Well, yesterday was a big day. We’re trying to sort through job opportunities and see what happens there, so pray for us on that and, there was a little ceremony that you may have heard about bringing in a new president.
Now, I’m not one much for politics, and I think that the Church getting mixed in with politics has proven to be a horrible idea since it first started doing so with Constantine (thank God Christendom is finally falling or has finally fallen depending upon who you’re talking to). The Church tends to lose its ability to speak truth to government when it gets too involved in government. But regardless of political spectrum it’s amazing to see a black person become president considering where we were as a nation not so long ago. But, while I’ve got a lot of thoughts swirling in my head regarding civil religion right now, what I really want to do is share a quote. The last part of last year I reread Brian McLaren’s A New Kind of Christian Series, and toward the end of the last book The Last Word and the Word After That a quote was given that has stuck with me. I will admit that I have not read the book that McLaren quotes, so like with so many things the quote may have more going on in it because of what’s outside of it than I realize. But I post it because I found it in and of itself quite intriguing.
“To believe in God is to believe in the salvation of the world. The paradox of our time is that those who believe in God do not believe in the salvation of the world, and those who believe in the future of the world do not believe in God.
Christians believe in “the end of the world,” they expect the final catastrophe, the punishment of others.
Atheists in their turn . . . refuse to believe in God because Christians believe in him and take no interest in the world . . .
Which is the more culpable ignorance?
. . . I often say to myself that, in our religion, God must feel very much alone: for is there anyone besides God who believes in the salvation of the world? God seeks among us sons and daughters who resemble him enough, who love the world enough so that he could send them into the world to save it.”
– Louis Evely, In the Christian Spirit (Image, 1975)