Jack’s Buzz

I’m in Washington D.C. on Memorial Day weekend. It’s 70 degrees and sunny–a perfect Chamber of Commerce day. This is Janet’s first visit. I’m excited to show her the National Gallery, the Mall, and all the monuments and memorials to our country’s greatness. I’m glad that I get to visit the WWII Memorial–Tom Hanks hadn’t built it the last time I was here. I hope to be able to thank a genuine WWII veteran for saving our world from evil men. I did that at the Vietnam War Memorial when I was here several years ago. I thanks a big old guy with a long gray pigtail, black leather jacket, and a million tattoos. He looked me right in the eye and cried. War memorials do that to you. We prayed together and he thanked me and hugged me until my spine cracked twice. There’s a lot of Christianity and hugging at war memorials too.

There are people in our country who are scared that our nation is leaving her Christian roots for paganism. Washington’s elite certainly do not seem to be good Christians–yes I am referring to Hillary, Obama, and McCain. Many Christians see California courts declaring the righteousness of homosexual marriage, and the bland if not militant acceptance of same by the politicians, and they get a little scared.

If you look around and wonder about things becoming too pagan, here’s a little piece from a good writer.

When grave persons express their fear that England is relapsing into Paganism, I am tempted to reply, ‘Would that she were.’ For I do not think it at all likely that we shall ever see Parliament opened by the slaughtering of a garlanded white bull in the House of Lords or Cabinet Ministers leaving sandwiches in Hyde Park as an offering for the Dryads [Druids]. If such a state of affairs came about, then the Christian apologist would have something to work on. For a Pagan, as history shows, is a man eminently convertible to Christianity. He is, essentially, the pre-Christian, or sub-Christian, religious man. The post Christian man of our own day differs from his as much as a divorcee differs from a virgin. The Christian and the Pagan have much more in common with one another than either has with the writers of the New Statesman; and those writers would of course agree with me. – C.S.Lewis, “Is Theism Important? A Reply,” Socratic Digest (1952).

We have little to fear from the Pagans. We might want to consider that Christianity has become more irrelevant to more people, and we live far deeper in a post-Christian culture than the one of which Dr. Lewis wrote 56 years ago.

I do not for one minute, however, fear that America has embraced a post-Christian secularity. I fear the God for whom we Christians act as ambassadors. I fear the One who holds all authority, and who told us to be his witnesses to all the nations (Matt. 28:18-20, Acts 1:8). I fear the One who told his disciples (us) to love one another so that “all men will know that you are my disciples” (John 13:34-35). I fear the One whose commands his disciples seem to take so lightly.