This Letter Says It All

Here it is.

“We have a high casualty rate. We’re the ones who get slandered and ridiculed and fired from our jobs and in every other way made as uncomfortable as possible. A certain percentage of us get killed or imprisoned. We live in virtual poverty. We turn back to our community every penny we make above what is absolutely necessary to keep us alive. We don’t have time or the money for many movies or concerts or T-bone steaks or decent homes and new cars.

We’ve been described as fanatics. We are fanatics! Our lives are dominated by one great overshadowing factor, the struggle for our cause for the whole world. We have a philosophy of life which no amount of money could buy. We have a cause to fight for, a definite purpose in life. We subordinate our petty, personal selves into a great movement of humanity. And if our personal lives seem hard or our egos appear to suffer through subordination to our community then we are adequately compensated by the fact that each of us in his small way is contributing to something new and true and better for mankind.

Our cause is my life, my business, my religion, my hobby, my sweetheart, my wife and mistress, my bread and meat. I work at it in the daytime and dream of it at night. Its hold on me grows, not lessens, as time goes on. Therefore, I cannot carry on a friendship, a love affair, or even a conversation without relating it to this force which both guides and drives my life. I evaluate people, books, ideas and actions according to how they affect the cause and by their attitude toward it. I’ve already been in jail because of my ideas, and if necessary, I’m ready to go before a firing squad.”

Billy Graham read this letter at a conference in 1957. It was NOT written by a follower of Jesus. It was written by a Communist. (I replaced “Party” and “Communist” with “cause” and “community.”)

Graham was showing that the devotion of a Communist to his cause trumped the devotion of the majority of Christians to Jesus Christ and His kingdom.

That was 60 years ago.

What’s changed?

The good news is that God is beginning to reclaim what has been lost in this respect. Namely, a recovery of the absolute allegiance to Jesus Christ and His kingdom that marked the first-century Christians.

Stay tuned …