As the Church seeks to adopt a more humble, receptive, listening and thus persuasive stance over and against the surrounding world, there are a number of strategies suggested by those Halik engages in conversation throughout his book. Here are just three from Paul, Von Balthasar and Thomas Merton:
The way of paradox – "great things are revealed in small things; God's wisdom is revealed in human foolishness; God's strength is revealed in human weakness"
The way of humility – the struggle against "that will to power disguised in the mantle of religion that drives one to assert one's own greatness instead of acknowledging that God alone is great…against every ascetical practice which aims not at God but at one;s own perfection, and which is nothing more than spiritual beauty treatment."
The way of Christlike living "What we are asked to do today is not so much to speak about Christ as to let him live in us so that people may find him by feeling how he lives in us".
Paul's point is that God is not limited by our limitations, or boosted by our resourcefulness. Von Balthasar's point is different – the stance of power, of certitude and of self-righteousness negates a Gospel earthed in the humility of God in Christ. And Merton was quite capable of speaking for Christ, as we all are – but the primary speech of Christian existence is the life lived, the evidenced vitality of the living risen Lord in the life of individual and community.
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