Newspapers / Gardner-Webb University Student Newspaper / May 1, 1954, edition 1 / Page 12
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WHAT IS RELIGION LOYALTY By MASON HUDSPETH ReIig:on is the service and adoration of God or a god as expressed in forms of worship according to popular definition. There are many diffei-ent religions in the world and some of them say that other religions are just as good as they are. Men have sought acd do seek to make compromises between different religious beliefs in the belief that tolerance will bring about peace and harmony in the world, but there is one religion which sticks above the rest and says by its very nature that there can be no compromise with any other. That is the religion of Jesus Christ. If the religion of Jesus is going to be believed in, all other religions are automatically excluded. Christ said that he and the Father, who created the universe with man as his crown ing creation, were one. If any man places his hope in the reli gion of Je.sus, there can be no room in his mind for the belief that other religions might be just as valid. Christ stands su preme in the mind of an individual or not at all. Some Christian groups try to promote tolerance of other religious groups m this country who do not believe in Christ as the Son of God. These groups propose to show that they are freedom loving and are willing to concede to other groups who deny Jesus as God, that their religion is just as good as Chi'ist- ianity. Such people lack conviction and cannot believe what Jesus said. They say that a person has the freedom to believe as ne pleases, which is giving the love of freedom supremacy over the teachings of Christ; but Jesus will take no second place to freedom. Christianity does not prohibit man from studying other religions, but it points out that there is only one true religion. Jesus pointed to the only, jealous, just, and merciful God. Some people think of Christianity as a bargain where they do things for God with the understanding that they will get something back. Applied science has become the great threat against people who think in this way. A person does not need to call upon a god when they can easily fulfill their own desires "God is the utmost service to all his children, whether they are aware of him or not, and those who know him call him their chief treasure; but he is never sought and found by those who look for his uses to them.” The heart of Christianity is not “What can I get?” but “What can I give?” Christ does not promise those who follow him that they will escape hardships and tragedies, but he promised his presence: “Lo, I am with you alway!” Christianity compared with friendship and love— they are of no use, yet they bring everything. Religion to many people is an opiate. They dream of a day in the great unknown when they can have everything that was denied them on this earth, they envision future reward— “We’ll have pie in the sky by and by!” Dealers in spiritual pain killers have not turned to the words of Jesus but to those who wrote of him; they have not turned to the religion of Jesus, but to a religion about him. Man may take from Paul’s writings, words which would support the opium theory, but investigate Paul’s life and stand beside him on the Ostian Way; there is no opiate there. You might ask John Howard, who fought for prison reform; you might ask Carrie Nation, who sought the liquor traffic; or you may ask John Greenleaf Whittier, who stood for abolition cf slavery. They will tell you that it was a driving force to duty, not an opiate. Behavioristic psychology has become the greatest menace to religion in the world today. This psychology claims that the dreaming of oppressed people of a better world someday is a defence mechanism, and in many instances it is. When men try to escape reality, one can hardly blame modern psychologists for their views. Of course religion has an element of wishful thinking. A boy meets a girl whom he loves and he thinks they can make a go of their marriage. Psychologists may say, “Wish ful thinking, my boy!” Thank God for such illusion! No one has ever proved the existence of God, or immortality; but a person’s thought become locked in such matters and no thought is possible. The same cosmic curtain upon which the faith of a Christian is cast in theistic thinking, blocks the doubt of an atheistic thinker, thus if a Christian is deceiving himself in accepting his faith: the atheist is equally deceiving himself by accepting his doubts. In the lives of religion’s worthiest ex amples, religion made like a shock and not a shock-absorber. By RICHARD E. PLYLER I was bom In America, The land of the free, God made America, For you and for me. A land where we may worship, Whatever our religion be. We can worship in our church, At home, or even by the sea. Be loyal to America, The land of the free. Be loyal to God Almighty, He made her for you, for me. God put in our fore-fathers. The will to want to fight For freedom, justice, liberty. For everything good and right. For if you love America, The way in which I do, You’ll be loyal to God and her, And to the red, white, and blue. WHAT TO DO By RICHARD E. PLYLER When you awake in the morning. And you wonder why. Is this that fatal day, When I must surely die? You go through the day, And you wonder still. I didn’t go today, I wonder when I will. But did you ever try. To do all that you could. Some things that you couldn’t, Others that you should. So when you awake in the morning. And you start to begin the day. Have no fear for yourself. For Jesus will go all the way. tion through Jesus Christ. The Christians are trying to show the unsaved people that they do not have fellowship with God and that without that fellowship, through Jesus Christ, they are destined for eternal damnation and destruction, and even though they are a disobedient people God loved them enough to have His only Begotten Son to die for them that they might have eternal salvation. It is one thing to profess to be a Christian, and it is another thing to live the Christian life. Never before has our country or the whole realm of Christ endom been faced with a more destructible or false philosophy of life than that of communism. To overcome and to overthrow communism we, the Christian people of America, are going to have to be obedient unto God and pray for the guidance of His Divine Hand. Let us contiriue to pray for all men, and remember these words of our Lord Jesus Christ, "Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you alway even unto the end of the world.”—Matthew 28:20. Page 11
Gardner-Webb University Student Newspaper
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May 1, 1954, edition 1
12
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