Article February 22, 1969 Issue

Do You Live in a Ghetto?

KIMMIS HARTLEY HENDRICK

Multitudes live in crowded slums and are often more cramped than the men and women who were forced into ghettos during the Middle Ages and even later. Many live more comfortably but also in isolation, surrounded by their prejudices and fears. We all do well to seek more freedom—and, according to our opportunities, to help others gain it.

Christianity as Christ Jesus taught it offers us all full freedom from every kind of limitation. This is not the Christianity of creeds and ceremonies, however, but the Christianity that means living the vital spiritual truths of being. This calls for a new premise. On an occasion when Jesus laid down one of his most basic teachings many of his immediate followers turned away. John tells us that the Master said, "It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing."^{John 6:63;} The New English Bible makes his words seem even stronger: "The spirit alone gives life; the flesh is of no avail."

Today's thinkers should find this teaching much easier to understand than it was for many in Jesus' time. Spirit may seem invisible, but so do most of the forces that move our modern world. We are well acquainted with the effectiveness of invisible forces. Atomic power, global communication, the relations between men and nations, all make their influence felt; but while we see their effects with our eyes, we comprehend their nature through the understanding.

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