As kids growing up, one of the games we used to play was blowing Dandelion seeds from the Dandelion stalk and seeing how the wind took them. Great fun we thought but not Dad who had just dug half a dozen Dandelion weed plants out of his treasured lawn. However, that blowing in the wind game, where we do not know where the wind will take the seed or which will take root and grow, can I think act as a metaphor for how God transmits the gospel.
There seems to be a general ignorance of, or a deliberate unwillingness to accept, that the lamented loss of ‘Western values’ is the result of the decline of Christianity and the corresponding loss of the biblical moral operating system essential to the control of western democracy. Thus, and here is the key issue, the restoration of a biblically controlled democracy and the values flowing from it, requires the re-evangelization of Australia.
Easter is a certainly is a time to laugh and dance with joy in what Jesus did for us, but it is also a time to weep Jesus’ tears for people like Jack, our family, friends, colleagues who have rejected Him.
To rebuild western civilization we need to go back to what made western civilization such a powerful force for good and prosperity and that is the Judeo-Christian world view. This is complex as many want the values without the Saviour.’
Standing in the shopping mall, those tomb-side words on that chill first Easter morning came to me, “They have stolen Him away and we don’t know where they have put Him”, words true for most contemporary Australians. But worse, society’s degraded state of spiritual desiccation is now so far advanced that most don’t even know there has been a theft!
‘This ‘Hideous Strength’ is far more fearsome and all-embracing than Lewis envisaged over 70 years ago. The technology available is far more potent and far reaching in its ability to capture imaginations and minds than at any point in the world’s history. The political will of the opponents of Christianity is strong and unrelenting. The Church by and large appears confused and compromising. The stakes are incredibly high; nothing less than the survival of a civilization and the eternal well-being of countless souls.’
‘The former long-serving Australian foreign minister, Alexander Downer, recently asked a very important question. ‘Could western civilization finally collapse?’ What would be your answer to that question I wonder?
The sun’s rim dips, the stars rush out, At one stride comes the dark’
‘We had rain the other day, real rain, weighty drops falling as tears from heaven. In the rain a picture of God weeping formed. For surely, He must be, weeping that is over this not sun-baked but sin-baked, spiritually dried out land, this erstwhile gospel-shaped country that has been given all the promises of God in the message of Jesus.’
While it should be remembered that no-one can be argued into the Kingdom of God, Christians need to be equipped to be able to say something about what is actually a quite limited number of issues that both Christians and non-Christian's wrestle with. ‘Barriers to Faith’ is intended to be some help when Christians need to respond to some of the main questions/challenges they may encounter in conversation with others.
