To love at all is to be vulnerable.
Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken.
If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal.
Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness.
But in that casket—safe, dark, motionless, airless—it will change.
It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable.
C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves, p. 121:
I didn’t have the patience to completely read the recent “Manhattan Declaration” in its entirety. Lazy, I know, but I’m not a theologian and was more interested to see who signed it than to understand every jot and tittle.
I’ve had several responses (some supportive, some not) forwarded to me. One of the most thought-provoking was from Professor John Stackhouse. I particularly liked this point:
3. The document gives no clear direction about what anyone is supposed to do once they have read it—besides sign it, I suppose. Is anyone now going to campaign for prolife positions any differently than he or she did before? Is anyone going to change his or her mind about homosexual marriage? Is anyone going to seek new legislation or, if the law swings against conservative Christians, engage in civil disobedience of some unspecified sort? Who knows? (HT: Garry Vanderveen)
The striking thing about previous church documents (the Creeds, Luther’s 95 Theses, the Westminster Confession) was their immediate practicality. The Nicene Creed, for example, was designed to distinguish between right and wrong worship of Christ. Luther’s Theses, though they began as an invitation to debate, ended up again distinguishing between true and false shepherding. And the Westminster Confession was designed to be a document for the edification and education of the church.
But what really is the Manhattan Declaration for? Speech can’t really be called speech unless it leads to discernible action and discernible change. Stackhouse is right to call this document a waste of time. Imagine the hungry that could have been fed, the pregnant teenagers that could have been counseled, or the lost souls that could have heard the Gospel with the time and resources expended in this document’s creation. To riff on Lewis, we’re content with defining the proper building code for mudcastles in slums when we should be inviting others to enjoy salt water and sunshine.
To make this personal, the more I’m faced with church responsibilities and church life, the more I realize how guilty I am of this in my everyday life. It’s hard and often not fun to talk to strangers at church, so I don’t. And I can admit this till I’m blue in the face, but what does it matter if tomorrow, I again go to church and leave without communing outside of my comfort zone? It’s not enough to feel guilty.
Father forgive us for our propensity to talk and our reluctance to get our hands dirty.
