It is NOT "Who's Right" but "What's Right"

This blog developed after receiving an email from Gemma Stone with this quote:

Jung said, "It is a bewildering thing in human life that the thing that causes the greatest fear is the source of the greatest wisdom."

Obviously his interests in “the archetype, the collective unconscious, the complex, synchronicity, The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI , a popular psychometric instrument), dream analysis and symbolization, Eastern and Western philosophy, alchemy, astrology, and sociology, philosophy and the occult” are fascinating but the it was the references to Rowland Hazard III and the Oxford Group that caught my attention.

Rowland Hazard III (1881, - 1945) was an American businessman and member of a prominent Rhode Island family involved in the foundation and executive leadership of a number of well-known companies. He is also known as the "Rowland H." who figured in the events leading to the formation of Alcoholics Anonymous. Jung once treated the american patient, suffering from chronic alcoholism. After working with the patient for some time and achieving no significant progress, Jung told the man that his alcoholic condition was near to hopeless, save only the possibility of a spiritual experience. Jung noted that occasionally such experiences had been known to reform alcoholics where all else had failed. Rowland took Jung's advice seriously and set about seeking a personal spiritual experience. He returned home to the United States and joined a First-Century Christian evangelical movement known as the Oxford Group (later known as Moral Re-Armament)

The Oxford Group was a Christian organization founded by American Christian missionary Dr. Frank Buchman. Buchman was an American Lutheran minister of Swiss descent who in 1908 had a conversion experience in a chapel in Keswick, England and as a result of that experience he would later found a movement called A First Century Christian Fellowship in 1921, that eventually became known as the Oxford Group by 1931. The name "Oxford Group" originated in South Africa in 1929, as a result of a railway porter writing the name on the windows of those compartments reserved by a travelling team of  Frank Buchman followers. They were from Oxford and in South Africa to promote the movement.

Franklin Nathaniel Daniel Buchman (1878 – 1961), best known as Dr. or Rev. Frank Buchman, was a Protestant Christian evangelist who founded the Oxford Group (known as Moral Re-Armament from 1938 until 2001, and as Initiatives of Change since then). He was decorated by the French and German governments for his contributions to Franco-German reconciliation after World War II.

It was F. B. Meyer, who when visiting Penn State College asked Buchman, "Do you let the Holy Spirit guide you in all you are doing? Buchman replied that he did indeed pray and read the Bible in the morning. "But," persisted Meyer, "do you give God enough uninterrupted time really to tell you what to do?"

Moral standards of absolute honesty, absolute purity, absolute unselfishness, and absolute love, though recognised as impossible to attain, were guidelines to help determine whether a course of action was directed by God. In Oxford terms sin: "anything that kept one from God or one another" and "as contagious as any bodily disease". "The soul needs cleaning "... We all know ‘nice’ sinless sinners who need that surgical spiritual operation as keenly as the most miserable sinner of us all.

The Oxford Group advocated four practices set out below: 1. The sharing of our sins and temptations with another Christian. 2. Surrender our life past, present and future, into God's keeping and direction. 3. Restitution to all whom we have wronged directly or indirectly. 4. Listening for God's guidance, and carrying it out.

The five C's: confidence, confession, conviction, conversion, and continuance was the process of life changing undertaken by the life changer. Confidence, the new person had to have confidence in you and know you would keep his secrets. Confession, honesty about the real state of a persons life. Conviction, the seriousness of his sin and the need to free of it. Conversion, the process had to be the persons own free will in the decision to surrender to God. Continuance, you were responsible as a life changer to help the new person become all that God wanted him to be. Only God could change a person and the work of the life changer had to be done under God's direction.

"My attitude to these matters is that, as long as a patient is really a member of a church, he ought to be serious. He ought to be really and sincerely a member of that church, and he should not go to a doctor to get his conflicts settled when he believes that he should do it with God. For instance, when a member of the Oxford Group comes to me in order to get treatment, I say, "You are in the Oxford Group; so long as you are there, you settle your affair with the Oxford Group. I can't do it better than Jesus." Carl Jung writing on the matter of an individual and his involvement in the Oxford Group

Moral Re-Armament (MRA) was an international moral and spiritual movement that, in 1938, developed from the American minister Frank Buchman's Oxford Group. Buchman headed MRA for 23 years until his death in 1961. In 2001 the movement was renamed Initiatives of Change.

In 1938 Buchman made a speech in East Ham Town Hall, London, in which he stated: "The crisis is fundamentally a moral one. The nations must re-arm morally. Morally recovery is essentially the forerunner of economic recovery." The same year the book Moral Rearmament (The Battle for Peace), sold half a million copies. Gradually the former Oxford Group developed into Moral Re-Armament.

When war broke out, MRA workers joined the Allied forces in large numbers, and were decorated for valour in many theatres of war. Others worked to heighten morale and overcome bottlenecks, particularly in war-related industries.

'Suspicions, rivalries, apathy, greed lie behind most of the bottlenecks. This is where the Moral Re-Armament group comes in. Where others have stood back and criticised, they have rolled up their sleeves and gone to work. They have already achieved remarkable results in bringing teamwork into industry, on the principles not of "who's right" but of "what's right". [Senator (later President) Harry Truman, Chair of the Senate Committee investigating war contracts, told a Washington press conference in 1943]

'important contribution to one of the greatest achievements in the entire record of modern statecraft: the astonishingly rapid Franco-German reconciliation after 1945.' historians Douglas Johnston and Cynthia Sampson

In 1956 King Mohammed V of Morocco sent a message to Buchman: 'I thank you for all you have done for Morocco in the course of these last testing years. Moral Re-Armament must become for us Muslims as much an incentive as it is for you Christians and for all nations.'

In Buchman's view, management and labour could 'work together like the fingers on the hand,' and in order to make that possible he aimed to answer 'the self-will in management and labour who are both so right, and so wrong.' MRA's role was to offer the experience which would free those people's hearts and minds from the motivations or prejudices which prevent just solutions.

William Grogan, an International Vice-President of the American Transport Workers' Union, said that 'between 1946 and 1953 national union leaders, local union officials, shop stewards and rank and file union members from 75 countries had received training' in MRA principles.

Evert Kupers, for 20 years President of the Dutch Confederation of Trades Unions, stated that 'the thousands who have visited Caux have been deeply impressed by its message for our age and by the real comradeship they found there.'

In France Maurice Mercier, Secretary-General of the textile workers within the Force Ouvriere, said: 'Class war today means one half of humanity against the other half, each possessing a powerful arsenal of destruction... Not one cry of hatred, not one hour of work lost, not one drop of blood shed - that is the revolution to which MRA calls bosses and workers.'

"The Oxford Group is a Christian revolution for remaking the world. The root problems in the world today are dishonesty, selfishness and fear – in men and, consequently, in nations. These evils multiplied result in divorce, crime, unemployment, recurrent depression and war. How can we hope for peace within a nation, or between nations, when we have conflict in countless homes? Spiritual recovery must precede economic recovery. Political or social solutions that do not deal with these root problems are inadequate."

"Everybody wants to see the other fellow changed. Every nation wants to see the other nation changed. But everybody is waiting for the other fellow to begin. The Oxford Group is convinced that if you want an answer for the world today, the best place to start with is with yourself. This is the first and fundamental need."

"We need a power strong enough to change human nature and build bridges between man and man, faction and faction. This starts when everyone admits his own faults instead of spot-lighting the other fellow's. God alone can change human nature. The secret lies in that great forgotten truth, that when man listens, God speaks; when man obeys, God acts; when men change, nations change."

"MRA is the good road of an ideology inspired by God upon which all can unite. Catholic, Jew and Protestant, Hindu, Muslim, Buddhist and Confucianist - all find they can change, where needed, and travel along this good road together."

Initiatives of Change ("IofC") is a global organization dedicated to "building trust across the world's divides" of culture, nationality, belief, and background. The organization is committed to transforming society, beginning with change in individual lives and relationships.

http://www.iofc.org/en/

As I researched all this I was struck with the wonder of the comradely that took place to rebuild after WWII.
Maybe future ‘fiscal cliffs’, bank failures and recessions can be avoided when every one  realizes it’s not "Who's Right" but "What's Right!"

How many lawyers, doctors, leaders, politicians, and corporate execs etcetera, etcetera, give God enough uninterrupted time really to tell them what to do?
Or the rest of us, for that matter.

It occurred to me that two sides can argue over whether a glass of water is half full or half empty and in terms of Morty Lefkoe's work they would both be right. To each it is a truth based on a belief attributed to that event.  

But unless you drink the water you'll die of dehydration.   

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