Keep close to Him

Christ the Healer. Acrylic and gold leaf on birch panel. 18x24"
Installation in Prayer Chapel at IU Health Goshen Hospital, Goshen, Indiana.

There’s no doubt that the human race is very, very sick. The way to cure it, however, is not to chop off heads, segregate and imprison women, restrict freedom of speech, movement, or assembly, or persecute sexual and religious minorities. The way to cure it is also not to engorge it with pharmaceuticals or graft it with laboratory-grown replacement parts, neither to give it more work or more leisure, nor especially to try to socially engineer it with subliminally loaded entertainment.

The sickness is moral, yes, as well as physical, but like the human body which cures itself of most ailments if simply left alone, the human race’s cure lies within itself, available not only to the learned or wealthy or otherwise amply privileged, but to all without exception. The human conscience is the beginning of the cure, and the grace of God, however dispensed but derived from the Word of God, is the end of it. Christ is not yet irrelevant or insolvent but remains essential to the life of the world.

Leave aside all human machinations, even, no, especially those that are laden with ‘gospel’ language and speak of ‘victory’ as if they have won it. These seek to hook men not with Christ’s truth but their vain opinions, and to make a spectacle and a business of religion, trapping themselves and their hearers in corruption. Let God be praised in your humble submission to His will as you seek His Kingdom and His righteousness, not your own. He has been victorious in the only war worth waging.

Keep close to Him.