Jesus Christ – The Lloyd C Douglas Page

How Will You Use Your Powers?

A page from the sermon “The Wilderness,” preached by Lloyd C Douglas at the First Congregational Church of Ann Arbor on 2/15/1920. In Sermons [5], Box 3, Lloyd C. Douglas Papers, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan. © University of Michigan.

Have you ever been part of a group icebreaker exercise where you were asked, “What superpower do you wish you had?” There’s something like that in this text I’m quoting from Lloyd Douglas, except he isn’t asking what powers you wish you had; he’s asking how high you would rate the powers you have been given.

Douglas is talking about Christ’s temptations in the wilderness — in this case, the temptation to turn stones into bread. This is from a sermon entitled, “The Wilderness,” preached by Lloyd C. Douglas at the First Congregational Church of Ann Arbor on February 15, 1920. (In Sermons [5], Box 3, Lloyd C. Douglas Papers, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan. © University of Michigan.)

“If the cause is large enough,” says Douglas, “and a man is aware of its importance, he can be depended upon to esteem that cause first. His life, his convenience, his appetite, these are negligible considerations.

“So, with Jesus, the solution of his problem all traced back to his estimate of the importance of his power. If it was Heaven-lent, it was not to be used in any such manner as was involved in this temptation.

“If a student fails of preparing himself for his life-work because, while he was in college, sport was more important than study, because he had gone through his period of training saying, ‘A man must live. A man must have a bit of fun. A man can’t work himself to death,’ this only means that his temporary pleasure was of more concern to him than his permanent power. He is an opportunist.

“If the merchant or manufacturer fails to keep his product up to grade because of unscrupulous competition, saying, ‘A man must live,’ he merely means that temporary success is more important than a permanent sense of inviolable integrity.

“This is the problem Jesus handles in his statement, ‘Lay not up for yourselves treasures where moth and rust corrupt and where thieves break through and steal, for where your treasures are, there will your heart be also.’

“If bread is the supreme fact of your life, why then, it is to be supposed that you should go after bread — but it will be with the distinct understanding that there are many other things, probably better, which will be forever denied you. If ‘getting on prosperously, by any hook or crook’ is the best thing in life and affords you chief satisfaction, why, it were foolish to have any other aspiration.

“But if the great things of life are larger than pleasure, more significant than prosperity, better than bread, then one must sacrifice to have them, just as one must sacrifice the great things to have less. One rarely appreciates a virtue until one has purchased the right to its possession at a heavy price.

“I suppose most of our mistakes are made because we do not invoice our personal power at a figure sufficiently high to represent its value. We cheat, only because we do not understand the moral satisfaction of being honest. We lie, because we have not recognized the moral pleasure of being truthful. We are selfish, only because we have not experienced the joy of sacrifice.

“The tempter says, ‘Jesus, you are hungry. You have the power to provide bread. Why not do so?’

“And Jesus replies, ‘Why not, indeed? I am hungry and I have the power to provide bread. But if I… debase my power for this purpose, what will that do to my power? Will not that act reduce my power — just by placing a low figure on it?’

“So may I today test out the value of my brain, to me — my eyes, my ears, my hands, my heart. What are they all worth? Just what I think they are worth. If I use them for the attainment of little, selfish ends, then they are worth just as much as littleness and selfishness are worth. If they are quite too important to be put to unworthy uses, they are important enough to be put to worthy uses. Which is only another way of saying that as a man thinketh in his heart, so is he.

“If he thinks himself a rascal, he is — all of that. If he thinks his life is worthless and his mind is poor and his power is cheap, he is correct in his assumptions.

“And if he thinks himself a child of God, entrusted with power too precious to be squandered — he is a child of God, and his power is precious. It does not belong on Mammon’s counter, but upon the altar of his God.”

This raises the question: What powers have you been given?

Decision Day

by Ronald R Johnson

“Jesus was entering upon his life work, jubilant of heart. He did not journey into the Jeshimon Wilderness over a Via Dolorosa. He was led up. All the bright hopes of the future led him up. He had a career before him. He had found his Father, God. His Father was very real to him — not circumscribed by books and laws and holy buildings, but accessible to all His children, regardless of race or country. Someday soon [Jesus] would return and tell the story of his discovery of this spiritual Father.

“Just now, he wished to be alone…”

Lloyd Douglas is speaking to students at the University of Michigan (among others), and he is about to tell the story of Christ’s temptations in the wilderness. This is from a sermon entitled, “The Wilderness,” preached by Lloyd C. Douglas at the First Congregational Church of Ann Arbor on February 15, 1920. (In Sermons [5], Box 3, Lloyd C. Douglas Papers, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan. © University of Michigan.)

“There comes a time in every story when all the circumstances, episodes, and incidents of the narrative seem to have converged upon one focal point which is to stand as a sort of decision day. A casual event of a few chapters earlier, passed as merely possessing a touch of color now bobs up wearing a very determined air. And so, when all of these circumstances, accumulated along the way, strike that point of focus where there are some great choices to be made, between love and duty perhaps, or between resignation and struggle, this day and hour and place and condition are encircled with a blue pencil and named ‘The Crisis.’ After that there are definite results which follow as the night the day.

“After the Macbeths have murdered their royal guests, we expect just one eventuality; for murder will out. After King Lear has repudiated his faithful daughter and trusted himself to the tender mercies of flattery and duplicity, we know exactly what will be the end of it. After the senators have finally rounded up enough influences to assure the destruction of Caesar and have planned the crime and gone home to make ready the fateful hour, we ourselves might easily compose the rest of the story. After the moneychangers have been scourged out of the temple, we understand that the cross is already in the making. When the crisis has been reached, the catastrophe is inevitable….

“Jesus is tempted to misuse his divine power by producing bread. It was not a question of starvation for him. He was hungry because he had gone out voluntarily where there was no food to be had. When he finds himself dangerously hungry, in peril of his life through starvation, he may easily retrace his steps out of the wilderness and find food.

“The problem was, What use should he make of his newfound power? For he was conscious now of his ability to perform extraordinary deeds.

“‘Here is all this wonderful energy,’ he was saying. ‘Let me test it out. I am hungry. I need bread. Why should I not use my power to provide food?’

“And as the sense of his power, on the one hand, and his hunger, on the other, associated themselves in his mind, he felt that much could be said in favor of doing this thing. To be sure, he could find bread by going back where bread was to be had. But it was good for him to be out here in this wilderness, planning his campaign. He ought not to be inconvenienced by hunger. It seemed like a temptation of necessity….

“How often do we get ourselves into trouble through such faulty logic as deals with a so-called problem of necessity. A man gives his customers short weight and adulterated goods because an ungodly competition makes it necessary. Overworks and underpays his employees because industrial rivalry makes it necessary. Lies to forward his business interests because if he does not lie, he can’t compete with his rivals — the lie therefore being necessary.

“Sometimes he says, ‘A man must live,’ not meaning that he is likely to die but that a man must live up to a certain standard of convenience, wealth, and luxury….

“Jesus’ reply to his temptation may properly be regarded a motto for all who face what they choose to call the temptation of necessity. ‘Man does not live by bread alone.’ There are other considerations of higher value than bread. Just the satisfaction of knowing that one has maintained one’s principles, at the cost of bodily hunger and inconvenience, is worth more than the satisfaction of serving one’s appetite.”

[I’ll tell you his concluding thoughts in my next post.]

The Mystery of Christ’s Silent Years

by Ronald R Johnson

The title page from the sermon “The Wilderness,” preached by Lloyd C Douglas at the First Congregational Church of Ann Arbor on 2/15/1920. In Sermons [5], Box 3, Lloyd C. Douglas Papers, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan. © University of Michigan.

“Early in the experience of every person who hopes to live a purposeful life,” says Lloyd Douglas, “there comes a consciousness of an ideal. For almost nobody is too absurdly self-sufficient [not] to understand [with Longfellow] that the ‘Lives of great men all remind us/We can make our lives sublime.’ Whether or not ‘We leave behind us/Footprints on the sands of time,’ is, indeed, quite another matter, depending on a variety of circumstances.”

It is Sunday morning, February 15, 1920, and Douglas is preaching to his congregation of students, professors, and administrators from the University of Michigan, as well as townspeople, at the First Congregational Church of Ann Arbor. (This is filed under Sermons [5], Box 3, Lloyd C. Douglas Papers, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan. © University of Michigan.)

Douglas holds up Christ as the supreme example to follow. In previous weeks he has been talking about how to develop (or, in his words, “discover” and “express”) one’s personality. Today he turns his focus on the Person whom he considers the Ultimate Personality.

“Jesus of Nazareth was but thirty-three years of age when he closed his eventful career, perhaps only thirty-one, and eighteen years of that short life are wrapped in mysterious silence. Of Jesus’ infancy and early childhood there is abundant record, replete with incident and rich in colorful detail.

“Clear-cut as a cameo [a raised sculpture cut out of a gem, in bold relief], the circumstances of his birth stand out in such high relief that all the world feels acquainted with the Babe of Bethlehem. It is as if we might take him in our arms. Every legend of the Nativity is precious. We see Joseph, the Nazarene carpenter, standing sentinel over the Child of promise, and Mary’s transfigured face as, in ecstasy of love, she clasps her little Son to her breast. We watch the shepherds leave their flocks and the sages journey from afar to pay homage at the manger-shrine. We attend the presentation in the temple and are thrilled at the escape from the murderous jealousy of the governor.

“We see him at the age of twelve, in company with his parents, attending the annual Passover feast in Jerusalem where, having contrived to gain admission to the Hall [of Hewn Stones], the lad converses with the doctors of the law on high themes, surprising and bewildering them all with his queries.

“Thus far, it is as if this sublime epic were rendered by a choir in full view, every syllable of the anthem clearly audible. But at this point there is a decided ritard. The choir recedes into its cloister and shuts the door. We hear, now, only the melody of the song as it trails off into a dreamy diminuendo, wordless and indistinct, until presently it is quite beyond the reach of our tensed ears.

“And it is as if a screened picture, presented with brisk action and bright vividness, had begun to lose its sharpness of detail, gradually drawn out of focus, until only one dim figure seems to be moving about: the figure of a growing youth who, as he increased in stature, increased also in favor with God and man. And the picture is too blurred any longer to be seen clearly, and for eighteen years we completely lose sight of him.

“Imagination comes to our aid…”

[Yes; imagination always came to Lloyd Douglas’s aid…]

“…and in fancy we see this stalwart youth embracing every opportunity to acquaint himself with the life of his fellow men. Caravans passed through the little town of Nazareth, and he talked with the travelers about the great world beyond the hills. He learned the duty and dignity of common labor in the little carpenter shop of Joseph. He attended the rabbinical school and became versed in the holy lore of his nation. He endeared himself to the villagers as a great-hearted, magnanimous youth, slow to believe evil, quick to forgive, pure as the snow, sensitive as a flower, in all things fair and above reproach.

“While he waited — waited for the day to come when he might enter upon the unique ministry, the responsibility of which had deepened within his heart as the years passed by. It is now as if the door of the sacristy had opened again. The choir comes forth, in renewal of the epic song. Jesus, the Galilean teacher, is about to enter upon his great commission.”

This is Douglas’s way of introducing the story of Jesus’ temptations in the wilderness. I’ll tell you more about that in my next post.

These Sayings of Mine

by Ronald R Johnson (www.ronaldrjohnson.com)

So far, Douglas had only published books about the ministry, aimed at other ministers. In 1926 he reached out to a wider audience, and he told them about the teachings of Jesus. It was called These Sayings of Mine.

I have read this book several times over the past 25 years, and although there is a lot of good material in it, I sense now, as I did the first time I read it, that this effort fell short of what Douglas was trying to do. He was trying to present Jesus as the answer to the pressing moral and psychological problems of his age, and yet he did little more than make that claim – in many ways, and from a number of angles. He let us know that he thought Christ was the answer, but he didn’t connect the dots for us. He didn’t tell us precisely how Jesus can help us in contemporary times.

The raw materials were there. You can spot them throughout the book. But he had not yet figured out how to put them together into a coherent message.

He wrote that Christ was the Light of the World and that there was no one else in history who spoke like Jesus did or who related to people the way he did. He wrote that, in order to follow Jesus, we need to do the things he taught. He said that our creeds barely touch on Christ’s teachings; and at any rate, reciting creeds about Jesus does not get us any closer to following him, just as electricians would never get anywhere by declaring their belief in Volta or Faraday; they can only generate electricity by doing what Volta or Faraday said.

As to Christ’s teachings themselves, Douglas said that they were directed to different classes of people, depending on their gifts and abilities. He said that Jesus taught us to “launch out into the deep” and “make large demands on life,” recognizing that we have heavy responsibilities. He said that we should be able to sense Christ’s nearness when we’re at our place of employment, but also in our leisure time. This presence would establish a kingdom within us here and now – a domain that would banish fear and motivate us to live by the Golden Rule.

But it was all so vague! He talked around and around the subject but never quite helped his readers to connect. He was trying to convey something that he, himself, hadn’t quite come to terms with, even though he had experienced it in his own life.

When I say that the raw materials were there, I can point out no better example than his comments on the early verses of Matthew 6, in which Christ talks about doing our alms in secret. As I told you in an earlier post, Douglas himself had practiced that for years – so successfully, in fact, that it took me a lot of detective work in order to uncover just one of his secret projects. (See the PDF mentioned at the bottom of this page for more details.) And it had clearly made a difference in his life. But he still hadn’t put the pieces together; he still didn’t understand how to help others experience what he had experienced.

In These Sayings of Mine, he writes:

There is a peculiar psychology involved here which baffles explanation. Do your good deed and keep it a secret. You will achieve a great deal of satisfaction. Tell somebody you did it, and you divide your joy in half. Tell a dozen, and the joy is all gone. Whoever wishes to elucidate this mystery is welcome to the materials. One simply knows that it is true.
These Sayings of Mine, p. 224

Again, after a guy named Jones does a good deed…

All day Jones goes about in a sort of golden mist. Never had he done anything in his life that gave him this particular kind of spiritual satisfaction. In the evening his closest friend and neighbor drops in for a call…. So Jones tells the story; and even while he is telling it, he feels the ecstatic joy of the thing gradually oozing out! Why? Who knows? But it is true. One can depend upon whatever Jesus said about these practical considerations. He was an astute and infallible psychologist.
Ibid., p. 225

We know that Douglas himself wasn’t satisfied with what he wrote here because he ended up writing an entire book about it – a book that remained a bestseller for years and is still in print, almost 100 years later. That book was Douglas’s breakthrough, not because it made him famous but because it helped him put his great idea into words. But I’m getting ahead of the story.

For now, in 1926, Douglas published a book that promised or hinted at what was coming. And it seems to me that there was a particular reason why he wasn’t able to piece it all together yet: because he was still approaching the problem as a minister. He needed more practice thinking about the everyday lives of regular people. And he got it… in some unexpected ways. I’ll tell you about that in the next few posts.

For a free PDF copy of the booklet, The Secret Investment of Lloyd C. Douglas, fill out the form below:

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Lloyd Douglas’s Views on Christ

by Ronald R Johnson (www.ronaldrjohnson.com)

Lloyd Douglas believed that Christian faith ought to be centered on Christ himself. (Note: in the passage I’m about to quote, he uses the word “hypothecated.” He may have meant “predicated,” or perhaps he was thinking about some form of the words “hypothesis” or “hypothetical.” Or maybe he knew exactly what he was doing but the word isn’t used like that anymore; if so, I haven’t found a dictionary that supports his use of that word.) At any rate, as he told his Akron congregation:

You will remember that I have attempted to preach the gospel of a Jesus who presents an ideal portrait of perfect living. I have not hypothecated his divinity on any biological miracle which—instead of distinguishing him—would merely assign him to a place alongside the populous list of saviors whose origins were thought to have been had through miraculous generation. I have not requested you to believe—as actual, veridical facts—the traditional nativity stories. I have preached that he offered himself as our example. And, to be an example for us humans, he would—one thinks—have to live under much the same conditions which surround us.

You have been given full liberty to believe as much or as little as you liked about the magical and mystical element in his recorded career.

If you wanted to believe that he turned water into wine—actually—and thought better of him as a worker of such magic, that was your right, and I hoped you found him greater and more lovable, in your esteem, for having done this strange thing. If you wanted to believe that this was just a poet’s way of singing that Jesus’ personality was so altogether lovely and healing and comforting and comradely, that when he came to their table it was as if the water in their cups had turned to wine—if you wanted to believe that, I saw no reason why you shouldn’t.

If you wanted to believe that he quieted the winds and waves on Galilee, I wanted you to do so—and find your Christ a peace-inspiring power thereby. If you preferred to believe that the magic words he spoke were addressed rather to the troubled hearts of these fishermen, so potently that they became, under his command, greater than their fears, I wanted you to think that!

But I did insist that the Galilean gospel—the Inasmuch declaration [Mt 25:40, 45], the Golden Rule [Mt 7:12], the whole Sermon on the Mount [Mt 5-7]—deserved your full attention and attempted practice.
Lloyd C Douglas, “Five Years of Akron,” in The Living Faith (Boston: Houghton-Mifflin/Riverside Press, 1955)

This was the most important part of Douglas’s theology: his insistence on knowing and following the things Christ taught. On his view, Christians weren’t just people who believed in the biblical accounts of Christ’s miracles. Professing that Jesus was a miracle worker did not imply that anyone would go on to become Christ-like. If one had to choose between the stories about Jesus and the things Jesus taught, then Douglas was on the side of Jesus’ teachings. (It’s debatable whether such a choice has to be made, but Douglas clearly thought so. He said that the miracles distracted us from the really important thing about Jesus: that his words lead to life.)

In fact, Douglas believed that the entire history of Christianity, and especially of the splintering of denominations, was rooted in creeds and formulas that tried to explain who Jesus was. The focus was entirely on talking about Jesus, not on knowing and doing the things he taught.

Douglas saw it as his mission to turn the tide. He wanted to educate his Akron congregation in what he called “Spiritual Culture”: a way of life based on the teachings of Jesus. He believed that this was how people could find God and have, as a permanent possession, the presence and peace and power of God available in every moment of their lives.

He also believed that this way of life was consistent with the modern (and especially scientific) frame of mind. I’ll tell you about that in the next post.

For a free PDF copy of the booklet, The Secret Investment of Lloyd C Douglas, fill out the form below:

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