The tensions of the world are mounting steadily. Every week brings some fresh outburst of passion which adds to the problems already waiting to be solved. There is a wide swathe of unrest all round the world from the central Americas, through Europe and Africa from south to north, enveloping the Middle East and spreading over distant China, extending to Indonesia, and even reaching out into the little islands of the Pacific ocean. How much further could it spread?
The one-time major powers have already abandoned their colonial and imperial possessions with the result that people with little competence for self-government are striving to secure their own particular nationalisms in order to gain some bargaining point for the greater struggles for power that will develop when new potentates find themselves stronger than their neighbours.
The complexity of the world’s unrest is due in no small measure to the jet age making neighbours of peoples newly emerged from seclusion, who do not know each other and have not learned the art of being neighbours. All peoples, even the most intransigent, are loudly protesting their desires for peace, whether sincerely or with tongue in cheek is hard to say, but it suffices that phrases like “We will stand firm upon our rights”, convey all the essence of warlike intentions. It is still too easy, even in this present world, for governments and militarists to make war at other people’s expense or at the cost of their blood.
Shall those who profess allegiance to Christ and acknowledge the righteousness of his kingdom be drawn away into serving interests of no comparable worth? The solution of all the world’s problems belongs to the Kingdom of God. Any successful government over human affairs must have God in it, and God has provided the means for a future perfect society through Jesus Christ, whom he has appointed to rule the world in righteousness at the proper time. The Kingdom of God has nothing to do with strife and destruction it is designed to be love, joy, peace as the fruit of the Spirit, and these worth while things can never be obtained except by serving God. Rising tensions inevitably push the world over into the horrifying barbarities of war which do no more than add to the long chain of evils now binding the world to its iniquitous systems. The question is, Can those who have answered the call of the Spirit, “Come out from among them, and be ye separate, and touch not the unclean thing” develop the fortitude and patience to endure the pressures of the world’s tensions without retaliation, especially at a time when life and interests are sorely tried and threatened?
This poses a question that sounds unreal in the face of worldly realities. The ideology of Christ and the ethic of his kingdom rest on intangibles. The material things of the world are so real in comparison. And yet the Christians of the early centuries, according to Josephus, resisted the doubtful honour of bearing arms for the battling war lords of their day. But this early zeal for Christ and his kingdom soon passed away, and history is emphatic in showing that every ecclesiastical system in its turn has compromised the purity and simplicity of its faith under the alternating pressures of persecution and affluence.
We have experienced a long period of affluence during which a conscience based on the simple belief in the teaching of Christ was sufficient to secure the privileges which democracy had written into its laws. But this sort of thing cannot be permanent and it must be anticipated that only a more profound conception of the Kingdom ethic will suffice to carry us through the dire unrest that appears to lie immediately ahead.
Reflections on the Potter and the Clay