| The Glory of the Common Life |
Chapter 8 |
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Are we patient enough with doubt like John’s? Somehow the religious world has always been most unforbearing toward any shadow of doubt, or even toward any questions concerning beliefs which seemed to indicate the least uncertainty. There are Christian men who are so impatient of even a child’s mere request for light as to drive the tender hearted one, hungry for knowledge, back to the world, and almost to incurable skepticism. The Bible is the same in its teachings about God, age after age, but as men see more and more clearly its wonderful revealings their opinions change, their views become truer. It is said that in the archives of an old church is preserved a manuscript sermon preached by a clergyman who was pastor of the church for fifty years or more. At the bottom of the page are the words, “All wrong,” signed by the man who had preached the sermon. In thirty three years the preacher’s views upon the subject had undergone a radical change.
Jesus was not fulfilling John’s idea of his Messiahship, and John began to wonder whether he was really the Messiah or not. The trouble was that John’s early views of the manner of the Messiahship were wrong. There was nothing wrong with the Messiahship – it was only with John’s presuppositions concerning it. There are good people in these days whose opinions are different altogether from what they were in the past. There has been no change in the truth, only they understand it better now. There are people who, in circumstances of sorrow, almost begin to despair, because the think that God is not the loving Father they used to think he was. The trouble is, however, that they did not at first truly understand this Fatherhood. They did not see how continued pain could be love, how it could be in love that he allowed the suffering to go on unrelieved. Jesus said, “What I do thou knowest not now, but thou shalt understand hereafter.” We say that John had lost his faith; no, he did not yet understand the Messiahship of Jesus – that was all.
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