There have been low moments before, but Christianity is an incredibly adaptable organism, using different parts of its repertoire to mutate into new ecological niches, yet preserving intact its story of grace, of love improbably triumphant.
Interpretation
The quote reflects on the resilience and adaptability of Christianity throughout history, emphasizing its core message of grace and love.
In this quote, Francis Spufford illustrates how Christianity has navigated through difficult times by adapting and transforming while maintaining its fundamental beliefs in grace and love. He portrays the religion as a living organism that evolves to fit new contexts and challenges, yet its core narrative remains steadfastly focused on the triumph of love and grace over adversity.
In practice
This quote could be shared during a church service to remind congregants of the enduring power of love in challenging times.
Emotions can certainly be misleading: they can fool you into believing stuff that is definitely, demonstrably untrue. Yet emotions are also our indispensable tool for navigating, for feeling our way through, the much larger domain of stuff that isn't susceptible to proof or disproof, that isn't checkable against the physical universe.
Taking the things people do wrong seriously is part of taking them seriously. It’s part of letting their actions have weight. It’s part of letting their actions be actions rather than just indifferent shopping choices; of letting their lives tell a life-story, with consequences, and losses, and gains, rather than just be a flurry of events. It’s part of letting them be real enough to be worth loving, rather than just attractive or glamorous or pretty or charismatic or cool.
In efforts to soar above our nature, we invariably fall below it.
Whoever now makes himself bigger, freer and more human in his own existence, is doing his part toward peace, — as yet it must be worked at in an inward direction, not until a few have it all big and ready within them can it let itself be brought into the world.
One never reaches home, but wherever friendly paths intersect the whole world looks like home for a time.
Humanity cannot afford to muddle through the rest of the twentieth century; the risks are too great, and the stakes are too high. This may be the last opportunity to choose our own and our descendants’ destiny. Failing to choose or making the wrong choices may lead to catastrophe. But it must never be forgotten that the right choices could lead to a much better world.
National boundaries are not evident when we view the Earth from space. Fanatical ethnic or religious or national chauvinisms are a little difficult to maintain when we see our planet as a fragile blue crescent fading to become an inconspicuous point of light against the bastion and citadel of the stars.
This is the reality of nuclear weapons: they may trigger a world war; a war which, unlike previous ones, destroys all of civilization.
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