"Quality Above Power"
It's always a pleasure to exegete the word of God and to apply it to our times, and this is a very significant time because it's an age of global networking. It's a time of increased urbanization but with that increased violence, and in all of that violence we ask the question, "What is the answer in this milieu?"
A little over ten years ago, John Paul II sat in a prison cell talking to an olive-skinned man outside of Rome. He reached out and took the hand that had held the gun that was meant to take his life, and then he spoke to this man a word of forgiveness. This is a word of grace. What does it mean to be a part of a world of competition, of violence, of global struggle, and to be able to speak a word of grace into that world?
I was recently in Japan during the earthquake in Kobe. I witnessed the suffering and pain of many persons and the question was, of course, asked, "What is the cause and what is God saying through this?"
I have listened to the woes of many persons caught in the turmoils in settings such as Rwanda, Bosnia, and other areas of difficulty. Over the last fourteen years, my wife and I lived and ministered in Washington, D.C. There we saw the problems of violence, especially handgun violence, and the many young lives that suffered and were taken. I think of one young girl that my wife was relating to who saw three of her close friends shot unnecessarily, of course. But the violence that is rampant in our cities...and we ask the question, "How do we speak and witness in this context?"
I want to have you think with me about an approach that I believe is the biblical approach that has to do with elevating quality above power. Jesus called us to be salt and light in the world. In the Book of Romans, Chapter 12, the Apostle Paul speaks to this issue. He begins by telling us that we are a special people of God and we should not let the world squeeze us into its mold, that we are to be transformed by the renewal of our minds. We are to demonstrate what is the good and perfect will of God. In the conclusion of the chapter, he talks about how we demonstrate this. "Let love be without alteration. Live with integrity. Be persons of prayer. Bless those who persecute you. Do not seek revenge. Return good for evil." And he concludes this passage by saying, "Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good."
It is that verse which I would use for our meditation today and have us think about what it means to overcome evil with good. Sometimes I am asked, "If your God is a sovereign God, why doesn't He just reach in and straighten this problem out?" My answer is, how do you think of sovereignty? Are you thinking deterministically? That reminds me of the fatalism so dominant in many countries and cultures of Asia. Is God deterministic? Does He just reach in and arbitrarily do things? Or, the fact that God is sovereign, may that not better be thought of as saying that sovereignty in God is like self-control in a person. A person who is self-controlled doesn't break out and react to another person, but behaves out of his or her own being and essence, so God's sovereignty is more God's self-determination than it is a determinism, an authoritarian way of ruling in life.
Thinking of God being sovereign, meaning that He is self-controlled, means that He is consistent with Himself. God is not capricious. God functions in a way that we can understand and so I would like to have you think with me about how God is at work in this world.
I project for our thinking three theses: One, that God works to overcome evil, not by exercising a superior power, but by expressing the superior quality of His holiness and His mercy and love. God could have knocked the devil for a loop long ago, but He chose rather to express in His greatness, His grace, His love, His mercy, His justice, and overcome evil with manifestation of good. Any thinking person looking at evil for what it is and then looking at God for what He is ought to say, "I'll go with God."
God's method of overcoming evil then is to manifest His superior quality, the quality of His grace and His love and His mercy. Now it follows that God's Son would do no other than overcome evil with good, that He would not overcome evil by exercising superior power, but by expressing His superior quality. When Jesus was in the Garden of Gethsemane the night before He was crucified, He told the disciples that he could call for twelve legions of angels. That would be exercising superior power, but He chose rather to demonstrate His love and His mercy and His grace. He, in that love, absorbed our hostility into Himself. He took that love to its very depth in that He expressed that love even to the cost of His own life.
Soon after we were in Washington, D.C., we were meeting persons, inviting them to join us in our work. I was walking down the street one day and I met a man sitting on a bench and I stopped to chat with him, and suddenly he said, "Are you a preacher?"
I said, "Well, matter of fact I am."
And then he almost sneered. He said, "Tell me, what difference does it make in my life that Jesus Christ died on a cross two thousand years ago?"
I could have talked to him about some theories of the atonement out of theology, but instead I looked at him and asked, "Do you have some friends?"
"Yes," he said, "I have friends."
I said, "Suppose one gets in trouble."
He said, "You hang in with him."
I said, "It gets really severe."
He said, "You still hang in."
I said, "It gets really rough. When can you cop out?"
He looked at me in amazement and he said, "Man, if he's your friend you never cop out."
Then I smiled and said, "And God came to us in Jesus as our friend, and we're in trouble and He hung in. Our trouble got really difficult, and He hung in. When could Jesus cop out?"
The man looked at me and it was almost as though lights went on in his eyes. He smiled. He said, "You mean that is why Jesus had to die?"
I said, "That's one reason. He came and said, `Your problem is now my problem.'"
He got up from where he was sitting, squared his shoulders and nodded his head and turned and walked down the sidewalk. I watched him go and I said to myself, "Man, you don't know it but you have been evangelized." Once you know a God who says, "Your problem is now my problem," you can never be the same.
Jesus came to overcome evil but not by exercising superior power, by expressing His superior quality of love and grace and mercy to the death.
Now, if God the Father exercises His superior quality in mercy and grace, and God the Son in Jesus exercises His superior quality and love and mercy and grace, does it not follow that God the Holy Spirit working in the lives of His children would do the same, that He would use us to express the qualities of God's grace and love and mercy, that our approach in life is to be a people of love and a people of mercy, a people of forgiveness and a people who give ourselves in service to our fellow man? Our calling is not to be people of dominance. Ours is not a calling to be persons who seek power over other people. We should always avoid what it boils down to, and we manipulate and intimidate and dominate others. Love means that we open our lives to others and we share with them. This is the quality of life to which God calls us. This is something that becomes a lifestyle in which you and I live in this quality and thus we are salt to the earth and light to the world.
A number of years ago I was sitting with Mr. Beré, a friend in Chicago, on the twenty-second floor of a building in his office looking out over Lake Michigan, and we were talking about issues in the business world with which he was very, very conversant. Then he looked at me and said, "Myron, one of the things that bothers me today is that a lot of the young persons coming into business go to church on Sunday, but from Monday to Friday they function like anybody else, as though they didn't know God. Isn't there a Christian ethic that affects us in business?" Of course, he knew the answer as well as I did.
A few years ago I was lecturing in a university in Moscow. This was a special meeting for faculty members of universities of the area and several hundred had come together. I was speaking to them about Christian ethics and free market, an attempt to somehow help them in the transition from the kind of world they had known for the last seventy years to a new age of freedom. After the lecture there were persons who came up to me and thanked me and said, "I, too, am a believer." But I remember the woman who came and said, "I am not a believer, but isn't it possible for me to set up an ethic for business, even if I'm not a Christian?"
I looked at her and asked, "Do you know anything about Immanuel Kant and his philosophy?"
And she said, "Yes, I've read Kant."
"Well," I said, "why don't you begin by his categorical imperatives. Treat everybody else the way you'd like to be treated. Behave so that your behavior could be a universal law."
And she smiled and said, "I think I can work at that."
Then I said, "And while you're doing it, how about the teachings of Jesus when He said, `As you want others to treat you, you get busy doing to them.'"
And of course she asked, "Where do I find that?"
And I told her, "In the Bible."
Well, there is in the world today a need for a new awareness that the teachings of Christ and the meaning of God's work in the world is a message of grace, and that this is a call of quality living and that quality living makes a difference in life. Each of us asks the question, "What can I do as one individual?" But if every person took seriously the principle of overcoming evil by doing good, we could change society for the better and enrich it. Now we do not do this just because of what we think we might get out of it. We do it because of a kind of commitment in our own lives to the high ideals and the principles to which God calls us in Jesus Christ.
There is a story I would like to tell you that I picked up about a year ago. There was an earthquake in Los Angeles, as you know, and the Christian College Coalition owns a building there which houses staff and program for a special educational experience we have for students in the Hollywood film production area. The earthquake had taken that little house and just cracked the brick veneer loose and practically destroyed it. I flew out to look at it, and then needed to arrange for its reconstruction. I wanted to find a contractor, a builder, that I could trust, and coming from the Mennonite church I wanted to find a Mennonite builder, and I learned about a Mr. Herman Riemple and through him I was able to get his son, Dennis, to renovate this building.
I went back to Washington, D.C. and his son came back from a trip to Africa, and so I called him on the telephone and believe it or not in this modern age, we worked out a contract by telephone, agreed on it, and he went to work on the house. But with that there's an amazing story I learned and perhaps it is a reason why these persons could be so well trusted.
Herman Riemple's father was Aaron Riemple. He lived in Gnadenfeldt, Russia. He had a large estate, was a very wealthy Mennonite farmer. He was so well known that the Czar of Russia would come and go hunting on his estate. In the early teens of this century, when the Red and White Armies were battling, they raged back and forth across Gnadenfeldt. One evening Herman Riemple was coming home from the market where he had gotten some things for his wife, and he came by a railroad siding and here was a box car full of people to be shipped off to Siberia, and a man called out and said, "Sir, we're so hungry. We've been in here all day with nothing to eat. Can you help us?"
And Herman Riemple, out of the goodness of his own spirit and heart, went over and shoved his bolognas and his bread and cheese through the slats and the man said, "Thank you."
And Herman Riemple said, "God bless you." And he went on home.
Sometime later the Red Army overran the whole territory. They took a lot of these Mennonite farmers and put them in box cars and shipped them off to Siberia. Now Herman Riemple had lost his estate. He went from wealth to poverty, but he still had his own ingenuity and he was quite an entrepreneur, and in Siberia he began getting tea imported from China, and he was selling tea. But this was contrary to the pattern of the new regime, and he was accused of a kind of capitalism in the midst of the new Marxist pattern of life, and he was brought to trial.
In the trial, of course, the witness was given against him and he was guilty of this capitalism. The Commissar asked him to step forward to be sentenced, and Aaron Riemple stepped forward, expecting this to mean his death. The Commissar looked at him and said, "I believe we have met before."
Mr. Riemple said, "Your Honor, I think not."
"Yes," he said, "I think we have. Have you been in Gnadenfeldt?"
"Yes," he said, "I lived in Gnadenfeldt."
The Commissar asked him, "Do you remember one evening when a man called you from a box car and said, `Sir, we've been in here all day with nothing to eat. Would you help us?'"
"Ah, yes," he said, "I remember."
"And what did you do?"
"Why I went over and shoved my bolognas and bread and cheese through the slats."
"And what did you say?"
I said, "God bless you."
The Commissar said, "We have met before. I was that man." He said, "I'm not going to sentence you. If you would like, I will sign papers and you and your family can emigrate."
And Riemple said, "Sir, if you will sign those papers for all Riemples, I've got brothers here with their families." And this whole family immigrated to California. Now little did Aaron Riemple know when he shoved that cheese, bread and bologna through the slats, what would happen in the future, but he did it out of the character of his being, and so I challenge us today to be God's people in truth, to put into practice the quality of the Christian life, to overcome evil by good.
Interview with Augsburger
Interviewed by Orley Herron
Orley Herron: Myron, we go back a long time. We were both college presidents of Christian colleges years ago and since then, eighteen years I've not been a president of the Christian college, but, Myron, do you still believe there is a role for a Christian college in today's world?
Myron Augsburger: Oh yes, I do, but if the college is not defensive, but really joins the larger stream and offers a perspective that is its own unique stance and that is a Christian world view. Everybody educates from some perspective, but to do it as an interaction and dialogue, rather than as a dogmatism that isn't open to hear others. That, I think, is our challenge.
Herron: And it's best for them to be clear on what they are for and not so often of what they're against.
Augsburger: Yes.
Herron: Wouldn't you agree with that?
Augsburger: I sure do. We've got enough to say about what we are for.
Herron: Myron, do you miss being a college president?
Augsburger: I do, of course. A college president is the visionary for a program, and through his vision and inspiration a lot of other people extend that program. And when you are not in that position, you don't have the same opportunity, not just of the influences and power I'm talking about, but it's the opportunity to use the privileges of community in the educational context to share that vision.
Herron: You were in Japan during that awful earthquake. Tell me about your spiritual perspectives on that?
Augsburger: Interestingly, I was working with a large group of young ministers who were born since 1945. This was an attempt to deal with the present. Suddenly this earthquake and the devastation threw them back, and the older people were saying this was just like it was in the Second World War, and it was so shattering that the questions of what life is all about and what the meaning of life is began to surface, and that, I think, was the more significant thing happening spiritually as a result of the earthquake.
Herron: I didn't ask that question too well, but your answer was wonderful.
Augsburger: Thank you.
Herron: I know your wife is an artist and she is doing something very important in sculpture. Tell us about it.
Augsburger: Well, she is a very fine sculptor and has pieces in India, one near Chicago at ServiceMaster, of Jesus washing Peter's feet, and in Washington about a year ago when they were turning in guns, Riddick Bow had offered money for handguns if they would turn them in to speak against handgun violence. Our son, Michael, who is also an artist, came to his mother and said, "Mom, why don't we build a sculpture?" So we went to the police department and while they don't have money for it, they offered the guns, and they've been building this sculpture. It's a plowshare. The sculpture is entitled, Guns into Plowshares from the Old Testament prophesy, "They will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks." And it's sixteen feet tall and nineteen feet long. There'll be a couple thousand guns on there. It will weigh about four tons and they're well over half way, a little more than that, toward completion. They hope in the next couple months to get it completed and by this summer it ought to be setting up in Washington in the John Marshall Plaza.
Herron: We certainly need peace around this world and that will be a good symbol, and certainly our Lord came that we would have peace. Myron, is there one thing you want to do yet in your life that you haven't done?
Augsburger: Oh, I'd like to write a theology of reconciliation.
Herron: Good. Thank you very, very much.
_____________________________________________________________________