Engaging God's World chapter 1

First of all, I want to say that I have been raised in the CRC church my whole life. The ideas of "shalom" and "hope" Plantinga writes of are ideas I have been indoctrinated in my whole life. However, while for me there seemed little new or original information presented and to me it was a little boring, Plantinga wrote about these ideas in a different, yet easy to read way.

Plantinga interestingly states that "if we hope as the prophets and apostles did, then we hope not only for ourselves but also for people we must struggle to understand." This idea, I believe, is beautiful. If we are to call ourselves Christians, loving our enemies and seeking shalom, than we should hope not only for our own prosperity, but everyone's. Along with this hope, "costly action" needs to come with it, so hope can become reality. One hundred years ago, equality in America for people of all races may have seemed a dream, but hope along with costly action made it for the most part a reality. Today, it is easy to call people "terrorists", "communists", "capitalist pigs", or a whole slew of other names that get in the way of hoping for their well-being as well as our own. It pays to remember we are called to work toward shalom, for yourself and your enemies.

While reading about these themes, I was reminded of a line in the preface that read "After all, a person's faith, even in idols, shapes most of what a person thinks and writes, and the Christian faith is in competition with other faiths for human hearts and minds". I can think of no greater example of this than C.S. Lewis. Over winter break I read most of the "Chronicles of Narnia", and in every book Lewis' belief in God was evident in the overarching story, every situation, and every character. Everything about it pointed to God, sometimes obviously, sometimes indirectly. I truly admire Lewis because I can see that he, to quote Plantinga, "hopes for shalom". I can only hope to have my thinking and writing and actions will affected by my faith to the degree Lewis' was.