God’s Trump Card

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I’ve been digging into the writings of E. Stanley Jones, the great Methodist evangelist of the 20th Century, as I work on a possible book project. (More to come on that.)  Jones, of course, was writing long before the name “Trump” would be associated with big business, TV reality shows, scandals and politics.  For him in 1948,  it was still just a term describing a crucial play in a card game. He uses it in his book about his relationship with Gandhi, written three years after the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. 75 years later, it still resonates:

      “So Mahatma Gandhi is God’s appeal to this age–an age drifting toward its doom.  If the atomic bomb was militarism’s trump card, thrown down on the table of human events, then Gandhi is God’s trump card which he throws on the table of events now–a table trembling with destiny.  God is appealing mightly to this age through this strange little man, as God has appealed agelessly through The Man, and here the strange little man and The Man are saying the same thing:  “Would that even today you knew the things that make for peace.”  (Gandhi: Portrayal of a Friend, page 160)

History watched as the power of Gandhi’s non-violent movement shaped the future of India, then E. Stanley Jones’ book about Gandhi inspired Martin Luther King, Jr in his commitment to non-violent change, which in turn motivated John Lewis and others to carry on the fight for justice through faith and love.  Jones concluded:

“We have seen the power of the atom in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, where it left piles of rubble and we have seen the power of “atma” (spirit) in Gandhi where it freed one fifth of the human race and afterwards healed their divisions and gave new hope to a confused and baffled humanity.  We have seen both.  The issue, then, is atom versus atma”.  (page 147) 

If Gandhi was God’s trump card played on the table of human events in the 1940’s, what card will we play now that it is our turn at the table, a table which is still trembling with destiny? Will we play the card of brotherhood, justice and peace in the spirit of Gandhi, Jones, King and Lewis? Or will we play the card of bitterness, division, bigotry and corruption?

Which card will trump the table this time?

The Rev. Jack Harnish is the retired Pastor Emeritus of First United Methodist Church of Birmingham, MI.  This post is republished with permission from his blog, Monday Memo.