Hi, I'm Jim Denison with Denison Forum, and this is the Daily Article for Tuesday, August 14th, 2018.

Father Ezekiel Sanchez is rector of the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe and Des Plains, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago.

He was one of 103 survivors of an Aero-Mexico plane crash outside Durango, Mexico on July 31, 2018.

Father Sanchez suffered multiple fractures in his left arm, requiring surgery and the insertion

of a metal plate. He said in response, I have become the bionic padre. In his sermon last Sunday,

Father Sanchez declared that the real miracle was not that everyone

survived the plane crash, but that so many went back into the burning plane to rescue others.

Survivors helping others survive is a powerful metaphor for the work of Christians in a post-Christian

culture. Jesus called his first disciples to be his witnesses in Jerusalem, Acts 1-8,

where they would confront the very authorities who executed him. They were to bring his message

to all Judea and Samaria, where they would encounter Jews who oppose them and Samaritans

who rejected them. They were ultimately to go to the end of the earth, probably a reference to Rome, the capital

of the pagan empire. Along the way, they learned to relate their message to their culture so

effectively that by Acts 176 they had turned the world upside down. How can we follow their example?

In the context of Western Christianity, we can think of culture as three circles. The first can be called

the Love and Teach Circle. Here we find the biblical worldview with all its precepts and principles.

In essence, we're to love our Lord and our neighbor, Matthew 22, and we're to teach the world to obey

all that Jesus commanded us, Matthew 2820. Of course, to teach the world to obey all that Jesus commanded us, Matthew 2820.

Of course, to teach the world to obey Jesus commands, we must first obey them ourselves.

The second can be called the reject and replace circle. Here we find truth claims and practices

we must reject if we're to live in the first circle. For instance,

we can't love God while agreeing with our culture that he's no longer relevant to our lives.

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