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“Having a Form of Godly Devotion”The Watchtower—1955 | March 15
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how can they hope to appeal to eager, idealistic youth?”
A current aspect of having only “a form of godly devotion” is the stress placed on the practical aspects of prayer. Parade, a U.S. national weekly, October 10, 1954, told about “Today’s Big Religious Story: Prayer at Work. America’s hard-headed businessmen and practical politicians are asking God’s help to solve problems in the H-bomb age.”
It told of President Eisenhower’s beginning his secret cabinet meetings with a minute of silent prayer, and of one of his cabinet members’ starting each day’s session with his top staff members with prayer. Congress now has a “prayer room” and “a dozen religious breakfast groups now meet regularly in Washington—one for Senators, another for Congressmen,” etc., and we are told that this is also taking place in big business, in fact, “all over America today,” and that a thousand times over.
However, in spite of all this trend toward religion in business and politics the fact remains that never has the United States seen so much political corruption, so much sexual immorality and such a lack of integrity in business. The National Council of Churches of Christ admits the facts: “When we consider how little it costs to be counted among church members in our country today, we are troubled. The average church member is not conspicuously different from the non-member. . . . Our crime rate appears to rise alongside our membership increase.”
Obviously it is a case of having “a form of godly devotion but proving false to its power,” or such bad fruit would not be produced, and constitutes one of the signs that we are living in the last days.
Men deceive themselves when they read the Bible, when they pray, when they go to church, for psychological reasons, for success in business and in society, and think that is applied Christianity. By viewing gain as godliness they show themselves to be men of corrupt minds. And men are also deceiving themselves when they go through the outward forms of godly devotion and by their actions show that they lack the true power of godly devotion. Such is, in fact, nothing less than hypocrisy.
Applied Christianity and genuine godly devotion are free from both desire for selfish gain and hypocrisy, being concerned only with the gaining of Jehovah’s approval. Yes, “God is a Spirit, and those worshiping him must worship with spirit and truth.”—John 4:24, NW.
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Negative Thinking Has PowerThe Watchtower—1955 | March 15
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Negative Thinking Has Power
Writing in the Christian Century of January 5, Simeon Stylites sought to temper the enthusiasm for positive thinking, saying that when it “is identified with a psychological pep talk to oneself, the best things of life and of true growth of mind and heart are left out.” Rather than exuding superconfidence all the time, one might very well let a little modesty and humility seep through also, though any such display of self-depreciation might be viewed as negative thinking. The writer concludes his column with these words: “The power of negative thinking is beautifully and profoundly pictured in the words of the returning Prodigal to his father: ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no more worthy to be called your son.’ That is about as negative as a person can get. And such self-awareness and consciousness of failure is the gateway to power. Humility is the first step in learning. Such a feeling is very different from the kind of ‘positive thinking’ to which many today are painfully aspiring, the kind that says, ‘Watch me, boys! I’m going places.’ That mood may be the beginning of becoming a Big, Booming Success. It is not the door to the life which is Life indeed.”
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