Wisdom the Principal Thing
May/June 2008
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After World War II, an American in Shanghai, the Rev. D. R. Lindberg (one of our Newsletter family) walked downtown one morning and witnessed an amazing sight.
How do you view the progress of the Kingdom of God? I do not mean its eventual progress, or its eternal victory, but right now, in this very day. Many people feel it is an expression of spiritual discernment to be discouraged, believing that it represents a sensitivity to the horrors of the sin we see.
If you allow the Bible to change your view of creation, you will realize how you may be living far below your God-given potential; and you will discover one of Christianity’s most paralyzing defects.
As I read church history and meet Christians who sacrificed themselves and all they possessed for the honor and glory of Christ and the preservation of Biblical truth, I am always moved to tears.
What is not a myth, regrettably, is how the Christian faith and the Bible have been skeletonized. How long did it take for the church to skeletonize the faith? It took more than a few minutes to reduce the faith to a skeleton; it took many decades, but the bones are no less white, no less denuded.
These Presbyterians took the long view and were not, as so many American Christians are today, looking for an escape. They believed that they and Christ’s Kingdom would prevail and that they would ultimately take dominion. Therefore, they built their lives—down to the dwellings they occupied—accordingly.
“Of course there must be lots of Magic in the world,” he said wisely one day, “but people don’t know what it is like or how to make it. Perhaps the beginning is just to say nice things are going to happen until you make them happen …” —Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden (1911)
Certain theological explanations espoused by preachers or scholars raise the question of whether the explanation can be universally applied.
Frank Viola has penned a provocative book—with an introduction by George Barna. Viola is a one-time high school teacher who left the institutional church twenty years ago to become an “organic” church planter and promoter.