No leap in the dark

I was on the train and was disconcerted to overhear two businessmen discussing family members who’d turned religious. They both lamented it as something highly undesirable. Their conversation summed up to me the false enlightenment that surrounds us which sees religion as a leap into the dark.

In recent months the ‘enlightened’ attitudes of British secularism have obscured the age old institution of marriage, eroded the prohibition of suicide and opened the way towards three parent children. This obscuring of the moral foundations of our society is a direct consequence of pushing faith to the margins of public life.

How ironic, since Christian faith is the supreme ‘enlightenment’ for, as the Christmas Gospel puts it: ‘the light shines in the darkness and the darkness has never overcome it.’ (Jn. 1:5) To have faith is to see how things realy are: made and loved by God, and to live with new depth and commitment to the future God’s building, and that’s nothing obscure at all.

God’s self-disclosure in Jesus sheds light on where the world’s come from and where it’s going. His investment in the human condition promises a glorious return, when love will be the be-all and end-all. It puts heart into the quest to create wealth and distribute it, to feed the hungry and build peace with justice.

Far from being a leap in the dark the Christian religion is about bringing the whole world into ‘the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.’ (2 Cor. 4:6b)

John Twisleton

Broadcast by Fr John Twisleton
(Rector of St Giles, Horsted Keynes, West Sussex)
on Premier Christian Radio DAB Digital Radio
Freeview 725/ Sky digital 0123
in London on 1305 1332 1413 MW