/lit/ - Literature

>>6423474
Yes, and you can make the argument that it's starting to happen thanks to the man in your picture.

There has always, always been a tension in Christianity between obeying the regular demands of the world and defying them in the name of Jesus. This crops up as early as Paul's letter to the Romans. Augustine's City of God is named after the idea that Christians don't really belong to the world- that they're pilgrims in it on their way to their true home, their true city, in Heaven. At the same time, Jesus commands that Christians go out and "make disciples of all the nations," and that necessarily requires being involved in the world.

So I suppose another way to put the tension is as one between worldliness and otherworldliness. Christians, in a sense, have one foot out the door of this world. Should they retreat from the demands of the world and live merely in anticipation of God? That's what cloistered monks do, after all. Or should they reach out to the City of the World and try to shape it in God's image, with God as their ally?

Or is the answer to do both? Christ, after all, was fully God and fully human. It stands to reason he wouldn't want the human world, the material world, to be overlooked by his followers, even as they keep one eye on the next life.

It's a dilemma that's had many answers over the centuries.