How Would Western Faith Communities be Different IF...

We valued character traits like:

• Love
• Joy
• Peace
• Patience
• Gentleness
• Goodness
• Humility
• Self-control
• Faith

And actions like:

• Justice
• Caring for the poor
• Living simply
• Giving
• Peace-making
• Esteeming others better than ourselves
• Looking out for the interests of others
• Tending to the Creation
• Gratitude

More than we value being:

• Right
• Secure
• Rich
• Even
  
• Safe
• Separatist
• Comfortable
• Consumptive
• Right

A Timely Quote from CS Lewis

He whom I bow to only knows to whom I bow
When I attempt the ineffable Name, murmuring Thou,
And dream of Pheidian fancies and embrace in heart
Symbols (I know) which cannot be the thing thou art.
Thus always, taken at their word, all prayers blaspheme
Worshiping with frail images a folk-lore dream,
And all men in their praying, self-deceived, address
The coinage of their own unquiet thoughts, unless
Thou in magnetic mercy to thyself divert
Our arrows aimed unskillfully, beyond desert;
And all men are idolaters, crying unheard
To a deaf idol, if thou take them at their word. Take not, O Lord, our literal sense. Lord, in thy great,
Unbroken speech our limping metaphor translate.