The Meaning of Life

Christian Truth and Social Change in Latin America

John A. Mackay, John M. Metzger, Metzger

• Publisher: Wipf and Stock
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN:
  9781620328729
  9781498266635
• eBook ISBN:
  9781630873264
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Theology

Democratic principles have not taken root readily in Latin America in part because spiritual inwardness, a necessary prerequisite of democracy that is inseparable from the Bible, has been lacking. During the twentieth century Protestant workers like John Mackay (1889-1983) brought the evangelical message to that continent through lectures and writings. This collection of John Mackay's early essays presents a range of his contributions, and the ideas in the essays are grounded in his clear understanding of the nature and dignity of human beings in the light of God. The fruit of this teaching is self-confidence, courage, steadfastness, and other positive ethical attributes that accompany progress and success for individuals and peoples. The essays touch on religious, educational, literary, political, and philosophical themes in the service of Christian truth. They embody key ideas and strategic judgments related to the presentation of the Evangel, the most basic and first work of the church. The message balances spiritual and social aspects of Christianity to meet the needs of the people, and it accompanied progressive social and political changes in the region. The historical experience of Protestantism in Latin America is well worth recalling today by readers in North America and elsewhere.

Part One

The Transforming Message

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The Meaning of Life

I. The Meaning of Hombridad

Charles Wagner was right when he stated that, “There is something more unusual than a great man: a man.” It is true that it is easier to be a physician, a lawyer, a writer, an artist, an engineer, than a man. And for the same reason that the profession of being a man is the only universal one, it is the most basic and important of human professions.

What does it mean to be a man, a full-fledged man? Where can we find a true human being, and how can we recognize him? Those farmers of Ibsen thought they had found one when they met the young clergyman, Brand, who had crossed the rough waters of the Norwegian fjord in a fragile little boat to do what he thought was his duty. “For a long time we have been told about the good way,” they told Brand, “and they point it with their finger. More than one has pointed to it, but you are the first one who has followed it. A million words are not worth one deed. For that reason we come to seek you, because what we need is a true man.” Pilate, too, that skeptic and feeble-spirited Roman governor of Judea, thought he was looking at a man in a certain prisoner brought to him on an unforgettable occasion. “Ecce Homo,” he said to the contemptible accusers of the Nazarene. “Look at the Man.”

Unamuno has called this quality of man, in the exact sense of the word, “hombridad.” He tells us in one of his essays that, reading the great Portuguese historian and psychologist, Oliveira Martins, his imagination was struck by the word “hombridad,” that he applied to the Castilian people. He thought “hombridad” was a good discovery. The way Unamuno uses it, this word involves wider qualities than simple probity or honesty that are meant by “integrity.” Its real sense is much more comprehensive and manly than “humanity” or “humanism,” words that reek of pedantry, of a sect, of an abstract doctrine. Hombridad is the “quality of being a man, a whole and true man, of being a full man.” “And there are so few men,” adds Unamuno, “of whom we can say that they are fully men!”

Adopting this attractive linguistic coinage of the great Basque—who, by the way, is one of the most legitimate examples of hombridad on the contemporary scene—we will attempt to provide the portrait of a true human archetype.

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The real man must be, first of all, the negation of some bastard archetypes that still enjoy wide prestige whether among the masses or among the intellectual or social elite.

One classic human archetype that enjoys great prestige in a certain sector of society, and in some countries more than others, is called Don Juan Tenorio. Don Juan, who received original literary personality in The Seducer of Seville by Tirso de Molina, shares with Faust the sad honor of being the most universal character of European literature from the Renaissance until now. Who is Don Juan? In fact, there are sharp differences in moral sensitivity between the Don Juans of Tirso, Zorrilla, Molière, Byron, and those of a South American city. But in the end they are identical. Don Juan does not change; he always proclaims the same motto, “Myself and my pleasures.” But, in spite of all his bragging and his gallant airs, he is a perfect rake, turned foolish by his lust. He is rarely a man of great passion, instead, almost always cold and calculating. He boasts of his freedom. He lives, none the less, in complete slavery, being uncontrollably led by the impulses of his flesh, or the irresponsible commands of a ceaseless desire: “Because that is what I want.” A short time ago the distinguished Spanish physician, Dr. Gregorio Marañón dropped a bomb in the camp of Tenorio, calling Don Juan “a biological monstrosity.” Yet, he deserves this qualifying adjective, because there are no two ways about it: he is an abnormal person from a moral or a physical point of view.

But there are many youths, unfortunately, who, although they do not become Don Juans, believe that to be a man one has to take lessons in the school of Tenorio. I remember the sad case of a Peruvian young fellow who was looked at as a hero by a group of his companions, when it was found that he had acquired one of the diseases that follows the path of being a Tenorio. In the opinion of those naïve youths, he had now become a man. But a man is something different. A man recognizes that the sexual instinct is perfectly natural, as natural as any other, and then takes one or the other of the following attitudes towards it. Without repression, to avoid forming Freudian complexes, he sublimates it, looking for some higher activity that will absorb his passion. Or, alternatively, he honestly directs his instinct within the channel of marriage, accepting and even seeking the natural consequences brought about by the foundation of a new home.

I believe that if the young could reflect a little on the possible consequences for others of an irregular passion, they would reject forever any form of Tenorial behavior. I will never forget an experience I had in the city of Valparaíso. I had addressed some encouraging words to a group of youngsters, newspaper sellers, who each evening used to attend a class organized for them by the Young Men’s Christian Association of that Chilean city. When I was leaving the place, I asked the secretary who was coming out with me, “How do you explain the extraordinary contrast between the intelligent and beautiful faces of many of those kids and their rags and their low social position?” My companion answered with these words so tragically suggestive, “Not a single one of them knows his father.” What about those fathers? Tenorios of a higher social stratum.

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Another human archetype, perhaps more cultured and correct, but no less a bastard and subhuman, is the snob. The snob belongs to the Old and Aristocratic Order of the Peacock. By virtue of the blood that courses through his veins, or the social position that he occupies, or the properties he owns, or the culture that he has acquired, the members of this order feel the greatest contempt for other people, and do not miss the opportunity to strut, taking care not to socialize with anybody who is not in their circle.

From the social point of view the snob is often a beautiful animal, who, not being able to find his genial society, shows preference for dogs and horses. Considering this branch of snobbism, Bernard Shaw said something about it, “It is allowed for ladies and gentlemen to have friends in the kennels, but not in the kitchen.” The number of people that exhibit their sub-humanity, being closer to dogs or horses than to humans, certainly is astonishing and disconcerting.

Another kind of snob devotes himself to letters. What the literary snob seeks is to shine, more than to give off light. He has an obsession for the form, and is unconcerned about the substance. Trumpeting the words “art for art’s sake,” he spends his life looking for new cuts and colors, in this way becoming a tailor of the ephemeral when he ought to be a sculptor of the eternal. The only aspects of life that the snob is interested in are the showy and gaudy. As a spectator sitting in his ivory tower or his carved aristocratic balcony, keeping away from every contact with real and true life, he will never consider placing his talent at the service of a noble cause or idea. And if it were ever the case, as may happen, that a literary snob writes a book of substance, it will almost always be about a subject that is fashionable. When he deals with human problems, he takes good care not to touch those aspects of the problems that are burning in his own country. To deal with thorny issues could prove very inconvenient. I know a great work of sociology, written by a South American professor, in which not a word is said about the huge sociological problems from the author’s country because he was only interested in the critical opinions of foreigners and not the national well-being.

Such people lack hombridad. All of them are little men, traitors against beauty, goodness, truth, or their own land. Every educational system is also traitorous and damned that tends to produce individuals who live contemptuously apart from eternal human reality and the actual reality of their country.

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The third archetype of a man who lacks hombridad is the self-worshiper. He makes the ego and his own interests the reason for all activity. He pretends to create for himself a cosmos revolving on an axis of him, himself. Don Juan was an egotist, but not a self-worshiper, given that his actions were not inspired by the objective idea of the ego, but by a simple carnal passion. The same could be said about the snob. Unquestionably, he acts for egotistical motives, but while what drives him is a good image or the good opinion of some elite, what drives the self-worshiper is an immensurable desire to place himself in the center of every picture, making everything a means for the realization of his goals without him serving as a resource for any outside interest.

To follow will and self-interest at all times, without considering others at all, is nothing but an aristocratic form of madness. The perfect willful one, with all his airs of an independent gentleman, is possessed by the most tragic of all demons, the demon of the ego. No one can perform a lasting work if his only motive is selfish ambition. Sooner or later the one possessed of the ego will fall headlong in one of his reckless flights because he will meet in the heights the driving wind of a universal law. “The stars in their courses fought against Sisera,” says the old Book of Judges.1 And Victor Hugo, in Les Miserables asks, “Who won the battle of Waterloo?” . . . And he answers, “It was God!”

Perhaps the most accomplished egomaniac presented in literature is Ibsen’s Peer Gynt. This young man adopts the motto, “To be myself,” and flings himself on the world in search of fortune. After a series of adventures in foreign lands, during which he has earned and lost several huge fortunes, he returns to the land of his birth as a man with a white beard. On the way to his town, he enters an old vegetable garden that he knew. He takes an onion in his hand and starts removing the onion skins. To each skin he gives the name of some role that he has played in his life . . . the castaway, thrown by the sea on an American beach, the seal hunter in Hudson Bay, the gold prospector in California . . . until he gets, at the end, to what should be the heart of the onion. But . . . nothing! The onion is just skins. “My life,” he says, “has been like an onion, all skins, appearances . . . On my tombstone the following should be carved, ‘Here lies nobody.’”

Peer Gynt was Mr. Nobody because he did not consider in his long life anything but his ego and his own interests. He had not placed himself at the service of anything that could benefit others. Not a single surviving grateful heart would keep his name undying. In the long run the egomaniac must end up being either crazy or a nobody, but never a man.

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Who is, then, the true human archetype? Whoever deserves to be called a true man possesses three basic qualities.

He is a free man who thirsts for what is real. His freedom stands out when compared to the prior types. Don Juan is a slave of a low passion; the snob is a slave of aristocratic prejudices; the egomaniac is a slave of the greatest devil, his ego. The true man, having assured his freedom with respect to his passions, his prejudices, and his wretched ambition, opens the doors and windows of his soul widely to the inspirations and voices that come from t...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Foreword - Dr. Samuel Escobar
• Preface - John M. Metzger
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: Christianity, Social Change, and Democracy - John M. Metzger
• Abbreviations
• Part One: The Transforming Message
• Part Two: The Message and Education
• Part Three: The Message and Intellectual and Literary Life
• Part Four: The Message and Political Life
• Bibliography