I’ve been thinking a lot about what kingdom we are focusing on and building, as St. Augustine reflects on in that important work: City of God. An article I read this past Monday spoke perfectly to our contemporary situation.
It’s because our actions in this world matter so greatly for the next that our choices and behaviors have meaning. Everything we try to do without God, no matter how noble or wellintentioned, is infected with our flaws and resentments. We can’t escape our defects. They’re part of who we are. Thus, in every age, the story of the world becomes the same tired drama, again and again, with a new cast and different props, but always the same, basic plot. A truly “new order of the ages” can only come about through our humility and conversion to the God who created and loves us. He’s the only reliable builder.
… Whatever happens in November, the lesson in this wicked season is this: Any confusion we allow ourselves between the City of Man and the City of God is really a ticket to the City of Dis, that fortress of wrath at the center of Dante’s Inferno. As Augustine wrote, our hearts are restless until they rest in God. He, and only he, can make all things new. Even me. Even us.
As I write this, we have no clear idea who will be our president for the next four years. Although this will bear consequence on the future, the truth of our situation remains unchanged: we need to be made new by Christ and work for the city that endures forever. “But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.” (Mt. 6:33)
C.S. Lewis’ great apologetic Mere Christianity reprises this truth: those who seek the kingdom of God ultimately are the ones who do the best work for the city of man, because they establish things on a proper and solid foundation instead of on sand.
I will leave you to reflect on his words. If you have not read this book, I highly recommend it!
Hope is one of the Theological virtues. This means that a continual looking forward to the eternal world is not (as some modern people think) a form of escapism or wishful thinking, but one of the things a Christian is meant to do. It does not mean that we are to leave the present world as it is. If you read history you will find that the Christians who did most for the present world were just those who thought most of the next. The Apostles themselves, who set on foot the conversion of the Roman Empire, the great men who built up the Middle Ages, the English Evangelicals who abolished the Slave Trade, all left their mark on Earth, precisely because their minds were occupied with Heaven. It is since Christians have largely ceased to think of the other world that they have become so ineffective in this. Aim at Heaven and you will get earth “thrown in”: aim at earth and you will get neither. It seems a strange rule, but something like it can be seen at work in other matters. Health is a great blessing, but the moment you make health one of your main, direct objects you start becoming a crank and imagining there is something wrong with you. You are only likely to get health provided you want other things more—food, games, work, fun, open air. In the same way, we shall never save civilization as long as civilization is our main object. We must learn to want something else even more.
Most of us find it very difficult to want “Heaven” at all—except in so far as “Heaven” means meeting again our friends who have died. One reason for this difficulty is that we have not been trained: our whole education tends to fix our minds on this world. Another reason is that when the real want for Heaven is present in us, we do not recognize it. Most people, if they had really learned to look into their own hearts, would know that they do want, and want acutely, something that cannot be had in this world. There are all sorts of things in this world that offer to give it to you, but they never quite keep their promise.