One Real Thing Is Closer To God

We Are So Impressed By Scientific Clank That We Feel We Ought Not To Say That The Sunflower Turns Because It Knows Where The Sun Is. It Is Almost Second Nature To Us To Prefer Explanations . . . With A Large Vocabulary. We Are Much More Comfortable When We Are Assured That The Sunflower Turns Because It Is Heliotropic. The Trouble With That Kind Of Talk Is That It Tempts Us To Think That We Know What The Sunflower Is Up To. But We Don't. The Sunflower Is A Mystery, Just As Every Single Thing In The Universe Is.

Christianity Is Not A Religion. Christianity Is The Proclamation Of The End Of Religion, Not Of A New Religion, Or Even Of The Best Of All Religions. If The Cross Is The Sign Of Anything, It's The Sign That God Has Gone Out Of The Religion Business And Solved All Of The World's Problems Without Requiring A Single Human Being To Do A Single Religious Thing. What The Cross Is Actually A Sign Of Is The Fact That Religion Can't Do A Thing About The World's Problems - That It Never Did Work And It Never Will

With Jesus, However, The Device Of Parabolic Utterance Is Used Not To Explain Things To People’s Satisfaction But To Call Attention To The Unsatisfactoriness Of All Their Previous Explanations And Understandings.

The World Exists, Not For What It Means But For What It Is. The Purpose Of Mushrooms Is To Be Mushrooms, Wine Is In Order To Be Wine: Things Are Precious Before They Are Contributory. It Is A False Piety That Walks Through Creation Looking Only For Lessons Which Can Be Applied Somewhere Else. To Be Sure, God Remains The Greatest Good; But, For All That, The World Is Still Good In Itself. Indeed, Since He Does Not Need It, Its Whole Reason For Being Must Lie In Its Own Natural Goodness; He Has No Use For It, Only Delight.

That, You Know, Is Why The World Exists At All. It Remains Outside The Cosmic Garbage Can Of Nothingness, Not Because It Is Such A Solemn Necessity That Nobody Can Get Rid Of It, But Because It Is The Orange Peel Hung On God's Chandelier, The Wishbone In His Kitchen Closet. He Likes It; Therefore, It Stays. The Whole Marvelous Collection Of Stones, Skins, Feathers, And String Exists Because At Least One Lover Has Never Quite Taken His Eye Off It, Because The Dominus Vivificans Has His Delight With The Sons Of Men.