Every morning I get up and look through the Forbes list of the richest people in America. If I am not there, I go to work. “With God all things are possible,” reports St. Matthew 19.26. The sciences which deal with behaviour are in an infant state. This cluster of scientific disciplines is usually thought of as including psychology, psychiatry, sociology, social psychology, anthropology, and biology, though sometimes the other social sciences such as economics and political science are included, and mathematics and statistics are very much involved as instrumental disciplines. Though they are all at work trying to understand the behaviour of beings, and though research in these fields is growing by leaps and bounds, it is still an area in which there is undoubtedly more confusion than solid knowledge. Thoughtful workers in these fields tend to stress the enormity of our scientific ignorance regarding behaviour, and the paucity of general laws which have been discovered. They tend to compare the state of this field of scientific endeavour with that of physics, and seeing the relative precision of measurement accuracy of prediction, and elegance and simplicity of the discovered lawfulness in this latter field, are vividly aware of the newness, the infancy, the immaturity, of the behavioural science field. #RandolphHarris 1 of 19

Without in any way denying the truthfulness of this picture, I believe it is sometimes stressed to the point where the general public may fail to recognize the other side of the coin. Behavioural science, even though in its infancy, has made mighty strides towards becoming an “if—then” science. By this I mean that it has made striking progress in discerning and discovering lawful relationships such that is certain conditions exist, then certain behaviours will predictably follow. I believe that too few people are aware of the extent, the breadth, and the dept of the advances which have still been made in recent decades in the behavioural sciences. Still fewer seem to be aware of the profound social, educational, political, economic, ethical, and philosophical problems posed by these advances. Each general statement I shall makes is supported by reasonably adequate research, though like all scientific findings each statement is an expression of a given degree of probability, not of some absolute truth. Furthermore each statement is open to modification and correction or even refutation through more exact or more imaginative studies of the future. In behavioural sciences there is an element of prediction which is prominent. The pattern of each of these can be generalized as follows: If an individual possesses measurable characteristics a, b, and c, then we can predict that there is a high probability that one will exhibit behaviours x, y, and z. #RandolphHarris 2 of 19

Thus, we know how to predict, with considerable accuracy, which individuals will be successful college students, successful industrial executives, successful insurance agents, and the like. I will not attempt to document this statement, simply because the documentation would be so extensive. He whole field of aptitude testing of vocation testing, of personnel selection is involved. Although the specialists in these fields are rightly concerned with the degree of inaccuracy in their predictions, the fact remains that here is a wide area in which the work of the behavioural sciences is accepted by multitudes of hardheaded industries, universities and other organizations. We have come to accept the fact that out of an unknown group the behavioural scientist can select (with a certain margin of error) those persons who will be successful typists, practice teachers, filing clerks, or physicists. This field is continually expanding. Efforts are being made to determine the characteristics of the creative chemist, for example, as over against the merely successful chemist, and, though without outstanding success, efforts have been and are being made to determine the characteristics which will identify the potentially successful psychiatrist and clinical psychologist. Science is moving steadily forward in its ability to say whether or not you possess the measurable characteristics which are associated with a certain type of occupational activity. #RandolphHarris 3 of 19

We know how to predict success in schools for military officer candidates, and in combat performance. To select one study in this field, Williams and Leavitt (31) found that they could make satisfactory predictions regarding a Marine’s probably success in Officer Candidates School (OCS) and in later combat performance by obtaining ratings from one’s “buddies.” They also found that in this instance the human’s fellow soldiers were better psychological instruments than were the objective tests they used. There is illustrated here not only the use of certain measures to predict behaviour, but a willingness to use those measures, whether conventional or unconventional, which are demonstrated to have predictive power. We can predict how radical or conservative a potential business executive will be. Whyte (30), in his recent book cites this as one of many examples of tests that are in regular use in industrial corporations. Thus in a group of young executives up for promotion, top management can select those who will exhibit (within a margin of error) whatever degree of conservatism or radicalism is calculated to be for the best welfare of the company. They can also base their selection on knowledge of the degree to which each person has a latent hostility to society, or latent homosexuality, or psychotic tendencies. #RandolphHarris 4 of 19

Testing giving (or purporting to give) such measures are in use by many corporations both for screening purposes in selection of new management personnel, and also for purposes of evaluation of beings already in management position, in order to choose those who will be given greater responsibilities. We know how to predict which members of an organization will be troublemakers and/or delinquent. A promising young psychologist (10) has devised a short, simple pencil and paper test which has shown a high degree of accuracy in predicting which of the employees hired by a department store will be unreliable, dishonest, or otherwise difficult. He states that it is quite possible to identify, with considerable precision, the potential troublemakers in any organized group. This ability to identify those who will make trouble is, so far as the technical issues are concerned, simply an extension of the knowledge we have of prediction in other fields. From the scientific point of view it is no different from predicting who will be a good typesetter. We know that a competent clerical worker, using a combination of test scores and actuarial tables, can give a better predictive picture of a person’s personality and behaviour, than can an experienced clinician. #RandolphHarris 5 of 19

Paul Meehl (18) has shown that we are sufficiently advanced in our development of personality tests, and in information accumulated through these tests, that intuitive skill and broad knowledge, experience, and training, are quite unnecessary in producing accurate personality descriptions. He has shown that in many situations in which personality diagnoses are being made—mental hygiene clinics, veteran’s hospitals, psychiatric hospitals, and the like, it is wasteful to use well-trained professional personnel to make personality diagnoses through the giving of tests, interviewing the person and the like. He has shown that a clerk can do it better, with only a minimum and impersonal contact with the patient. First a number of tests would be administered and scored. Then the profile of scores would be looked up in actuarial tables prepared on the basis of those measurement, appraisal and evaluation of human characteristics, and the prediction of certain behaviour patterns on the basis of those measurements. Indeed, there is no reason why Meehl’s clerk could not also be eliminated. With proper coded instruction there is no reason why an electronic computer could not score the tests, analyze the profiles and come up with an even more accurate picture of the person and his predicted behaviour than a human clerk. #RandolphHarris 6 of 19

We have all seen it—and perhaps done it! The father walks in the door after a pressured day, preoccupied, with brow furrowed. His three-year-old comes running to him, but Dad is busy unburdening himself to his wife. “Just a moment, Leo.” Leo tugs at his father’s britches—no response. He tugs again! His father explodes, picks him up, and taps his little legs for being “rude.” The Lord knows how many children “lose heart” because their fathers have “hard days.” Life is sometimes like the cartoon where the boss is grouchy toward a worker; his employee, in turn, comes home and is irritable with the children; his son then kicks the dog; the dog runs down the street and bites the first person he sees—the boss! We fathers must never let our pressures drive us into this unhappy cycle. The costs are too high. Some say you treat your fellow humans on the level. However, when you are home with the wife and kids, are you as mean as the Devil? Your kids know. “Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves,” reports St. Matthew 7.15. Few things will exasperate a child more than inconsistency. Pity the horse that has a rider who gives it mixed signals, digging his heels into its side and pulling the reins at the same time. Pity the child even more who has the rules changed by a capricious father, and who is always exasperated because of the conflicting messages one receives. #RandolphHarris 7 of 19

Fathers, you may forgive yourself by saying, “I am so busy…Memory is not my thing…I am just a spontaneous person!” However, your children will not. Be consistent. Never ever make a promise to your children you do not keep! Do any unfulfilled promises come to mind? Horseback riding that never happened? Trips to the Baskin-Robbins ice cream shop, Winchell’s Donut, New Lai Wah Chinese food, of Giant Burgers, or to watch a Golden State Warrior’s Game on an A’s baseball game? You may forget, but you have a little boy or a girl who will remember it eighty years from now. One of the most exasperating and damning sins a father can commit against his children is favourtism. I say this despite being the last one who would suggest you should treat all your children alike. Some children need more discipline, some need more independence. Some need more structure, some need less. Some need more holding than others. Some need more encouragement. However, no child should be favoured over another. Favouritism was the damning sin of Isaac, who favoured Esau over Jacob. Ironically, it was also the damning sin of Jacob, who favoured Joseph over his brothers. Like favouring father, like rejected son! How crushing, how disheartening to know that you are less favoured—less loved. #RandolphHarris 8 of 18

Men, the great “do not” of fatherhood is, “Do not exasperate your children”—and life tells us what the resulting “do nots” of this are: Do not be critical, do not be over strict, do not be irritable, do not be inconsistent, do not show favouritism. God has created our children with their hearts turned toward ours. Our power is awesome! We must take God’s Word to heart. We can select those persons who are easily persuaded, who will conform to group pressures, or those who will not yield. Two separate but compatible studies (15, 16) show that individuals who exhibit certain dependency themes in their responses to the pictures of the Thematic Apperception Test, or who, on another test, show evidence of feelings of social inadequacy, inhibition of aggression, and depressive tendencies, will be easily persuaded, or will yield to group pressures. These small studies are by no means definitive, but there is every reason to suppose that their basic hypothesis is correct and that these or other more refined measures will accurately predict which member of a group will be easily persuaded, and which will be unyielding even to fairly strong group pressures. We can predict, from the way individual perceive the movement of a spot of light in a dark room, whether they tend to be prejudiced or unprejudiced. #RandolphHarris 9 of 19

There has been much study of ethnocentrism, the tendency toward a pervasive and rigid distinction between ingroups and outgroups, with hostility toward outgroups, and a submissive attitude toward, and belief in the rightness of, ingroups. One of the theories which has developed is that the more ethnocentric person is unable to tolerate ambiguity or uncertainty in a situation. Operating on this theory Block and Block (5) has subjects report on the degree of movement they perceived in a dim spot of light in a completely dark room. (Actually no movement occurs, but almost all individuals perceive movement in this situation.) They also gave these same subjects a test of ethnocentrism. It was found, as predicted, that those who, in successive trials, quickly established a norm or the amount of movement they perceived, tended to e more ethnocentric than those whose estimates of movement continued to show variety. This study was repeated, with slight variation, in Australia (28), and the findings were confirmed and enlarged. It was found that the more ethnocentric individuals were less able to tolerate ambiguity, and saw less movement than the unprejudiced. They also were more dependent on others and when making their estimates in the company of another person, tended to conform to the judgment of that person. #RandolphHarris 10 of 19

Hence it is not too much to ay that by studying the way the individual perceives the movement of a dim light in a dark room, we can tell a good deal about the degree to which one is a rigid, prejudiced, ethnocentric person. This hodgepodge of illustrations of the ability of the behavioural sciences to predict behaviour,and hence to select individuals who will exhibit certain behaviours, may be seen simply as the burgeoning applications of a growing field of science. However, what these illustrations suggest can also cause a cold chill of apprehension. The thoughtful person cannot help but recognize that these developments I have described are but the beginning. One cannot fail to see that if more highly developed tools were in the hands of an individual or group, together with the power to use them, the social and philosophical implications are awesome. One can begin to see why a scientist like von Bertalanffy warns, “Besides the menace of physical technology, the dangers of psychological technology are often overlooked.” Why then do we not experience more of this endless supply of God’s grace? Why do we do often seem to live in spiritual poverty instead of experiencing life to the full as Jesus promised (John 10.10)? #RandolphHarris 11 of 19

There are several reasons that may or may not apply to a particular believer, but for the purposes of our study on grace, I would like to look at two that probably apply to most of us. First, is our frequent misperception of God as the divine equivalent of Ebeneezer Scrooge; the God who demands the last ounce of work out of His people and then pays them poorly. That may sound like an overstatement of our perception of God, but I believe it is a fairly accurate representation of how many Christians think. Consider the following words from one of John Newton’s hymns: Come, my soul, thy suit prepare: Jesus loves to answer prayer; he himself has bid thee pray, therefore will not say thee nay. Thou art coming to a King, Large petitions with thee bring; for his grace and power are such, none can ever ask too much. How many Christians really believe those words? How many of us really believe Jesus loves to answer prayer? How many of us believe His grace and power are such that we can never ask too much? Rather, we tend in the direction of believing God is reluctant to answer prayers and His grace and power are not sufficient to fulfill our needs, let along our requests. We should not forget that Satan’s very first temptation of humankind was based on questioning the goodness and generosity of God (see Genesis 3.1-5). #RandolphHarris 12 of 19

And this vicious attack on the patriarch Job was designed to cause Job to question God’s goodness so that he would then curse God (see Job 1.16-11). Satan has not changed his strategy today. This perception of God as the reluctant giver comes right from Satan and must be resisted by us if we are to experience the fullness of God grace. “Remember this. Talk to God. No matter how you are feeling, no matter what you are facing, no matter what happens to hurt you or disappoint you or confuse you. Talk to God. And never stop talking to Him. You understand me? Talk to Him. Realize that because things go bad in this World, because they go well, because they come easy or they come with difficulty, well, it does not mean that He is not here. I do not mean here in this chapel. I mean here everywhere. Talk to Him. No mater how many years pass, no matter what happens, always talk to Him. Would you try to remember to do that? Anytime you want. You start now with or without words, and you just keep talking and you never never let anything come between you and talking to God,” Page 27, Of Love and Evil by Anne Rice. Many believers do not comprehend the superabundance of God’s grace and generosity, we ask Him for paltry blessings, when we could be drawing on the abundance of His riches. #RandolphHarris 13 of 19

The apostle Paul told us that God “has blessed us in the Heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ,” and “[He] will meet all your needs according to his glorious riches in Christ Jesus” reports Ephesians 1.3, Philippians 4.19. Within the scope of these two scriptures, God promises to meet every one of our needs, both spiritual and temporal. The God who was gracious to Adam and Eve both before and after the Fall, who rejoiced in doing good to the Jewish nation in captivity, who was the “God of all grace” to Peter, is the same gracious and generous God today. Grace is part of the very nature of God, and He cannot change. He is indeed the generous landowner of the parable, continually going to the marketplace of life to find those in need of “a day’s wages” so that He can bring them into His vineyard and then reward them out of all proportion to their labors. Perhaps the larger reason why we do not experience more of God’s grace is our misconception that, having been saved by grace, we must now, at least to some degree, “pay our own way” and earn God’s blessings in our daily lives. An accepted maxim among people today, “there is no such thing as a free lunch” (which may be true in our society), is carried by us into our relationship with God. #RandolphHarris 14 of 19

In fact this misconception that we must pay our own way is more than a mistaken theological notion. It actually springs from the perverse disposition of our hearts—the disposition of pride. Perhaps the most difficult task for us to perform is to rely on God’s grace and God’s grace alone for our salvation. It is difficult for our pride to rest on grace. Grace is for other people—for beggars. We do not want to live by a Heavenly welfare system. We want to earn our own way and atone for our sins. We like to think that we will go to heaven because we deserve to be there. When considering the subject of the grace of God in salvation, the problem of pride described is applicable to living the Christian life. Not only do we think we must pay our own way, at least to some degree, we subtly insist on paying our own way. Grace is for other people—for beggars, but not for us. Let me illustrate from my own experience. After the death of my first wife, Eleanor, God very soon brought into my life another charming and Godly lady whom Eleanor and I had known for a number of years. Just over a year Eleanor’s death, Jane and I were married. A few months later I began to realize I was experiencing a vague sense of guilt despite confidence that God had guided in our marriage. One day I realized my sense of guilt was due to the feeling that I had not “paid my dues” in long months of grief and loneliness unlike some of my friends who have lost their spouses. #RandolphHarris 15 of 19

I felt I did not “deserve” such a tremendous blessing from God so soon after Eleanor’s death. In fact, I discovered I was unconsciously not allowing myself to enjoy the full riches of the blessing God had so obviously given me. I had lapsed into the World’s way of thinking that we somehow must earn God’s blessings through our suffering or sacrifice or hard work. It can be humbling, sometimes humiliating, to realize we have not paid our own way. Think of the workers in the parable who worked only one hour. How did they feel when they realized they had received as much pay as those who had worked twelve long hours through the heat of the day? Did they feel grateful for the generous gift they had received, or guilty that they had not earned their pay? If they were living by a philosophy of works as we so often do, they would have felt guilty. They would have experienced the gracious generosity of the landowner, but they would not have enjoyed it. You and I actually experience the grace of God in our lives far more than we realize. However, all too often we do not enjoy His grace because we are trying to live by merit, not by grace. In looking for our own goodness by which we hope to earn the blessing of God, we fail to see the superabundance of the goodness and grace of God in our lives. #RandolphHarris 16 of 19
O God, Who wast pleased to send Thy disciples the Holy Spirit, the Paraclete, in the burning fire of Thy love, grant to Thy people to be fervent in the unity of faith; that evermore abiding in Thee, they may be found both stedfast in faith and active in work; through Jesus Christ our Lord. May the Spirit, the Paraclete, O Lord, Who proceedeth from Thee, illuminate our minds, and, as Thy Son hath promised, lead us into all truth; through the same our Lord Jesus Christ. May the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, O Lord, cleanse our hearts, and make them fruitful with its plenteous dew; through our Lord Jesus Christ. “And God also declared unto prophets, by his own mouth, that Christ should come. And behold, there were divers ways that he did manifest things unto the children of humans, which were good; and al things which are good cometh of Christ; otherwise humans were fallen, and there could no good thing come unto them. Wherefore, by the ministering of Angels, and by every word which proceeded forth out of the mouth of God, humans began to exercise faith in Christ; and thus by faith, they did lay hold upon every good thing; and thus it was until the coming of Christ,” reports Moroni 7.23-25. #RandolphHarris 17 of 19

Blessed Lord Jesus, before thy cross I kneel and see the heinousness of my sin, my iniquity that caused thee to be “made a curse,” the evil that excites the severity of divine wrath. Show me the enormity of my guilt by the crowns of thorns, the pierced hands and feet, the bruised body, the dying cries. Thy blood is the blood of incarnate God, its worth infinite, its value beyond all thought. Infinite must be the evil and guilt that demands such a price. Sin is my malady, my monster, my foe, my viper, born in my birth, alive in my life, strong in my character, dominating my faculties, following me as a shadow, intermingling with my every thought, my chain that holds me captive in the empire of my soul. Sinner that I am, why should the Sun give me light, the air supply breath, the Earth bear my tread, its fruits nourish me, its creatures subserve my ends? Yet thy compassions yearn over me, thy heart hastens to my rescue, thy love endured my curse, thy mercy bore my deserved stripes. Let me walk humbly in the lowest depths of humiliation, bathed in thy blood, tender of conscience, triumphing gloriously as an heir of salvation. “And after that he came humans also were saved by faith in his name; and by faith, they become the sons of God. And as surely as Christ liveth he spake these words unto our fathers, saying: Whatsoever thing ye shall ask the Father in my name, which is good, in faith believing that ye shall receive, behold, it shall be done unto you,” reports Moroni 7.26. #RandolphHarris 18 of 19

The readiness with which one once plunged into other people’s affairs to help the, as one believed, will dissolve and disappears. One knows now that their real troubles remain unaffected by this surface acid, that meddling in their problems is not the right way. One is surrounded by an aura which makes one a crowd of fawning disciples and flattering admirers. However, one could not accept such a role because one knows that they will refuse to let one be oneself and will expect one to be different from what one really is. One does not care to face an attitude which is hostile or indifferent; one does not even need to talk to beings who begin by disbelieving one. No self-actualized person looks down on others from one’s pedestal, but that does not alter the distancer that extends from their ignorance to one’s knowledge. One does not require idolatrous homage from them and indeed shrinks from it. One unaffected nature renders one desirous of being treated no better than others. One passes among others a hidden existence, a secret inner life. The conventional World is so tied to, and therefore so deceived by appearances, that it is only a tiny handful of people who meet such a being with the understanding and sympathy one deserves. It is not personal desire which makes one refrain from communicating oneself to others, but public circumstances. In this one obeys the Greek verse, “When to be wise is all in vain, be not wise at all.” Why should one communicate the oracles of Heaven to those whose minds run only to trivialities? #RandolphHarris 19 of 19

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