"In this world, irrationality clings to man like his shadow so that the right things are done for the wrong reasons - afterwards, we dredge up the right reasons for justification. It is a world not of angels but of angles, where men speak of moral principles but act on power principles; a world where we are always moral and our enemies always immoral; a world where "reconciliation" means that when one side gets the power and the other side gets reconciled to it, then we have reconciliation; a world of religious institutions that have, in the main, come to support and justify the status quo so that today organized religion is materially solvent and spiritually bankrupt. We live in a Judeo-Christian ethic that has not only accomodated itself to but justified slavery, war, and every other ugly human exploitation of whichever status quo happened to prevail..."
-- Saul Alinsky
As bleak a picture as Alinsky paints of the human condition, the hope is that this is the beginning and not the end... but in attempting to move towards the end without accepting the brokenness of our foundation, our house will be built on sand... and we all know what happens to that house.
But that these faults dont stop us from pursuing the possibility of a better tomorrow... in fact, that this brokenness would propel our hopeful, creative, and prophetic imaginations to extend beyond the limitations of society's rule, into the ancient vision to which God calls us to return...
that's our finale... the New Jerusalem.
1 comment:
Sweet quote and a good, hopeful word, friend! Where'd that hope come from, anyway? Oh what's that? Somewhere outside of Philly? HA.
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