by A.W. Tozer
The old devotional writers used to say that there are two kinds of Christian life, the active and the contemplative. And their favorite illustration was the story of Mary and Martha.
Martha stood for the active life, and Mary for the contemplative. The first was concerned with practical service and the second with worship. Of course the contemplative life as represented by Mary was preferred over the other. Martha came to stand for a shallow if useful type of Christian life and the emphasis was placed upon the superiority of the life of prayer and meditation as Mary lived it. Naturally she, not Martha, was held up for emulation.
Now the truth is that Christians cannot be divided into two types and no more, as if Martha does nothing but cook and Mary sits always at Jesus' feet. Human beings are not as simple as that. The most heavenly person must break off meditation sometimes to attend to pressing earthly needs, and the most active Christian must retire sometimes to recharge his spiritual batteries. We are not forced to accept the familiar either/or, to choose to be either a praying Christian or a working one, as if it were not possible to be both. Actually every true Christian is both to some degree. The problem is one of balance.
The anonymous author of the celebrated Cloud of Unknowing, though very emphatically on the side of the detached, worshipping life, nevertheless admits that the two aspects of the Christian life may be fused into one. "There be," he writes, "two manner of lives in Holy Church. The one is active life, the other is contemplative life. Active is the lower, and contemplative is the higher. Active life hath two degrees, a higher and a lower: and also contemplative life hath two degrees, a lower and a higher. Also these two lives be so coupled together that although they be diverse in some part, yet neither of them may be fully without some part of the other. For why? That part that is the higher part of active life, that same part is the lower part of contemplative life. So that a man may not be fully active, but if he be in part contemplative; nor yet fully contemplative, if he be not in part active."
Stated in modern terms this means simply that every real Christian, however practical, is in some degree a mystic, his mysticism lying on the upper side of his life. He prays, meditates on spiritual things and communes with God and the invisible world. Also, every Christian, however he may be dedicated to the holy art of prayer and worship, must of necessity descend to work and eat and sleep and pay his taxes and get on somehow with the hard world around him. And if he follows on to know the Lord he must serve in every useful way outlined for him in the Scriptures of truth. To be a Christian it is necessary that he serve his generation as well as his God.
The big problem is to keep the two elements of the Christian life in proper balance. Martha and Mary are sisters and we need both. During the years since Pentecost one and then another of the two has had her day to the exclusion of the other. The pendulum has swung from the practical to the mystical and back again with the passing of the years, and while both sides of the religious life were always present, one side or the other usually got all the attention at a given time. Too bad that even religion must be influenced by intellectual and spiritual fashions.
Today the Christian emphasis falls heavily on the "active" life. People are more concerned with earth than with heaven; they would rather "do something" than to commune with God. The average Christian feels a lot nearer to this world than to the world above. The current vogue favors "Christian action." The favorite brand of Christianity is that sparked by the man in a hurry, hard hitting, aggressive and ready with the neat quip. We are neglecting the top side of our souls. The light in the tower burns dimly while we hurry about the grounds below, making a great racket and giving the impression of wonderful devotion to our task.
The difficult part of this whole thing is to get people to see what is happening to us. The average Christian has accepted the prevailing spiritual mood as normal and is likely to become indignant with anyone who dares to question its soundness or to suggest that the Christian religion as we experience it today is not in every particular one and the same as the religion of the apostles.
It is time that we prayerfully test the flavor of present Christianity and compare its spiritual quality with that of the New Testament. I think we shall find the element of mystic worship all but absent from it. I say all but absent, for it can never be wholly absent. Wherever the Spirit of Christ is present, however imperfectly perceived, the sense of worship will be there in some slight degree.
It is to our lasting reproach that we cannot live full rounded and symmetrical lives, embodying in our redeemed personalities the practical service of Martha and the adoring vision of Mary. We would appear to be unwilling to have both sisters present at once. Just now Martha is all over the premises, but where is Mary? I wish someone would find her soon.
( Article taken from The Price of Neglect, Chapter 12 )
[ Back ]
Place on line by the Neve family. We'd like to hear your comments : click here