What good is it, my brothers, if a man claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save him? Suppose a brother or sister is without clothes and daily food. If one of you says to him, "Go, I wish you well; keep warm and well fed," but does nothing about his physical needs, what good is it? In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead. ---James 2:14-17
Words CAN rescue a nation; can turn the tide in a community or congregation; but never by themselves. Actions can rescue a nation; can turn the tide in a community or congregation, but not by themselves. Always, from the days of Ezra and Nehemiah through the days of Jesus and even to the present, a coalition of words and deeds must save the day.
In The Good War, Studs Terkel** tells the story of an Iowa farmer for whom World War II was a double-edged sword:
"For the old Iowa farmer, it (the war) was something else. Oh yes, he remembered the depression and what it did to farmers: Foreclosures the norm; grain burned; corn at minus three cents a bushel; rural despair. Oh yes, it changed with the war. 'That's when the real boost came. The war---' There is a catch in his voice. He slumps in his rocker. His wife stares at the wallpaper. It is a long silence, except for the tick-tock of the grandfather's clock. '---it does something to your country. It does something to the individual. I had a neighbor just as war was beginning. We had a boy ready to go to service. The neighbor told me what we needed was a (expletive) good war, and we'd solve our agricultural problems. And I said, 'Yes, but I'd hate to pay with the price of my son. Which we did.' He weeps. 'It's too much of a price to pay.'"
Most Americans think Franklin Roosevelt ended the Great Depression with either his New Deal, or---like the farmer and his neighbor---think World War II and its' industry ended the hard times.
Both were important, but neither was enough without this most important ingredient: The hope that people felt listening to the power of Roosevelt's reassuring words, ("We have nothing to fear but fear itself.") Acts without feeling and belief; and feeling and belief without action are like weeds, they die quickly. People must have hope to act; and they must act to sustain the hope they feel.
Written, one-dimensional history fails to record the incredible catharsis Americans experienced as Roosevelt spoke. Here, at last, was a voice with authority, with bold certainty, with the thrilling sting of hope burned into its phrases. The Depression had so ravaged the nation nobody knew what to do; or knowing, lacked the will to act. Wall Street culture, which in large part had let its greed start the stampede, was stunned, completely unable to act, incapable, even, of knowing what to ask for in the way of help. They looked to Washington with an ache for legislated salvation. But Congress and the President, too, had stalemated themselves into inaction, fearful of making things worse but even more worried somebody else would get credit if it got fixed. The little they did do, then, only seemed to make the crisis feel more hopeless, more entrenched.
Into this historic tragedy stepped Franklin Delano Roosevelt, body wracked by polio and pain, a personal testimony to triumph over adversity. Two courses seemed best to him; and both would be strokes of genius: First, "Do something" and second, "Be vocal, be bold, be direct and be confident."
Armchair economists now make Roosevelt their personal piņata, slashing at his policies with their rhetoric while blindfolded by their own commitment to economic principles that are more Darwinian (survival of the fittest) than Biblical (kinsmen-redeemer). Roosevelt knew, however, that work brings dignity and dignity rekindles hope and hope breeds innovation and innovation inspires creativity. So he started the CCC and its cousins and offspring, even going so far as to employ penniless writers to ink state-by-state travelogues in order to prime the pumps of America's hope while simultaneously restoring her dignity.
Franklin Roosevelt ideas had the ring of Jesus' brother James did when he wrote his epistle to Jewish believers who'd been chased from their homes by persecution. To these people who had lost everything of consequence, James wrote: Words without actions are useless; and actions without words are almost equally useless.
We face an economy rapidly growing as dark as the Depression; in fact, already dark and cold for many of our friends and family members. They, and millions like them, including this generation of Wall Street's culture, are waiting for the voice that lifts itself above the cacophony of naysayers, whiners and finger-pointers with words that comfort backed up by actions that restore.
Government, however, can't and won't turn the tide this time. The1920-30s Hooverian era is back, where fear of someone else getting credit trumps bipartisan searches for solutions.***
That's the clarion call to the Body of Christ, the keeper of vast storehouses of hope. Every pastor must step to the pulpit and push past platitudes and liturgy to the moments that are rocking their people's souls, offering them words of comfort so platitudes and liturgy once again mean something; and they must comfort them even as they rally them to be, themselves, comforters to one another.
It's also the clarion call of every leader who calls himself/herself a follower of Christ. No longer now solely a fiduciary centurion, you must recognize you've become the newest iteration of Joseph, whom God embraced---and who faithfully embraced God---through years of torment, only to set him up as the keeper of the grain that saved a nation.
Roosevelt's words made Americans believe in him, and then his "do something" made them believe in themselves. It was this combination of inspiration and perspiration that made the miracle of America's recovery possible. Contrary to Terkel's (et al) assertion, it was not the war that brought the country back; broken people couldn't have pulled off the industrial miracle of the '40s. It was what happened before the war, words with deeds and deeds reinforced with words that set the table.
We need another industrial, technological, and economic miracle, to be sure, but only hope can give birth to that; and we who claim the hope of eternity have a reservoir of that resource we haven't even begun to tap.
For Christians it really is true "we have nothing to fear but fear itself." That, and inaction.
What will you choose?
POSTSCRIPT: Sadly, Studs Terkel, perhaps this era's greatest chronicler of what "real" people really think, recently passed away, to the end describing himself as an agnostic. His classics include Working: People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do (the only textbook a CEO and human manager ever really need) and The Good War: An Oral History of World War II, but his most moving book was his search for some reason to hope around eternity after his wife died in the poignant-but-ultimately-unsettling Will the Circle Be Unbroken: Reflections on Death, Rebirth and Hunger for a Faith. For a counter to this book (especially if you've lost a loved one, and especially a spouse) please don't miss The Light That Never Dies: A Story of Hope in the Shadows of Grief by Bill Hendricks, co-author of the work/faith classic Your Work Matters to God. And yes, he is related to that great Christian thinker/teacher, Howard Hendricks; Bill is his son.
**The excerpt from Terkel's book which I quote in this week's devotional comes from pp. 9-10 of The Good War: An Oral History of World War II, published by MJF Books, copyright 1984 by Studs Terkel.
***(Technically unfair to President Hoover, to be sure, but it was during his Presidency that greed run its rampant course.)
