Summer 1974

Page 62

174

CHICAGO STUDIES

can not be any other way? These are serious questions, and they can be duplicated in questions of poverty, of what help will be given to the children of the poor, what guarantees and supports the society and its government owe to the poor because they are powerless in making economic bargains with the rich, whether racial discrimination must be accepted as a permanent fact of life or can be eliminated, whether it is enlightened and unadulterated self-interest that makes the world go around or whether love would get it rolling too. These questions come around full cycle to the point at which this article began, namely, the content of Christian hope. The essential or ultimate content, is indeed God Himself as the end and future of man, hidden, elusive, never concretely definable . . . . However, it is necessary, if there is to be any action at all, appropriate to our hope, that we begin to be more concerned with the intermediate goals which we ourselves must project out of the experience of trying to live a Christian life in the world as it now is. To attempt to live now as though God reigned and all other powers were already subject to His rule is to come in conflict quickly and accurately with the powers that are ranged against the power of God and to discover equally swiftly and accurately intermediate goals that must be striven after. Such goals will manifest themselves frequently as a direct challenge to the economic structure and presuppositions of the whole society, and perhaps of the international complex of national societies. They may manifest themselves as a political challenge, and as a challenge to deeply held cultural priorities and values. Action according to conscience on any one point tends to be revelatory in terms of the whole cultural and the network of sin within the culture, and therefore tends to bring about reflection and radically oppositional commitments across a much broader range. The key to orthodoxy, or orthopraxy, here is basically always the same, being serious and consistent about the brotherhood of all mankind. If we pursue the ideal of fraternal charity as its demands become more far-reaching we shall keep discovering the content of Christian hope, because we shall, so to speak, see the Reign of God coming from within the experience of the Resurrection which anticipates it.


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Summer 1974 by Chicago Studies - Issuu