Tuesday 14 September 2010

Dramatic Public Gestures

The Real Versus Trifles

Amidst the international brouhaha over koran burning we see some Christians (Warhol Christians, Douglas Wilson calls them) seeking to make a grand public gesture to "put the world to rights". The more the rest of the world, from the chattering to the rabid classes, protest and prognosticate, the more the folk see justification for their grand gestures; the more they are joined by more bandwagon Warhol Christians. It's all sad, really.  The only entertaining thing about it is to see the chattering classes in such a bother. 

So now we have a slew of folk, it would seem, who have decided to burn korans in public. Stupid, self-defeating, unhelpful. But there you have it. Things like that happen in a free society. Here are some links to a few of the folks who have decided to get in on the act. Springfield Pastor Plans To Burn Quran; Westboro Baptist Church to burn Qurans if Dove doesn't.

OK, so we accept that some of these folk are likely self-serving, publicity seeking, and venally inspired. But there will be others who really do believe that God's Kingdom can be advanced by such "grand gestures" which is a perversion of the truth.

The Kingdom of God comes like leaven leavening the whole loaf. It comes by means of an insinuating Spiritual influence and power that transforms from the inside out. The Kingdom of God ordinarily takes a lifetime to come in the lives of individual people. It requires generations of godly influence to come to substantial institutional form. The notion that the Kingdom can be advanced by some grand histrionic act is risible. It betrays that the purveyor of the histrionic act has little understanding of the depth, profundity, and thickness of the Kingdom.

The Kingdom of God involves doing God's will upon the earth as it is in heaven. And God does not do histrionic acts in heaven. Neither must we upon the earth. The Kingdom of God is far too holy, weighty, substantial, glorious, and real to be served by such piffle.

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