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The Problem of Being Human
An excerpt from None Were So Clear

The Bible tells us how God, the creator of all things, has concerned himself with the human problem and how he has acted in history to bring order, peace and harmony to human beings. It tells the story of how God has chosen to gather a holy covenant people to himself who will live under his rule and who will be the means by which his redemptive purpose will be brought to all men.

The Bible is not concerned with religion in general, but it tells us how God has spoken to particular men and women in particular times and places and how these people believed God and obeyed him and were gathered by him to be his people who are called to serve him and to bring his blessing to all nations.

Abraham is the prototype of the perfect responder to God's call...The story of Abraham introduces us to the tension that is found everywhere in the Bible between religion and faith...

Abraham is not portrayed in the Bible as the typical religious man--homo religious--but he is portrayed as the man of faith... The people of God who look to Abraham as their father have a name for God. He is called the God of Abraham...

The prophets of the Old Testament are the speakers of a word from God to God's people. Their message is a call to hear God and believe and obey him... The Word of God came to the prophet Isaiah saying; "[Listen to me, you who pursue righteousness, who seek the Lord:] Look unto the rock from whence you were hewn... Look unto Abraham your father, and unto Sarah who bore you...for I called him alone and blessed him...(See Isaiah 51)."

The prophets are the spokesmen for the God who is concerned with the problem of man, and they frequently remind the Hebrew people that their preoccupation with religion is not pleasing to God...

...The human problem is really several problems and they all have to do with human relationships...

A...perennial segment of the human problem is man's difficulty in finding his true self... This quest for identity is a conspicuous feature of this age in which men have become alienated from God, and so experience a sense of lostness...

There is no true self-knowledge that is not based on God knowledge...

...the key to all the other flawed relationships is the broken relationship with the creator...

...we have separated these human problems and undertaken to deal with them by means of the mental disciplines of economics, ecology, sociology, psychology, theology and the like. But God's revelation in the Bible tells us that these are really all one problem... The reason why men are beset with so many problems is that they have become "strangers from God" and so are "wandering in strange paths in a dark world" (Works, 1831, vol. VII, .218)...

Judaism and Christianity witness to God's self-revelation in history... But these two prophetic faiths, in so far as they have been transformed into complex systems of religion, have become increasingly remote from the human problem. Thus they come to stand in relation to the gospel of God as do the other religions of the world, that is, as leading man away from the faith of Abraham and the God of Abraham.

...God is not calling men to be religious, or to be concerned about religion, but he is calling men to a hearing-and-obeying relationship to himself. Jesus said, "I came that you might have life." ...the life that seeks counsel of God and obeys God and bears the image of God...

At the very beginning of his ministry Jesus claims to have been sent by God to bring deliverance to the captives. Fox says that the Devil "hath imprisoned his people and brought them into the pit" but that Jesus Christ "the covenant and Messiah brings the prisoner out of the pit...and he is called a savior." (Works, 1831, vol. IV, p.295) Human beings are prisoners and captives because they seek to order human affairs without divine help...

Fox's encounters with the 'Christian religion' led him to the conclusion that it had lost touch with the human problem. It had ceased to be the means of bringing men to the saving word that "brings the prisoner out of the pit...

Fox's criticism of the Christian religion was similar to the prophets' criticism of the Jews' religion... They are calling people back to the primal word -- the word that was spoken to Abraham and Moses. Fox is in the best tradition of the prophets... He says "all religions, ways, worships are in bondage and in slavery that are not made free by the Truth (Headley Mss., p.315 Cat. No. 8,90F). He is calling men back to God's primal word, Jesus Christ... he refers to Paul's exhortation to the Roman Christians to "walk in the steps of the faith of Abraham... these have the pure religion (Works, 1831, vol. VIII, . 228, Epistle #382.)"

What Fox calls the "pure religion," ...is not only that by which God reconciles men to himself, but it is also the means by which the manifold human problem is resolved...

George Fox saw the institutions of "the Christian religion" as failing to channel the good news from God to perishing man... He saw that people who made a profession of Christianity did not seem to be given more power to cope with the human problem than did people making no profession of faith in Christ. He saw that they were morally confused and morally impotent, and that their behaviour was determined by the standards and mores of a corrupt society. He saw that "the Christian religion" did not lead to the gathering of a church that learns together, obeys together and suffers together. He saw that what was needed was a new foundation. And he saw that over against "the religions of the world which are vain" that God has spoken a word which is good news to all men, and that this was the good news that began to be preached to Abraham and that is the everlasting gospel that John, in Revelations, saw was to be preached to "every kindred, tongue, and nation."