Fortunately
for all of us, human nature is not fixed but plastic. Every human being is in a
state of becoming, of passing from what he was to what he is to be. And this is
as true of the Christian as of every other person.
 The new
birth does not produce the finished product. The new thing that is born of God
is as far from completeness as the new baby born an hour ago. That new human
being, the moment he is born, is placed in the hands of powerful molding forces
that go far to determine whether he shall be an upright citizen or a criminal.
The one hope for him is that he can later choose which forces shall shape him,
and by the exercise of his own power of choice he can place himself in the
right hands. In that sense he shapes himself and is responsible at last for the
outcome.
It is not
otherwise with the Christian. He can fashion himself by placing himself in the
hands first of the supreme Artist, God, and then by subjecting himself to such
holy influences and such formative powers as shall make him into a man of God.
Or he may foolishly trust himself to unworthy hands and become at last a
misshapen and inartistic vessel, of little use to mankind and a poor example of
the skill of the heavenly Potter.
To any
who might object that we cannot fashion ourselves, that God alone can fashion
us, we offer this explanation: A young man decides he wants the benefits of a
healthy tan. Now, does he tan himself or does the sun tan him? Of course the
answer is that he tans himself by exposing himself to the sun. He has but to
bring himself into contact with the sun's rays and the sun will take care of
the rest.
So we
fashion ourselves by exposing our lives to the molding influences, good or bad,
that lie around us. Let us pull this thought down from the theoretical to the
practical and identify some of the powers that shape us.
FRIENDS.
We are all influenced powerfully by our companions. Even the strongest
characters are shaped by the company they keep. They may flatter themselves
that they, with their dominant personalities, are shaping others and are
uninfluenced by the lives of their friends; but we cannot escape the power of
friendships.
LITERATURE.
What we read with enjoyment does much to decide what we shall be finally. To
lend the mind to the spell of a book is to become clay in the potter's hand. In
our Protestant system no one can decide what we shall read, but what we read
will shape us for good or evil.
MUSIC.
There is about music a subtle charm that no normal person can resist. It works
to condition the mind and prepare it for the reception of ideas, moral and
immoral, which in turn prepare the will to act either in righteousness or in
sin. The notion that music and song are merely for amusement and that their
effects can be laughed off is a deadly error. Actually they exercise a powerful
creative influence over the plastic human soul. And their permanent effects
will be apparent in our growth in grace or in evil.
PLEASURE.
The human constitution is so constructed that it requires a certain amount of
pleasure; it is built for it as a harp is built for music, and remains
incomplete and unfulfilled without it. Sin lies not in receiving pleasure but
in deriving it from wrong objects. A mother tending her baby in a glow of
delight or smiling in death when she hears that her late-born is normal and
will live presents a tender picture of unselfish pleasure. A man at the card
table fascinated by the thrills and perils of gambling is an example of
degraded and demoralizing pleasure. The Christian should look well to his
pleasures for they will ennoble or debase him, and this by a secret law of the
soul from which there is no escape.
AMBITIONS.
The great saints of the world have all been ambitious. They were driven forward
by an inward urge that finally became too much for them. Paul stated his
ambition as being a desire to know Christ and to enter into the fullest meaning
of His death and resurrection, and toward this goal he pressed with everything
that lay in him. By this ambition he was propelled upward to the very peak of
spiritual perfection. Carnal and selfish ambitions, however, have just the
opposite effect. Each one should watch his ambitions, for they will shape him
as an artist shapes the yielding clay.
THOUGHTS.
We Christians need to take into account the tremendous power that lies in
plain, ordinary thinking. We have allowed ourselves to be cheated out of a
precious treasure by the irresponsible babblings of weird occultists and quack
religionists who make too much of the human mind or who misunderstand it
altogether. From them we have turned away, and have turned so far that we
forget that it is still true that a man will finally be what his active
thoughts make him. It is hardly too much to say that no Christian every fell
into sin who did not first allow himself to brood over it with increasing
desire. And every godly soul knows how much spiritual meditations have meant to
the total success of his inward life. "As (a man) thinks in his heart, so
is he."
There are
of course many others, but these are among the major forces that shape our
lives. To sum up, the wise Christian will take advantage of every proper means
of grace and every ennobling and purifying influence that God in His providence
places in his way. Conversely, he will avoid every degrading influence and flee
from those forces that make for evil. He has but to cooperate with God in
embracing the good. God Himself will do the rest.
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