Simply Christian - Chapter 2

Well, I finished reading chapter two of the N.T. Wright book. It was titled, The Hidden Spring. Wright talked about the separation of church and state and how some people have enjoyed not having any “religious” interference in their life, some have done their best to find the living water, and even more are still searching for something to quench their thirst.

People searching to quench their thirst are looking in many different areas. Since ‘civilization’ is giving us no guidance people are looking into mysticism (get in touch with nature), Buddhism (a detachment from the world), Celtic things, and many more areas. It seems to me that people are looking everywhere but where they should be looking, however I digress. Wright states, “People who have been starved for water for a long time will drink anything, even if it is polluted…Thus by itself ‘spirituality’ may appear to be part of the problem as well as part of the solution.”

“If the call to spirituality that we hear can be interpreted as the echo of a voice, it’s one which is lost in the wind as quickly as it comes, leaving us to ask ourselves whether we imagined it or whether, if we really did hear something, it was simply the echo of our own voices.” This brings to mind the verse 1 Kings 19:12 in which Elijah heard God, not in the strong wind, not in the earthquake and not in the fire but in a “still small voice.” The voice does not compel us to listen, we have to choose to either follow the voice or ignore it.

Wright also brings up that skeptics use relativism. The phrase most commonly used is, “Just because it’s true for you, does not mean it’s true for everybody.” But this only works when you use truth to mean ‘something that is genuinely happening inside of you’ instead of ‘a true revelation of the way things are in the real world’. To me that phrase is just the nice way of saying, “you’re full of it and I’m tired of talking to you.”

Wright ends with saying that this echo of a voice, that we can’t drown out with distractions, but does not “compel us to listen” joined with a passion for justice would make it worth listening for further echoes of the same voice.