Realities that are built on sand
Reflections
| 26 May 2008
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We see it now in the collapse of the great banks: this money disappears, it is nothing. And so all these things, that seem the true reality to count on, are realities of secondary importance. He who builds his life on these realities – on matter, on success, on appearances – builds it on sand.
– Pope Benedict XVI
, in remarks to the Vatican's Synod of Bishops, referring to the global economic crisis.
Lorna Dueck comments on spirituality and the credit crunch:
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2008/10/09/f-vp-dueck.html
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A great many people do now seem to think that the mere state of being worried is in itself meritorious. I don’t think it is. We must, if it so happens, give our lives for others; but even while we’re doing it, I think we’re meant to enjoy Our Lord and, in Him, our friends, our food, our sleep, our jokes, and the birds’ song and the frosty sunrise.
C.S. Lewis, Yours, Jack edited by Paul F. Ford (HarperCollins, 2008).
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If anyone would tell you the shortest, surest way to all happiness, all perfection, he would tell you to make a rule to yourself to thank and praise God for everything that happens to you. For it is certain that whatever seeming calamity happens to you, if you thank and praise God for it, you turn it into a blessing. Could you therefore work miracles, you could not do more for yourself than by the thankful spirit, for it heals with a word spoken, and turns all that it touches into happiness.
- William Law, A Serious Call to a Holy and Devout Life (Vintage 2002).
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The biggest single social factor relating to declining church attendance among younger adults is not TV, the Internet, increasing scepticism regarding Christian orthodoxy or the spectre of ‘secular humanism’ or ‘relativism’. "Being married or unmarried has a stronger effect on church attendance than anything else… Children also make some difference… This means that the postponement of marriage and children continues to suppress church attendance at least until adults are in their early 40s.”
- Brian D. McLaren reviewing After the Baby Boomers: How Twenty and Thirty-Somethings Are Shaping the Future of American Religion by Robert Wuthnow (Princeton University Press; $US29.95).
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I have had to recognize that many thoughtful people express deep gratitude for Marcus Borg’s Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time: The Historical Jesus and the Heart of Christian Faith.
They are relieved to find, at last, a Jesus freed from his churchly spin doctors and Sunday school bodyguards, a Jesus who is plausible, credible and reasonable.
Too reasonable, I’d say. Borg weaves a strange post-Enlightenment filter from strands of overly positivist history, a vaguely Newtonian worldview and filaments of leftover Lutheran piety. The Jesus who manages to squeeze through this narrow mesh may be an inspiring figure – a dreamily compassionate spiritual sage – but even the touchy Romans probably wouldn’t have wasted a cross on him. More likely, they would have given him tenure.
- Thomas G. Long writing in the Christian Century
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