GUIDANCE OR GUNS?

Dominion, Volume 32, Issue 66, 10 December 1938, Page 17

GUIDANCE OR GUNS?

Need For Moral Rearmament

NEW PHILOSOPHY OF LIVING At rimes of crisis we must reexamine ail our values. Our commonly accepted standards fail to be adequate. We need a new quality of life for all. We must possess some superior quality—a quality of living that rises above resentment, jealousy, greed and points of view, because ail these may keep us from a maximum message. ‘ It is that quality of life that is above party, above class, above faction, above nations —God-control. We need to call into being a whole new philosophy of living, writes Dr. Frank Buckman in a Church of England newspaper. People and nations for a long time have been thinking abnormally. Some superhuman power is needed to change the thinking of the ordinary man and of those who lead. The great man of history is the man who can articulate and transfer into action the answer to war, the man who will confess his own shortcomings instead of spotlighting those of others.

At times of great crisis people just naturally look to God, and they expect their leaders to give them the lead. In a fateful hour when pronouncements are made, men hope against hope that there will be some force at work that will put off what we all deserve. . It is one thing to say that God-control is the only true policy. It is another thing to make it a reality in the life of the nation. A whole new fabric needs to be woven. We cannot live on the past. We must bring in a whole new philosophy of willing ami living and acting. Through the lack of that sort of living we have starved the nation’s life and the lives of the nations. Ali our values are slipping, as currencies slipped after the war. Times of crisis reveal the bankruptcy of our thought and action. Then we resort to feverish improvization and expediency. Sheer economy of time and energy and ultimate bankruptcy may force us to God-control. The Oxford Group. The Oxford Group has been in action since the last war -training men for the moral rearmament of the nations. We are waging the greatest buttle of history in this world-war against selfishness. Wo must forge new’ weapons of warfare. Our weapons seem like relics from the armoury of some illustrious ancestor, which in (heir day were useful, but now, outmoded, leave us defeated and defenceless. We must have superior forces of spiritual armour. Moral rearmament is the keynote of world reconstruction. We need the same characteristics that distinguish a great general—(the phis of character, the plus that will change the world. We all agree on one thing—that we ought to be different, and that the world' ought to be different. If people were different and had the power to change the men and the nations, that would be rhe answer to all our problems. And that is what the Oxford Group believes.

It is just as simple and natural and normal a-s that, and it is just what everybody is waiting for. It is a national necessity. Why don’t we reach the age of sanity and do it? Events are focussing us to the only programme of sane control —God-con-trol. I was called into conference with one of the great world statesmen. He simply said that he was living in an insane world —a world that had not yet grasped the great truth that the only sane people in an insane world are those who are guided by God. He was perplexed and dumbfounded by the colossal expenditure on armaments. He saw the taxes mounting before bis eyes which someone ultimately would have to pay. We will find our national security only in “moral rearmament. The choice is guidance or guns. We must listen to guidance or we will listen to guns. The choice is between a vortex of fear and a pageant of triumph. Programme From God.

The Interlaken Oxford Group Conference demonstrates that every man in every land should listen to guidance. For every home in every land the natural and normal thing is to get their programme from God. In industry, in the workshop, in the nation’s life, in Parliament, the normal thing is to listen to God. Each nation expresses it in its own way—one nation in one way, and another in another, but all Godcontrolled and God-led. Thus .with God leading, all will understand each other. Here in this philosophy is lasting peace, and only here. You will not find it in any other quarter. It is the peace that is born in God-control. Godcontrol means asking for guidance. It is a forgotten factor in world politics today—listening to guidance. Yet in certain countries all the laws of the land are still made—at least according to the Statute Book—“ Under Divine Guidance.” But suppose every individual had the moral rearmament of Godcontrol. Think what a strength that would be throughout the world. It would call into action those latent powers which we oftentimes hide under a cover of false reserve and call it,national character. If those latent powers were released and mobilised under God they could generate enough power to change the thinking and living of the world.