Spence!
It’s true. At least I think it’s true. You almost don’t want to say it out loud for fear of jinxing it. But it’s like that tendril of warmer air that sometimes drifts beneath your nostrils toward the end of winter. You can’t help wondering: maybe what seems like the worst of the weather is really the start of better days.
I know I’m not alone in feeling we’ve gone through — we’re going through — a period of genuine wickedness. Almost everyone I talk to says it to me, some version of that line from The Tempest: “Hell is empty, and all the devils are here.” It’s not just hard times. I’ve been through hard times. It’s the embrace of — the celebration of — the insistence on the rituals of degradation. The abandonment of the rule of law. The hostility toward simple truth. The flirtation with worldwide war. The sexualization of children, the butchery of children, the killing of unborn children to keep the world safe for pleasure and perversity. When disaster strikes, we won’t have to ask: “Why us?” We’ll know why. This can’t go on. It won’t go on.
Which is not to say a religious revival would instantaneously cure our ills or fend off the consequences of our decades-long Festival of the Abhorrent. God never promised us a better world. The opposite rather. All he ever offered us was the kingdom of heaven among us and peace that passes understanding in each of us who see it there.
But that’s not nothing. And who knows? If enough of us find that peace, the world might look at least a little better than it does right now.
On that almost hopeful note, I would like to offer a personal perspective. I’m not a pious man. I have no faith in pious men. Piety is a lie. No one is righteous, no, not one. I know that my redeemer lives. He’s real and nothing will make him unreal. He isn’t prissy or delicate. He doesn’t need to slap down doubts or silence questions or thunder against honest searching that might lead his children through heresy before they find the truth.
So here’s what I believe. We are going to have to rebuild the church. It’s in rubble and even the rubble’s corrupt, sclerotic and small-minded on the one hand, twisted into the ugly image of the age on the other. Two by two and three by three, small gatherings, Bibles in hand, we’re going to have to find our God again. And — here's the heretical part — I don’t think orthodoxies and rituals and doctrines are what we’re missing. I think it’s Christ. His message of radical mercy and radical love. I think churches and rituals and doctrines and even scripture itself are only worthwhile if they are vessels that carry him. And they can only carry him if we look for him there.
There’s nothing to salvage, nothing to wait for. We may as well begin.
Love,
Yer Dad
If the devils' motto in The Screwtape Letters, if I'm recalling correctly, is "Anything but God" then we are all guilty of diverted attention, particularly in the age of the Internet. Keyboard warrioring is not a substitute to an authentic prayer life, but prayer is an actual battle and thus more difficult. Regardless, I have often thought that if most of us spent half as much time in prayer as we do in online engagement, myself included, the Powers and Principalities might not be having the field day they seem to be enjoying currently. The difficult thing though, is to be detached from outcome. To focus on God for His sake and not for some benefit.
I’ve seen a LOT of conversions to Christianity, particularly Catholicism, lately. I can only guess at the reasons. For some, maybe it’s the fascination with The Chosen, or even the horror at what the West has become. Whatever the reason, it’s a good thing.
For others, surely it’s fear that the end times are at hand. And there’s a fair reason for that fear. The Lord God of Israel destroyed 4 of the 5 cities of the plain for less than we are right now. Is there any reason to think any western nation, particularly the US, might be another city of Zoar? I don’t know about that. 🤔
It makes me wonder how much longer He will wait for us to repent of our iniquities and return to the straight and narrow road.
But those conversions are a good sign. It is not the time now to be shy in your faith. Don’t be afraid of a raised eyebrow or scoffs, when you tell others why you are a Christian. And if they ask why, tell them and be as confident as Charles Colson was, when he said this:
“I know the resurrection is a fact, and Watergate proved it to me. How? Because 12 men testified they had seen Jesus raised from the dead, then they proclaimed that truth for 40 years, never once denying it. Every one was beaten, tortured, stoned and put in prison. They would not have endured that if it weren't true. Watergate embroiled 12 of the most powerful men in the world-and they couldn't keep a lie for three weeks. You're telling me 12 apostles could keep a lie for 40 years? Absolutely impossible.”