JAC Online

Sacrifice in Reasonable Service
by Major Harold Hill

Two true stories

An officer accompanied his young son to school for a teacher/parent interview. The teacher suggested some project the father could do together with his son. The officer was floored when the boy asked, “Is it all right if I get someone else’s father to help; mine would be too busy.”

An old soldier of a country Corps died. The family went and knocked on the Quarters door. The young officer said, “Sorry, I’m on furlough. I’m not able to come.” (It’s OK…The family contacted the previous CO, who drove half-way across the country in order to be with them in their bereavement and conduct the funeral.)

Regarding the first story, we have in the Army a long tradition of the “better to burn out than to rust out” kind.  The Orders and Regulations prescribed suffering as part of the officer’s commitment: “The F.O. must choose not only the Salvation of Souls as the end of his existence, but that suffering, without which they cannot be saved. He embraces not only the end, but the means by which alone this end can be accomplished.”[1] Bramwell Booth confessed in a letter that “This feeling that you are a poor sinner loaded with guilt if you stop work for ten minutes, even in a railway train, is really dreadful.”[2] Most of us received some initial conditioning in Sunday School, when we learned to sing, “Jesus first, myself last, and others in between.” Sometimes family came last, with “myself”, rather than in between, with “others”. So the first story rings true.

Now, looking at the second story, we have a less-trumpeted tradition of this kind too. Mrs General Bramwell Booth, when in charge of the British Territory in the 1920s, was dismayed to learn of an officer who stated that “as a Field Officer she would be in little home where she would be able to rest whenever she desired, and go to meetings occasionally.”[3] Some might characterise that attitude as typical welfare-dependency, or perhaps a public service mentality. I don’t think that’s entirely fair, but I gather that senior officers today may be as frustrated as Mrs Booth at a like reluctance of some officers to be accountable to anyone but themselves for their time or for the discharge of their responsibilities.

You will gather that the particular angle of “sacrifice” I am addressing is that which concerns “the Work”, as “service”. Here we find these two opposite poles, workaholism and laziness – or at least such a clarity about the need for self-care that, as one church-member said of his pastor, “Unfortunately the church doesn’t seem to figure in his ‘core business’.” Organisationally, have we swung from one to the other? Why do some people always need a rev up and others need to slow down? What causes these extremes? How can we maintain a realistic balance between having no boundaries at all and erecting a Maginot Line around the Quarters?

Sacrifices then and now

Once upon a time the sacrifices involved in serving God through the Salvation Army were fairly obvious – poverty, suffering, hardship, persecution were par for the course. You sometimes depended on charity to eat, if you collected enough for the corps expenses but not enough for your allowance as well. Riots and terms of imprisonment were left behind with the nineteenth century, but you were not too highly regarded in the community until the movement had earned a grudging respect through its social work or war service, and you might still endure some name-calling from the rowdy element and a measure of contempt from their betters. There was also the expectation of obedience to superiors, and sometimes a degree of harshness, of arbitrary unfairness, about the administration of the Movement. Of course, that would never happen now, but frustration with the organisation is nothing new. Even the loyal and saintly Brengle confided to his wife in 1912 that

I think probably most of our difficulty at present in this country arises from this multiplicity of details and the infinite red tape with which we are tied up which sap the strength and frustrate the piety of our people… To my mind it is one of the paradoxes of history how the General, with his free, large spirit which refuses to be bound by the mild rules of a Methodist conference, could have developed a system which binds men hand and foot with red tape, which is to Methodist rules what… calculus is to the multiplication table.[4]

Officer-recruitment in the good old days was like Churchill’s famous offer to the British people in 1940; “nothing but blood, toil, tears and sweat”. However, the Salvation Army officer’s boat has risen with all the others on the rising tide; it’s nearly forty years since officers in New Zealand were not virtually guaranteed their allowance. We have come to expect a moderately comfortable middle-class life-style. If we still maintain some of the rhetoric, the reality is a little different. And most, if not all men, think well of us.

So what are the sacrifices asked of officers today? Is there anything which might occasion suffering?

I suspect that most discomfort arises internally, from within the movement itself, both from above and from below. The officer is caught between the upper and the nether millstones, like Hopalong Cassidy in the first moving picture I ever saw. Unfortunately it was just part two of a three-part movie and I never saw the final instalment, so for me Hopalong Cassidy is forever crouching beneath the slowly descending grindstone of a bad injun’s grinding mill…

The “lower” millstone? I suppose there have always been some Salvationist families whose staple Sunday lunchtime fare was roast officer; that won’t have changed. Keeping the peace amongst our comrades in the war remains an onerous responsibility, and the energy expended dodging friendly fire is no longer available for prosecution of the war itself. Perhaps more significant is that in any people-helping role, you cannot have a more than ordinary exposure to a toxic environment of sadness and badness without risking some personal damage.

The “upper” millstone is the expectations of the organisation itself, augmented by the ever-growing burden of compliance fashioned by those who rightly seek to save us from ourselves. This is not a Salvation Army distinctive. Ask any professional person or anyone in the “people-helping” industry. Of the making of forms, all for the best of possible reasons, from Occupational Health and Safety to Statistical Returns, there is no end. Computers have not yet delivered the paperless office, and the officers no longer visit the comrades at home because they are bent over their keyboards far into the night... Mat Badger describes it as “death by paperwork”.[5] The end result is that we continue to kick against the pricks with renewed energy as far as accountability to the organisation is concerned.

Biblical perspective

The Biblical text which most commonly springs to mind as linking the concepts of “sacrifice” and “service” is of course Romans 12:1: “Offer yourselves as a living sacrifice… which is your reasonable service”.

Here we have firstly  the notion of sacrifice, thusia. Sacrifice implies costliness; we remember David saying that “I would not offer to the Lord my God that which costs me nothing.”[6] What is being offered as sacrifice to God is the Christian's whole self; in T.S. Eliot’s words, “costing not less than everything.”[7] Once offered, ownership of what is sacrificed passes into the hands of God. If, as in the feast that followed a temple sacrifice, we get to share the meal, we receive it as God’s gift to us, not as something we own ourselves.

Then we have Paul’s play on the word “service” – latreian  – meaning both cultic worship and the tasks of ordinary servitude. It embraces both the “religious” duties we may discharge, the tasks which maintain the corporate life of the church, and the necessity of doing everything else, our “secular callings”, the “trivial round, the common task”,[8] all in the name of the Lord Jesus.[9] They are all means to worship and glorify God. “Service” reminds us that our faith includes both vertical and horizontal dimensions; both heart to God and hand to man. It is a word rich in prophetic associations, reminding us of Isaiah’s warning that offerings are useless if justice is neglected, of Hosea’s declaration that God requires “mercy and not sacrifice”, of Jesus’ own “inasmuch” parable and his warning that it is not those who merely say “Lord, Lord” who will enter the Kingdom.[10] This is all about “walking the talk”.

Then there is the qualifier, logikon, “reasonable”. (We’ll set on one side the NIV’s “spiritual service” because although the translators have their reasons, frankly, I think they’re wrong. “Spiritual” conveys far too restricted an application.) So, “reasonable”. What is “reasonable” in this context?  Does he mean something like “moderation in all things… Sure, make some sacrifice… just don’t go overboard about it…” I think not. “Intelligent worship” says Philips. “The most sensible way to serve God,” according to the CEV. “Understanding worship” in Cranfield’s phrase. Paul is not referring to “reasonableness” or “rationality” in our modern, colloquial  sense, but as Cranfield puts it, to what would be “consistent with a proper understanding of the truth of God revealed in Jesus Christ.” Logically, given that (the mercy, the grace of God), then this! (our whole-hearted response).

Cranfield sums up: “The intelligent understanding of worship, that is, worship which is consonant with the truth of the gospel, is indeed nothing less than the offering of one’s whole self in the course of one’s concrete living, in one’s inward thoughts, feelings and aspirations, but also in one’s words and deeds.”[11]

Then of course that opening is followed up by Paul’s injunction not to “let the world squeeze you into its mould”, in J.B. Philips’ memorable paraphrase, but to let God  re-mould, transform us from within. And all of this as introduction to, and in the context of, our involvement in the Body of Christ. So although I’m taking that particular text as a springboard, I’m not intending to use it as a “proof text” on which all depends, without context, but as one directing us towards the whole grace-filled Christian life-style implied by the qualifier, “reasonable”.

So what does that mean in practice; what does it involve? And how does it relate to the two poles of workaholism and hyper-self-care illustrated by my opening stories? Living for others and living for myself are both needful, but either, if not balanced by the other, is deeply dangerous. But a whiff of paradox is not uncommonly a sign that a truth lurks nearby, so let us tease it out.

“Living for others” is obviously Biblical. Paul urges that “those who live should no longer live for themselves but only for him who died and was raised to life for their sake.”[12] He also says that “We should not please ourselves. Instead we should all please our brothers for their own good, in order to build them up in the faith.”[13]  He says that we should “look out for one another’s interests, not just your own.”[14] (Note: not “instead of your own”.) To live by these principles, by the power of the Holy Spirit, is a needful and powerful witness to a self-centred and hedonistic society. (Though we remember that countless non-Christians also live or die for causes greater than their own pleasure or self-interest, from the care-giver for a disabled person to the suicide bomber making the ultimate sacrifice.) That side of things is pretty well covered anyway.

At the same time, what about “self-care”? Is that just “another gospel”, derived from pop psychology? No string of supporting texts springs readily to mind here. Perhaps it’s more a matter of inferring what kind of life-style was being enjoined by one who promised not only suffering but an “easy yoke”. Who not only warned of homelessness but emphasised the need not to get stressed out about the things the Gentiles were all uptight over because “your Father knows you need that stuff”. Who was sufficiently sensitive to our lack of self-love that as an update on the second-greatest commandment, “Love your neighbour as yourself”, he proposed “Love one another as I have loved you”. On a merely utilitarian level there’s a case for calling self-care the wise stewardship of God’s resources, but the recognition that we are loved takes it to another level altogether. More than anything else the thread that ran through all Jesus’ teaching and example, the central truth of the Gospel, as Paul’s great insight had it, was “grace”. That is, the undeserved favour of God, independent of merit or earning capacity – the antithesis of Law, and of the slavery to shoulds and oughts to which we are prone. This “grace” is fundamental to, inseparable from, the “truth of the Gospel” to which Cranfield alludes. Self-care is actually integral to that perspective.

Addictive behaviours

Sometimes we get a different message from that, partly because, fairly or not, Paul comes across in his letters as a classic, driven, workaholic. But chiefly because Law is the default position of humanity; and because workaholism is one of the devil’s classic imitations designed to deceive even the elect. No use having a temptation if it doesn’t look a bit like the real thing; a Bangkok market Rolex looks like a Rolex until the gilt wears off. Or it stops. So: love is distorted to lust, gambling demonstrates a parody of faith, low self-esteem masquerades as humility, rescuing presents as care, co-dependence is mistaken for mutuality, hope has been displaced by expectation – workaholism is rewarded as diligence and laziness can hide behind self-care.

So there is a connection between the rhetoric of sacrifice and the phenomenon of resistance to sacrifice in the name of self-care. Both are good things made bad by over-use. Both are addictive behaviours, at opposite ends of a continuum. Both arise from unmet needs for attention and approval, which we attempt to meet in our own ways – whether over-working or under-working – instead trusting in God to meet our needs. Like all addictions, workaholism and laziness are characterised by selfishness and self-centredness, by the using of other people for personal ends. And both consume the one afflicted by them as well as creating a zone of toxicity, hazardous to others. They give rise to one or other of two opposite and equally adverse reactions. One is the “headless chook” syndrome, the revving out of control. The other is the reactive, “tell someone who cares” complex, which brings the wheels to a grinding halt. Both extremes are “unreasonable”, in that both are incompatible with the gospel of grace.

Without a sacrificial commitment to God and the people, the inconsistency between what the Salvation Army claims and what I actually do as a Salvationist soon becomes destructive of my own integrity as well as a disincentive to those who might look to “imitate me as I imitate Christ”[15]. If I’m known as a lazy slob, hardly motivated to countersign the salary cheque if it can possibly be avoided, the word will get around quite soon. The same is true of course if what we model is unhealthily driven and obsessive behaviour. If we have within ourselves a deep and addictive need to be needed, we will run ourselves (and others) ragged, and eventually burn out. And as far as serving either the Lord or others is concerned, that soon becomes counter-productive. People are not silly; nor is God.

This is not beat-ourselves-up time. Of course we are always people of mixed motivation, and our needing to impress our peers, or to please our boss, or to placate our own sense of inferiority, may have to be acknowledged. Any blame and shame we might have taken on from family of origin or absorbed by osmosis from a shame-based society, and the perfectionism of a holiness theology gone sour, are burdens to be laid aside so that they do not get in the way as we address ourselves to the race that lies before us.[16]

The application of “reasonableness”

Which brings me back to Paul’s key word, logikon, “reasonable”; that is, “consistent with the gospel of grace”, in Cranfield’s exegesis. If you like, that is the fly-wheel on the engine of sacrifice, the weight of which not only helps keep the engine turning but also prevents it from revving out of control.

So, what would be “consistent with the gospel”, and by what means might that be secured as our “default setting”, instead of being the unattainable ideal of over-responsibility on the one hand, or a complete discarding of responsibility on the other? A proper application of “reasonable” is the answer. That is, bringing our needs to the only one who can meet them, a transforming experience of grace; a conversion from self-salvation, to trust in the love of God. Grace sets us free from the need to earn brownie points and free to get stuck into the job. And that attitudinal change can be followed up by (1) on-going, practical measures taken to ensure accountability, with appropriate supports (which are all part of being part of the Body in the world), and (2) an on-going, deepening, personal relationship with Jesus (which goes on transforming from within).