Here is a passage that I think is wonderful and have been reflecting on from With Open Hands By Henri Nouwen
“What is perhaps most striking about today’s visions of the
world’s future is that they have mostly taken shape independently of
Christian thinking. The voices which cry out for a new age, a new
order, are often heard outside the Christian tradition.
And yet you are Christian only so long as you look forward to a new
world, only so long as you constantly pose critical questions to the
society in which you live, and only for so long as you emphasize the
need for conversion both for yourself and for the world. You are
Christian only so long as you, in no way, let yourself become
established in a situation of seeming calm, only so long as you stay
unsatisfied with the status quo and keep saying that a new world is yet
to come. You are Christian only when you believe that you have a role
to play in the realization of this new kingdom and when you urge
everyone you meet with a holy unrest to make haste so that the promise
might soon be fulfilled. So long as you live as a Christian you keep
looking for a new order, a new structure, a new life.
As a Christian it is hard to bear with people who stand still along the
way, lose heart, and seek their happiness in little pleasures which
they cling to. It irritates you to see things established and settled,
and you feel sad about all that self- indulgence, and self-
satisfaction, for you know with an indestructible certainty that
something greater is coming, and you’ve already seen the first rays of
light. As a Christian, you not only maintain that this world will pass,
but that it must pass to allow a new world to be born, and that there
will never be a moment in this life when you can rest assured that
there is nothing more to do.
But are there any Christians? If you get the impression that
Christianity today is failing in its role of spiritual leadership, if
it appears that people seek for the meaning of being and non-being, of
birth and death, of loving and being loved, of being young and growing
old, of giving and receiving, of hurting and being hurt and expect no
response from the witnesses to Jesus Christ, then you begin to wonder
to just what degree these witnesses should be calling themselves
Christians.
The Christian witness is a critical witness because the Christian
professes that the Lord will come again and make all things new. The
Christian life calls for radical changes because the Christian assumes
a critical distance from the world and, in spite of all contradictions,
keeps saying that a new way of being human and a new peace are
possible. This critical distance is an essential aspect of true prayer.
It is not so much a question of making a Christian into an activist as
of being willing to recognize in the contemporary prophet challenging
the “status quo” the authentic features of Christ. For maybe in this
person who makes no peace with the world and who is totally dedicated
to the struggle for a better future, we can once more find him who gave
his life for the freedom of many.”
