STORIES HAVE a way of making the rounds, especially if they have a good punch line. One such story told and retold in India describes a rich man who sought to buy up an entire village. The man walked from house to house, offering a disproportionately large sum of money to each householder in exchange for his property. Delighted at the prospect of such a large profit, all readily entered into the sale except for one determined old man who owned a small shack right in the center of the village. No sum of money would change his mind, and he responded to each increment offered with the calm rejoinder; "I'm not interested in selling."
Frustrated, the rich man finally had to be content to buy the whole village except for this tiny piece of real estate in the middle. The old man relished his symbolic victory. Every time the rich man had a visitor in the village, the old man stepped out of his little hut and, wagging his bony finger, tauntingly declared, "If he tells you he owns this whole village, don't believe him; this part right here in the middle still belongs to me."
There is a sad, yet striking similarity in this story to the church and her solace when conceding the cultural dominance of secularism over what was once religious terrain. The analogy is even heightened, for the transference of dominion has not been just of land but also of ideas. Retreating from the world, many Christians seek cover inside their church buildings, wagging their fingers at the "secular ownership" of the social landscape and receiving petty satisfaction in saying, "This little part still belongs to us." This is the way the dust has settled after the storms of conflict and the winds of change have raged over which central ideas should govern our culture.
Extracted from Ravi Zacharias’ Deliver Us From Evil.
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