Tuesday, November 5, 2013
364 - Omnipotence Is Not Enough
Spirituality Column #364
November 5, 2013
Current in Carmel-Westfield-Noblesville-Fishers-Zionsville
“Christianity is the only religion on earth that felt omnipotence made God incomplete … [it] added courage to the virtues of the Creator.”
November 5, 2013
Current in Carmel-Westfield-Noblesville-Fishers-Zionsville
Omnipotence Is Not Enough
By Bob Walters“Christianity is the only religion on earth that felt omnipotence made God incomplete … [it] added courage to the virtues of the Creator.”
– G.K.
Chesterton, “Orthodoxy”
G.K.
Chesterton’s Orthodoxy is a book I
read every couple of years. You can’t
beat the pithy aphorisms, cultural observations, theological deductions, and
plain-as-day, a-b-c Christian truth offered in this brief, classic
British volume from 1908.
Orthodoxy is a great refresher of
thoughtful faith: not in the way the Bible is mysteriously uplifting, cosmic, spiritual
and personal, but in a “God and Christ and church and me and my brain against
the world,” boots-on-the-ground kind of way.
Orthodoxy equips the faithful –
intellectually and morally – to battle the relentless, dark and
death-hearkening anti-God forces of fallen man in this fallen world.
Across
100 years – really, one may as well say 2,000 years – the problems pagan and
secular elements of culture have with, and the challenges they make to, the
Christian message have changed little.
Chesterton’s writing is fresh despite the fact that Orthodoxy predates the gross upheavals of the 20th
century – two world wars, communism, Nazis, dictators, genocides, and the rise
of evolution-fueled, post-modern, techno-centric philosophical nothingness. Chesterton is a voice for the ages.
But
horrible wars, terrible government, murderous politics, private deceit and
heretical faith are nothing new in the history of mankind: just read the
Bible. What very much is new,
dramatically new – even 2,000 thousand years hence – is Jesus Christ: God as
man, God who loves, serves and forgives, God who is glorified by saving sinners
through His own death and grace, and God whose courage declares our lives
worthwhile and makes our deaths a triumphant transition to eternal life.
Yes,
modern mankind wants to worship and glorify something, but it typically shades-over
Christ’s truth on the Cross. Instead, mankind’s
own power, money, pride, fame – all temporal charades – are mistakenly deified. Man may assign a vaunted priority and love for
family and nation, but while that is good, it is incomplete; it’s merely an
affection consigned to expire on this earth if it lacks faith in the eternity
of Christ.
That
we worship the almighty Creator God of love, action, freedom and courage – not
to mention grace, mercy, forgiveness and truth – is the richest gift in the
universe. Yet empirical, “show-me,”
“prove-it,” faith-throttling mankind, in the dark, cowering, Christ-less
embrace of destructive appetites, rebuffs this profound, eternal gift that is graciously
provided by a humble and courageous Jesus Christ on the Cross.
Christ
never bragged about his power. Maybe
that’s because, though an all-powerful God can do anything, a courageous God
can do so much more.
Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) this week marks seven years – 364 consecutive weeks – of writing “In
Spirit” for Current.
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