It is, I find, fatally easy to forget what kind of world we live in, especially today. We’ve got all our gadgets, our (relatively) ordered society, and all the rest of it, so that it becomes only natural to fall into a kind of trance assuming that everything just kind of works and that’s all there is to it. We think of things like Religion as mere classifications of people: this group believes this, that group believes that. And we only rarely go any further. In any case, the main point is how those beliefs practically affect themselves and the world around them: not the truth or falsehood of those claims.
It’s hard to describe, because I myself can only catch glimpses of another perspective. Habits of thought are extremely difficult to fight, and we all default to much the same assumptions: modernism (we assume ourselves at a higher level than the past), materialism (again, we assume the practical, material effects of any given idea or practice are the main point), and liberalism (we are suspicious of any kind of human authority). This applies whether you call yourself Conservative or Liberal, and it is a rare person indeed who is legitimately emancipated from it (again, speaking as someone who can only step out of it with conscious effort).
But the truth is this: we live in a world where God took flesh and lived among us as a Man: a Man in history, living a certain amount of years before us, in a place we know, at a fairly well-documented time of history. Consider, as you go about your day, that this world of ours, now filled with cars and computers and concrete, is the very same one in which Christ lived and walked and taught. We live in a world where Miracles have indeed taken place (and, I see no reason to doubt, continue to do so).
Jesus is not a ‘lifestyle choice.’ He is not simply one choice among many, nor is His Church merely one among many. He is the Way, the Truth, and the Life; He is the Lord, and there is no other.
We live, in short, in the time of fulfillment. Our age is the one in which God has revealed Himself to Man, and our only options are either to accept Him or reject Him. We do not live in the time of questions or doubts or plurality of religion, when man is searching for God. We live in a time when God has come to man and established His Church upon Earth.
It’s hard to convey the full impact of this. Basically, the supernatural is at work openly in our world; it is baked into its very structure. It is no more of a question – actually considerably less of one – than that gravity is at work. We live in a world of miracles, fulfilled prophecies (and prophecies still to be fulfilled), and authorities, amid unseen supernatural beings. If you believe in Christ, I don’t see how you can disbelieve in this or consider the ‘supernatural elements’ of Religion somehow less important than the material ones.
In any case, it is healthy to try to recall, when we pray, that we are speaking to a real Person who hears us, and at any time to consider the fact that this is the world in which God lived among us as a Man.
It is a sobering thought.
