All spirits of human privilege and social injustice are repelled and driven out by the Holy Spirit. When we pray that God’s kingdom may come, we ought to pause and ask ourselves whether we are ready, whether we are willing to accept and to stand up for all the changes that God’s rulership brings with it.
- Eberhard Arnold
- Eberhard Arnold, January 1920 From an EssayJustice and love demand that everyone take part in simple practical work with a spade, hatchet, or rake. Everyone should be ready to devote a few hours every day to this practical work; those who have done purely mental work till now will feel its humanizing effect especially. In this way it will be possible for each person’s unique gifts to be kindled. The light that flickers within each heart will then exhibit its once-hidden glow in scholarly research or in music, in expressive words, or in the craftsman’s art in wood, stone, or paint…such work will reveal the joy in life that is in each person. Only death knows idleness and tedium. Where there is life, the mind’s creative will remains alert and comes to expression in the service of the whole.
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If the word “faith” has any meaning, it is the certainty of what God—really God, not man—is and does. Faith belongs to God. It does not originate in man. It is God who gives faith and brings it about. The oneness of man with God consists in the faith that comes from God. Where community is given through faith, this community sets to work at a living activity which is God’s doing. In faith, God’s power is revealed through human helplessness, God’s greatness through human smallness.
- Eberhard Arnold
The Christian was baptized into Christ, the Crucified, in such a way that the water of baptism could be compared with the blood of Christ; he had made his own the conflict and victory of the cross against all the demonic powers of the world epoch, and lived from now on in the power and future of the Risen One. He who had broken with all things as they are, had to live and die for the cause to which he had pledged himself in this dedication unto death. With a company of warriors faithful unto death the message broke in upon the old world.
- Eberhard Arnold