There is a nostalgia for religious faith, but not one that makes annoying demands; instead, the market calls for spiritual bonbons, little angel-fairies that grant wishes and look so reverent you just have to chuckle.
Christianity is declining in part because we can't, and shouldn't, pander to this current demand for sentimental spiritual delights. Our message is unfashionably tough: that the humanists are wrong, and we are not perfectable under our own power -- that we are more lost than even our panicky despair indicates...
But God has made a way. We can stop denying our sinfulness and stop fooling with ersatz gods. Jesus Christ alone paid the price, and He is the way -- the only way -- to make sense of our lives and make peace with God. There's nothing exclusive here. Salvation through Jesus is offered to all who will respond.
The worn words are overly familiar, but you don't get a new truth just because the old one got to looking old fashioned. Many are looking for this toughness; they're fed up with Cocoa Puffs and are searching for real food.
-- Frederica Mathewes-Green, excerpted from the Religious News Service, July 25, 1995. For the complete article click Looking for Religious Truth in All the Wrong Places
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