My latest over at Mere Orthodoxy (and, I think, a good one):
One of the most significant moves Christians can make in the culture wars, then, is to drop the sense of entitlement and the accompanying resentment when things don’t go our way, and to forge in their place a cheerful, Chestertonian (which is to say: friendly and witty and incisive all at once) confidence in the truth of our positions and a deeper trust in the sovereignty of God. When attacked we can respond with good cheer. But how?
A friend recently posted as her facebook status a sentiment familiar to us all:
[I hate] politics. Why can’t we all just get along and work together? Today, I’m thanking God that this place is not my home.
“We are foreigners and strangers in your sight, as were all our ancestors. Our days on earth are like a shadow, without hope.” 1 Chronicles 29:15
I’m with her on the majority of that status. That first bit, though? I understand the sentiment; I think we all feel that desire for peaceable cooperation in love, and we all look forward to the day when our many differences no longer divide us, when our unity in Christ really does supersede all else and our disagreements fall away.
There’s are many reasons we can’t all just get along and work together, though. Read on, intrepid explorer →
Many of us are aware of how religion easily becomes a work, through legalistic observance of rules and rituals, but sometimes we forget that relationship can fall into the same traps. While the legalist chases adherence to the rules, the relationist chases the next feel-good moment. In this sense, relationship can become just another type of salvation by works among pietistic people who go from one passionate mountaintop experience to another, only to sour on God when he doesn’t deliver according to the bargain they had struck.
—Stephen Lutz, College Ministry in a Post-Christian Culture