Day 28 - Risen from the Word

The ancient pagans, faced with Christianity, needed to make a choice between their brilliant, jangling, irresponsible universe alive with lawless powers into which they could not possibly have any influence, and the serene and ordered universe of God.

We modern pagans have to make the same choice; between that divine order and the grey, mostly dead, irresponsible and chaotic universe of atheism.

And the tragedy for us is that we might be making that choice without realising it-not by clear conviction that is, but by a general and vague drifting, by merely losing interest in him. A nominal deist might well admit: "Of course there must be some sort of Force for good out there that created the galaxies. But I think it's naïve to imagine that such a force would have any personal connection and relation to me!"

In saying so, he begins to go back to the original pagan understanding of his forefathers. Atheism exists In his belief as an undiagnosed disease. The man who says, "One God," and does not love him, is an atheist at heart. The man who can talk about God and yet does not recognize him in the burning bush--that man is an atheist, even if he does speak with the tongues of men or angels, appearing in his pew every Sunday, and making large and regular contributions to the church.

He must be wary, too, of following an imaginary Jesus, the Christ who is 'nice', gentle, meek and mild, bowed down in humility and seeking to help cripples to cross the street. He builds a god in his imagination from his experience of life, exactly as the old pagans used to do.

True Christianity lies in following the only true risen Lord, risen out of the pages of the New Testament into the glory of heaven and into the glory of our hearts.