The Farmville herald. (Farmville, Va.) 1957-current, 1962-05-04
Against Pressure
Lesson for May s, 1862

O--- ~~~eS~~-
are shocked by the picture
Question l." because it makes
starkly plain the ugly penalties
Christians have to pay in com
munist countries just for being
Christian. Because there is such
a difference between our coun
try and East Germany flor ex
ample or between our country
and the Roman Empire in the
first century after Christ, We
are tempted to overlook the fact
that we too live in a society
that is still very largely pagan
The Christians to whom the Let
tiers in the New Testament were
written were reminded that they
had come out of darkness into
Gods light. The darkness hao
not vanished, it was out there
like a vast dreadful night.
Passions of the Flesh
If we are not surrounded by
pitch-blackness, it is because
Christian ideas and ideals have
permeated society as a whole
Much of Americas way OF
life has. Christian origins. New
ertheless. paganism may take
the form of grey cloud, a fog
like the bright emptiness of an
antarctic white out" Nothing
can be plainly seen in it. This
kind of pagan fog surrounds the
Christian, often without his rea-
lizing it. We can take some ex-
pressions from I Peter 2, to il
lustrate. The writer speaks Of
passions of the flesh that wage
war against your Sold In
America paganism, much as in
the ancient and rotting Roman
world, the suggestion is con
stantly made, in advertising,
entertainment. literature and
the ordinary "climate of opin-
ion, that anything is all right
for you if you really want to do
it or to have it. Liquor is all
right if you want it, the best
reason for a divorce is just that
you want one. young people
don't have to wait until marri-
age before living with each
other These and other lies are
circulated all around us. and it
is hard to resist the pressure.
hard especially for young peo-
pie. who do not realize that the
voice of Everybody may be
just the voice of age-old pagan
ism.
hulOuS tiIC NNnliicS
The early :. times Christians
could not have been fooled by
this. They knew that Every
body was mostly pagan. To
look to popular opinion, in any
Roman city, for Christian stand
ards of living would have
seemed ridiculous. A Christian
was expected to be different;
they knew that much, or most
OF them did. Today "conformi-
ty' is very much the thing. but
We do not ask, as we should.
whom? Initiating people who do
not even pretend to be Chris
tan, is absurd: yet millions of
church members do it. Take
two simple examples. There is
a magazine bout women S
"hair-do's.' It's what the maya
zine is all about. nothing else.
Query: Is it a Christian use Of
time, brains and money to
spend money making and buy
ing a magazine devoted to hair
dos? Is there nothing more
important to take Christian
Woman's time?
Not Just Against
No one should suppose that
the Christian life consists most
ly in Whacking pagans over the
head with the Ten Command
ments. Neither does it consist
in merely not doing this and
not doing that. Saint Peter did
not lay out the Christian life as
a series of Don'ts Live as free
men but live as servants
of God" That's positive living,
not negative. Honor all men. he
says. Love the brotherhood.
That's positive living in two di-
rectlons. The Christian has deal
lngs with Christians and
also with Christians: and mega
tive approaches are no help
either way.
The best resistance against
the constant pressure of pagan
ism is not to keep shouting NO
all the time. 1t is to find a way
OF living such that it will be the
pagan. not the Christian, who
discovers that his life is empty.
The Christian can well get on
without the pagan's fun but
the pagan may be turned around
by observing the Christians