Thomas in an address during the General
Committee. Again, "The Church has allowed legitimate human aspirations to
become the servants of Hell". Too often, the Church, and we who are its
members, are content to decry the devil whom we see, instead of seeking to
discover the original good now become proud. Fear of the unforeseeable, and
desire to retain the familiar, hold us back from what ought to be an
adventuring with Christ in the twin realms of thought and action. It is not wrong
of men to desire a reasonable share of material goods and neither of
responsibility nor is to use the political machine in order to attain those
ends neither it wrong for men to wish to push scientific exploration to its
utmost. If Christians behave as though these things are wrong or are so
faithless as to believe these things a threat to God's sovereignty, then the
men and women involved in these areas of thought and action turn away from God
- believing that they have seen Him mirrored in these Christians ~ and become
prey to impersonal and depersonalizing ideas and ideals. There is an urgent
need for the church in our day to confess its timidity and lack of faith, and
to speak again to the world of democracy saved from utopianism, of science
saved from scientific humanism, of the social revolution saved from Stalinism.
These are the points at which people are creating or accepting patterns and
relationships; it is at these points that the Church has its opportunity of
recalling men to creative relations with one another under God. In place of the
pride that destroys, there is a need for contrition, which opens the way to new
life. We cannot make a community - it is a gift to men who come together
in penitence before the Cross-, and receive there the forgiveness of God. It is
the Church's part forever to be calling men and women into this situation,
bringing them face to face with Jesus Christ and, in its own life, helping them
to understand that He goes with them through all that makes up their days and
years.
A fundamental Personal Encounter
For the fact of the
matter is that Christianity is not first a matter of creeds and codes, but of a
spontaneous relationship with a person. Wherever the Church is oppressed, we
see this in sharp relief. Where that are no longer precedents and familiar
patterns, men and women do live in daily obedience, forced back
to the bedrock of faith affirming nothing but the presence of Christ living and
active in the situation. Where the real issues are less dramatic, they are
nonetheless real, and the fact of this personal initiative and response is the
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basis of the
church's message. It is the message for the students in a University, as it is
the message for any other group of people in any other setting. The Commission,
which worked on “Our Pastoral Needs as Students”, stated it in contemporary
language: "A major pastoral need is focused around the word 'integration'.
The first thing that has to be recognized is that integration is not an end to
be striven after, but a consequence. The centre of integration cannot be of
oneself. Moreover, it is to be integration of a person and not of a human
machine, the centre must be personal. The only integrating factor, which does
not lead to impersonalism or slavery, is the person who loves completely. It is
our experience that there is only one such person, Jesus Christ. In his love,
he accepts people as they are even when they cannot accept themselves. Before him,
there is no need for pretense as to either who one is or where one is.
Inability to accept oneself and one's own situation is the major factor that
leads to disintegration. Conversely, the knowledge that one is accepted as of
value, in spite of the facts, is a liberating and dynamic force. Here is an
entry into life, which is a finding of oneself through losing oneself in
Christ. In finding oneself one also finds one's real situation. Therefore, the
Christian is one who is free to throw off all masks, and is at home in any
situation, and with any person.
"Not only is a
new person born, but also relationships. The loneliness that is the product of
self-made barriers is broken by a life that is now open to others, who are seen
to be acceptable to Christ. It is also broken by the fact that the Christian is
no longer alone, for he is bound in the community of the Christian Church
together with all those who have received life from Christ”.
This fundamental
personal encounter illumines for each Christian the reality of his being in
but not of the world. He recognizes and accepts his involvement in the
total human situation, but he is no longer imprisoned in it; he knows that the
prison door is open, that in Christ is freedom from the tyranny of
circumstance, and he longs to share with others his knowledge of this fact. If
he is to do that, he has to be prepared to share real friendships, to recognize
and appreciate the wholeness of personality. So at Nasrapur we talked a great
deal about the need for "maximum human hunter" if we are truly to
bear witness in the Universities or anywhere else. Many of us had seen a
dramatic example of such encounter when we visited the
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and of medical aid
and of useful employment together constitutes a work of evangelism.
Deeds and words are mutually illuminating, as the message of the love of God is
given content at points of real human need. There needs to be wholeness,
likewise, in the witness of Christians in the University world; and this is
only possible if there is a real willingness to enter into friendships with the
people behind the facades. Student Relief committees, for instance, become more
than the machinery for raising funds, as understanding grows between the
people wearing the political or religious labels of cooperating Societies;
further, there is recognition of the need to break through the anonymity of
relations with those who receive material aid, so that the unknown T.B. student
becomes the Honors Chemistry man whose personal and academic life has been
dislocated by this illness, and who finds adjustment to his changed
circumstances terribly hard. Again, in his Faculty Society, or the Overseas
Club or the Dramatic Society, the Christian student works to make this a good
society, academically speaking, without falling into the error of regarding it
as being merely the sum of its activities; he more than any other member,
should be aware of and responsive to the people in that society learning to
understand them and so, perhaps, finding the point at which, for one or more of
them, Christianity makes sense.
The Christian
student resident in a university college does not pretend than he can stand
aside from the personal and social tensions common to adolescents and young
adults; he admits that these are his problems too, but he is not overwhelmed by
them for he knows, as he grapples with them, that "there is one who hears,
knows, understands, judges and forgives". As a member of one or the other
of the political clubs, a Christian is concerned for the betterment of social
structures but is not deluded into any belief that such human structures will
be perfect, nor does he accept the party line as absolute authority. It is as
we begin to recognize the power of redemption in such common human experience
that we begin to understand the necessity of our remaining "in the
world" and the reality of our being kept "from the evil".
It would appear
that much of this witness is the witness o individuals. But that is not so.
Rather it is the witness of a community "scattered", which knows the
visible unity of common worship and study and fellowship. That this is a unity
experienced in diversity is true; but that such unity is given, is to be
recognized by each
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Student Christian
Movement and demonstrated within the life of the secular University. This was
brought home to us sharply during the General Committee meetings. We belong to
different cultures, to different denominational traditions, we spoke from
different theological viewpoints, and we called for different political action.
Commission reports were hammered out as opposing views clashed and were
modified. It all happened with more or less grace, but it was never easy. There
were times when it seemed that the tension was too great and that something
must snap. But that did not happen, nor will it happen while we remember that
we are held together in a common encounter with God and man. Ut omnes unum
sint: That they all may be one. The Federation motto has taken on new
reality. The oneness is not experienced if we sidestep the very real human
issues that divide us; it grows as we frankly face those issues, as we struggle
intellectually and imaginatively to understand one another, as we enter into a
fellowship of prayer and intercession and recognize our responsibilities one to
another, as we know ourselves engaged in the common enterprise of witness in
the student world.
Of all this we were
reminded as Robert Mackie led us in worship at the close of our meetings. In
all of its more than fifty years of life, the Federation has known only one
task - Witness. It was for this that it came into being and ever since it has
been in the fellowship of the Federation that men and women have carried out
the task, despite all those calamities that would have seemed to make such
fellowship impossible. In the coming three years, the work we did at Nasrapur
has to be carried further; in every Student Christian Movement, and in terms of
the world context, there must go on the struggle to make the message of the
mission contemporary. There is nothing to suggest that the task is easy, nor
that the state of the world will make it easier. But it is exactly there, in
the world, that ^e mission is to be preached; Christ continually pours out His
life for the world, and as Christians witness to this, in the life of their
'-Christian community and in the life of their secular communities, men and
women do meet Christ and recognize Him as their Lord and their God.