(C)Set...
Illustration
(C)
"Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth."
First things first, Paul says.
Do not think that we have here a warrant for escape from the contemporary social situation. To us is committed an Easter gospel of redemption, the transformation of our present situation and not an exit from it "God so loved the world that he gave his only son," John says. This means that we must love it, too, and labor in and for it.
But these verses do remind us amidst the hue and cry to focus on essentials first, to fix our eyes on those truths which often are hidden in the world, but whose triumph we celebrate today God's sovereignty, judgment, and enabling power. Only as we appropriate these truths will we become God's effective servants.
In A History of the Idea of Progress, Robert Nisbet, the distinguished historian, concludes. "It seems evident from the historical record that only in a context of a culture in which the core is a deep and wide sense of the sacred are we likely to regain the vital conditions of progress itself." As De Tocqueville predicted, over the years a society's steadfast moral neutrality will degenerate into hedonism. A society which is stripped of the sacred is stripped of meaning and commitment. It is like the house which the foolish man built on sand. [Robert Nisbet, A History of the Idea of Progress (New York Basic Books, Inc., 1979)]
-- Bachelder
"Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth."
First things first, Paul says.
Do not think that we have here a warrant for escape from the contemporary social situation. To us is committed an Easter gospel of redemption, the transformation of our present situation and not an exit from it "God so loved the world that he gave his only son," John says. This means that we must love it, too, and labor in and for it.
But these verses do remind us amidst the hue and cry to focus on essentials first, to fix our eyes on those truths which often are hidden in the world, but whose triumph we celebrate today God's sovereignty, judgment, and enabling power. Only as we appropriate these truths will we become God's effective servants.
In A History of the Idea of Progress, Robert Nisbet, the distinguished historian, concludes. "It seems evident from the historical record that only in a context of a culture in which the core is a deep and wide sense of the sacred are we likely to regain the vital conditions of progress itself." As De Tocqueville predicted, over the years a society's steadfast moral neutrality will degenerate into hedonism. A society which is stripped of the sacred is stripped of meaning and commitment. It is like the house which the foolish man built on sand. [Robert Nisbet, A History of the Idea of Progress (New York Basic Books, Inc., 1979)]
-- Bachelder
