The Christian task

Front matter

BR 121 .D77 Copy 1

J. Harold DuBois

Gpiglit'N?- coBoaBm DEFosir.

Contents

I. The Need Stated: The Need of a Task ... i

II. The Need Analyzed: The Need and the Age 6

1. A Big Task: A Restlessly Ambitious Age

Chapter I The Need Stated: The Need Of A Task

The whole world seems to be conscious of the fact that the War has brought us to the threshold of a new age. The best of human understanding everywhere insists upon interpreting the momentous experience through which we have passed as being at once the death throes of an old civilization and the birth pangs of a new world order. All serious-minded men are aware of the fact that it is incumbent upon them to play some part in the new times which are at hand, and are eager to learn just what their particular relationship to the new age will and ought to be. It is realized that what we face are not new certainties, but new possibilities and opportunities, and that whether or not these opportunities are to be utilized for the best depends upon us. A new age is at hand, but it waits to be seen what we shall make out of it.

It is this combined element of certainty and uncertainty, of opportunity and responsibility, which tends to draw out the very best that is in us. Because of it we are not only constrained to prepare ourselves for the changes which are bound to come from the efforts of others, regardless of what our own individual attitudes toward the new age may be, but are encouraged to go to work to create out of these uncertainties the right kind of actualities. We feel that a double obligation rests upon us. We must work to create out of the new age a better age, and we must prepare ourselves for the coming of this better age. Only in appearance, however, is the obligation dual. In fact it is single, for it is only through helping to bring in a better age that we can hope to prepare ourselves for its coming. We become true inheritors of the age by first being its benefactors. It is through giving all that we gain all.

Consequently, the most important question which each of us must ask himself is. What can I do to serve the age in which I live? Or if the problem is the larger one — which we have set for ourselves — of the relation of Christianity to the new age, the question will be similar: What can Christianity do to serve the age which is at hand ?

It is quite evident that in order to answer these and related questions it is necessary first to determine the needs of the age in which we live, for service is nothing other than the satisfying of needs. What some of these needs are it is by no means difficult to determine. Difficulty arises only when we attempt to distinguish between these needs, to classify them, to arrange them in the order of their importance, and to pick out those which seem to be basal. It is to this more difficult task that we have set ourselves. What we are to seek for is not all of the needs of the age. We want, if possible, to discover what is the supreme need of the age.

The writer himself is thoroughly convinced that it is possible to discover a fundamental need of the age around which all other needs can be grouped, to which they can be subordinated, or upon which they must be erected.

The Need Stated

He does not hesitate to say at the very outset that in his opinion the supreme need of the age is the need of something to do, the need of some gigantic undertaking — in a word, the need of a task, or in still simpler Anglo-Saxon, the need of a job.

If the age were advertising its most important need, the writer feels strongly that its advertisement would not be that of a traveler in a strange land who desires a guide, or that of some irresponsible and helpless individual who requires the services of a guardian, or that of an ambitionless idler who needs a counselor or manager, or that of a lonely old lady who seeks a companion, or that of a youth who wants a tutor, or even that of a successful business man whose increasing activities create a demand for more help. All of these advertisements suggest needs which are important, but no one of these needs by itself constitutes what could be termed the supreme need of the age.

Still less would the age's advertisement take the form — as some would have us believe — of a notice of bankruptcy. The world, during the past four years, has been pretty roughly handled. Its ordinary business has been disrupted. It has been visited by a calamity which has been terribly destructive of its goods and its life. But it is still a good deal more than a dreary cemetery or a pile of junk. It is a long way from being bankrupt, either spiritually or materially. Its assets still exceed its liabilities. It does not propose to go into the receiver's hands, to close its doors after selling out its damaged goods at a monster war-sale, or to hang up the sign "Under

New Management." While alterations are being made, it is going to continue to do business at the old stand, under the old name, on a grander scale.

There are others who would have us believe that what the age stands most in need of is the rest-cure. They picture the race as having had its energy and spirit exhausted by the experience of the War. Blinded, gassed, and suffering from shell-shock, it struggles along, a nervous wreck on crutches, its whole thought centered on wheel-chairs, nurses, doctors, hospitals, sanitariums, or quiet secluded resorts. But the truth of the matter is that mankind, on the whole, has emerged from the recent conflict with its spirit awakened rather than dimmed, its energy increased rather than destroyed. To be sure, it exhibits the fresh wounds of battle; it wears bandages which are soaked in its warm life's blood; it is battered, and scratched, and torn, and mangled; but these misfortunes are overlooked in the excitement and joy of service and accomplishment.

The spirit of the race, indeed, is that of the dough-boy who is pictured on the well-known liberty loan poster entitled, "And they said we couldn't fight." No doubt the dough-boy was as greatly surprised to discover his latent ability as were his enemies; but the picture suggests that in no sense is the dough-boy to be satisfied either with the discovery of this ability or with the use to which he has already put it. The determination to make added and real use of the newly discovered ability is prominent in the picture. It is a picture, not of an invalid, but of a crusader.

The Need Stated

And so It is with the race, which has been startled by a new consciousness of tremendous power to accomplish things. It has discovered its ability to fight; fight, in some way, it must. It hears the call, not of the idle resort, but of the battlefield. Work, not rest, is its insistent demand.

No, if the age were to advertise its most important need, its advertisement would scarcely appear in the columns which deal with sanitariums and resorts, schools and colleges, bankruptcy sales, or help of various kinds wanted. It would appear in the column "Situations Wanted," and it would be the advertisement, not of any of the individuals to whom I referred above, but of a young man who has just completed a long, tedious, yet entirely successful course of training, and who yearns for a real opportunity to put his knowledge and skill to a supreme test. It would be an advertisement for a job.

Geologists tell us that the earth has reached the period of decrepit old age; but there can be no doubt but that humanity has just celebrated the attainment of its majority. In a very real sense the race has just completed its special period of discipline and training. It has graduated into early active middle life. So far as it is concerned, the coming age must be one of active service. In a thousand ways mankind is making known its desire for a task.

Chapter II The Need Analyzed: The Need And The

AGE

If the foregoing characterization of the age is correct, it is clearly evident that not any kind of a task will do. The newly initiated are usually most insistent upon their rights and most confident of their abilities. Untried skill is always most particular about the nature of the tasks to which it applies itself. It can afford to be so. Ambition will learn soon enough to walk warily. What the world needs to see is not a smaller but a larger display of this tendency of confident youth to be particular about the kind of service it performs. It will pay us, therefore, to search further to see just what kind of a task the age desires and needs. It is only as we uncover the successive points in an analysis of the kind of a task that the age needs that the full significance of our claim that the need of a task is the supreme need of the age will be disclosed.

1. A Big Task: A Restlessly Ambitious Age

The first quality which must be possessed by the task which will prove satisfactory to the new age is the more or less comprehensive characteristic which is adequately, although somewhat vaguely, described by the adjective "big." The primary demand of the age is for a big task. There is a very widespread feeling that long enough have we as individuals, as nations, as churches, as societies of one kind and another, engaged ourselves in the menial tasks of catching fish and collecting taxes. Our ears are tuned for a call to a wider service.

While we wait we are restless. Our age, in fact, is an age of unrest. This unrest permeates every department of our life. Evidences of political unrest, of religious unrest, of industrial unrest, are preeminent facts in our daily experience. They are facts which can be explained adequately only on the ground that our jobs are too small for us. We are conscious of individual and corporate capacities which our tasks have not begun to fathom. We feel that we have an infinite reserve of capability upon which we have not yet begun to draw. We are no longer content to be maggots. The restrictions of the past, even though they may have been protections, must be cast off; our freedom must be exercised. Responsibility is what we crave. Give us that and inspiration will not be lacking.

If for any reason we are compelled to continue at menial and mechanical tasks, which hitherto have been entirely devoid of wide meaning or significance, we now insist that we at least be made to realize the bearing of our work upon the larger work which we make possible. It may not be for all of us to accomplish big things, but we can be satisfied with no less than the consciousness that what we do constitutes a direct and necessary contribution to world need.

No wonder the age is restless, for a consciousness of infinite capacity for service is breaking upon the mind of humanity. The mustard seed of faith is finally germinating : mountains must be moved.

2. A Practical Task: A Practically Scientific Age

This is a practical age as well as an age of unrest, and the demand of the age is for a practical as well as a big task. By a practical task I mean, in part, a task which recognizes that men have other than spiritual needs. There are mental needs, physical needs, and industrial needs, which beg as persistently and justly for satisfaction as do spiritual needs. If we ignore the former, we can never hope to meet the latter satisfactorily. All of these needs are closely related. No single kind of need can be isolated from the remainder and overcome in isolation. To be overcome successfully, human need must be attacked at the several points at which it discloses itself.

I have spoken as though we have been at fault in this connection, and as though our error has always taken the form of an over-emphasis upon spiritual needs. This is not wholly the case; but it is true that the Church, which has rightly conceived of its province as being chiefly that of the spirit, has perhaps been the chief offender in this connection, and its error has consisted in this failure to see the close connection between the spirit and the other phases of man's nature. It is the Church which, when there has been a demand for bread, has been most prone to change the subject to a consideration of the theory of the Church and of the rock upon which it was founded. It is the Church which, when a request has been made for fish, has been most likely to substitute an unnourishing disputation on original sin and the serpent in the garden. But the error does sometimes take the form of an over-emphasis upon one or another of the other kinds of need. In such cases the violation of the requirement of a practical task is even more serious, for it is true that the ultimate purpose of man must be spiritual, and to a certain extent, therefore, the extra emphasis which the Church has been prone to put upon spiritual needs can be justified. Justice, however, cannot be satisfied if the related needs are to any degree ignored. They may be subordinated, but they must not be neglected.

The age demands a practical task by insisting that proper consideration be paid to needs of every kind. It demands that human need be studied and approached scientifically — a demand which is a natural result of the fact that the age is at once a scientific and a practical age.

The new age will not be satisfied with a job of peddling milk, unless this task is seen to be closely related to other than the physical needs of man. The age will not accept a teaching position, unless this vocation is viewed in its wider ramifications. This age could never be constrained to undertake the task of organizing labor, unless the bearing of better working conditions upon the higher phases of man's life is made apparent. Much less could the present. age ever be inveigled into accepting a job of distributing evangelical leaflets or of performing any of the other less practical tasks which are so numerous in the religious field. The former tasks, taken in themselves, are practical in a sense which is in no way true of the latter. But it is only when they are viewed in their wider relations that the best of these tasks become practical in the scientific sense which is demanded by the new age.

The age demands a task of the widest social, educational, political, industrial, ethical, and religious reform, which aims at the development of a more perfect environment and a higher type of personal character. It is an age which prefers to say, "Arise, and take up thy bed, and walk** rather than to say, "Thy sins be forgiven thee."

3. A Constructive Task: A Positively Creative Age

It is necessary, in the third place, that the task to which the new age can devote itself wholeheartedly should be in the highest and fullest sense constructive. In the light of the recent world-situation this need for constructive activity is so obvious and its meaning so clear that lengthy illustration and discussion of the point are not necessary.

As we indicated above, the race heretofore has been in a special period of training which has actually, if not necessarily, involved a large amount of activity which has been to a considerable extent of a destructive nature. Owing to the fact that its training and experience were yet incomplete, the race has erred or fallen short of perfection in its application of principles and has lapsed into attitudes and activities which have not furthered its highest interests.

These errors have taken a multitude of different forms. They have disclosed themselves, in the field of industry, in the form of boycotts, lockouts, strikes, sabotage, and unlimited competition. Natural resources have been squandered. Wide sections of country have been ruthlessly deforested and rivers have been polluted, and the health and well-being of thousands thereby endangered. The national ideal has been that of struggle, of isolation and self-sufficiency. Delinquents have been punished, imprisoned, and destroyed. Criticism of all kinds has tended to be destructive. We have laid emphasis upon what we do not believe. In the field of morals we have stressed the "shalt nots."

But it is a cardinal element in the faith of the new age that this special period of training has come to a close with the greatest destructive act that the human race has ever perpetrated — that the negative destructive principle has spent its all and failed in one gigantic final attempt to justify itself. To be sure, mankind has yet much to learn. Its entire life must, in a real sense, be one long course of training. But faith insists that in another sense, which is no less real, the special period of training is over and a special period of constructive application is at hand.

The new age is a positively creative age. It is entirely out of sympathy with the passive and negative attitudes which have been prominent heretofore. It insists upon the positive, constructive attitude which displays itself in projects of reclaiming arid and swamp lands, of conserving natural resources of one kind or another, of improving waterways and harbors, of promoting trade and intercourse, of constructing railroads, bridges, and canals. Class rivalries and antagonisms are to be eliminated through promoting justice. Sin, sickness, and crime are to be prevented by improving environmental conditions of all kinds. The criminal is to be regarded as an object of reformation rather than condemnation. In short, the new age is an age, not in which evil can be passivelysubmitted to, not in which evil is to be overcome with evil, but in which good must be done regardless of whether or not evil is present.

The race has spent its allotted time in slavery in Egypt and in wandering in the wilderness. The time is now ripe for the seizing of the promised land and the building of the new Jerusalem. The new age demands a constructive task worthy of the true and abundant faith which did not shrink from saying, "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up." What the new age says IS, "Destroy a civilization, and in half the time which it takes you to destroy it, I will rebuild upon its ruins a newer and fairer world order."

4. A Cooperative Task: An Age in Quest of Unity

We have already suggested the next characteristic which must be possessed by the task which will prove satisfactory to the new age, in indicating that the time has come when the competitive principle must give way to the cooperative. The new age is a cooperative age, an age in quest of unity. Mankind thrills with a new sense of solidarity, and demands a task which will require men to work together in the interests of a common end.

Here again we have a characteristic whose very patency is its sufficient proof. Evidences of a developing consciousness of social solidarity appear on every hand. The servant problem and the whole problem of the serious trend of population from the country to the city are but two of many contexts in which this tendency discloses itself in simple and individual forms, for, to whatever else they may be partly due, it is certain that these and similar problems owe their existence to an important degree to a widespread dislike to work alone, to an almost universal demand for fellowship with others. The average girl worker prefers an irksome, dirty, mechanical, illpaying factory job, which provides her with the opportunity for frequent or continual intercourse with her friends, to any position, no matter what other advantages it may possess, which denies to her this privilege. The ordinary laborer will turn down a job as a farm hand, which promises him a good living and a fair wage but denies him social intercourse, for a gang job, which suflFers in comparison with the other position at every point except that of the privilege of companionship. Of all evils, it is of loneliness that men are most shy. To be alone is least to be endured. Individuals will sacrifice much for the sake of having companions. They want them, they need them, in their work as well as in their play.

This growing consciousness of kind and this demand for fellowship, this tendency to cooperate and unite with others, discloses itself as variously and strikingly in other realms of life than the individual. In the field of industry we discover, on the one hand, the important trend toward unity of ownership and of management and toward employers' associations of one kind and another, and, on the other hand, the prodigious phenomenon of organized labor. The woman movement is a similar manifestation in the more strictly political field. Even the churches are beginning to lay greater stress upon the catholic principle of unity in essentials and to manifest a willingness, if not yet an active desire, to work together for certain common ends. And the final and most patent fact of all is the inspiring world-wide tendency toward internationalism. Even the nations of the world are beginning to see the need and to manifest a desire to work together for the accomplishment of certain common tasks.

The demand of the age for a job which will require men to work together for the attainment of common ends is thus due partly to a renewed consciousness of social solidarity — a consciousness which was active in an earlier stage of human history, but which had become more or less dulled in an age of individualism. This requirement, therefore, more than any of the other requirements we have thus far considered, is due to a resuscitation of a primitive element in man's makeup. The task which will prove satisfactory for the new age must be a task which will permit men to work together, for the consciousness of solidarity inherent in men of the present age demands it.

But there is a second element in this requirement which is not covered by the foregoing explanation. Primitive solidarity and cooperation were due largely to a sense of individual impotence, as it related to the negative desire to protect oneself. The present-day demand for cooperation finds its chief source elsewhere. It is not due to the individual sense of lack of power for ordinary needs. Rather it is due to the individual sense of insufficient power to accomplish alone the great task which the individual need not undertake, but nevertheless desires to tackle. It is in no sense due to the fact that man cannot possibly get along by himself, for in present-day society it is a fact that, to a large extent, he can. It is due rather to the fact that the present age insists on setting itself to the accomplishment of a big, practical, constructive task — a task of such a nature that it cannot possibly be successfully accomplished unless all men cooperate in its interests. In other words, in demanding a big task, the age necessarily demands a cooperative task.

The requirement of a cooperative task, therefore, is due to a double necessity, an inner necessity in the form of an inherent and universal desire on the part of man for fellowship with his kind, and an outer necessity in the form of a need of accomplishing successfully the kind of a task which the age demands. There is active in the race a sense of unity which demands a cooperative task. There is in the world a need for a greater sense of unity, which can be created only through cooperative labor. In seeking a cooperative task, the new age seeks to satisfy an already existing sense of unity and to develop a greater sense of unity. Its desire for a cooperative task is, indeed, a prayer that the unity which already partly exists may be made perfect.

5. A Task for the Task's Sake: An Age in Quest of Happiness

The task which will satisfy the demand of the new age can be described further by adding that it must be a task which can be undertaken for its own sake. I mean by this that the task for the new age must possess the qualities which will justify making its performance the ultimate end of existence. Mankind has had enough of mixed purposes and multiple allegiances. It has wearied of reward-hunting and self-seeking. It has wandered aimlessly through a maze of preoccupations and entanglements until it is frantic. The need of a single main purpose in life has begun to be realized. A search is on for a task which can command the undivided allegiance, the unlimited interest, the unstinted effort, of an entire race. A big, practical, constructive, cooperative task is wanted. The race is not going to work to save its respectability. The race is not going to work to gain a living, or for any other reason. The new age wants work for work's sake. It wants a task to the direct performance of which every other activity must be subordinated.

Work for work's sake, however, does not require the absolute elimination of all other motives. It does not, for instance, exclude the consciousness of the effect of our work upon others. This is because of the fact that the work which takes the form of service of others is the only form of work which the new age will recognize. Service and work are synonyms in the terminology of the new age. The direct effects produced In others by our service of them are Integral parts of the final effects which we wish to bring about through our labor. These effects, however, are of primary concern only as they are viewed in their bearing upon the race as a whole and upon the whole task which Is being pursued. When considered In their bearing upon the individuals in whom they are produced, they are of distinctly secondary concern. In both cases the effects are the same. It is merely that the same effects have a greater value and wider significance when viewed in their relation to the whole than when viewed in their relation to a part.

The relation of the individual to the race is not that of means to end, or vice versa. The relationship is simply that of a part to the whole. The individual and the race are two inseparable phases of the same thing. The realization of one is bound up with the realization of the other. A consciousness of the effect of our services upon others is permissible, but only because of the identity of these effects with the effects produced by the same services upon the race. Our final reason for performing every service must be its effect upon the race. The service of other individuals for their own sakes is usually called altruism. The new age demands a higher form of altruism in the service of others for the sake of the race. It is altruistic in the highest sense. It wants to serve all for the sake of all.

But while work for work's sake not only permits but requires altruism of the highest form, it excludes every form of selfishness. If it did not, it could not satisfy the new age, for this age demands a task which requires selfforgetfulness. The men of this age desire continually to risk themselves. This is not to say, however, that work for work's sake excludes the consciousness of the effect of our work upon ourselves. The service of others for the sake of the race necessarily produces its effects in the life of the servant as well as in the lives of those who are served. These effects, as in the former case, are effects for the race as well as for the individual who performed the services, and because of this identity the consciousness that they are effects in his life is permitted to the servant.

The consciousness of reflex effects of one's work upon oneself, however, must be subordinated, not only to one's consciousness of the effects of his work upon the race as a whole, but also to one's consciousness of the effects of his work upon the particular individuals whom he serves. In other words, in spite of the fact that the two sets of effects have an equally direct and important bearing upon the race as a whole, the laws of moral activity require that the effects produced by our own moral actions in our own lives, viewed either from the individual or the racial standpoint, ought to be subordinate in our minds to the effects produced by our moral actions in the lives of others. It is, moreover, more important that we should always think of ourselves as members of the race than that we should always regard others in the same light. Successful moral action requires that, so far as we are able, we should regard the whole race, with the exception of ourselves, as the object of our services. The thought of other individuals than ourselves should influence our acts only secondarily. Ourselves as members of the race should be of least concern to us. Thought of ourselves as individuals should be entirely eliminated.