God's People Need to Have a Large View

I wonder: Does almost everyone walk around with some sort of song playing in their head during their day, or does that just go on in the heads of lovers of music? The former, I think.


We just heard the song on the radio, we sang the hymn at church, we listened to the tune on our iPod, played the CD in the car, and the song lingers unbidden between our ears. It may even be an unwelcome tune or a musical atrocity, something akin to Billy Ray Cyrus’ “Achy Breaky Heart.” What really breaks your heart is that the sorry song is stuck so firmly in your head! (Rats! I wish I hadn’t thought of that one. Now it’s lodged in my brain.)

I think the same thing happens to people who read books. I don’t know when I read the following words of D. Elton Trueblood, but they’ve been replaying in my head for the last few days: “The major danger of our contemporary religion . . . is that it makes small what ought to be large.”


Trueblood goes on to write that if we wall up our faith and make it small with regard to “place or time or personnel,” we make it “relatively trivial” when it “ought to be concerned with the whole of life.”


What he’s saying, of course, is that real faith is a very large thing encapsulating, enfolding, enlivening every aspect of our lives. If we relegate our faith to just an hour or two a week (when completely convenient) at a particular time and place and leave religion just in the hands of a few religious professionals, we’ve made small what should be very large indeed.


If our view of Christ’s Kingdom includes only those who look just like us, worship just like us, share all of our supposedly holy hang-ups and pious scruples . . .


If our view of Christ’s Kingdom only includes Christians presently drawing breath on this globe and not also the “great cloud of witnesses” who’ve gone on . . .


If our view of our responsibility for sharing Christ’s message and love extends just around town and not around the world (and if we deceive ourselves into thinking we can’t and shouldn’t do both if our eyes are open to see and our hearts are big enough to care about both) . . .


If our view of living the Christian life has to do only with Sunday in the sanctuary and not with Monday at the workplace . . .


If our view of Christian ministry doesn’t include valuing Mrs. Johnson’s work teaching at the school as highly as Pastor Jones’ proclamation in the pulpit and doing everything we can to strongly affirm and recognize the gifts of both--and of all God’s people . . .


Then we’ve trivialized and devalued real and strong faith. We’ve made small what God has made large. And we probably make that mistake often and in a thousand ways.


We need to think about that. It’s a good question to have playing often in our heads.







Copyright 2010 by Curtis K. Shelburne. Permission to copy without altering text or for monetary gain is hereby granted subject to inclusion of this copyright notice.