The Cloth of Our Humanity

the Light that gives light to every man who comes into the world was born in the dank darkness of a small isolated cave in a Bethlehem hillside...and He was wrapped in the humble cloth of our humanity that we might be wrapped in the glorious garments of His divinity, "garments of salvation" and "robes of righteousness".

Marketing the Church

Marketing the Church

Viruses and Antidotes

I have often pondered the phenomenon of various types of viruses and the manner in which antidotes are developed, deployed and work to combat and eradicate or prevent a particular virus.  This may seem like a random thought to some, but increasingly we are told by medical research agencies and medical science that certain types of viruses are increasing in their potency and threat to human (and animal) health.

Life on planet earth is slowly growing more and more precarious and fragile, it seems.  Of course, in one way or another, it has always been so.  Human life as we have been able to follow history has always had its temporal vulnerabilities to environmental changes.  The amazing thing is that our Creator has endowed human beings with such a strong "survival instinct", an unquenchable thirst and grasping for life, that we have, by His beneficent Providence, been able to come through a host of some of the most amazing and intimidating catastrophes, plagues, wars, genocides and environmental threats imaginable.

In the process of the challenging quest to live on this planet and survive and overcome developments such as those listed above, some of our making and some completely beyond our control, amazing "antidotes" have been discovered, developed and made available that have in some instances seemingly eradicated from human experience certain threats to human health and well-being.  Penicillin, sulfa-drugs, vaccinations and a host of more recent breakthroughs have, at times, given people a sense that anything can be overcome with scientific knowledge, persistence and human ingenuity.  On the other hand, in the last 15 years we are increasingly being warned that there are certain types of "viruses", or "super viruses", that seem to be emerging or morphing in ways and at an increasing rate that medical science has often pondered the possibility of viruses, and consequent diseases and health epidemics, that could potentially become a major threat, once again, to the safety and health of the "global family" the world of our time has become.

As sobering and disturbing as this perspective is, there are also other types of viruses that pose even more radical and deep-seated threats to human well-being and order in societies.

C. S. Lewis Quotes - Requires Savoring and Pondering

"Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another: "What! You too? I thought I was the only one."
— C.S. Lewis

"I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else."
— C.S. Lewis

"The Christian does not think God will love us because we are good, but that God will make us good because He loves us."
— C.S. Lewis

"If we find ourselves with a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that we were made for another world."
— C.S. Lewis

"Some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again."
— C.S. Lewis (The World's Last Night: And Other Essays)

"There are far, far better things ahead than any we leave behind."
— C.S. Lewis

"God can't give us peace and happiness apart from Himself because there is no such thing."
— C.S. Lewis

"I pray because I can't help myself. I pray because I'm helpless. I pray because the need flows out of me all the time- waking and sleeping. It doesn't change God- it changes me."
— C.S. Lewis

"To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable."
— C.S. Lewis (The Four Loves)

Notable and Quotable - Thoughts for Birthing New Perspectives

“We have to remember that we look for solitude in order to grow there in love for God and in love for others. We do not go into the desert to escape people but to learn how to find them: we do not leave them in order to have nothing more to do with them, but to find out the way to do them the most good”.  Thomas Merton

“A friend is someone who knows the song in your heart, and sings it back to you when you have forgotten how it goes.” Anonymous

"Next to the WORD of God the noble art of MUSIC is the greatest treasure in the world; It controls our thoughts, minds, hearts and spirits." - Martin Luther

"Nobody dreams of music in hell, and no one can imagine heaven without it." - Samuel Parkes Cadman

Ponderings At The Back of the Wardrobe

Mystery is not something we conquer, but something we embrace and enter into; and, in the process, we are enriched, humbled, and transformed.  So often in western "civilization" we try to conquer the mysteries of life, a poor and wearied approach that modernity has tried and found wanting.  Many branches of science are beginning to acknowledge with every new probing discovery the wonder, awe and mystery of life.  "Exact science" is beginning to discover its hubris and the folly of empirical rationalism that would seek to reduce the mysteries of life to controllable equations.

The human mind and reason functioning from a perception of its ability to conquer and control always, inevitably, finds itself on the cusp of the chasm of the "deep magic", as C. S. Lewis describes the nature of creation permeated by the life-giving and life-sustaining power and active Presence of its Creator.  The greatest mystery, that of a loving and personal, yet transcendent Creator - God in Three Persons, as one great hymn puts it - beckons and invites all His creatures back into the embrace of His unfathomable and unfailing love in order that we might have the joy of sharing again in the dance of the divine mystery that gives meaning and purpose to every aspect of life.  And, that great Mystery of Love permeates the everydayness of our lives in a manner that has the power to transform the commonness of our daily struggles, questions and uncertainties into discovery, encounter and awakening and to alter our perceptions of what is real and lasting and that can only, finally, be described as wonder and mystery.

Somehow, it seems imperative to take searching steps of faith toward the back of the wardrobe with a trembling hope that as we reach out in the dark there awaits us the joyful discovery that the Great Mystery we have so often feared, ignored or raged against is waiting to free us to enter into and experience the profound realization that there are other "lands", other "dimensions", other "vistas" available to us. He has prepared for us, as the Holy Scriptures describe it, "that which no eye has seen, no ear has heard and has not entered into the heart of man" as we learn to trust and embrace - the Mystery.

The Mystery and Enchantment of Faith

It seems as though “post-modernity” as a philosophy and way of seeing life has come round to reveal to the world of modernity with all its hubris, pride of control and the exaltation of reason and will over all things just how far from reality and truth it really is. 

The last 250 years have seen the rise and ascendancy in the western world of what has been known as The Age of Reason, the Enlightenment or Modernity.  It is philosophy that has shaped the western worldview in such a way as to deify human reason and will and to make “progress” the ultimate “modern” idolatry.  Most of the “isms” that plague our contemporary world have sprung from the womb of Enlightenment thinking in almost all of the aspects of culture and society in mainstream America and Western Europe.

Autonomous individualism, moral relativism, lethal societal narcissism, secular humanism, scientific or rational reductionism (sometimes called “scientism”), pluralism and a host of other Enlightenment offspring have taken hold of our society in almost every field of endeavor and social construction.  In so doing, modernity (which is still very much with us despite post-modernity’s increasing influence on younger generations) has reduced most of the meaning of life to what we make of it, to what we can make happen by will and reason, by gaining understanding so as to control our environment. 

We see the fruit of this insidious philosophy of life in the increase of other, more ancient “isms” which fueled the Enlightenment “human engineering” project.  Hedonism, rampant materialism, unrestrained consumerism and the economic brutality of globalization and runaway capitalism have reduced human experience of life to the survival of the fittest, or the greediest, or the shrewdest, valuing power and wealth above compassion and generosity.  Totalitarianism has arisen in new and unexpected forms in many parts of the globe, even “post-communism”, and the regard for the dignity and value of human life, together with most other categories of meaning, have been reduced to impersonal “bottom lines” of various kinds. 

The late Pope John Paul II lamented these developments in societies and cultures where the “culture of death” seemed to open its maw to consume individual dignity and freedom.  He described the state of man in 1991 in his speech before the United Nations General Assembly: "At times it seems as though man exists only as a producer and consumer of goods, or as an object of state administration," he said.

But, you might be saying by now, what about our faith, what about the power of the Gospel to bring change to these desperate times and developments.  I ponder the same questions and look for the fresh and transforming answers the Good News of Jesus Christ and His new way of being human may hold for our times.

One of my deep concerns in this regard has to do with what I see as a capitulation of the Christian faith on so many fronts to the very same Enlightenment rationalism, particularly in America and western European nations.  So often, the Christian faith has been reduced to accommodate or fit in with aspects of modernity that are so pervasive we don’t even realize we are serving its agenda in the ways we approach the implementation and understanding of the faith.