Man's Most Difficult Thinking

Green, in his History of England, demonstrates that man’s most difficult task is thinking in this way. Men seek to ap- pease the wrath of their gods by physical torment. In a frenzy they lash themselves with scourges to win the favor of some god. Sometimes they slash themselves with sharp stones, sometimes they sit on spikes, crawl incredible distances in great suffering, to win the love of their gods.

A moment’s thought would show them that a being that demanded such things of us could not be the Supreme Being. Men carve an image out of wood or shape a stone into some grotesque form. Then they worship as supreme what they them- selves have made.

A moment’s thought would show them that they must be greater themselves than the things they make. “In other words,” Green says, “it is easier to go through untold tor- ment and suffering and endurance than it is to think.” Thomas A. Edison had on the wall of his office these words written by Sir Joshua Reynolds: “Men will resort to every device rather than think.”

There is this saying current in the educational world: “Eighty-five per cent of people never think, ten per cent think they think, five per cent really think.” Yet when you present the truth of God to men that is what you are attempting to get men to do—to think.

Not only so, but you are trying to get men to do the hardest kind of thinking—to think about God and the unseen world, man’s relation to God, the conse- quences of sin, the need of salvation, growth in spiritual things. II. The Christian worker, whatever the form of his serv- ice finds everywhere a surprising ignorance of the ordinary things of life, and still more so in regard to the matters of the spiritual realm. The Christian worker finds that the minds of people in general are chiefly occupied with five ideas.

First, pay time or, When do we get our money? Second, bell time or, When do we stop work- ing?

Third, play time or, How shall we amuse ourselves? Fourth, meal ttme or, When do we eat?

Fifth, bed time or, Let’s go to sleep. There are hundreds of thousands whose lives revolve around the variations of these five ideas. As the Christian worker tries to get an understanding of the people among whom he is working, he is met with ignorance of things one would naturally expect all to know.