The House of Quiet

Hutt News, Volume XXII, Issue 10, 18 August 1948, Page 12

The House of Quiet

THE HONEST ANSWER (Contributed by the Hutt Valley 31inistera’ Fraternal.) Honest questions deserve an honest answer. What are the honest questions people ask about religion? I have asked a housewife; I have asked a communist; I have asked a school-teacher; I have asked a doctor. Here are the things they said needed answering. My part is the honest answer.

What good does church-going do? Are there not plenty of decent people who never go to church? Certainly there are. Church-going is not a matter of being a nice,

decent sort of person. It is a question of duty. God created us.

We owe a duty to our parents; we owe a duty to our country; how much greater is the duty we owe to God. Unless men seek Him and honour Him in worship, God cannot begin to help thpm. So long as men do not seek Him and honour Him they are going their own way, denying His order, and bringing themselves and their country to ruin. It is God’s world. His is the only order that will work.

What about all these denom inations? Don’t they prove thu religion is a ‘matter of opinion?

The usual answer is to say that people ought, no more to be surprised at the number of denominations in the Church than at the number of regiments in the Army. I think that is quite a. sensible answer. Religion is so cieep-seated a thing that a man must feel that it grips the whole of him. The question for you and me is: which denomination gives me the opportunity to devote myself body and soul and spirit as I ought to God?

Has not a map who does not believe in God as much right to his opinion as a religious person to his? Right to Choose Of course he has. We all of us have a right to choose which opinion we intend to hold But we none of us has the right to choose the consequences of holding that opinion. We are perfectly free to act as if God did not exist. We are definitely not free to choose the consequences of so acting. In God’s universe, / those consequences must be ruin and disaster.

If God does exist, why does He allow war and things like 'that? Because He has made man big enough to.choose for himself,. God’s idea for the human race is that it

should live with Him like a great family. If men choose to deny God’s rights, and treat each other as rivals instead of brothers, then men must bear the consequences, which include war. If God made us able to choose is not He responsible for the eonquences? Certainly not. If He had refused us the power of choice, then He would have been responsible; but that is precisely ihe opposite of what He has actually done. Is it fair of God to make Eternity depend on the choices we make in this life?

It is not fair; it is amazingly generous. That this life should present me with the opportunity to share in God’s Eternal Enterprise is good news of the highest order. Here is a bit of plain speaking. Those .who complain that God makes their Eternal Destiny dependent on their choices in this life mostly want to go their own way without taking the consequences. It cannot be done. If we must take the conse-

quences of our choices, why not make the choice that will result in the best possible consequences? Lives Affect Each Other Can we help making 'the choices we do? Ordinary people do not make wars, for example, but they have to light them; they have no choice. , That is true. Because we are made to live in a great family our lives affect each other. Because of the long history of wrong choosing by mankind, because of the. strong fashion of our own day against recognising our duty t.o God, mankind has come under hostile powers and is victimised by them. Only God is gble to meet and drive back these dreadful forces which invade human personality, and entrench themselves in man’s order. But we are still free to make the one choice that will open up to us the way of liberty. The one choice that really gives us freedom to grow and. develop is the decision to let God into our lives to meet the powers of darkness that find a base of operations there. Against such forces man on his own is helpless. Only when God has met and answered the spiritual problem of his victimisation by evii is man free to be his true self.