The notion has got around, somehow, that the Christian Church is in the business of cramming down folks throats a batch of indigestible dogma about Jesus, the God-man, “Who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, et cetera, et cetera.”

“Of course,” so this popular notion goes, “It is all unbelievable, fairy-story stuff, which couldn’t be of any possible use to you in this life. In fact, it is a bit crazy and disconnected from this world’s cold practicalities.”

“But, the only way to get to heaven is to hold your nose and shut your eyes and swallow big. It tastes bad going down, and you can’t see the reason for it, but when its all over you will be glad you swallowed this dose of dogma, for here is the cure for your sin-sickness and here is your passport to heaven.”

Well, nothing could be more of a distortion than this popular notion about church dogma and the church’s business with it.

For first of all, let it be said as positively as possible, that dogma of any kind and every kind inside the church and outside of it is not irrelevant, but crucial in our kind of world. Dogma is belief. All ideas about the meaning and value of human existence are dogma. Any belief you hold to as true, any creed that controls your conduct is dogma.

Now it has become almost trite to say that the ultimate field of battle in our time is the mind of man. General MacArthur at the Japanese surrender put it this way: “The conflict is basically theological.” Dorothy Sayers in 1949 said it this way: “The people who say that this is a war of economics or of power-politics are only dabbling about the surface of things. At bottom it is a violent and irreconcilable quarrel about the nature of the universe, it is a war of dogma.” President Eisenhower, in his farewell address to the nation the other day, put the same thought still another way when he warned that America must beware of handing over the ultimate decisions in our national destiny to either the scientists or the military leaders.

The real struggle of these apocalyptic times is in the area of men’s minds. Munitions and missiles, though important in their places, are no defense against ideas, values, ideologies, principles of belief. Abraham Lincoln said: “You can’t shoot sense or religion into a man any more than you can beat daylight into a cellar with a club.”

“So, in this crucial struggle now going on in the world,” says Dr. William Elliott of Dallas, Texas, “our weapons must be largely mental and spiritual if we are to win. Then it matters, and matters terribly, what men believe and think.” Dogma is the ultimate source of all human dynamics.

Then let it be said, in the second place and just as positively, that the dogma of the church regarding Jesus Christ as the God-man, the revealer of ultimate reality, is not unbelievable nonsense, nor irrelevant gibberish about other-worldly unrealities, but hard core imperishable truth about time and eternity.

“Zona Gale has a story about two tadpoles. One believed that there was a world vaster than their little puddle. But the other mocked: it was folly to believe in a world of men who could change and destroy that eternal puddle.” (Interpreters Bible)

The Marxist communist insists that the whole world of reality is summed up in this material universe. Man must make his own heaven here through his own efforts by controlling justly human society and distributing fairly this world’s goods to all. Talk of spiritual realities beyond is just bilge-wash to the doctrinaire communist.

Jesus Christ came into the world proclaiming that there is a realm of reality beyond and above this tangible, visible, material world. He taught that this realm is also a possibility for man’s exploration, enjoyment, and habitation. “There’s another puddle,” he announces to the pollywog that is man. “I’ve been there and I’m constantly in touch with it, and I’ll tell you about it and lead you there, if you will follow me.” To profess the Christian faith is simply to put confidence in the testimony of Jesus about ultimate reality.

Why did everyone get so excited last week over the seizure of the Santa Maria in the Caribbean? A few men overpowered the crew on a small Portuguese cruise ship and the news of the adventure pushed Castro and Kruschev and the newly inaugurated president of the United States off the front page. Why?

Was it because the episode called to remembrance the colorful days of the buccaneers on the Spanish Main? Perhaps that was some of it, but wasn’t the principal reason we all were immediately and intensely interested in the Santa Maria because here was evidence that ours is an open world, that the unusual and exciting can happen even in our kind of a world?

Well, the Christian is just the one who believes that this universe is open not only to man’s intention, but to the purposes of the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Yes, and the world has never got over, and praise God, it never will get over the glorious excitement occasioned among men by that one who came into our bourne of time and place proclaiming that the kingdom of God had come, that God had broken through into human life and human history, that ours really is a many storied universe.

Let it also be solidly affirmed that what Jesus taught was not sentimental, impractical ideas and ethics, having to do entirely with a never-never land, but rather the hard core of eternal reality which will stand when the rocks of this globe have been melted with fervent heat and the skies are rolled up like a window shade. Yes, and more, the whole world is beginning to perceive that His pronouncements about the Father’s Kingdom which is both beyond and above, but which is also impinging on our world today, are really the imperative blueprints for our world here tomorrow, if we are to have a world tomorrow.

Take for example, His Beatitudes. J. B. Phillips has suggested that the worldly practical beatitudes would run something like this:

Happy are the pushers, for they get on in the world.

Happy are the hard-boiled, for they never let life hurt them.

Happy are they who complain, for they get their own way in the end.

Happy are the blasé, for they never worry over their sins.

Happy are the slave drivers, for they get results.

Happy are the knowledgeable men of the world, for they know their way around.

Happy are the troublemakers, for they make people take notice of them.

These have been the wise maxims by which we have run ourselves to the brink of hell.

But what did Jesus say? In the way we would talk today his ideas are something like this:

Happy are the humble-minded, for they already belong to our Kingdom of Heaven.

Happy are those who know what sorrow means, for they will be given courage and comfort.

Happy are those who claim nothing, for the whole earth will belong to them.

Happy are those who are hungry and thirsty for goodness, for they will be fully satisfied.

Happy are the kindhearted, for they will have kindness shown to them.

Happy are the pure in heart, for they will see God.

Happy are those who make peace, for they will be known as sons of God.

And aren’t the wise planners and plotters of family life and our cities and nations saying to us today that we’ve little time left to follow these blueprints of Jesus’ eternal Kingdom in structuring our life here, or our kind of a world will be thrown on the cosmic junk heap?

Finally, let it be said that the central assertion of the Christian dogma is that Jesus Christ reveals, in his life and teachings and death, that the ultimate reality of the universe is a waiting Father’s love; just that, and that this is the only key that will unlock the mystery of this broken, evil, tragic world.

The father of a boy lost with an Air Force plane over the North Atlantic said: “ I have to believe that there is a plan — that this somehow fits into that Eternal Plan — I don’t know how, or else I couldn’t go on.”

1. H. Oldham says that for him “to believe in Christ is identical with believing that love is the ultimate meaning of life.”

When the old Redpath Chataqua circuit would bring entertainment to our town in the leisurely summer of my boyhood, one oft-repeated favorite was a play about romantic love during the First World War. It portrayed the love of a man and a woman which neither separation, nor warfare, nor crippling, nor blindness, nor the feebleness of encroaching years could destroy, but rather grew the grander in warmth and intensity. The popular song which went with the play carried the theme of “two eyes of blue which came smiling through — smiling through the years.”

Well, the whole creed of Christendom is summed up in the belief that in Christ God is focused for us in human form, so that we can see that smiling through all the years for us there are a Father’s eyes upon us and a waiting Father’s arms outstretched to us, and the most blessed of all beatitudes is being pronounced upon us. “Blessed are the homesick, for they shall come home.”

So, it matters terrifically what men think about Jesus Christ. The set of their souls is determined by it; the institutions they build are founded upon it; the history they enact is directed by it; the lives they live are sustained or blasted by it.

“Whom do men say that I am?” Jesus asked his disciples. And when they told him, He put the question squarely to them: “But whom say ye that I am?”

Well, what about you? What think you of Christ?

Today it is not the theologians only, but the scientists, the sociologists, the psychiatrists, who are telling us that the commodity for want of which our contemporary world is perishing is love. Psychiatrists affirm that the basic cause of mental illness is lovelessness.

Experts in child psychology say that their studies reveal that insecurity in the lives of the smallest of children may later result in all sorts of mal-adjustments in the life of the mature adult. They further avow that their studies prove it is emotional security, rather than physical or economic security the young child needs most. Human nature is so constructed by its creator that what it needs for coming to fullest flower is the assurance of love.