Tag: election

Counter-Culture at Its Best

It used to be that Hippies and Beatniks (remember them?) were America’s counter-culture…

“As Christians [in America], our challenge is to go back as close as we can to the Gospel and truly be the church. Increasingly, we’re likely to be a counter-culture. As that happens, we will be the last great defenders of reason, truth and human dignity, with the task of defending [the Faith] not just theoretically…but practically, as the early church did… Our privilege will be to repeat that story in our time.” —Os Guinness (World Magazine interview, June 29, 2013)

Our passports say “Kingdom of Heaven”.
Our culture is Jesus.
We are light in the darkness at noon.

Far out, man.

—j

The Unelected

Democracy makes people rulers, ideologies are their battlefields and votes are their swords—until a real King happens along…

“As Christians we know that here we have no continuing city—that crowns roll in the dust and every earthly kingdom must sometime flounder, whereas we acknowledge a King men did not crown and cannot dethrone, as we are citizens of a city of God they did not build and cannot destroy. Thus the apostle Paul wrote to the Christians in Rome, living in a society as depraved and dissolute as ours. Their games, like our television, specialized in spectacles of violence and eroticism. Paul exhorted them to be “steadfast, unmovable, always abounding in God’s work,” to concern themselves with the things that are unseen. “For the things which are seen are temporal but the things which are not seen are eternal.” It was in the breakdown of Rome that Christendom was born. Now in the breakdown of Christendom there are the same requirements and the same possibilities to eschew the fantasy of a disintegrating world and seek the reality of what is not seen and eternal, the reality of Christ.” —Malcolm Muggeridge

The King is coming.

—j

You, the Hero

There are people in this darkening world who are admired more than others, even when the darkness is great and imposing. They are of little worth to the status quo, yet they shine like stars. They are you.

“If we lived in a state where virtue was profitable, common sense would make us saintly. But since we see that abhorrence, anger, pride and stupidity commonly profit far beyond charity, modesty, justice and thought, perhaps we must stand fast a little—even at the risk of being heroes.” —Sir Thomas More, from the play, “A Man for All Seasons” by Robert Bolt 

Stand fast, mighty one of God—be the hero.

—j

In Case of Turbulence

“Jesus was surrounded by [religious] men who made criticism their constant occupation while missing their opportunity to help the hurting, the hungry and the oppressed.” —Douglas R. McClean Jr.

In a turbulent world we can complain or we can serve; the first is about my offended sensibilities; the second, compassion for others—like Jesus in His turbulent world.

Complain, and none benefit; serve, and all are blessed.

Blessings,
—j