“Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all they soul, and with all they mind” Mt 22:37 

The most difficult thing in the world is to be truly honest

I am thinking of honesty of motive and purpose, the honesty of mind which will think through a problem and

face a situation without prejudice or bias, an honesty which often involves great mental courage. The path of

courageous, honest thinking through the centuries has been strewn with crosses, stakes, manacles, leg-irons and

other symbols of disapproval. The Cross on Calvary was the answer of that generation to the challenge of a Man

who posited as the first great principle. “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy mind”. The story of

Martin Luther, Joan of Arc, the fate that overcame Ridley and Latimer and others. The struggles of Galileo,

Pasteur, Madame Curie and others, all go to make up a general pattern of man’s inhospitality to new ides and

attempts at honest thinking.

Lets face the uncomfortable fact – Christianity in South Africa today is being weighed in the balances and found wanting for the same fundamental reasons. Our actions are incompatible with honest thinking. We have exposed ourselves to the charge of hypocrisy in that we profess to follow Christ and do not follow His ethic in relation to our fellow men and women. Our final Judge and Arbitrator will not be those whose hands are no cleaner than our own, but the One who will ask, “Where is your brother, and what have you done with him” The bounds of brotherhood and responsibility have already been set by our Lord in the incident of the woman of Samaria, the parable of the Good Samaritan and the story of the visiting Greeks in the Gospel of John chapter 12 and in the scores of actions and attitudes of Christ during His earthly ministry.

Dishonest thinking looks for all kinds of dishonest alibis, but such alibis must reckon with the whole trend of Christian teaching and seek to by-pass Christ Himself. Because thinking with blood and according to prejudice and fear is so strong, this has been attempted many times, even in the astonishing thesis that we may accept the final mind and purpose of God in these matters.

I am reminded of the story told by John Williams of the BBC Religious broadcasting program. There were two medical students studying together in India, one a Christian the other a Hindu, a brilliant scientist. On one occasion the two went to Benares which was crowed with pilgrims, who as part of their religious exercises, were to bathe in the Ganges. In due course the Hindu student bathed with the rest. Afterwards the other student placed a few drops of the river water under the microscope inviting his Hindu friend to examine the slide. The water was found to be teeming with bacilli of cholera and the plague. The Hindu student knew enough to realize that to bathe in such polluted water was to invite trouble. Obviously he had to make a decision. He did. He smashed the microscope and gave up medicine as a career, Whether true or not the moral of the story is abundantly clear.  Here is a man torn between his religion as expressed in certain practices and his knowledge of science. With one half of his mind he knew that bathing in filthy water meant spreading a disease which he as a doctor, was committee to combat. With the other half of his mind he believed that God as he understood Him, expected people to continue this practice of bathing in sacred water, whatever the consequences.  The two ideas were in direct contradiction and so he turned a blind eye to the one and gave up thinking about it anymore.

I leave you to work out this problem for yourself in relation to the context of our life and environment in this country here and now.

But there is one thing that I repeat with all emphasis at my command. We dare not shut our mind to any aspect of truth simply because it is uncomfortable. If we are to worship God at all, if we are to honour and serve Him, then it must be with all our mind, not half of it.

Extract from Rev J.B.Webb.s “More Saturday Talks”