A Final Reflection on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter [Sat, 4-17-21]

 

CHRIST IN WINTER: A Final Reflection on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter  [Sat, 4-17-21]

I was reading yesterday--in my doctor’s waiting room, there for my regular visit, for about the third time now--Reinhold Niebuhr’s Leaves from the Notebooks of a Tamed Cynic, observations he made in his first pastorate, in Detroit, mostly in the 1920s. His insights in that book have stood the test of time quite nicely.

In the pages I was reading yesterday, he pointed out that every society works on moral compromises, and it reacts with equal disconcert at criminality and prophecy. A criminal subverts the moral compromise by refusing to honor it. So does a prophet, who calls for the society to be more moral than the compromises we use to get by. Both criminals and prophets threaten to undo the compromise, so we treat both criminals and prophets in the same way, by punishing them.

Right now, once again, our American moral compromise is being challenged both by prophets who want us to be more moral, and criminals—some in very high places—who want to subvert what morality we do have left.

More applicable here, I think this is true of personal lives, too. We get by with personal compromises between Godly yearning and earthly necessities. So…yes, I’m finally getting to the point…that’s why I’m not writing Christ In Winter anymore. Or anything else.

I think I have used writing to avoid the Godly yearning. It’s my compromise. I use words to avoid Word. If I’m ever going to get around to dealing with God “face to face,” I need to get at it now. Whatever happens, I need to present it to God, rather than avoiding that presentation by writing about it, presenting it to you.

So, if you have come here looking for some whimsical story, I apologize. I apologize for ending this column so abruptly without a word of farewell. I knew I had to end it pretty soon back on March 28, because I was running out of stories, again, but I hadn’t meant to stop writing right at that moment. But then I read the poem I wrote for that day and thought, “You know, that’s a pretty good way to end this.”

So, thank you for reading. But I’m out of stories and out of defenses. I’m still going to use words with you in mind. Now, though, they will be in prayers instead of blog columns.

John Robert McFarland

What does it mean to love God? It has nothing to do with the ways we worship or the things we believe. We love God by loving what God loves.