Where Are The Leaders? (III)

Are We Compromising?

J.W. Deenick. Trowel & Sword. August 1963

Preamble: In preparing this preamble we thought about some of the colloquialisms that could be applied to Bill Deenick. Here are some examples:
He not only talked the talk but also walked the walk.
He didn’t beat around the bush.
He called a spade a spade – or – he called a spade a shovel.
He didn’t muck around.
We could go on but you get the drift.
So in this third instalment of “Where Are The Leaders”, he gets right to the point and pulls no punches.
We’ll let Bill tell the story.

Where Are The Leaders? (III)

Question:
Do you remember the question? It ran like this:
Our leaders are compromising. They do not give the right leadership in the battle for Christian organisations and schools. What is wrong with our ministers and their leadership?

Answer:
Last time ( in the June issue) I concluded by asking: Have we not acquiesced too easily in the fact that there are no better schools or radio stations or political and social organisations? Is it right that we read the daily and weekly papers, that we listen to the radio and T.V. programmes and send our children to the schools and universities, that do not in fact honour Jesus, but continually either ridicule or suppress His gospel and His commandments, even if they occasionally allow a Christian word to be written or to be spoken?

Is it right for me to send four children to the government school? Is it right for one to read the “Sydney Morning Herald”? We have no T.V., but I must admit that through the radio occasionally some very unpleasant rubbish resounds through the rooms of 6 Wattle Road. Is that right? Is that giving the leadership that is expected from me? 

This question embarrasses me. But gathering all my courage I say bravely: No, that is not necessarily wrong. Apart from that resounding rubbish, of course! But that about the schools, the paper and the radio programmes is not necessarily wrong, just as it is not necessarily wrong that an unbelieving neighbour or ‘friend’ visits us or that an unbelieving teacher would train my daughters to play piano. I say: that is not NECESSARILY wrong. I admit that under certain circumstances such friendly visits and piano lessons could present certain moral and spiritual dangers, but they do not NECESSARILY present these.

To begin with: we cannot go out of this world. We are not even allowed to. But being in the world and having a calling in the midst of unbelieving men and women we cannot get away from hearing and seeing a lot of sin and misery. Nor can we conceal it all from our children. They gradually begin to see and to hear the world in action. I admit that there is a difference between not being able to go out of the world and inviting the world to come in, as there is a difference between being forced to see the world in action and going out to see it. And that is precisely the point in question: by subscribing to the “Sydney Morning Herald” I invite the world to come in, and by placing a T.V. set in my lounge I go out with my family to see the world in action.

The “exclusive brethren” had the courage to face this problem. They have been in the limelight for that some months ago. They refused to co-operate with Australian unionism and objected to radio and T.V. in their homes. How they have been ridiculed for it by the secular press! Yet I admire their courage and their foresight and I am not prepared to brush their arguments aside too easily. I do not believe that they are as silly and misguided as their caricature in the worldly press would like to make us believe. I visited recently the non-reformed home of people who lived in the world for many years. They felt that their T.V. set had been a curse to them and to their children for a long time. And I would venture to believe that sone of our own people would be better off today without their T.V. than with it. I sometimes have the silly impression that worldly people distinguish better than we do. Did not Jesus Himself say that the children of the world have quite often more foresight and use their commonsense better than the children of the Kingdom? I have seen weekly papers in Christian homes that many a father outside the church would refuse to see in his.

And here, I believe, we come closer to our answer: i.e., that in the endlessly varying circumstances of a complex society we must leave it to the individual Christian to make his own responsible decisions; and that in this ministers and professors may be able to give some guidance or set an example but that they cannot take decisions for others. Because what is right in the one home is not necessarily right in the other, and what is extremely dangerous under certain circumstances is not necessarily dangerous in others.

Take the matter of the paper. There is no “Christian” daily paper in Sydney. Still, if I read a newspaper, and I believe that I do, I am justified in subscribing to the “Sydney Morning Herald” as long as everybody in the family knows that this paper is a regular but unreliable visitor, whose words are to be listened to critically, and as long as I am convinced that no real damage is done to the spiritual welfare of the home. But as far as I am concerned I would subscribe to the “Mirror” or the “Sun” no more than I would invite a foul-mouthed neighbour to come and see us in the family circle.

The same is true with regard to radio and T.V. If you really believe that these means of communication contribute significantly to the enrichment of your life, that they equip you better for the Christian warfare – and I will not deny that a discriminate use of both could serve to that end – you are justified in letting them enter the Christian home. But circumstances and situations differ. And what is wise here, may be very foolish there.

That is also true with regard to the school question. Here the problems differ from school to school, from child to child, from case to case. If I send my children to a “secular” school I am inviting unbelieving men and women to help me in their training. That is a risky thing to do. Am I justified in taking that risk? That again depends. I would believe that most Australian and New Zealand schools are like unbelieving “friends”, who cannot really be trusted in matters of education, but who if we keep a close eye on them can still be allowed to help us train our children in certain fields of education. But circumstances again differ from place to place. I know of Christian parents, who went to live in a different district to be able to send their children to a different school. And the time could come that we all would have to refuse to send our children to the government school even to the risk of being summonsed for it.

Some of us live under more favourable circumstances, or have themselves created such circumstances. They have a Reformed or a Lutheran school in their district. That is something to be jealous of with a holy jealousy and it is something to work for with a holy zeal, but in the meantime most of us have to battle under less favourable conditions. That does not necessarily mean compromising with the world and with sin in the sense that we neglect or refuse to deal with an unbelieving “friend”, paper, teacher, radio programme, in the manner in which Jesus would have dealt with them. I mean this: Co-operation does not necessarily mean compromise. If we keep our eyes open, and call sin – “sin” and unbelief – “unbelief” and keep a faithful watch over that part of Jesus’ Kingdom that God has entrusted to us, not letting paper or school or T.V. damage the spiritual welfare of our homes, then co-operation does not necessarily mean compromise. I do not think that as “spiritual leaders” we could do a great deal more than, in the first place: That we watch over God’s people and our own home to see to it that certain forms of co-operation with the world do not unawares become forms of compromise with sin. And in the second place: That we give purposeful leadership in the promotion of distinctively Christian means of communication, education and social and political expression.

Next time something more about the political issue in relation to the naturalisation question. 

J.W. DEENICK

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