A salesman who was growing more and more nervous
about his travel by air went one day to see a statistician.
"Can you tell me what the odds would be against my
boarding an aircraft on which somebody had hidden a bomb?"
he asked. He replied, "I can't tell you until I've
analyzed the available data. Come back again in a week."
The next week the worried salesman returned and asked if
the answer was ready. "Yes," said the statistician, "the
odds are one million to one against you getting on an aircraft
with one bomb on it." "Those are good odds," said the
salesman, "but I'm not sure they are good enough for me. I
travel a good deal." "Well then, if you really want to be
safe, "The statistician counseled, "carry a bomb with you.
My calculations indicate the odds are one billion to one
against your boarding an aircraft with two bombs on it."
This is obviously crazy advice, but the statistics are
correct and they reveal how you can prove anything with
statistics. The jump of the odds from one million to one
billion also points out what a radical difference there can be
between one and two. Upon close examination we find the
most radical transition anywhere is the jump from one to
two.
Elton Trueblood, the outstanding Quaker theologian,
points out some things of interest here. He says that the step
from two to three is relatively slight, but the step from one to
two is enormous. Why? Because when you go from two to
three you are going from one degree of plurality to another,
but when you go from one to two you leapt out of one
category into another totally different, not only in degree but
in kind, for you leap from singularity into to plurality. For
example, if a man has two or three wives or any number
beyond this he remains in the same class-he is a polygamist.
But if he has one wife he is a monogamist. To go from one to
two is a change in class, but to go from two to any other
number is only a change of degree within the same class. To
go from two to any other number is just a change in
quantity, but to go from one to two is a change in quality.
One is the most unique of all numbers, not only because it
is the beginning of numbers, but because it represents a class
all it's own. Singularity refers to one, and one only, but
plurality refers to all the rest from two to infinity.
Trueblood says, "There is more essential difference between
one and two then there is between two and a million." This
is more than an interesting fact of mathematics, it is an
important theological truth. One is the great theological
number, for ultimates are characterized by singularity, and
they call for undivided concentrated commitment. Paul in
Eph. 4 says, "There is one body and one Spirit, just as you
were called to the one hope that belongs to your call, one
Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of us
all..."
Christianity is characterized by oneness, and we find this
is also central in the Old Testament. The most basic text of
Judaism is Deut. 6:4, "Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is
one Lord." One God is the foundational doctrine of the
Bible, and that is why commandment number one deals with
the fundamental issue of oneness. God prohibits a plurality
of gods and demands singular and concentrated devotion to
Himself. No other category but oneness is acceptable. He
will tolerate nothing but that unique class of number one.
The Old Testament emphasis is on the prohibition of
polytheism. The New Testament emphasis is on the positive
concentrated devotion to the one God. Both have the same
goal, but before one can concentrate he has to get rid of his
divisive loyalties. Let's look first at the Old Testament
emphasis which-
I. PROHIBITS COMPOUND DEVOTION:
It might be hard for us to conceive in this day of growing atheism and
anti-religious attitudes, but one of man's basic problems has
always been that he is too religious. Man's tendency has
always been to believe too much rather than too little. The
result is, his religion distorts all of reality and becomes a vice
rather than a virtue. Doctor John Baillie says, "A pagan is
not a man who does not believe in and worship deity, but a
man who believes in and worships too many deities." The
pagan is too religious. He has no unity of life, but is a
shambles of disunity, tossed about by fears and uncertainty.
He is at the mercy of gods everywhere, and never knows for
sure how to placate them or gain their favor.
Paul in Rom. 1 says that one of the worst curses that ever
befell man was when God gave them up to worship their
manifold gods. As too many cooks spoil the soup, so too
many gods spoil life. When you have gods galore and even
more, your devotions are divided. There is no basis for unity
in the individual or society. Chaos reigns within and
without. Every man creates his God in his own image. Too
much religion can be more of an enemy to mans unity than
no religion.
The Jews came out of Egypt where there were many gods,
and they were headed for Canaan where there were many
gods. The only hope for Israel to become a unified nation
was to prohibit them from giving devotion to the plurality of
gods they would encounter. Even two gods is one too many,
for it divides man, and man cannot be divided in his
ultimate loyalties and be happy. Jesus said that we cannot
serve God and mammon. You will love the one and hate the
other he said. A compound ultimate devotion is a
psychological impossibility.
This is a universe and not a multiverse. The planets
revolve around a single Sun, and so it must be with man. He
cannot have a duel or plural center and be happy. He must
have a single center, a single devotion, a single God.
Oneness is the only category into which ultimate value will
fit. Science confirms monotheism by revealing the unity of
all creation. There is only one Creator of this unity, for all
is regulated by one system of law.
Now you might think that this commandment is not
relevant for our day. The choice now is not between one
God and many, but between one God and none. Atheism
and not polytheism is the great competitor for mans loyalty
today. Gods Word prohibits the jump from one to two, and
God demands that His people reduce their devotion to one
God, but the atheist wants to reduce even further and have
no God at all. Even one is one too many for them. But
atheism is really only a subtle move to get back to polytheism.
Even the atheist and unbeliever has values
which become the object of his highest devotion. For some it
is the state, or money, or pleasure, or power, or fame, but
every man has his gods, and if he does not have one, and one
only, he will have several. Oneness alone is ultimate, and if
man goes either way, ahead to two or more, or back to none,
he opens himself up to an infinite number of gods. No God
and many gods leave a man in the same boat. Atheism and
polytheism both leave men empty, for neither provides for
an ultimate loyalty. Man only rejects the one true God
because of his foolish desire for a plurality of gods, and this
is as true today as it was in the ancient world, and it leads to
the same problem of lack of unity.
Civilized men in America are polytheist and their
broadminded message is, "All gods are the true god, and
everyone is a prophet." Everyone makes his own god in his
own image. The effect of this plurality of gods demanding
devotion is the same as it has always been. There is a
breakdown in unity, a loss of standards of morality, and it is
every man for himself. There is no longer a single voice to
follow, but a host of voices calling men to go different
directions. Man's nature cannot stand this disunity,
however, and so there is a desperate effort to find a cause
that will satisfy the craving for oneness. Man needs oneness
even if he rejects the oneness of God. He searches for a
single ultimate loyalty to which he can give undivided
devotion. Conrad Aikin in Time In The Rock, expressed the
mind of those caught in the whirlpool of plurality, but
recognizing the need for a single cause to give life unity and
meaning-
We need a theme! Than let that be our theme:
That we, poor grovellers between faith and doubt,
The sun and north star lost, and compass out,
The heart's engine all but stopped, the time
Timeless in this chaos of our wills
That we must ask a theme, something to think,
Something to say, between dawn and dark,
Something to hold to, something to love.
Man's very nature cries out for a single ultimate
loyalty--something to hold too, something to love.
The First Commandment is God's merciful attempt to
help man avoid the painful search for a way out of the
darkness and despair of a plurality of devotions, to the light
and love of a single devotion. Even with this prohibition,
however, Israel failed time and time again before she learned
the truth stated by H. G. Wells, "Until a man has found God
he begins at no beginning, and works to no end." After
much suffering for disobedience, Israel finally did forsake all
other gods, and escaped the disunity of compound devotion.
So when we come to the New Testament we see Jesus
emphasizing the positive aspect of the First Commandment
which-
II. PROMOTES CONCENTRATED DEVOTION:
Jesus said the First Commandment is that we are to love
God with all our hearts, minds, and soul. The negative
aspect of the command is its exclusiveness. It excludes all
other gods and demands that they be eliminated. Positively,
it is an inclusive commandment, for it calls not for just one
aspect of our devotion, but for all aspects of it. It demands
that the plurality of our nature be united in an undivided
concentrated devotion. Our whole nature is to be united
around the oneness of God.
One God, one law, one element,
And one far-off divine event
To which the whole creation moves.
Concentrated devotion is the fundamental principle
necessary for all success. That is why it is the First
Commandment. If we do not start here we will get nowhere.
God knows that concentration is essential and that none will
be able to keep His law and be pleasing to Him if they do not
acquire the singleness of devotion required by this First
Commandment.
If a man cannot have a concentrated devotion to one
God, how can it be expected that he will be able to be
committed to lesser loyalties? A man who fails to obey the
First Commandment is likely to break all the rest, for they
are a unity and all depend on the first. Jesus taught that if
we love God with all of our nature the rest of the
commandments will fall into place and be fulfilled in love. A
small boy reading a well-known hymn read it wrong, but the
wrong reading was still a basic truth. He read, "take my life
and let it be concentrated Lord on thee." Emerson said,
"The one prudence in life is concentration, the one evil is
dissipation."
Vance Havner, like many others, is convinced that the
weakness of Christians today is the result of their dissipated
devotion. He writes, "there are not a few saints today who
spread themselves out too thinly. They are taken up with so
many good concerns that too many irons are in the fire.
They attack along a front so long that they never advance
anywhere. They would do more if they did less." Aaron
Crane, and efficiency expert wrote, "the mind cannot
successfully attend to two things at once, for a part of the
mind can never accomplish as much as the whole, and
divided attention always causes inefficiency in some
direction." That is why Paul said, "this one thing I do," and
not these twenty things I dabble at.
God is the greatest efficiency expert and that is why He
demands concentrated devotion. He knows that a divided
devotion creates an unstable life. A young man was
proposing to his girlfriend and he said, "I am not wealthy
like Jerome, and I don't have a yacht and convertible like
Jerome, but my darling I love you." The girl responded, "I
love you too, but tell me more about this Jerome." She had
a divided devotion, and when you offer a divided devotion
you offer a mutilated devotion, and we do not want that kind
of devotion even on the human level. How much less does
God want it? His nature demands the whole of our devotion
and so does our happiness.
During the Civil War the Southern States kept making
offers to Lincoln. They offered to give up more and more
territory if the rest would be allowed to remain independent.
Lincoln, however, met each new offer with refusal, and at a
Conference he placed his hand on a map so as to cover all
the Southern States, and gave this ultimatum, "Gentlemen,
this government must have the whole." Lincoln demanded
total unity with no exception. "A nation divided against
itself cannot stand," he said, and God says the same of the
soul. A soul divided in its loyalties cannot stand, and that it
why He demands that our devotion be concentrated on one
God--Himself.
Arthur Sweltz in New Directions From The Ten
Commandments, tells about the movie, Save The Tiger.
Jack Lemmon plays the role of a man who lived during
World War II. He accepted good and bad in life as his
parents had and their parents before them. Now he feels
lost, however, for the routine of life had been shattered. He
says, "There are not rules anymore, just referees."
Everything is relative, but relative to what? He had lost his
foundation and life becomes very insecure without a
foundation. That is why God gave man this First
Commandment. He begins his letter to His
people--exclusively yours. He does this, not only because He
is the only God, but also because the gods those men invent
rob them of the freedom they were meant to enjoy. In a
maze there are many ways to go, but only one leads to
freedom. God in this First Commandment is putting up a
sign, which says, in the maze of life this is the way to go.
He does not do it to make life limited, but just the opposite, to
prevent men from dead ends, and lead them to freedom.
Man has only two choices--he can follow the God who made
him, or follow the gods he makes. The one leads to life and
freedom, and the other to bondage and death.
This First Commandment is a law of love, for God knows
we cannot be happy in split-level living with dual or multiple
gods demanding our devotion. The law is God's
preventative love, whereas the cross is God's redeeming love.
If I say to my son, "thou shalt not go near the river," that is a
law of love given to prevent him from danger and death.
But if he defies this law of love and goes and falls in anyway
and I leap in and save him, that is redeeming love. In the
law God warns, but in the cross God rescues and redeems.
Love is the motive behind both.
The law could not redeem man anymore than my
prohibition could pull my son out of the river. God had to
give His Son to redeem us and save us from the
consequences of sin, but after being delivered, the law still
stands as a law of love to prevent further folly and falls.
After I rescue my son from the river, he still needs to heed
the command to stay away from it. The law is even more
meaningful now, for he knows the dangerous consequences
of disobedience.
So it is with the First Commandment of God. The
Christian can appreciate and experience its great value more
than ever. He can avoid the dangers and unhappiness that
comes from lack of concentrated devotion to one ultimate
and absolute God. Let us, therefore, concentrate our
devotion, and make the choice that G.A. Studdert-Kennedy
made in his poem-
All war must end in Peace. These clouds are lies.
They cannot last. The blue sky is the Truth.
For God is love. Such is my Faith, and such
My reasons for it, and I find it strong
Enough. And you? You want to argue? Well,
I can't. It is a choice. I choose the Christ.
None of us can do everything in life, but all of us can do the
most important thing in life--we can make this choice, and
by such concentrated devotion obey the First
Commandment.
