Pilgrim Soldier

It was a couple of months ago that I picked up a book by Bishop Graham Cray called Disciples and Citizens. Having in the past worked for what was then called the Movement for Christian Democracy and having a considerable interest in how Christians can impact politics for the good, there was something about the book that piqued my curiosity and made me take it off the shelf. The blurb on the back says:

Many of us find integrated, whole life discipleship very difficult. It is easier to live, not so much a double life as a dualistic one, where faith is a personal matter with little impact on work and other spheres of life.

Graham Cray shows that there are profound gospel reasons for taking seriously both our national life and our call to be Christian citizens. A nation’s social health is a matter of Christian action and concern because it matters to God.

So far I’ve read the first two chapters and I’ve not been disappointed. There are various highlighted passages so far, but the following stood:

…God’s kingdom is his reign over all things which cannot be limited to his inner reign in the hearts of those who believe. ‘Neither in Judaism nor elsewhere in the New Testament do we find that the reign of God is something indwelling in men, to be found, say, in the heart; such a spiritualistic understanding is ruled out both for Jesus and for early Christian tradition.’

Of particular importance is this idea that we need to get away from a dualistic faith, which creates a division between our church persona and our ‘real-life’ one. Its that Christian Schwarz of Natural Church Development fame calls ‘radical balance’ where our lives don’t sink down to some sort of lowest common denominator in each area, but instead strives to achieve the highest Christian standards in all areas of our lives. Only this sort of attitude will see Christians being lights in the darkness of this world.