There is a remarkable indifference in the earth to the fact that this planet was visited by God. I think we just have to recognize that we are in a kind of sleepwalk, a stupor; the god of this world has blinded the minds, not only of those who do not believe, but also of those who only nominally believe. The impact of the significance that this planet was visited by very God has not penetrated us to the depths of our understanding. I very much agree with a brother who said, “We are not yet ready for the second coming of the Lord, because we have not yet fully appropriated the meaning of His first coming.”
There is not a sufficient sense of astonishment. No one is really raising the electric questions: Why is it that God would choose to visit the earth, and for what purposes did He come? What was affected by His coming, and what is the significance to us who remain? It is surely much more than just a matter of historical curiosity or interest.
Instead of asking these questions, people see a world without God, and even if they do see a world with God, they think He has done nothing but set it in motion and abandoned it to men. And that this is a kind of mechanistic universe that prevails and perpetuates itself, in which God does not have to be too seriously considered. Therefore, it is not at all surprising that in the vital interests that affect the lives of men and of nations, God is not invoked, nor is He sought. It is just remarkable to pick up a newspaper, Newsweek or Time magazine, and see that the media is filled with the counsel of men.
They discuss issues of war and peace and what constitutes wisdom, but never once is there any mention or reference to the fact that there is a God who can be considered, whose counsel can be sought, whose will can be obtained, or who was here at one time, had spoken, and had left us a body of statements saying that He intends to prevail in terms of the conduct of nations and of men.
There is an astonishing unresponsiveness toward God that amounts to rejection, and I hold the Church responsible for allowing men’s views to prevail. When it comes to the effectual circumstances of our own lives, though we believe, the way that we conduct our lives and make our own decisions is virtually the same way that the world makes theirs. God is not radically taken into our own consideration, and we make our decisions, whether it is going to college, getting married, establishing a business, or any such thing on the same basis as the world makes its reckonings—by appealing to reason, logic, circumstance, convenience, and personal advantage.
The world is indifferent to God because we who believe have not radically taken God into our consideration. The conditions have become such that any thought of bringing God into the counsel of men is considered a violation. It is ironic that it is the world that raises the issue of the separation of Church and state, as if somehow the state needs to be protected against the Church.
The Church is not to have any voice, not to stick its nose in, not to sound itself, not to express itself, not to bring the counsel of God into the secular affairs of men. They say this would violate the separation of Church and state, but they are altogether forgetting that the principle, when it was first invoked, was invoked to protect not the state, but the Church. God never intended that there be the distinctions of sacred and secular that prevail today and constitute the comfortable categories, not only of the world, but also of the Church itself.
God intended for the sacred to penetrate the secular, and the Church is the instrument by which the divine is to come into the ordinary and eternity is to come into time.
