Ultimate Reality

Good sermon yesterday about being real, not religious, and about the challenge of communicating the gospel in a secular world. Interesting thoughts about how modern man, by starting with man, can't reach God through reasoning. (Ultimately, Postmodernism is not even confident about the reliability of reason.) Pastor Brad said it's about the music... hearing the eternal chorus and and finding our part in the whole.
August 20, 2007

After the service yesterday I thought about the challenge that is before the church today. Christians do not live in a vacuum. They live within a context, with 2000 years of history behind and an uncertain future ahead. Of the past, it is easy to see that much horror has been committed in the name of Christ. Add to this the manifold ways in which earnest believers have, in ignorance, demonstrated the most dreadfully insensitive attitudes. Non-christians are not always being insincere or foolish to have reservations about the validity of faith in Christ.

By way of contrast there is the ongoing music of Ultimate Reality. In the background, or within the ground of our being, there is the chorus of angels, the music of the heavens flowing like a river beneath and through the whole of existence, a perpetual tribute the to greatness of God's love, compassion and generosity.

The problem comes when Christians try to reason unbelievers into the light. Dante, in The Inferno, notes that Reason is the highest mountain in hell, but will not bring us to the light. Kierkegaard notes that Reason can point us toward God, but ultimately faith requires a leap. At some point we must let go of reason to embrace the Other.

Existentialists argue from the point of view of man within the box. Living in darkness he is unable to see beyond the walls of his circumstances, barricaded on six sides by his situation. His only light is self-created. Alienated and alone, he struggles to give his life meaning, rejecting any light that might be offered from outside his box.

Postmodern man wonders if communication with other persons is even possible because words have no fixed meaning, and we are all so "stuck" in our alienated, catastrophic situations.

Then there is Ultimate Reality, the ever living song, of hope and joy and meaning. It is out there, beyond the walls of our box, seeking to penetrate our fixed, finite worlds. Yes, there is a Life outside our selves that wishes to fill us with Himself, the light of the world.

Man's predicament: How open this box to allow the light to penetrate? The Answer: Listen. Listen to the music....