Remembering What Side of Eternity We're On

News cycles tend to the ultimate and the catastrophic, and current events have headlines running at a high pitch. Between the Trump trial and the Columbia University controversy on the national scene, contentious developments in both Gaza and Ukraine on the international, and a bit of chatter over the Church’s latest engagement with gender issues and sexual ethics touching a nerve on all sides of those issues, there’s a steady diet of hot-blooded, provocative news media currently on offer, one that tends to goad us into taking sides, forming nuanced opinions, and scrupulously analyzing situations to make judgments about them because, we’re told, the fate of the world depends on it.

It's good from time to time to take a step back from that narrative, recalling that such events are the inevitable ebbs and flows of human life, however serious, and they’re not ultimately ours to sort out. Christians are called to hold to the truth, speaking it peacefully where it may be heard, but they’re never optimistic or pessimistic about the state of things according to the latest bit of breaking news about the most recent crisis. Their minds are occupied much more with what the fate of the world does depend on – God’s way in the world, his plan for salvation, his unshakeable word – and they know that the Lord will ultimately have his way, regardless of who’s holding the loudest microphone.

The truth never simply wins, this side of heaven, but then neither does error. So Christians fight for truth where they can in whatever comes onto the scene because they love the truth and they love our neighbor, but politics is never their ultimate game. The real battle has other nexus points, deserving much more of our attention: spending life with God, embracing the spiritual battle for the fate of immortal souls. This week, let’s remember to keep our minds and hearts sharp, poised, and eager for that fight, then, rather than those that are, whatever the rhetoric suggests, far from decisive of our collective fate.

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