Storms

We ought to be concerned and clear about Christian culture related to the accumulations of world history.   Examples of the tragedies in mankind’s natural history (which is never wholly natural, in that God has never given up on assisting mankind) reveal what seem like oddities difficult to explain. We may become uncertain about God’s care when great cities, and verdant forests, are devastated in natural storm occurrences of drought, wind, water, and fire.  We also live with relatively little attention to even larger dragged-out tragedies affecting whole populations caused by the negatives of mankind.  Christians can affect at least some of the world’s culture for good, by addressing the matter of personal and national relationships with both models of care among themselves, and influence on the solutions available in the body politic.  By politic I mean, the Christian uses resources to communicate, to provide leadership that presses to be heard and used, to provide personnel and substance to advance life in the direction God meant for it.  A blessed balance is possible, even if in many contexts not probable.  We were not called to address the probable, but righteousness.  That difference is a useful distinction.  It means we never give up.  We seek right (righteousness).  God appears to discipline populations, and humanity shows its best side when addressing the mystery of tragedy.  It would be well if we could find the meaning of nature in storm whether in nature itself or in that factor reliant on nature – the human being.  What makes a man visiting Las Vegas to kill more than 50 persons, and wound 500 in about ten minutes?  (I have significantly edited this Page some years after it was written so to address the matter of tragedy and sorrow for mankind.}

We are informed that Rome fell in the year 410 ad.  The fall was more the fault of the Roman society than the invading hordes, outnumbered by the Roman forces.  But Rome had fallen away from its former greatness – as history counts greatness.  The news of the fall shattered the Mediterranean world.  The effect was so much greater in context than what happened to the Twin Towers in New York City, in    2001 ad. that one hesitates to discuss the two horrendous events in the same paragraph.  One man went to his pastoral room when he heard of the fall of Rome, and wrote a book.  It is the greatest document to have emerged from that era and enormous event in dark ages.  (It was a catastrophe because the people believed it so, and their projections for the future worsened it.)  Augustine, who had tasted the life of pagan Rome, sat at his table and wrote: The City of God.  His message was not to worry, there is something better ahead and we have the opportunity to communicate that message.  The Church emerged as the glue to hold things together.  Rome actually did not really fall.  The Romans absorbed the horde of invaders during the ensuing decades.  The invaders either became westerners or went back home. They did add to change.

The Church, even with its follies and deviations, became the force for good and society.  Robert Maynard Hutchins was right in pressing for a better understanding of the so-called Dark Ages that followed Rome’s fall.  The Church preserved learning, gave the populace hope in a faith of hope, found ways of preserving life and family with minimal warfare.  The benefits might be further chronicled.  The Church provided the arts, the music, the emerging science, even her own critics for improvement.  Luther was a priest before the Reformation, and a leader in the meaning we argue for here.  His arguments were for the correction of the church he loved, and the leadership Scripture called for, with corrective doctrines.  He would not destroy the church, but energize it.  Invasion hordes might take over, but the church began building in old Rome.  The basic position of the church is to keep what is good for the general population, to bring reform where it is needed, both in church and society.  By prayer, ask God for aid to the good of all.  Divine grace is activated in an individual life, begun in personal contrition and faith in the redemption of Christ.  The consequent acceptance of a relationship between the devout person and God becomes independent of the circumstances of the natural world.  Within time there is a common grace available to all nations, all peoples, who will meet at least a respect for the values of God that grow out of a revealed righteousness.  We have met the enemy.  We qualify.  We need to test ourselves for righteousness, love and peace.