MICHAELMAS 2004
From the editor…
A Glorious Gospel Opportunity
“Safe?” said Mr. Beaver…
Who said anything about safe?
‘Course he isn’t safe. But he’s
good.”
A wonderful description of Jesus from C. S. Lewis,
that. It applies especially well to
Jesus’ tour de force, the Sermon on the Mount, in which he teaches the
disciples to live as “salt” and “light.”
Salt in the ancient world was a source of flavor but it was
also a preservative. If a piece of meat
had become rotten, it was not the fault of the meat, but of the salt.
This means that part of having a Christian worldview is to
understand that if a culture is decaying, that is the responsibility of
the
church, not the culture.
With that in mind, consider the recent book by social critic
Jane Jacobs entitled Dark Ages Ahead.
Ms. Jacobs 1961 work, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, is
now seen to be a minor classic and so her voice deserves a careful
hearing when
she says America
is in serious cultural decline. She
describes “ominous signs of decay” in five “pillars” of our culture:
family,
community, higher education, science, and "self policing by the learned
professions.” Speaking of the first, she
says modern families are "rigged to fail,” especially because of the
brutal challenge of home ownership. In
terms of the second pillar, she claims that, “not TV nor illegal drugs
but the
automobile has been the chief destroyer of American common life.”
“The death of vigorous cultures is caused not by assault
from outside but by assault from within, that is, by internal rot in
the form
of fatal cultural turnings, not recognized as wrong turnings when they
occur or
soon enough afterward to be correctable.
Time during which corrections can be made runs out because of mass
forgetfulness.”
It is an arresting read.
“A society must be self-aware.
Any culture that jettisons the values that have given it competence,
adaptability, and identity becomes weak and hollow.” And what is
her prescription for a culture
that could be headed the way of Ancient Rome?
People who will enrich our souls.
Ms. Jacobs is giving the church in America
a wake up call at the beginning of the 21st century. We need to
repent of our failure to be
genuine salt and light. We also need to
realize that in a time of shaking societal pillars there is a glorious
gospel
opportunity.
Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have
the words of eternal life” (John
6:68).
May God give us the courage to offer those words in the days
and weeks ahead.
The Rev. Canon Dr. Kendall S. Harmon
Contact Dr Harmon by e-mail at ksharmon@mindspring.com
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