Because It Is True . . .

Because It Is True . . . April 30, 2017

public-domain-images-free-stock-photos-down-town-chicago-blue-sky-1-1000x666_optOn a day like today when I am with the perfectly-named Hope, thinking about God and life, then Christianity is happy. There is great evil in the world, but reason and experience, part of my Faith, assure me that this goodness is more fundamental. While righting the world is complicated (!) and long, justice will win.

When I sit with my colleagues at The Saint Constantine School and we share laughter and purpose, because we are helping kids and adults learn, then it is good to be a Christian. We are motivated, best we can tell, at heart by a desire to serve the church and serve our students. The other day I saw kids in our playground who started school unwilling and unable to play outside (too hot! Where is my screen?), running around, climbing trees, inventing games.We have eaten kale, radishes, and other vegetables from the garden that did not exist this time last year.

It is good.

When Hope plays with Hannah and I hear trumpet blending with trombone in music, then I hear beauty. The children and the college students blend their voices in the School Hymn (thanks JAC!) or the troparion of Saint Constantine and the fellowship is lovely, jolly, and fine. The choir at Saint Paul lifts their voices up in “We have seen the true light . . . ” in the candle light and that is beautiful, too.

My daughter is getting married to a fine young man and we gathered with their friends. These are strong, thoughtful Christian men and women and I am glad.

To be a Christian is to have access to beauty, we can know that Bach was right and Handel perceptive, and to goodness. Of course, to aspire to goodness and beauty is not to posses it oneself. I fall short of the glory and sometimes have chosen the shadow or neon over the true light, but always the light and the glory are there.

Yet none of that is why I am a Christian. There was a moment when all my heart and soul wanted to leave the faith, every desire I had pointed away from God and His Word. Atheism was intellectually unappealing, but there are forms of theism (including deism) that make different demands. Christianity is good and beautiful, but sometimes goodness and beauty are unattractive.

I preferred the broken and the cheap. That is stupid, but is true.

I was saved by truth. I recall sitting surrounded by books at a desk in the University of Rochester library and wanting to deny the Truth, but I could not. The arguments against Christianity, not the cheap and silly ones, but the best ones, did not persuade me. I had read too much to think that there was a killer argument against Christianity and the reality of Jesus, the truth of the Gospels, and the witness of Christian saints through the centuries was compelling.

I had also experienced Jesus. As the old hymn said: “He walked with me and talked with me . . .” And of course I knew I could be wrong, but best I could tell, my experience and reason pointed to Christianity. Jesus was alive.

This was bad news to me before it was good news. I would like to say that I quickly and obediently followed the argument where it led, but still I tried to slip the necessity of the arguments and the experience. Truth kept checking me and then beauty, the sound of Christmas carols, kept calling me to higher joys. Goodness, hard and stern, pulled me up and made me see (as it so often does!) where I was wrong. And so I am a Christian and as I grow old have never been afraid of any question, any problem, any doubt, because Christ is so full of love, even for me, that it is utterly unafraid.

Jesus is good. Jesus is beautiful, but Jesus and all He said is also true. 


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