Editorial
January, 1970
Volume 5, Number 1

The theme of the 1969 Church of the Brethren Annual Conference was “Faithfulness in Change.” This was also the theme of the Third Theological Conference held this past Summer at Bethany Seminary.

No one on earth favors change more than the Christian. Not only does he favor change, but he asserts that all who will not change will perish. Jesus preached a gospel of changed human character, changed for the better in those who receive Him as Saviour and Lord. Where the Christian differs with others on the matter of change, is in his concern that changes must come within the context of God’s Word and in agreement with God’s spiritual laws. This is where faithfulness comes in.

Changes of various kinds and various sorts take place every day everywhere. But irresponsible change merely for the sake of making things different, is unreasonable and uncalled for. The basic needs of men are no different now than they were two thousand years ago. And God’s provisions for those needs have not been changed. Strip off the veneer of our civilization, and there remains a desperate loneliness, a sense of frustration, and a void that remains empty until it is filled with the living Christ.

The old paths which are biblical, are sacred and right, and we cannot afford to forsake: them. We believe in a God whose essential nature does not change; in standards of right and wrong that do not change; in death and judgment which are inescapable; and in truth that is absolute (not relative) which is forever settled in heaven and cannot pass away.

Faithfulness in Change

by Harold S. Martin

Change is inevitable. Preserving the status quo is simply not possible. The fact that each day one hundred eighty thousand people are added to the world’s population, means that change is constantly taking place. There are changes in living conditions, and thought patterns, and personal relationships. Man’s scientific advances during the last one hundred years have brought changes that stagger the imagination. And there is no reason not to believe that fifty years from now, people will marvel at what has been accomplished in their lifetime.

It is true in the world of technology that the latest is often the best. We rightly prefer the up-to-date typewriter or the newer automobile. But we must remember that technology advances automatically, building upon the practical lessons of past experimenters. Every engineer begins at the point where the last one left off. Advancement is due not to any improvement in the human brain, but to the mere accumulation of experience. The ancient brains that measured the diameter of the earth and worked out the principles of leverage were just as great brains as our age possesses, but the modern technologist can see farther than they, because he sits on their shoulders. But this is not true in the area of human conduct. Calvin Linton says that here it is not technology, but wisdom that governs. No man becomes virtuous because of the virtue of another. He might be inspired by the wisdom and virtue of another, but he must make that wisdom his own possession. Every human being, as a moral creature, starts from scratch~ The human heart is something that since the Fall has never changed. Every human being has drives, and greeds, and compulsions, and passions that are not eliminated by merely learning about the experiences of others. There is not the slightest evidence (with all of man’s scientific achievements) that there has been a corresponding improvement in his heart. Man does not seem to learn the lessons of history. The sins of our day are but the same old sins with new names. Adultery is the same whether it is committed under “the new morality” or under the old. It is the same kind of hate that kills a man with a revolver as killed him with an arrow. Robbery is the same when the victim is a bank and the escape is by means of a high-powered car, as when the victim was a lonely man on a donkey, and the getaway was by horseback. The basic issues of our day are simply the old issues in a new setting. The setting is the H-bomb, space travel, automation, cybernetics, mass communication, population explosion, and highway slaughter. But the basic issues are the same as in the nineteenth century, in the eighteenth, in the seventeenth, and on back to Adam. In an address to the Royal Society, Australia’s top atomic scientist, Laurence Oliphant, declared: “I can find no evidence whatever that the morality of mankind has improved over the five thousand years or so of recorded history.”

Often churchmen seem impressed with changes that really are only superficial. The notion that all our problems are new, and that we are living in a fresh time of wisdom, that nobody ever had it before, and that “man has come of age,” is actually an almost intolerable conceit. Elton Trueblood tells, that, in speaking to a group of pastors, he advised these men to study Augustine’s Confessions and The Imitation of Christ, and John Woolman’s Journal. Right away one of the leading clergymen said, “Oh, those were all very well for another day. But so much has happened now, that their appeal is utterly undermined. We are in a new world, and these books have nothing to say to our situation at this moment.”

People often say, “What, for example, could Abraham say to us?” After all, he never went faster than a few miles an hour, and any of us can go six hundred miles an hour in our day. Abraham never saw a large university or a really big city or advanced technology. Therefore, they say, his answers are not relevant to our day. There are high officials in the ecclesiastical world who express the view that the Christian message must be altered to make it acceptable to the men and women who, they affirm, live in a wholly new age. They create: the impression that we need to rethink the inspiration of the Scriptures, revamp all our theology, and work out a new code of Christian conduct, in line with the times and acceptable to the nuclear age. They say these older concepts were all right for the little church in the wildwood, but they have no significance for people who live in the rush of the latter half of the twentieth century.

Vance Havner expresses a truth when he says that actually this nuclear age is not essentially different from any other age, except for the increase in gadgets and gimmicks. This is a generation of poor lost sinners, and man needs to be sent to the same old laundry and cleansed in the same old way. For the church to be faithful means that it must proclaim the message that men can be rightly related to God through faith in Jesus Christ (Romans 3:24, 25). One who commits his life to Jesus Christ finds peace with God (Romans 5:1), forgiveness of sin (Ephesians 1:7), and receives a new nature (2 Corinthians 5:17). This makes an impact on his own life as well as on his horizontal relationships with his fellow men.

It is still true that the great questions of life are answered in the Bible, and specifically in the person and work of Jesus Christ. He is “the way, the truth, and the life.”Jesus Christ is the only person who fulfills completely our basic needs. Many lives have been wholly changed by hearing and believing the old Gospel, and by God’s grace we need to continue to preach it because it works.

In every generation, men believe that the problems they face are unique. However, man does not change, and his problems change very little (Ecclesiastes 1:9, 10). Our age is an age of revolution, but there have been revolutionary ages before. Early in the eighteenth century England was in turmoil. Men were demanding political, economic, and spiritual freedom. Moral decay resulted. J. C. Ryle says, “Bribery among all classes was open, unblushing, and profuse. Adultery, fornication, gambling, swearing, Sabbath-breaking, and drunkenness were hardly regarded as vices at all.” It was the preaching of the simple gospel message under Wesley and Whitefield and others that had much to do with a revival of moral standards in England.

We live In a time similar to that of Noah’s day. Sensual immorality, violence, secularism, and crime characterized Noah’s world (Genesis 4:11-24; 6:11). These same things characterize the present age. Noah was a “preacher of righteousness” who went up and down the land preaching repentance and proclaiming judgment to come. He prepared an ark “to the saving of his house.” We need to do the same as Noah did. The person who speaks about a new day and a modern mind, with new processes and a new gospel, is simply a new fool.

This article originally appeared in a collection of essays entitled, Variations on a Theme, and it is used here by permission of the Parish Ministries Commission of the Church of the Brethren General Board. The entire book (paper cover) is a discussion of change from many points of view.