Having finished Tony Parsons latest novel- not bad but not half as good as Man and Boy- I've recently started reading God's Politics. Really enjoying it. Best quote thus far;
'God is personal, but never private. If God is not personal, there is little meaning to faith. It becomes merely a philosophy or a set of teachings from religious figures who died long ago.
Without a personal God, there is no personal dimension to belief. There is no relationship to God, no redemption, salvation, grace, or forgiveness. There is no spiritual transformation without a personal God, and no power that can really change our lives beyond mere self-improvement. …
However, that personal God is never private. Restricting God to private space was the great heresy of the twentieth-century American evangelicalism. Denying the public God is a denial of biblical faith itself, a rejection of the prophets, the apostles, and Jesus himself. Exclusively private faith degenerates into a narrow religion, excessively preoccupied with individual and sexual morality while almost oblivious to the biblical demands for public justice. In the end, private faith becomes a merely cultural religion providing the assurances of righteousness for people just like us. …
Our private religions have failed, but we must not lose a personal God. Instead of trying to strike an elusive ‘balance’ between private piety and the social gospel, we must go to the heart of prophetic religion itself in which a personal God demands public justice as an act of worship. We meet the personal God in the public arena and are invited to take our relationship to that God right into the struggle for justice. Indeed, without that personal relationship we will lose the political struggle. That shift—bringing the personal God into the public arena—is at the heart of the prophet’s message and will transform both our religion and our politics.'
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