“And Jacob awaked out of his sleep, and he said,

Surely the Lord is in this place; and I knew it not”

(Genesis 28:16)

At the door after service one Sunday morning, I was surprised at one worshiper’s frank remark: “You were talking to me this morning, preacher. That’s my problem — compromise. But you preachers just get after us for compromising our Christian convictions and conduct, but you don’t ever tell us how we can keep from compromising. Why don’t you do that sometime?”

Now, I liked that. It took my breath away, but I liked it. It’s always wholesome when the pew talks back to the pulpit with constructive suggestions. And difficult though my friend’s challenge is, that is just what I hope we can attempt: to discover what we all need to do to keep from compromising, to chart, if we can, some of the practical steps for people such as we are that will safeguard us from cheap and cowardly compromise.

The first thing we need to do is take stock of who we are, what sort of people we are, to determine why compromise is such a problem with all of us. An honest appraisal of the average Christian man and woman among us will reveal each of us to be a person of good intentions, but weak and fickle-hearted and hounded by strong temptations before which we fall in defeat, over and over. If we are honest with ourselves, we have to admit that there is a pretty even mixture of the evil and the good, the holy and the devilish desires rising within these hearts of ours.

Our human nature, yours and mine, is not much better or worse than that which Jesus gathered about himself in those first twelve disciples. In his book Saints without Halos, Alvin Magary speaks of Jesus on that night of his trial in the high priest’s house as “the Embarrassed Messiah.” Why embarrassed? Jesus was firm and courageous before his questioner. What was Jesus embarrassed about? Well, you see, the high priest asked about his disciples, among other things. The gospel record reads: “The high priest then asked Jesus of his disciples, and of his doctrine.” And the record shows Jesus talked about his doctrine, but said not a word about his disciples. What reason Jesus had to be embarrassed about them!

There were James and John, those jealous-hearted brothers. The last Jesus had seen of them they had turned the final fellowship supper that love had prepared into a wrangle over who was to come first in honor. And there was Peter, the Rock, who boasted so loudly of his brave devotion. When Jesus had mentioned the possibility of his backsliding, Peter had said, “Not me, Lord. Though all the world should forsake you, yet will I not forsake you.” And now Jesus could see out of the corner of his eye the same Peter (or was he the same?) cozily warming himself at the enemy’s fire and shaking his head and sternly saying to a serving maid, “I tell you I don’t even know the man.” The three Jesus had asked to watch while he prayed in dark Geth­semane had fallen asleep. And then there was Judas, whom Jesus had loved and called and lived with for three years, gone for good now and whose betrayal was at the bottom of all this dark business. And the other disciples, where were they? Heaven only knows. At the first show of armed opposition they had scattered like frightened chickens.

Yes, when the high priest asked Jesus to tell him of his disciples, the Savior dropped his head in an embarrassed silence. And how often he must be embarrassed when the world is asking about the astonishing compromise we, his Christian disciples, make today. For we are just like they were — weak, vacillating folk, however well-intentioned we may be, so quick to forsake him and follow our own selfish ambitions or our inherited traditions and cultural patterns.

And what does all this add up to? Why, that we need help, of course. We compromise our Christian convictions and conduct because the balance in our lives is so easily tipped in the wrong direction. To remain strong and steadfast, resolute and constant before all temptations to compromise, we need an amazing amount of help. In our own strength alone we’re doomed.

Even Saint Paul says this. If the disciples stood in need of outside help, surely we do, too. That help is of Christ who transformed the disciples’ lives and can do the same with us, if we will let him.

Now, the next thing we need to see in our consideration of how to keep from compromising our Christian faith and action is this (and it may be a bit of a surprise for us): that ours is not so much a problem of strengthening the armor of our righteousness as of tightening the cord of our love.

There is the scriptural example of Peter denying his Lord. In the high priest’s house that fearful night, the pressure of a hostile society was too much for Peter’s ideals and his pledged loyalties, and the blustering disciple compromised so shamefully. “No, I don’t know him,” he said angrily with an oath to the maid. “I never knew him.”

But later on the lakeshore, when Jesus had come victoriously through the Crucifixion and the Resurrection, see how the risen Lord deals with Peter’s weak compromise. See them there in the dim, cold light of the early dawn, the morning mists rising like smoke about them, and Peter with his tormented conscience hanging his head before his approaching Lord. And Jesus? What does he say? Does he shame the culprit by saying, “How could you do it, Peter, after all we’ve been through together?” Does he begin to point out the weakness of Peter’s faith? Does he upbraid him for his lack of courage to hold out alone for righteousness when the right was overwhelm­ingly outnumbered? No! Jesus comes to the penitent Peter with just one question, “Peter, do you love me?” That’s all he says. “Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou me more than these?” But oh, how fundamental, how incisive is that question: “Peter, where is your heart? What are the emotional bases of your life? Do you really love me more than all these other things in your life?”

Psychology tells us that when there is a conflict between the will and the emotions, the emotions will always win the battle. “To what are the ultimate love, loyalty, allegiance of your life pledged? Peter, do you love me?”

In this business of compromise as it plagues our lives — when we see how we’ve slipped, when a survey of our lives reveals the same sorry pattern of Peter warming himself before the enemy’s fire in the high priest’s house as the Prince of Light was under trial and unpopular and the powers of darkness were in the ascendancy — the thing we must come back to discover why we compromised is to ask ourselves, “What do I really love?” Then if love and desires are weak where they should be strong, do something to strengthen them.

Simon Peter, searching his heart, found love, though wavering, still there. “Yea, Lord; thou knowest that I love thee.” Peter’s problem is ours. If we would not compromise, we must find some way to nourish that love and make it grow stronger in a hostile world.

And that brings us to this important junction, what we all know so well and apply so poorly: The ties of affection and devotion are strengthened by daily association; they are weakened and destroyed by long seasons of separation and neglect. Modern lovers have given the lie to the old adage, Absence makes the heart grow fonder, by adding that realistic phrase, For somebody else.

What have the saints of all the ages done to build the battlements of their lives against the destroying forces of this world that would pull them down in cowardly compromise? This they have done: Whatever experience of God they had in their lives, they held on to it. They ringed it round with sanctities. They returned to it day after day as to a shrine.

Jacob at Bethel, where he saw the shining ladder to heaven and the angels going up and down in solemn cadence, rose from his dream and set up a stone pillar to mark that place in his life as the very house of God. Later at Peniel, Jacob had another shaking encounter with God. Over and over through his life, Jacob made the actual or spiritual pilgrimage to these experiences. Something from God had been added to his life, and he wanted to hold on to it. He never let it go.

Four times in the New Testament there pops up the account of Paul’s conversion on the road to Damascus. Why? Wouldn’t one telling do the job? The account recurs because Paul is always telling and retelling it. This experience of the living Christ changed the direction of Paul’s life, and if he was to be kept on that straight course, Paul felt the need of frequent recurrence to that hallowed event.

Sewn in the lining of the coat worn by Blaise Pascal at the time of the philosopher’s death a piece of parchment was found. On the parchment, written in Pascal’s own hand, were these words: “In the year of Grace, 1654, On Monday, 23d of November .… From about half past ten in the evening until about half past twelve, FIRE. God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob, not of the philosophers and scholars. Certitude. Certitude. Feeling. Joy. Peace. God of Jesus Christ.” Pascal called it his “Memorial.” It was the record of a moving spiritual experience in the life of Blaise Pascal. For at least eight years, from the time of this experience of the reality of God and communion with him, Pascal had taken care to sew and unsew the parchment in the lining each time he changed his coat. Pascal always carried this memorial with him, so that in a moment of wavering faith, he could touch it, recall the exalted experience, and be renewed in love, loyalty, and strength.

During my pastorate at Grace Covenant Church in Richmond, Virginia, one of the ushers of the church brought to me a Bible that he had found in a pew rack in the balcony. He opened it and pointed to what he had just discovered written on the flyleaf. I saw there, written in pencil and signed by some person unknown to me, these words:

Sitting in church this Sunday, October 24, 1939, I suddenly felt a great faith come over me. In a blinding flash of light I saw suddenly that the way of life I was following led to perdition. I wish to record this so when I return to this church ten years from today as I have sworn to do, a new man, a pillar of society and of the church, a friend of the underdog, and a true Christian in all respects, I will be reminded of the most eventful day of my life and the hour that changed the whole course of events for me.

What does all this business mean — Jacob at Bethel, Paul on the road to Damascus, Pascal’s memorial, the unknown worshiper at Grace Covenant? Just this: Whenever they have an experience of God, people, instinctively knowing their own weakness and the distractions and temptations of life, seek to set up some sort of memorial to which they can return and replenish the fires of faith and devotion.

How important to preserve a nation as free, independent, and noble is the observance of Memorial Day, when a people’s heroic defenders are remembered and honored. How indispensable to the individual Christian to remember his or her closest, most vivid encounters with the Eternal God.

What experience of God have you and I had in our lives? What have we done, or are we doing, to keep that experience real, insistent, in the warfare between heaven and hell that rages daily in our souls? Well, what are we doing, you and I, day by day, week by week, to keep in Christ’s company, to live and move and have our being so really in his presence that the living Christ may have a chance to strengthen the bonds of our devotion that gird our lives to him? What are we doing? It is here that we lose or win the battle against cowardly compromise. In the words of the hymn:

I bind my heart this tide

To the Galilean’s side,

To the wounds of Calvary,

To the Christ who died for me.