GOD WAS IN THEIR MIDST

"There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”  (Galatians 3:28 NIV)

Race highlights the fact that in our congregational life we usually do not reflect the variety of cultures.  There are Asian, West Indian, and Anglo-Saxon congregations worshiping and meeting close to each other.  These groups meet at work and in school, but not always in church.  If the church is middle-class and intellectual in the language of the services, in the music employed, in the life-style expected of Christians, in its leadership, and in the methods of presenting the gospel, then the whole atmosphere is such as to repel those who are not middle-class and intellectual.  They feel out of place and unwanted, even if they are given a friendly greeting at the door.

The life of the New Testament Church was evidence of the supernatural; God was in their midst.  The power of Christ was a reality.  The fellowship could not be explained in simple natural terms.  A church divided on social and racial lines is not evidence for the supernatural, but for the simply human and social.

-- David Bronnert in "The Gospel and Culture" in “The Changing World”


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SUBSTITUTE SACREDS

A society that denies the supernatural usually ends up elevating the natural to supernatural status.  Annie Dillard tells of experiments in which entomologists entice male butterflies with a painted cardboard replica larger and more enticing than the females of their species.  Excited, the male butterfly mounts the piece of cardboard; again and again he mounts it. "Nearby, the real, living female butterfly opens and closes her wings in vain."

C. S. Lewis uses the phrase "sweet poison of the false infinite" to describe this same tendency in the human species.  We allow substitute sacreds, or false infinites, to fill the vacuum of our disenchanted world.

-- Philip Yancey in Rumors of Another World


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