Of battle lines

I have good reason to thank God every morning when I awake to find a roof over my head, food if I want it, a car that works with gasoline in the tank, and a job to go to. I have good reason to thank Him for giving me a quiet rest in a safe and clean place, for granting me and my family the blessing of good health, and not least of all, a few very faithful friends.

This month I have extra cause to thank Him for surrounding me with such a great cloud of witnesses from whose lips and in whose lives I hear and experience such Truth, as I cannot remember anymore that anything in this world matters, but to follow Jesus.

Quoting some passages from Fr Stephen’s recent blog post In the Shadow of the Grand Inquisitor,

The case for power is always replete with good reasons. The case for forgiveness is weak in the extreme. It is generally the case that those who take the commandments of Christ so seriously that they actually seek to live them inevitably look like fools against those whose knowledge and cynicism wield worldly power.

Our human lives are repeatedly tempted to take up certain
"Christian" goals and implement them. Indeed, the increased organization and efficiency of modern man seems quite capable of eradicating hunger, abuse, neglect and the like. Strangely, the many efforts towards such worldly perfection (in the name of heavenly goods) has left history littered with failed schemes and occasionally vast amounts of carnage.

Christ did not come into the world to make bad men good, but to make dead men live.

It is not a great scheme through a united world, or a united Europe that will succeed in creating paradise on earth. I find it comical (were it no so tragic) that among the earliest accomplishments of the European courts is to banish crucifixes in the schoolrooms of Italian children. How many empty bellies will that feed? The Inquisitor (now in Strasbourg) will tell us it is for the children’s freedom.

The battle lines are not political (they never have been). The removal of one Inquisitor is simply to create a vacancy for the next. Indeed, the Christian response is not a response to the actions of man: it is a response to the actions of God.

[The] answer to the Grand Inquisitor is not a better-honed argument… it is the day to day life of the simple believer:
“Greater is He that is in you than he that is in the world”
(1 John 4:4).

The answer of the Church, apart from everything else, is to live the transforming life of the indwelling Christ. Christians will be persecuted in this world. They will take away our crosses, smash our icons and tell us that we are wasting our time. They will tell us many things.

But Christ tells us:
“Be of good cheer, I have overcome the world” (John 16:33).