Understanding the ScripturesMcConnell, Francis John
Religion
Understanding the Scriptures
McConnell, Francis John
Bible -- Criticism, interpretation, etc.; Bible -- Study and teaching
Jesus preached the highest ideal for individual righteousness. Men are
to strive to be perfect even as the Father in heaven is perfect. But
the perfection is to show itself in social impartiality in the use of
material opportunities. God sendeth the rain to fall and the sun to
shine on the evil and the good. How many Christians of the present day
could be safely intrusted with the distribution of rainfall and
sunshine? Those of us who dwell in lands that must be irrigated know
that the type of Christianity that can be trusted to deal fairly with
our irrigation system is somewhat unusual.
We take the injustices of the present social order too much as a matter
of course. We ought to see them as making against humanity, and
therefore against the scriptural revelation. When these injustices
culminate in a war like the present, the only safety is thought that
deals honestly with the inhumanity of the war. Granted that war in
self-defense is justifiable, we keep ourselves open to divine
revelations only as we refuse to glorify the inhuman. Only that nation
can succeed in war and remain open to revelation from above which
recognizes the inhumanity of war and refuses to glorify it.
Closely related to the blight of the spirit of this present world is
the failure to perceive the need of missionary spirit for a full grasp
of scriptural truth. Though the Bible was given to a peculiar people,
self-centered and exclusive, it nevertheless abounds in suggestions
that its content can be appreciated the full only by those whose
sympathies run out to men at the very ends of the earth. In the eyes of
the Scriptures a human being is a human being anywhere. The differences
between men are as nothing compared to the likenesses. Every revelation
must begin somewhere and must attack its problems in proper sequence,
one after the other; but mere priority of approach does not mean that
one problem is inherently more important than another. Leaders among
the Jews early tried to impress this upon the Jewish mind. Considered
in its historical setting, the book of Jonah is one of the most
spiritually daring books ever written. Jonah stands as a type of Jew
who would not admit anything of worth in human beings outside of
Judaism. Rather than carry the word of the Lord to Nineveh he would
leave his country and go to Tarshish; rather than turn back and resume
the journey to Nineveh, he would consent to be cast overboard in a
storm. Forced at last to deliver his message, he announced it with the
grim satisfaction of expecting to see Nineveh destroyed. And the final
text of the book is that Jonah must learn not merely to proclaim his
message to the Ninevites, but to proclaim his message with sympathy and
genuine human interest. The Jews were a long time learning the lesson,
but not longer than other peoples have been. Just because of the human
interest involved, the missionary impulse is necessary to a spiritual
seizure of the biblical revelation.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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