The Gospel is the only saving power in the world.  Any involvement in politics, philosophy, the arts, or education - in short, any involvement at all in this world - must be an outflow of our belief in and practice of the preaching of the Gospel of the crucified Savior, Jesus Christ.  If it is not, we are wasting our lives on seeking to save the world by our own human means.  But, if it is such a Gospel outflow, we have the opportunity to show the world the Gospel on full display in every area of life, just as God intended, for the Gospel has much to say about these areas of culture. 

   We must be careful never to transfer our trust to the transformative power of politics, the beauty of the arts, the uplifting nature of education or soaring thoughts of philosophy.  Our trust must be in the person of Jesus, the human-God who sacrificed Himself to save us and draw us into eternal fellowship with Him.   This is utterly stupid to the modern mind that values knowledge, and it smacks of impotent weakness to the pre-modern mind which values physical strength.  But, we preach Christ!

For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe. (I Cor 1:21)

Too Many Books?

"Since we do--to some degree-- arrange our libraries so that our friends will see our books as we want them to be seen, an easy way to clear them out is to decide which books we'd prefer to, shall we say, hide or banish altogether, so that our friends won't see them at all.  We can throw large numbers of books away just so no one will know you ever took such nonsense seriously."  

-- Orhan Pamuk, Other Colors, 108.