Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings St. Louis, Missouri — 1958, Page 25

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Lutheran Synodical Conference, 1958 25

that matter on the street corners or from the housetops, if the
need arises.

The second great sphere of church activity in this division is
witnessing, better named living, that is, being witnesses to Christ
by what we do rather than by what we say, although saying of
course can still play a part. Emerson’s famous statement, “What
you are speaks so loud I cannot hear what you say,” applies here.
The Greek word for witness is martureo, from which comes our
word martyr, one who dies for his religion. If we are in the work
of the church we must know how to combine kindness and toler-
ance with firmness and certainty. The man who has no charity is
like a tinkling cymbal, and the man who has no standards is like
a reed shaken by the wind.

Witnessing by living is creative work and never ceases during
life. Just as a sculptor will hew an impressive figure out of a block
of stone by virtue of his artistic power, so a Christian will trans-
form that block of stone, the old Adam within him, by virtue of
the creative power given him with the Spirit. He will chip away
the heavy masses of sin, the sharp edges of desire until gradually
the nobler man of the spirit, “the measure of the stature of the
fullness of Christ,” stands revealed. “As thy days, so shall thy
strength be.” How few Christians advance so far on the road of
witness-ship or sanctification?

This witness by living can be done in many ways, and it can
be done in the wrong way. The minute we brag about ourselves
or acquire habits of self-advertisement and self-aggrandizement,
we are spoiling the good thing. On the other hand, a kind of re-
verse pride in deliberately hiding our light under a bushel or
disdainfully making it a point not to demonstrate our faith can
be even worse. It is a real task to maintain the golden mean in
witnessing — between eagerness and dignity, between enthusiasm
and reverence, between modesty and self-confidence. To know that
we may be the channels through whom Christ pours supernatural
help and strength upon His people is at once a sobering and
a challenging fact. It raises the call to witness-ship to the level
that Christ gave it when He made it part of His farewell on the
day of Ascension: “After that the Holy Ghost is come upon
you... ye shall be witnesses unto Me both in Jerusalem and in all
Judea and in Samaria and unto the uttermost part of the earth.”
Judea, the circle of sympathy, as the late James Moffatt so aptly
put it; Samaria, the circle of antipathy; and the uttermost parts
of the earth, the circle of apathy! We witness by living whether
we are among friends, enemies, strangers, or alone with ourselves,

Now one would think that there couldn’t be too much active
Christianity. Yet it also has its pitfalls. For one thing, let us
remember Augustine’s warning: “No man has a right to be so
immersed in active life as to neglect the contemplation of God.”
Foreigners have often called Americans activists. Bernard Shaw
said it more colorfully: Americans are like mice in oxygen. The
curse of too much activism is shallowness and aimlessness. The
thoroughgoing activist often finds himself in the position of the
young man who jumped on his horse and rode off furiously in all
directions. He acts just in order to be doing something, without
investigating whether the action is necessary or beneficial or