this week's podcast follows up on recent topics. First, some further thoughts about light. Someone emailed me to ask, "But before God said 'Let there be light,' wasn't he in the dark?"
http://audio.ancientfaith.com/frederica/fhn_lightandevangelicals_pc.mp3 Secondly there's a followup to the podcast about 9-11 and God's protection and mercy. In the latter I said that I had a strange experience when I was awoke in the wee hours this past Sept 11, and as I prayed I gradually gained the impression that God will spare and protect America because of the strong, sincere love so many Americans have for his son. After that podcast aired, someone asked me, "Did you know that Fr George Calciu said the same thing?" Fr George was my spiritual father till his death in Nov 2006, and had survived imprisonment in Communist Romania. A recent issue of "The Orthodox Word" is devoted to him, and in the course of a transcript of a speech he contrasts France with America in terms of how freely people express their faith. He says "As long as simple people speak about God, as long as simple people read the Bible, America is saved" -- pretty nearly exactly the thought that had come to me. in this followup I think more about that "simpleness" and how it is the most simple of American Christians who are mocked and feared; even many evangelicals strive to differentiate themselves from garden-variety evangelicals, because the latter have such a bad public image. (They have a strategic reason for this differentiation; the primary mission of evangelicalism is evangelism, and people don't want to listen to what I call "simple" evangelicals because they are hated and feared--thus the urgency about establishing a separate identity. But I think this doesn't pan out in the long term, because there are simple litmus tests, mostly about sexuality, that allow any kind of evangelical to be lumped in the "bad guy" pool.) On the contrary, I think that it is *good* to side with exactly these simple and despised evangelicals, to whatever extent we can in sincerity, precisely because they are mocked and despised. That is the point at which Christians are closest to being persecuted in the US today. Matthew 5:11-12 says that this is a blessing, and that we should rejoice and leap for joy if we are despised and lied about. Standing up next to the simple, hated evangelicals (in so far as we can, in good conscience) is a way to share in that blessing. A week from today I will be in Chicago, speaking at the 40th anniversary convention of Birthright International, an organization that began offering help to women in unplanned pregnancies years before Roe v Wade. The volunteers at these pregnancy care centers are likewise lied about and despised, because they don't recommend abortions. We should listen to our Lord and learn to see these slights as blessings. Instead of getting rankled because things aren't fair, we should "rejoice and leap for joy", and imitate our Lord who forgave and loved his enemies. That's such a basic part of the Gospel, but even among Christians the idea has mostly vanished, I think in part because we are fed such a steady stream of entertainment that valorizes "getting even". Well--if you're interested, there's more in the podcast. ******** Frederica Mathewes-Green www.frederica.com
_______________________________________________ Frederica-l mailing list *** Please address all replies to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** You can check your subscription information here: http://lists.ctcnet.net/mailman/listinfo/frederica-l
