Choosing to Live

Have you ever read something that captures what you have been thinking? 

In his opening chapter in The Republice of Grace: Augustinian Thoughts in Dark Times, Charles Matthews writes the following about choosing to live our faith in a world of ambivalence and violence.  Beginning with a quote from Reinhold Neibuhr, Matthews states:  "'It is no easy task to do justice to the obligations to do justice to the disctinctions of good and evil in history; and also to subordinate all these relative judgments and achievements to the final truth about life and history which is proclaimed in the Gospel.'"  He continues: "More deeply than discrete positions, I want to introduce Christians to a way of living their faith more thoughtfully than they may currently be living it.  I want to wake people up to the challenges they face to their faith, their prayer life, their ability to love, their ability to be grateful, their ability to be joyful, their ability to care.  Christians need to believe again - to have faith in God, but also belief in our capacity to challenge ourselves and change the way we have chosen to live.  We need to turn from cynicism and scorn, from selfishness and avarice, from lassitude and despair, and to affirm that this is our world, and that its suffering and peril are not cause for retreat but urgent reason to recommit to serving God's purposes in it, that its vulnerability is not inducement to shield ourselves behind brittle walls but reason to care all the more.  Behold, today we have set before us, as perhaps never before in human history, life, and death, and as never before, me must choose to live" (p. 7).