Out of all the commendable thoughts expressed in Fr Stephen's recent post, Icons and Words, something about the sentence quoted above grabbed me strongly, and I confess that the thoughts that began to arise out of it have little to do with the topic in his original post, other than that, for me, they are, like words of the scriptures, ikonic to an amazing degree. I often say, "Pictures are supposed to be worth a thousand words, but for me the bible is the word that is worth a thousand pictures." That's what happened inside my head when I read, "God cannot enter the world for the world has been rendered God-proof."
In context, what I think Fr Stephen was expressing is that the drift of modern Western culture has tended towards the elimination of God from every aspect of our lives, and that it has very well succeeded, or at least in popular culture. In an odd way, though, I think he was also saying that even amongst some Christians the same thing has happened.
What he writes about is from the viewpoint of an Orthodox Christian looking out of his window on the world, and as a matter of fact, it also looks like that to me too.The fact is, the world has not yet succeeded in making itself God-proof, and we who follow Jesus are the living, walking reminder of that failure. It may never be able to render itself God-proof as long as we are on the planet. This opens up many other questions to discussion which I won't go into here, but as I read that line in his post and its conditional truth thrust itself deep into my mind, I saw a lot of things that I can't express in words, except one:
Just at that moment when the rulers of this world system are at the point of being able to certify the world God-proof, that is when He won't be able to hold Himself back.
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