You are all
sons of the light and sons of the day. We do not belong to the night or to the
darkness. So then, let us not be like others, who are asleep, but let us
be alert and self-controlled. 1 Thessalonians 5:5-6
We of the
Christian faith need not go on the defensive, for it is the modern man of the
world who is the dreamer, not the Christian believer!
The sinner
can never be quite himself. All his life he must pretend. He must act as if he
were never going to die, and yet he knows too well that he is. He must act as
if he had not sinned, when in his deep heart he knows very well that he has. He
must act unconcerned about God and judgment and the future life, and all the
time his heart is deeply disturbed about his precarious condition. He must keep
up a front of nonchalance while shrinking from facts and wincing under the lash
of conscience. All his adult life he must dodge and hide and conceal. When he
finally drops the act he either loses his mind or tries suicide.
If realism
is the recognition of things as they actually are, the Christian is of all
persons the most realistic. He of all intelligent thinkers is the one most
concerned with reality. He pares things down to their stark essentials and
squeezes out of his mind everything that inflates his thinking. He demands to
know the whole truth about God, sin, life, death, moral accountability and the
world to come. He wants to know the worst about himself in order that he may do
something about it. He takes into account the undeniable fact that he has
sinned. He recognizes the shortness of time and the certainty of death. These
he does not try to avoid or alter to his own liking. They are facts and he
faces them full on.
The
believer is a realist—his expectations are valid and his faith well grounded!
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