Monday, November 28, 2005
God In The "Big" News
I found two pieces over the weekend in the legacy media that simply astounded me. The first was an opinion piece by Umberto Eco in the London Telegraph. A lapsed Catholic, Eco nonetheless writes a startingly good defense of a Christian view of Christmas.
That magic is particularly important for bloggers to remember. The very absurdity of the Christian story prevents its full communication from ever happening in this medium alone. We can communicate the clear and concise nature of that absurdity here, but it's truth is a matter of experience, not words. As we write, we must endeavor to experience the truth for ourselves.
The other big story of matters godly in the legacy media was a Bill Buckley piece on persecution of Christians in China and North Korea. It's some horrific stuff, particularly in North Korea. The Christian Persecution Blog is maintained by a friend of mine and is a great resource on the matter. On a side note, given such real persecution of actual human beings, doesn't this, McCartney attacks China over fur, strike you as extraordinarily silly?
Buckley rightly asks questions in his peice of the State Department on the matter. There are limits to what we can do, but we certainly can pray. And we can thank God for the people who have the strength of their faith sufficient to suffer such persecution. Do you? Would you, as did some in North Korea, allow a steam roller to crush you before you would renounce your faith? Heck of a question, isn't it?
If your faith is not so strong, why not? There is a lot more to pray about in a situation like this than we might at first believe. Part of what I am praying for is that I can have their faith. Join me?
I think I agree with Joyce's lapsed Catholic hero in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man: "What kind of liberation would that be to forsake an absurdity which is logical and coherent and to embrace one which is illogical and incoherent?" The religious celebration of Christmas is at least a clear and coherent absurdity. The commercial celebration is not even that.Sometimes, I think we as Christians forget the apparent absurdity of our faith. An omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent, eternal Creator God somehow became a mortal, material, dimensionally limited, temporally contrained human and allowed Himself to die and be resurrected. Doesn't make much sense, does it? And yet, it is without question the most beautiful story ever told.
That magic is particularly important for bloggers to remember. The very absurdity of the Christian story prevents its full communication from ever happening in this medium alone. We can communicate the clear and concise nature of that absurdity here, but it's truth is a matter of experience, not words. As we write, we must endeavor to experience the truth for ourselves.
The other big story of matters godly in the legacy media was a Bill Buckley piece on persecution of Christians in China and North Korea. It's some horrific stuff, particularly in North Korea. The Christian Persecution Blog is maintained by a friend of mine and is a great resource on the matter. On a side note, given such real persecution of actual human beings, doesn't this, McCartney attacks China over fur, strike you as extraordinarily silly?
Buckley rightly asks questions in his peice of the State Department on the matter. There are limits to what we can do, but we certainly can pray. And we can thank God for the people who have the strength of their faith sufficient to suffer such persecution. Do you? Would you, as did some in North Korea, allow a steam roller to crush you before you would renounce your faith? Heck of a question, isn't it?
If your faith is not so strong, why not? There is a lot more to pray about in a situation like this than we might at first believe. Part of what I am praying for is that I can have their faith. Join me?
