If Brother Harry Whittaker had been a professional boxer it is doubtful whether many of his opponents would have escaped from the ring unscathed. As it is, there will be very few readers of his latest book who will not feel a bit punch-drunk by the end of its thirty-four three-minute chapters. “A book for Christadelphians” this may be, but many brethren and sisters who read it will find it exhausting to be hammered so relentlessly and in such all-embracing fashion. And though the purpose of the book is wholly praiseworthy (in a phrase, to turn “the heart of the children to their fathers” (Mal. 4:6), like Elijah and John the Baptist), the reviewer suspects that only the masochists among us will be able to take all this punishment at one go.
To be fair, though, Brother Whittaker himself recognises that the law of diminishing returns is likely to operate in the book’s effect upon its readers. Having previously published many of these chapters as articles in The Testimony (mostly between 1978 and 1982), he notes in his Foreword that “feed-back seems to suggest that readers can stand this sort of thing in small doses at monthly intervals”, and so he counsels readers on the threshold of the book that “perhaps that is the best way to read what is now an expanded collection”.
If the cap fits
So what is it (to change over to the author’s medical figure) that will make Reformation so hard for many to swallow in large doses? Style or content? Or both? Well, the author himself clearly expects his book not to be popular because of his “plain speaking on important issues”. He even anticipates that his call for reformation will “make plenty of people cross”. But while some may not like to hear a spade called a spade (and thereby object to the manner in which it is expressed), and while others may not agree with particular points of view put forward ( and thereby object to the content), the author is prepared to speak his mind in the hope that “it may also do some good in the lives of others with responsive consciences”.
That ‘reformation’ is needed in certain aspects of all our lives is quite beyond doubt. And in that sense, at least, we all need some of the strong medicine offered here. The difficulty with such a book, however, is that each reader will have a different profile of weaknesses (not to mention a variable awareness of them), and each will find parts of the book which seem (from their own point of view) inappropriate or overstated. For in condensing into 150 pages so many of the possible weak points of the Brotherhood as a whole, Brother Whittaker may appear to be guilty of exaggeration or excessive pessimism. But then criticism is never an easy thing to carry off successfully, and readers should make allowances for that fact. And if the cap fits, we should learn to wear it.
At the root of it all
In this at least no one can cavil with the author: most of our failures in living the life in Christ can be boiled down to a small number of common causes, chief among which are worldliness and lack of effort (what the author repeatedly calls “intention”). In the author’s own words, “we have let the world impose its outlook and its standards of judgement on us”; and: “In a sudden burst of honesty or contrition or enthusiasm it is relatively easy to begin. But it is continuance that really makes Reformation . . . if there is intention to be a genuine disciple of the Lord who issued the call to discipleship, then he will not need to go on saying to us through the pages of Holy Scripture, nor whispering to us through the niggles of conscience, nor shouting at us through the saintly examples of others: Follow me”.
It is, perhaps, these two principal themes which bind together this “hotch-potch collection”, this wide-ranging survey of all our various activities in the Truth—it is our worldliness and our lack of intention which are shown to undermine the quality of our service in the Lord. Whether in our attendance at the meetings, our contributions to the collections, our willingness to pray, our Bible reading, our care for others, our self-indulgence, our criticism of brethren and sisters, our use of leisure time, our squandering of God-given talents, or our general approach to the doctrines and practices of the Brotherhood, the influence of the world outside and the lack of personal commitment from within clearly stand out as the twin rocks on which we all so often founder.
Positive advice
But all is not negative in Brother Whittaker’s approach; far from it. He is not slow to criticise, of course; as when, for example, he roundly demolishes a list of ‘reasons’ (he calls them excuses) for non-attendance at ecclesial meetings. But he is almost always careful to suggest some practical solution or antidote. And if his enthusiasm sometimes carries him into what may seem fanciful suggestions ( like the one about the appointment of an “ecclesial watchdog” to give “the undutiful a nudge in the right direction” to improve their attendance at the meetings), then it has to be admitted that far more of his positive recommendations are self-evidently practicable, sensible and right.
Most of us, for example, could systematically allocate a larger proportion of our income to the work of the Truth (the author helps us to do the arithmetic); most of us could improve the quality (and regularity?) of our prayers and of our Bible reading and study (plenty of sound advice here from the author about how and when, and about the long-term value of routine); every ecclesia must have its ‘lost sheep’ and would do well to demonstrate its continuing care for them by any or all of the means Brother Whittaker proposes; we could all do with a lot more cross-bearing and self-sacrifice and a lot less “high self-indulgence” (an extensive quotation from Law’s 18th century Serious call to a devout and holy life reminds us that “puritan” ought not to have the sort of negative associations amongst us that it does); we could all adopt more wholesome reading, listening and watching habits and generally make more edifying use of our various abilities and skills (no shortage of suggestions here!); and there can be no doubt that our community as a whole needs to respond to Brother Whittaker’s plea for a return to “first base”—what he calls “a re-discovery of the basic doctrinal instruction which was once a normal part of Christadelphian equipment”.
There is good, solid exhortation too about the dangers of segregating young and old in the ecclesia, about day-dreaming, time-wasting, window-shopping, marriage out of the Truth, and the “sins and faults of youth”. All these, and many more, are discussed with positive, helpful and sympathetic advice which, if followed, would greatly help us to “counteract modern temptations with realistic re-dedication”. His comments, too, on ecclesial and inter-ecclesial fellowship (which are not expressed here for the first time) come from a long and varied experience and from a deep study of the relevant passages, and are worth our careful consideration.
Minority viewpoints
There are times in this book, however, when the author expresses personal views which will not command such common assent. And though he is, of course, entitled to have his say and deserves to be listened to respectfully, it is perhaps something of a pity that the force of what would otherwise be a book with an unassailable Biblical case will be dissipated by the variable acceptability of some of his less central and more idiosyncratic arguments. Many, for example, will disagree with his chapter advocating a Day of Prayer and in favour of prayer meetings generally, and will feel unconvinced that he has proved his case from Scripture (Brother Richard Mellowes has already published his own objections in the June 1980 Testimony); others will be sorry to read his advice against insurance; not all will agree with his view that parents ought not to leave money to their children in their wills; and many will be surprised that he should recommend the study of the Gospels in preference to the Law of Moses, Romans, Revelation, or any other part of Scripture.
The reviewer himself cringed a little when he read the unsubstantiated opinion that we can do without explorations into God-manifestation, but not without a revived study of the Gospels. (God-manifestation being, perhaps, the single most distinctive first principle of Bible—and therefore of Christadelphian—teaching, it would seem self-evident to the reviewer that we cannot do without either, and that we cannot properly understand the Gospels until we have grasped the dispensational purpose of God revealed in His name and, therefore, supremely, in His Son.) It is disappointing too—and all the more so because such comments are unnecessarily polemical—to hear reservations being expressed about the writings of some of our earlier brethren. Racily written they may not be, but they ought to be read by all, and we could do worse than include them systematically in the personal reformation to which we are rightly exhorted.
A clean sweep
Others may well find irritants also in other aspects of this searching examination of Christadelphian life and work. In some senses, however, the author will no doubt feel that his book has succeeded if they do. The call for reformation has always been unwelcome to those who are settled on their lees, and it behoves us all not to dismiss too glibly the many powerful elements of this call to rededication to our life in Christ. In sweeping out so many dusty corners of our personal commitment Brother Whittaker has put us in his debt. We may not be convinced by everything he says; but if we are not moved by this book, if our conscience fails to prick us at all in the reading of it, then our need for reformation may be even greater than the author feared. But, as he writes in conclusion, “if there is intention, then ( as the modern jargon has it) the reader has ‘got the message’— and the rest, please God, will follow”.
Review of “The Early Earth” by John Whitcomb (1972)