Closure

These Pages have addressed personal and societal interests for four years and close with this Page. They have been formed in a conversational style, and meant to cover the thought, conduct, and faith concerns of persons and families.  They presume to begin as the reader enters college, or any age of interest in formation.  It is hoped that the Pages will be read again on a daily schedule after the first round has been completed.  The second reading becomes the most important in the claim of understanding, affirming or amending the concepts/conducts/commitments (beliefs) suggested.  In the second reading the Pages have the experience of the reader in an important period of maturation for life to accept, test, even reject, the implications of the proposals.  The Pages are written in the context of personal Christianity that relates to the biblical development of the redemptive story of Jesus Christ, and the perception of common grace for all persons in the world, pointing to effective natural life.  The Pages presume that divine grace is available to those who include God through Christ in their lives in personal relationship, and that grace incorporates common grace so to form a different holistic context for the individual holding Christian faith. (Note: The Marketplace of Faith, by Syria Iyer, W.S. J., 12/28/2018, Pg. A13)

At this point I want to play a prophetic role for the Christian.  It is a sometimes a foolhardy thing to do, but even the effort will afford some interest to the issues related to assumptions about the future.  The individual Christian is called upon to find a way through natural life that is often at odds with spiritual life.  This leads to objectives that may not be well determined, and conflicting with other Christians with equal convictions.  This conflict is well illustrated by Mark Noll in his analysis of the Christian community North and South during the periods before and after the Civil War in the United States.  Both sides were energetic to use the Bible, the written source for Christian beliefs, as supportive of directly opposite points of view and conduct.  The conclusion, Noll discovers, is that if the Scripture is used in this way to conflict its own message then the use of the Bible for daily life in the non-Christian and secular society is muted, perhaps violated.  The church divided in sections holding strong conflicting opinions meant loss in the meaning of the Bible in civic life.  The loss is incalculable, and continues even more apparent decades after the Civil War.  Human distortions of the divine message have tangled some of the prestige of Christians.

The Civil War dissolved slavery as a legal matter for the States of the United States.  It did not settle the matter of racial prejudice which persists in states since World War II – in street conflicts, government orders, civil demonstrations and the like.  Application, at the time of this writing, has some way yet to go to ultimate sensibility about mankind, and the love of God.  The secularization of much of the Church, seen in changing orientations of some denominations, may be part of the decline in applications of Scripture.  Secularists now find church bodies so varied that they may join this or that body of a congregation without believing in God. The meaning of Scripture on the redemptive work of Jesus Christ, and the call to a life of righteousness has been so diluted in secularism that Christianity is for many a conundrum.  As one atheist put it, the story from the combination of churches sounds now like a herd of pigs flying through the air speaking French.  The future of the Christian Gospel, and the meaning of the Church to communicate that Gospel, and to live by it in biblical obedience is going to be dependent upon improved understanding and application of scriptural life pattern for Christians.  There needs to be a greater cooperation in communicating not only divine grace, but common grace as revealed in righteous context.  The future of Christianity is not found in human reasoning, even though it is important to any scenario.  It is found in, prayer, love, faith, modeling, righteousness, unity, and revelation (the awareness that God makes a difference in the world), primarily through individual lives acting in concert.  All this, if followed historically, calls for revival in the Church to reaffirm and live the meaning of Christianity.  We are assured that God will not abandon us, and faithful Christians will not forget God in human experience.  Our lives are in a flow to forevermore.  God is successful with his creation.  He doesn’t know failure.