"His master
replied, 'Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a
few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share your
master's happiness!' Matthew 25:23
I turn next to the idea of glory. There is no getting away from
the fact that this idea is very prominent in the New Testament and in early
Christian writings. Salvation is constantly associated with palms, crowns,
white robes, thrones, and splendour like the sun and stars. All this makes no
immediate appeal to me at all, and in that respect I fancy I am a typical
modern. Glory suggests two ideas to me, of which one seems wicked and the other
ridiculous. Either glory means to me fame, or it means luminosity. As for the
first, since to be famous means to be better known than other people, the
desire for fame appears to me as a competitive passion and therefore of hell
rather than heaven. As for the second, who wishes to become a kind of living
electric light bulb?
When I began to look into this matter I was shocked to find such
different Christians as Milton, Johnson, and Thomas Aquinas taking heavenly
glory quite frankly in the sense of fame or good report. But not fame conferred
by our fellow creatures—fame with God, approval or (I might say)
"appreciation" by God. And then, when I had thought it over, I saw
that this view was scriptural; nothing can eliminate from the parable the
divine accolade, "Well done, thou good and faithful servant." With
that, a good deal of what I had been thinking all my life fell down like a
house of cards.
—from "The Weight of Glory" (The Weight of Glory)
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