by Chauncey C. Riddle
There once was a lord who desired to bless his servants. Calling to him his master-builder, he charged him to build a spacious and beautiful dwelling place for his servants. But the lord required of the master-builder one special restriction: the dwelling place must be of a heavenly order, not conformed to the habitations of the world. The master-builder was taken aback at this restriction, but he inquired of the lord as to what manner of buildings one would find in the heavenly plan; he was told that as he sought to know and partake of the order of heaven, he would be given a vision of the heavenly mansion required at his hands.
Encouraged and enthused, the master-builder sought to ennoble his mind and heart to partake of the heavenly order. His sacrifice was not in vain for indeed he did begin to have small glimpses of the mansion he was to build. Carefully he treasured the insight he received, and began to draw the plans of the edifice. When his understanding of the footings and foundation was complete, he besought the approval of his lord. The lord’s countenance was radiant as he commended the master-builder for his faithfulness and bade him proceed with the foundations immediately.
As the master-builder and his fellow-workers toiled at the excavations and forms, men of the world came to view their labors. Duly noting the strangeness of the plan, these men of the world delegated another master-builders among them to warn the lord’s master-builder. In a kindly but firm way they showed him how the plans were not of the pattern of the world, and therefore would neither yield a stable building nor would anyone want to dwell therein.
The lord’s master-builder was pleased with the interest of his colleagues, but assured them that the plan was just what his lord wanted. But his colleagues pressed him. “Is your lord a master-builder, that he should know whereof he speaks?” “Anyone who is competent can see that these plans are formulated without due regard to the laws of physics.” “Do you have a right to squander the limited resources of our world in such a misguided undertaking?” “Where are the plans for the rest of the building?” “Do you mean to say that you would actually proceed to lay a foundation without having the total plans and specifications of your structure?”
The master-builder calmly stood his ground, even though he could not answer his would-be benefactors. Horrified at such naiveté and with mutterings about “intelligence,” “sanity,” and “senility,” the delegation hurried over to the master-builder’s fellow-workers who were toiling in the afternoon sun. With earnest purpose the delegation fanned out among the workers and began to explain that this foundation was ill-conceived and would eventually cause the misery and destruction of many souls. Being master-builders they easily overpowered the reason and understanding of the workers. The combination of hot sun and powerful arguments soon had all but a few convinced that the leader was in error. Carefully they listened to the delegation of master-builders as to how a responsible builder would build a good, reliable worldly building. Even the workers who did not believe the delegation gave up in despair as they saw everyone else stop and cluster around the delegates. “Surely,” they said, “we cannot build this structure alone.”
The lord’s master-builder spoke plainly and firmly to his fellow-workers. He told them to trust in their lord, not in these men of the world. But his voice was dim against the din of the delegation. With shouts and “hurrahs” the workers received the standard worldly plans offered to them, and hastened to tear down the forms and to lay the building out according to these new plans. The delegation cheered them on and even took up a collection and procured refreshments for the the workers. The workers who did not believe the delegates stood idly by and said, “Surely we will see the end of this thing. If our master-builder is right, perhaps our lord’s building will build itself; if this worldly building is sufficient to our needs, then we do not need our lord’s building. Meanwhile, we will not waste our labor in the hot sun.”
Seeing no way he could convince his workers, the distraught master-builder went to his lord and prayed for relief. The lord instructed him to continue to plead with the workers and to fear nothing. “Your own mansion is assured,” he comforted the master-builder. “Those faithless workers cannot destroy your blessings. It is their own blessings which they reject, for now they will have no heavenly mansion wherein to dwell.”
With the courage born of hope, the lord’s master-builder returned to the construction site and began to entreat his fellow-workers one by one. They listened respectfully to him, then went on with the new plans. The master-builder called them all together for an evening meeting. They rejoiced and commended him for his inspiring talk. But some said, “I understood him to say that the new worldly way is really better.” In the morning they all went back to work on the worldly building.
Notwithstanding the fact that the delegation of worldly master-builders had successfully thwarted the work of the lord’s master-builder, they were worried that he might win some of the workers back and begin to build strange buildings again. They sought out the governor of the land and explained their case. The governor was sympathetic, but lamented that since men in that society were free, there was no law by which he could legally restrain the lord’s master-builder. The delegation then went to the legislature and with vivid descriptions portrayed the irreparable damage to morals and society which the plan of the lord’s master-builder would inflict. With anxious indignation the legislature decreed that it was society and not men which should be free, and it enacted into law a statute providing that no person had the right to promote causes that were not first approved by a council of the world’s foremost experts. This would guarantee that no person’s mind would be trammeled by anything but the best which the world has to offer. It would also block the squandering of resources on projects which did not serve the interests of the whole society.
Armed with legal sanctity and moral indignation mixed with pity, the delegation confronted the lord’s master-builder with a writ and led him away where he could not disturb the workers in their enjoyment of their natural blessings. Triumphantly the delegation declared the elimination of all disunity among the people and proclaimed the era of universal peace and the brotherhood of men. But a peculiar problem haunted that millenial era. They could all agree on Mother Nature, but they never could quite agree as to who was worthy to be the Father of all those brothers.
This parable portrays the problem of establishing Zion. Zion is the great creative work of the latter days. It is the preparation of a people and a dwelling place where the Lord Jesus Christ may come to live and reign for a thousand years. This task is more demanding of ingenuity, efficiency, astuteness and, above all, faithfulness, than any other task men could undertake. For while the world tries to create a utopia through force, coercion, control and propaganda, Zion is built only by laying a sure foundation of purity in righteousness in the heart of every person who would participate.
The problem in establishing Zion, as in the parable, is to convert the workers to be servants of the Lord Jesus Christ and to serve him through the Holy Spirit. This is to say that every worker must himself be a master-builder. Any man who attempts to labor in the kingdom of God who does not hear the voice of the Holy Spirit, does not see the vision of the goal, does not know the Lord, cannot stand. The pressures of the world, the ardor of the labor, but more especially the misguided thinking of the world destroy the effectiveness of him who does not know Christ. He who knows not Christ feels restricted by Christ’s Church, and is horrified that the Lord’s way of doing things is not in harmony with the thinking of the world. In warm appreciation of the things of the world, the misguided worker who knows not Christ rejects the prophets of God and proceeds to serve God and man after the image of the world—not even conceiving that he is thereby fighting Christ.
The issue of freedom is plainly one of objectives if we are concerned with the work of the Savior’s Church. The man who knows not Christ feels hampered and destroyed because the prophets of the Church do not laud him when he promotes worldliness. He may sense something great and wonderful about the Gospel and thus remain bound to the Church, but he will likely deny the power thereof, which constant personal revelation from Jesus Christ through the Holy Ghost. Such an one can only be set free by converting him to accept and abide in the spiritual order of Christ’s plan for the salvation of men.
Let us proceed to examine the matter of freedom from a more fundamental point of view. The issue at hand concerns the dual nature of man. It is not the traditional mind-body dichotomy that is pertinent. Rather should we look to the choice which each man enjoys to select for himself a nature, a character.
Man may on the one hand choose to be “natural.” This means simply that he chooses to remain as he finds himself in the world: subject to the flesh and without Christ. This natural man has a carnal mind: his thinking is furnished data and influences only through the flesh. He relies upon his eyes, ears, and the opinions of other men as he communicates with them through the flesh. The natural man is not inherently bad. But in either not knowing or in rejecting the influence of Christ, he cannot keep the laws of God, and thus becomes an enemy to God.
Man may on the other hand be born again, to have his spiritual feelings, ears, eyes, touch in turn become sensitive to the influence of Christ in this world. Adding to the senses of the body and the information derived thereby the senses of the spirit as he communicates with divine beings, the spiritual man sees, know, and judges out of a double insight. The law of the Gospel is no mystery to him and he delights in receiving commandments through the Holy Spirit, for he stays himself upon the God of Israel. Such a man is free from the blindness of the natural man, free to know the gods and to learn of righteousness, free to do and to gain every good and righteous thing.
But the choice between remaining a natural man and becoming a saint is not a simple matter. It cannot be decided once and for all, putting on sainthood as we might don a robe. Choosing to be a saint is to choose to gain a divine character, to take upon oneself the divine nature of Christ. To become a saint is the adding together of thousands, perhaps millions of consecutive moment-to-moment correct choices. At each moment a man may yield to Satan by yielding to the impulses and ideas of his flesh, or he may, if the Holy Spirit is with him, choose to be obedient to the voice of Christ. As a man chooses to yield himself unto Christ, moment after moment, his nature and character are changed. With the increment that accrues with each correct decision he becomes more like Christ, to have the understanding, emotions, insights, expressions, appearance and powers of his beloved master. If he endures to the end, nothing will be withheld from him as he becomes a joint heir with his Savior.
The greatest freedom in this world then is the freedom to become Christ-like. The alternative is to stay relatively as we are: to be damned.
In all fairness it should be noted that to a man who wishes to be carnal and natural, the greatest freedom of becoming like Christ is not seen by him as a freedom at all, but as a threat. Not wanting to be different than he is, rather wanting to be conformed to the world, he resents any encouragement to repent and feels terribly put upon if in any way the Kingdom of God places any stigma on his speech, dress, work, etc. He wants to be free to do as he wants, to create and revel in greater and greater worldliness. He will cry in righteous indignation, “I am a moral man. I love children. I am active in my church. I am diligent in my work. How can you accuse me of being worldly? All I want is academic freedom, to do and say as I please, to investigate anything, anywhere, anytime. It is truth which I worship, and you and your narrow-minded religion are not going to stop me from finding and creating truth.”
This natural man does not understand or accept several fundamental ideas. He does not know that why we act is even more important than what we do. He therefore cannot understand that only acts which are willing obedience to the personal commands of Jesus Christ are good and that whatsoever is not of faith is sin. He does not know that the greatest thing in the world is doing good, not knowing truth. He does not know that a man cannot know any important amount of truth except through Jesus Christ. He does not know that Jesus Christ will not and cannot fill him with truth except his goal is to do good. He does not know that the most difficult part of learning to do good is to be good. He does not see the necessity to transform his character and nature to be Christ-like so that he can stand to receive the knowledge and power that enable one to do real good, to love with a pure love. Not understanding or accepting these ideas, the natural man fights against the work of Christ, and even in all the charity he can muster of himself, he only promotes the damnation of himself and others.
If this natural man is a member of Christ’s church, there are other important ideas he will not be able to understand or accept. He will not see that if there seems to be an anti-intellectual influence in the church that it is an anti-natural-intellectual influence, a resistance to the man who sets himself up as a light unto the world but who knows not Christ. He will not believe that to be spiritual demands intellectuality, and that the best way to solve any intellectual problem and to develop one’s intellect is to come unto Christ and to be tutored and reproved by the Holy Spirit from moment to moment. He will likely belittle the group of men who have the greatest intellectual attainments of any group of human beings on the earth today: the prophets, seers, and revelators of Christ’s church. And because he will not accept the constant influence of the Holy Spirit in his life, he cannot accept the prophets, and thus cannot accept Jesus Christ. He indeed may say, “I am a servant of Christ.” But when he rejects the Holy Spirit and the prophets, both of which are in agreement, he indeed rejects Christ.
To the humble man of God, there is no boundary to this freedom or to his creativity. If he wishes to relieve the suffering of the poor, his master will show him how it can be done in righteousness and will give him the power to do it. If he desires to produce great art for the edification of the souls of men, his master will comfort him through the long struggle of gaining technique and judgment, and then will inspire the great themes to be portrayed. If he wishes to conquer the secrets of the physical universe that the kingdom of God may roll forth and fill the immensity of space, nothing will hinder him. If his soul hungers to bring happiness and salvation to men by bringing them the glad tidings of the Gospel, his feet will be sped and prospered, till they become beautiful upon the mountains to the nations of the earth.
The servant of Christ feels no restriction because he does not want to create after the manner of the world. He delights in instruction and reproof, for his only desire is to create, to bless, to improve according to the heavenly pattern, which he sees only dimly at first. Barriers to the ways of the world are not barriers to him, because he seeks to go up, not down. The only barriers he fights are the chains of error in his mind, the evil impulses of his breast, the weakness of his physical powers, the shallowness and inconsistency of his own love. He does not need to rebel against any segment of society to quiet his fears, for he fears only himself and the degree to which his own character is yet unlike that of Christ.
The servant of God seeks first, then, to bring to pass that greatest of all miracles, the creation of a Christ-like being out of his own natural self. He struggles through repentance to gain a new mind, a new heart, a new countenance, a new body, a new faith, a new hope, a new charity. Having gained that miracle, he then turns to the work of enticing every person and every thing to partake of the goodness of Christ, even as he has. He will create ideas, programs, cities, industries, families, friends, servants of Christ—all done by persuasion, by love unfeigned, even as he himself was drawn unto Christ without compulsion. He does not fear age or death, for his work and his creations are eternal. All he accomplishes will endure, and passing into eternity is but one further step of freedom.
But in this life he hopes that he will not be the only master-builder. He hopes and prays that others will dedicate themselves to the Lord, that together they might perfect their characters, that together they might establish a Zion that never will be taken away. And all this for the glory of that great God who begat them unto a newness of life.