The Hobo Jungle Near Omaha

The Hobo Jungle Near Omaha

by Starr Daily

Transcribed from the original recording; may contain errors.

I was reading this morning in a book about a man who didn’t like his boss. And he said he just boiled inside every time he thought of it. And then he got boils on the outside. First the boils inside, then they come out. Let us pray.

We thank Thee, Father, for the gathering of the brethren. And help us to love the brethren, even as we are loved by Thee. Amen. Now, I don’t want to seem cynical, and I really am not. But very frequently preachers and those who talk on subjects of religion have for their main audience themselves.

I think the reason why anyone condemns another is because he hasn’t overcome that weakness in himself. And it gives him a sense of security to project condemnation to another person while carefully shielding his own guilt. Jesus said if you judge, you’re judged. And the only reason why you could judge is because you’ve got the thing you’re judging in another. Consequently, you’re already judged.

And so he says that in order to get rid of judgment and condemnation and those things which create tensions, you’ve got to have compassion. And so we preach to ourselves all the time. So I want to read out of the word this morning, to start with, in the Second Timothy.

And then I’m going to read the translation of the same text. This know also that in the last days perilous times shall come. For men shall be lovers of their own selves. Covetousness, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, traitors, heady, high-minded, lovers of pleasure more than lovers of God.

Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof. From such turn away. For of this sort are they which creep into houses, and lead captive silly women, laden with sins, led away by divers lusts, ever learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth. That is Paul’s version of it, these last days, in the King James Version. Now I want to read a modern translation, because it deals with tensions.

This is the same thing, modernly translated. But understand this, that in the last days there will come times of stress. For men will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, inhuman, implacable, slanderers, profligates, fierce, haters of the good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure, rather than lovers of God, holding the form of religion, but denying the power thereof.

Now you would expect Paul dealing with these inner sources of tension. You would have expected him to include war, famine, pestilence, reaction, negative, outer negative reactions against outer things, fire, earthquakes, storm, tornadoes. But he didn’t mention a single one of these things.

He gave 19 causes of inner tension and stress and strain, right there in that text. And every one of them is a producer, a prolific producer, of stress and strain. And these days in which we are living are the days of which he spoke. All these things are now rampant in the earth. The devil is turned loose as never before on earth. All of his emissaries and all of his agents are turned loose and they are wanting to create these inner tensions and strains. A Montreal doctor says that all disease comes from stress and strain. Tension. Tension.

He says that the pituitary gland and the adrenal glands are perfectly able to keep the body in perfect balance. And if the body is in balance, no disease of any kind can touch it. Neither can accident come near it. But he said when there is too much stress, too much strain, it causes these glands to excrete too much fluid. The result is imbalance. And the result of imbalance is subjection to all manner of diseases.

Inner diseases. Now, the thing that we need then, if we know this, is to find out how we can release these tensions. How they can be sublimated and redeemed. And I’m dealing with the Bible this morning because there has been some, a little criticism that we don’t deal with the scriptures enough.

We apparently don’t know the word of God. Well, we don’t just quote all the time. And we weave it in. Someone asked Brother Rufus Moseley, about these camp leaders, “You never deal with the word of God. Don’t you know any scripture?”

And Brother Rufus said, “Well, I know one scripture.” The man said, “What is it?” And Rufus said, “The way of the transgressor is hard.” Now, I’m going to deal with the scripture. I’m going to quote verbatim. I usually quote indirectly.

But I want to quote verbatim today and tell you how to release all your inner tensions. Tell you what causes these inner tensions and how to release them and be free of them. How many religious people with the form of godliness and denying the power thereof are in great conflict about whether or not they are really disciples of Jesus?

They don’t know whether they’re following Him or not. They wonder if they really are in union with it. And if they really are disciples, and if they’re not disciples, how they can be disciples? They’re a conflict there. An inner conflict set up. Tensions arise. And tensions that you may over these theological points.

Religious people of every… above everyone else ought to be released from tension. But you see here in Paul’s words it is just exactly the opposite. Religious people are the ones with the tensions. I never saw a man in the underworld in my life with any tensions. Never saw a sick man in the underworld.

They don’t get sick. You know, you’ve never seen a sick hobo. He has no tensions. He’s happy. And of course, there’s the psychological factor there. He can’t afford to get sick. It’s a luxury. They never die by natural causes.

They finally die by accident or they don’t die. They’re perfectly relaxed. Satisfied with yesterday’s paper. A couple of handouts and a can of coffee. They’re washing on the line. Perfectly happy. I was riding on a train with a young Armour of the packing company. And we came through Omaha sitting there talking. Passed by a hobo jungle. It was a warm spring day. Two men lying there in the jungle had their washing out. Their stomachs were full and the body was at rest. And he said, “I envy those men.”

No, there’s nothing in the underworld to create tension. There’s honesty there. They’re sinners and they don’t have any religious pride. Pride creates tensions and they don’t have any religion. Hence, no pride. And they don’t have any avarice. They don’t have any, to tell you the truth. They’re rather disgusted with money.

All they do with it is throw it away. They don’t want it. They don’t have any troubles with sex and they don’t have any troubles with sex because most of them are celibates. They just don’t give it any thought.

There’s a practical reason. It’s dangerous to fraternize with women because find the woman and you find the man. And so they don’t have any of that. They have no religious pretenses at all because they have no religion. There is no worshipping two masters, only one.

See it and cry. They make no affectations about being good because they readily, honestly confess that they’re not good. And so they have no tensions. They’ve eliminated all the sources of inner tensions. But… they make no progress. There’s no growth. They just vegetate. And so we don’t want to use that method to get release. We want to go to the scripture and not the jungle.

Now, if you’re in conflict about your relationship with Jesus and wondering whether or not you really are a disciple of His and you want to get free from that source of tension, here is the scripture in John 13, 35. In John 13, 35.

By this shall all men know that ye are My disciples if you have agape, spiritual love, one to another. Now, you could slay most of your tensions right there. You could be as free in a spiritual way of inner tensions by applying this scripture as the hobo is free of all tensions by applying no scripture.

You simply love one another. And that does it. I can’t imagine how anyone could be tense who loved his fellow man. Now, the psychiatrists tell men, the psychologists, that they’re dealing all the time with guilt. And guilt is a great source of inner tension.

They say that 98% of all people who come to them for counsel come there because of an unsublimated, an unresolved, an unredeemed sense of guilt that’s been lying, buried in the subconscious maybe for years. Perhaps a sin committed way back in childhood.

Been festering there, buried and covered over, but still there. And it is the psychiatrist’s business to try to tunnel his way through all of this defense mechanism to get to that sense of guilt. And these people will defend that sense of guilt. They will defend that guilt with everything they’ve got. All the device they know. They’ll try to keep the psychiatrist from getting to it and releasing it. And what they actually, the real source of their tension is a feeling of being unforgiven. That’s what it is. Anyone who entertains guilt is also entertaining a feeling that God hasn’t forgiven them for the sins.

And the psychiatrist may get to it and pull it out by the roots, or he may not. But this scripture here will always work. If you feel unforgiven, if you are harboring a festering sense of guilt, even if you are unconscious of it, is buried deep in the unconscious mind, this scripture will never fail.

It is the perfect therapy for inner tensions arising out of this guilt. And then, Roland Brown was preaching in his church. And twenty members had come from another church that had been disbanded, and they were looking for a new church home.

And he knew they were going to be there that day, and he had practiced his speech, his sermon, for a month. He delivered it to Lake Michigan. He went out in the woods and delivered it to the trees. He stood before the mirror hour on end and delivered it to himself.

Had it committed to memory. Had all of his accents perfect. All of his dramatics in order. His gestures were just… right. And the great day came. And the twenty were there, twenty scalps. And he was ready to get those scalps, gather them into the fold.

That would have been a feather in Roland’s hat. And so he rose to great heights of eloquence. Out of the tail of his eye, watching the twenty who were in the first pews. And they were leaning out. They were rising to his message. And he was saying, the back of the mind have got them.

Then a woman got up and… stumbled over everybody’s feet. Came forward. He hadn’t given an altar call. And… His eloquence sort of petered out. Came up and reached into the offering baskets. And began poking the money in her pocket.

And… He leaned over there and looked over the pulpit and… That offering was important. And… Became absolutely paralyzed at what he saw. He was no longer… vocal. He just stood there paralyzed and watched. And then after she’d poked the money in her pockets. Big overcoat too.

She picked up a basket of flowers and hurled it at the choir. And she screamed in a loud voice, “How dare you women be in here with your hats off.” By that time, a man bestirred himself in the choir. And came down and laid hold on her.

But before he did, she had slammed another basket of flowers. He tried to drag her away from the… the communion table where the offering was. And she was kicking and screaming. And another man came. And they finally dragged her to the door.

Got her about halfway out. And Roland came to. He said that his mind bridged a gulf of centuries. Instantly. And he saw Jesus in the same predicament. Only the man wasn’t taking the offering. He just disturbed the meeting. And instead of dragging him out or having him dragged out, Jesus just put out His hand and cast the demon out of him. Set him free. He sat down and enjoyed the meeting. Roland said, “Let us pray.” And he did the same thing. “Whatever this is disturbing this dear sister, cast it out.”

And at the door she grew calm. Collected and looked around. Knew what she’d done. He told her she’d taken the money and she gave it back. Came back in. Went through the service. Next day committed herself voluntarily to the Elgin Hospital out in Illinois.

He followed the case through. Went there and visited her and prayed with her. And finally got out of her after a long time. A sense of guilt that had been lingering in her subconscious since she was 16 years old when she’d committed adultery.

And he just said, “All right. Now that we’ve got it. We’ll just let Jesus pluck it out. And you just give it up to Him. And He’ll take it. And we’ll just throw it out the window.” And he released her from it and she was perfectly well. Source of tension for many years. And so forgiveness releases. And this is what it says in 1 Peter 4.8. Release from unforgiveness.

Unforgiveness. Above all these things, being fervent in your love among yourselves, for love covereth a multitude of sins. So all you need to sublimate, to redeem, to resolve these inner sources of tension, is simply to love. Agape. Agape. Spiritual love. Redemptive love.

Love. Now, love realizes God consciousness in us. And the separation from the consciousness of God is a great source of inner tension. That feeling of being separated, of being lost, of being alone, of having no spiritual skies. That is a great source of inner tension in the lives of religious people. There’s no source of tension in the lives of sinners. But in the lives of religious people, that sense of being in darkness. St. John of the Cross calls it the dark night of the soul. It can become a great depression. It can create migraine headaches. It can establish all kinds of allergies against life-giving foods, such as milk and eggs and things like that. And vegetables and fruits.

Many tensions arise out of this darkness in the minds of religious people when they feel just utterly separated in the consciousness of God. I’ve been in those dark nights of the soul many times. And it’s a great state of depression.

Many times the desire to leave this world comes. Great temptations, self-destruction may come. And you can’t read the Bible. Every time you look at it you feel condemned. And you can’t pray. Your prayers seem to be like sounding brass and tinkling cymbals. They’re hollow.

It just seems like hypocrisy. And they don’t rise to the top of your head even. And so you’re in a great… You’re in a great depressed state. It’s darkness. You’re just trying to tunnel your way through this darkness.

And love is the answer to that. And wherever I have used it… Finally wake up and go ahead and take the only cure and the only solution. Then the darkness vanishes. And the light breaks in again. One time during a dark night of the soul I went down on the skid road… Los Angeles… And went into an empty church where the doors are always open… But no services are ever held there.

And lost men sometimes wander in there and try to pray. And I went in this great darkness and there was another man there up in the front. He was trying to pray. A lost soul. And I sat down beside him and…

I asked him to pray for me and he didn’t know how to pray. And he finally said, “God help this man.” And immediately I felt release. And a great love for him for being the instrument of bringing help to me. And then I prayed for him and I just said, “God help this man.”

And we walked out of there on air. We were arm and arm going down that skid row to the rescue mission. Went in there and I introduced him to the… to the people in there, the staff. And they lovingly took him in. Went to the back room and we all had a prayer meeting.

Then they fed him and got him some clothes. And he was converted and he talked on the radio and gave his witness. And after he got all the liquor out of him and everything and cleaned up, they got him a job. And he may be found… Sometimes conducting divine service on the street corner or something like that.

Ministering, yes. He has a good job, earns his living, and helps the rescue mission. Now, love did that. This is the way to get rid of a feeling of separation from the consciousness of God. 1 John 4, 7, 8. Let us love one another. For love is of God. And everyone that loveth is born of God. And knoweth God. He that loveth not, knoweth not God. For God is love. Now, this is agape. This is spiritual love. This is natural love. It isn’t human love. It’s agape. It isn’t eros. It’s agape.

It’s not passion. It’s compassion. It’s compassion. And that will always release you from any depressed state because of religious separation from God. Now, love realizes the true path. There are literally millions of paths to God. They can’t all be true.

Out of the millions of paths to God, there’s got to be one that can stand the acid test. Why? There are literally thousands and tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands of doctrines, theological doctrines, which represent pathways to God. They can’t all be true. They contradict each other. One cancels the other out. One says, “We’ve got it.” Well, if they’ve got it, then no one else has it. And so it is chaos.

It is chaos in the realm of religion. Here are all these paths going in every which direction. And all claiming that this is the real path. And that you can’t get to God or to heaven in any other way. Got to go this way. Well, now, out of all this bedlam. And all these tangled paths. There is bound to be one path. That’s true.

That’s consistent. That is predictable. That will stand up under any test. That cannot be battered down by any argument. That cannot be reasoned away. Cannot be analyzed away. That cannot be moved. It’s absolutely true. Now, what is it?

Stanley Jones says that the most undisciplined people in the world are American Christians. And the reason why they are undisciplined is because of the great war between the innumerable approaches they have to go. All fighting each other. All resenting each other. And all in conflict with each other. And the result is undisciplined personalities. Well, what’s the solution? Are you going to be disciplined?

Is there one path on which the discipline is perfect? And there is. And this is out of Ephesians 5, 2. Walk in love. That’s the path. And that’s the only one that will stand the acid test. For Paul says elsewhere, if you miss this way, you miss all ways. There is nothing to any other ways.

Unless you can walk, be active in love. And this is agape. And it’s not abstract. It’s love for persons, not ideas. It’s love for persons, not ideals. It’s love for persons, not altruistic philosophies. It’s down here among men. One person loving another person with a holy compassion. That’s what it is. Love that is separated from persons is not love.

Love that suffers is not love. Love that claims anything is not love. Love that prays for anything is not love. Love is everything, has everything, and there’s nothing to pray for. The only prayer that’s ever needed is the prayer that is the prayer without ceasing. And that is not formulated in words. It’s just love.

Anyone who walks in love prays without ceasing. And there is no need to put it into words. No need to express it verbally. It just is. Love has everything, therefore needs nothing. And when you walk in love, you have everything, and there is nothing for you to seek.

Love is the end of seeking. Love is the end of seeking. Love is the end of asking. Love is the end of knocking. The only thing that you can ever come to, ultimately, by asking, seeking, and knocking, is to come to the end of asking, seeking, and knocking. And there you find love. And so Paul says, be active in this love, and you will be released from these terrible sources of inner tension.

Love will realize for you the one flawless, unmodified, undisturbed message. There is one message that these apostles have. And this is the message. This is the message that ye have heard from the beginning, that we should love one another.

Do you notice there are no abstractions connected with this love? There is nothing remote and nebulous and hazy. It is not ideas. It is not ideals. It is just common, homely, spiritual love. Love that one person has for another, and flows out to another person, without ever any thought of wanting to get anything out of that person. Because love is its own reward.

And this is the message that ye have heard from the beginning, that we should love one another. Isn’t that wonderful? Isn’t that a wonderful solution to these sources of inner tension? How simple it is. It’s so simple that it’s elusive, isn’t it?

Simple things are elusive. The simpler they are, the more difficult they seem to be, because we are complex organizations. And we’re always looking for complexities. We’re looking for the answers out of some complex rigmarole of some kind. And we never quite get to the simplicity of it, or we just love.

Now, suppose you serve without love, and you think by that means you can get into the kingdom of God. Suppose you go about doing the forms of goodness, and you think that social services of all kinds will help you get into God.

That all you have to do is to be a disciple of service, and go about helping other people. And you think that will do it. Some of the most disillusioned people and tragic people I know are missionaries who gave their lives in foreign fields, exposed to every kind of a contagion, some of them living under the most horrible conditions.

And they went there out of disillusionment, and they came back still disillusioned. They went there with the motive of serving God, by serving people. And they were escaping from inner tensions within themselves, and difficulties within themselves, religious conflicts.

And they thought in this manner, that if they could just throw themselves out to other people’s needs, that this would be it. But it is not so. There is only one motive for service. And if service is rendered without love, it is vain. You just as well not do it.

Unless it’s motivated by love, and you just love to do it. It’s vain. And St. Paul said that if I wear my hands to the bone, serving the needs of people, and I give my body to be burned as a martyr, and I do it without love, it’s nothing. Absolutely not. It’s vain. And that is true in service. There are many people who believe that they can adequately serve God by serving people, even though they do not love. Open your capacities to receive love. It’s very possible. For if you act in that direction, it is almost like a prayer. It means that you really want to love.

And when you really want to love in this way, this scripture says that love will come, and that if we love one another, God dwelleth in us, and His love is perfected in us, and it is. What does it mean, that… that scripture… What does that scripture mean, be ye perfect, even as your heavenly Father is perfect? Hmm.

Well, we are not perfect, we know that. Every one of us has all kinds of weaknesses. We’re not perfect in faith. We’re not perfect in wisdom. We’re not perfect in discernment. We’re not perfect in our bodies. We’re not perfect in any of the gifts of the spirit, or any of the fruits of the spirit.

Nowhere can you find any perfection in us. And yet, God says, “Be ye perfect, even as your heavenly Father is perfect.” Now what does that mean? It means that God would not have said that unless we could be perfect.

And there’s only one place where we can be perfect. And St. Paul says, and this is absolutely true, above all these things put on love, for love is the bond of perfection. The only place. Any moment that we are perfect in love, we are perfect. And any moment that we are not perfect in love, we are not perfect. But if we cultivate more and more of those moments in which we abide in the heart and consciousness and feeling and emotion of love, during those moments, we have fulfilled that commandment. We are perfect, even as our Father in heaven is perfect. Isn’t that marvelous?

Now, you know and I know that one of the greatest sources of tension is work, is our work. Our work gets dull and dreary and uninteresting. We do the same thing over in the same way, day in and day out, until it becomes a monotony.

And sometimes the work is of such a nature that it seems utterly impossible to enliven it in any way, or to make it exciting. And so we just do the same old thing over and over. In the factories, a man will just put on the same boat. Eight hours a day, just putting on that one thing. Monotony. And that gets awfully boresome.

Consequently, the resistance to that work creates inner tensions. There’s a longing for vacation time to come, to get away from it all. Longing for some break in it. A desire to get another job. And it’s like having your nose on a grindstone. And so the reaction against this work builds up and builds up and builds up these inner tensions and resentments. And they get us down. And the doctors try to tell us what to do. And it doesn’t work. So the best place to go is to go to the Bible. If you want psychiatry, go to the Bible. For here is the best psychiatry in the world.

And here is the scripture that Paul gives us in 1 Corinthians 16, 14. For our occupations and vocations and professions that have become boresome to us and deadly. Let all that ye do be done in love. Now I come to the greatest source of all tension.

I’ve just been working around the fringes of sources of tension. But here is the sum total of all the sources of tension. This gathers them all up. And builds them into one great big ball. Which is the source, the greatest source of tension. And that is the doubt. The fear.

The misgiving. About the life that is to come. Where do we go from here? If a man dies, shall he live again? What will be the condition of the soul on the other side? Does personality go on? Can the continuity of life be broken?

When we leave this plane, will we meet our friends and loved ones? In the other plane. Shall we again have the love and fellowship of those we loved here? Do we live again? What is death? What is beyond the grave?

No man has returned to tell us except what. Only one man has returned to tell us what lies ahead. Now this fear, often unconscious, concerning immortality, creates many lingering doubts and misgivings within us. And these build on through life, up within us. And create all kinds of psychological abnormalities within us. Tensions.

Anxieties. Fears. And ruin our lives. And there is no need to go to a doctor to get a message on immortality. If you want to be released from this source of tension, it is very simple. Very simple. As far as I am concerned, the problem is solved. Long ago.

We know. We know. That we have passed from death unto life. Because we love the brethren. He that loveth not abideth in death. Get that repetition, that constant repetition. Because we love the brethren. Because we love one another.

It is a beautiful thing to write essays on abstract love that is floating way around up in the clouds. It is a beautiful thing to rise in our spiritual zeal and all of our joy and everything and get way up here with our feet dangling over the earth.

That is what a lot of religion is. An emotional shot in the arm that gives you a boost like a rocket. Like Thor. Or Sputnik. And up you go. And there you are up there and your feet just dancing all over God’s heaven. And just having a happy time.

But this isn’t the kind of love that the Bible talks about. It keeps saying, come down. Get down here where we are. My old sailmate used to say, “You’ve got some good ideas about love. But bring it down. Let’s see some of it.”

I have a message on loving your neighbor. Which is quite a chore when you come right down to it. And some of these neighbors are planted around by the Lord. And all they are doing is saying, “Hello, they tell me you are a great lover.

Tell me you are in union with Jesus. And that you just love everybody. Well, here I am. Love me.” And you will find opportunities. Everywhere. In apartment houses, in the neighborhood. Everywhere you go. There will be someone to say, “They tell me you are a Christian.”

“Yes. Yes, I have been a Christian for many years.” “Well, I have found it hard to be a Christian. I am very difficult, they say. I am unlovable. I am even afraid to be loved. But I wonder if you would love me.” Ha!

Lots of opportunities. Now I have taught from the Bible. And I hope that I have satisfied… all of you. For the word… and that I won’t be compelled anymore… to be so orthodox as I have been this morning. For my orthodoxy is… the Bible of love. That’s one orthodoxy in which I am a fundamentalist.

Let us close this discourse with prayer. Thank the great lover of all souls. Love us today and bless us with Your love. That we may walk in love and… realize that all of our tensions are gone. Because all of the inner sources of tension have been healed.

And if You give us this grace… and this blessing… all of our thanks will go to You. And all of our honor and praise… will be Yours. In Jesus’ name… Amen.