Bono wrote a compelling piece in the NY Times yesterday
I come to lowly church halls and lofty cathedrals for what purpose? I search the Scriptures to what end? To check my head? My heart? No, my soul. For me these meditations are like a plumb line dropped by a master builder — to see if the walls are straight or crooked. I check my emotional life with music, my intellectual life with writing, but religion is where I soul-search.
The preacher said, “What good does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses his soul?” Hearing this, every one of the pilgrims gathered in the room asked, “Is it me, Lord?” In America, in Europe, people are asking, “Is it us?”
He seems to also point out that much charity comes not from religious people but rather from spiritually agnostic people. Which causes me to reflect on whether we as religious people are really committed to all that we say we believe... especially when others who don't believe in much of anything, or at least anything with some structure or a tangible kind of God that's not some amorphous, unknowable being.
A big question remains in this Easter season: Do we really believe in the resurrection or is there really no good news at all? If we believe than it's about time that we start acting like it and start taking better care of one another.
3 comments:
There was a book a couple of years ago by Arthur Brooks in which he demonstrated through careful research that churchgoing people give more to charity than non-churchgoers, at least in the United States. I'd be curious where Bono got his facts from.
He didn't say that more churchgoing people don't give--just that he finds it surprising that there are wealthy who give a lot and don't have religion (Gates, etc). At the same time while churchgoers give they don't give at the high rates that are needed--if they did parishes and schools wouldn't be closing.
I think we have to do a better job of why following Jesus Christ makes a difference in our lives. If people can't say of us, at least once in a while, that this person is doing that because he or she is a Christian, then why would anyone even bother to wonder whether they should be a Christian too? God has to make a difference in our lives not just personally but publicly.
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