Because God Comes In...When Man Listens

Because God Comes In…When Man Listens by Cecil Rose for The Oxford Group

One of the representatives of Great Britain at the Washington Conference in 1922, after leaving the Conference temporarily to carry out official duties in Canada, felt guided to return to Washington and look into the matter of ‘a clause in the Pacific Treaty. He arrived just in time to give the necessary help in producing the final draft of a clause which has worked out satisfactorily ever since. He introduced into world politics a principle which will eventually destroy the old diplomacy, and replace international bargaining by God’s control of world affairs.

Those who know the industrial North will realize how the protracted efforts to reorganize the cotton industry have been slowed again and again by the difficulty in getting all parties to suit their own interests and points of view. Earlier this year in Denmark, nine textile manufacturers sought together in quiet and prayer God’s scheme of reorganization for their industry. They began a revolution in industrial affairs.

A departmental manager of a large industrial concern in the North of England began to listen to God. A dispute between himself and the employees in his department threatened to end in a strike. He considered the question in the new light of God’s Plan, and listened to God’s guidance. A possible solution came to his mind. He suggested it to the men, who welcomed it. ‘We have never reached an agreement so quickly before, in fifteen years of negotiation,’ said the men’s representative, a prominent Trade Union leader. A revolution in the relationships of employer and employee had begun.

When men do such things anything can happen, because God comes in. And the only alternative to violent revolution which will shatter the structure of a society that fails to supply the human needs, or respect the human rights of so many of its members, is a Divine re-creation of society which outdoes in thoroughness and outpaces in speed anything which violence can achieve. Such a revolution begins in the personal revolution of surrendering the whole of life and all its business to God’s control.

Why, it may be asked, has Christianity so far failed in our generation to produce this revolution in society, and has consequently left the field open for revolution by violence?

Our obedience has not gone far enough, either in extent or cost.

Too often, men and women have come into an initial experience of God which has liberated them from their more obvious sins, but has left them tied still to their social environment and to their own unrecognized sins. They have taken part of their new life from their new Lord, but have continued to draw heavily on the conventional ideas and standards of their social or business world in the ordering of their conduct. They have renounced, it may be, sins of the flesh and the habits about which they were already uneasy in conscience, but have continued under the domination of their fears, their desire for security, their love of comfort, and their selfish independence of others. They did let God over their front doorstep, but kept Him standing in the vestibule.

Christian revolution begins when a man is really willing for God to displace everything but Himself from a share in the control of life–tradition, accepted social and business standards, preconceived ideas, human ties which hinder us, our fears, our comfort, and everything else which has in the past dictated our actions. A business girl secures a change in the wages and working conditions of the rest of the staff, because she is no longer afraid to lose her job by stating the employees’ case. A Dutch manufacturer invents a new form of incendiary bomb, for which he is offered a large sum of money. After meeting the Oxford Group at a house party in Switzerland, he is guided to destroy the formula. Though in great need of money, he obeys. Another man, retired and looking forward to more leisured days, sees that God needs his leisure. He sells his home, so that he may be free to go anywhere and do anything under God’s orders. These are the men and women who start a revolution, because they are free from all ties except the will of God.