I’ve written a lot about the importance of excellence in the Church on this blog before. I believe it’s important to do things in a way that communicates that we value what we are doing, we value those we are ministering to, and most of all we value the God we are worshiping. However, I also believe that there is a higher ideal that we must pursue without forsaking excellence.
Authenticity.
I first came across this quote listening to John Piper teaching about C.S. Lewis. I have been pondering lately the idea of discipleship in the Bible and how that relates to the mission of the Church. In doing so, I’ve come to realize that so much of the effort spent in our lives (and in our churches) is wasted on things that are good, but not best.
People matter. Jesus thought so. So much so, that He died for them, offers to occupy their hearts, and then places the hope of the world on their shoulders as the Church. People. Really. Matter.
It is a serious thing to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or other of these destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all our dealings with one another all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics.
There are no ordinary people.
You have never talked to a mere mortal.
Nations, cultures, arts, civilization these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit immortal horrors or everlasting splendors.
This does not mean that we are to be perpetually solemn. We must play. But our merriment must be of that kind (and it is, in fact, the merriest kind) which exists between people who have, from the outset, taken each other seriously no flippancy, no superiority, no presumption.
And our charity must be a real and costly love, with deep feeling for the sins in spite of which we love the sinner no mere tolerance or indulgence which parodies love as flippancy parodies merriment. Next to [God Himself], your neighbor is the holiest object presented to your senses. If he is your Christian neighbor he is holy in almost the same way, for in him also Christ the glorifier and the glorified, Glory Himself, is truly hidden. ~C.S. Lewis
How does this truth change the way we view and treat the people around us? I think it changes everything.
