The City of God, It's Purpose and Definition

in thirty words or less, care of Mark Lowery.

from Living the Good Life
Mark Lowery

It is essential to grasp the Christian conception of history found in Scripture and tradition, and heavily influenced by St. Augustine's understanding as put forth in his classic work Certainly all humans live within history. But the best way to improve the world is by an awareness--a membership in--another "city" or "kingdom" far more important: the kingdom of God or the city of God.

Those who follow Christ and have grace in their hearts are citizens of this city--and as we'll see later, non-Christians can have some connection to his city. (The "charter of this city is the beatitudes--see CCC 1716-24.) Members of the Church, then, have a dual citizenship, in both the city of God and in the historical, political order. As Gaudium et Spes 43 notes: "This council exhorts Christians, as citizens of two cities, to strive to discharge their earthly duties conscientiously and in response to the Gospel spirit."

Two points here--one germane and one professional.

We straddle two kingdoms, one of which we see "as in a glass darkly." Too often we live out our lives with the notion of WYSIWYG. And yet, it is precisely what you do NOT see that is what we end up getting. We see the kingdom of God rarely, but it does emerge if we are looking. It comes out in small ways and in large. For example, it may emerge in the smile of someone greeting us as we come into work. It certainly does emerge in the Eucharistic celebration, if we are paying attention.

Now to my other point, a trivial one, but one that niggles at me. (And you'll note that it takes up the majority of this post.) Who the heck edits these books? What's with this insane jumble of grammatical oddities:

t is essential to grasp the Christian conception of history found in Scripture and tradition, and heavily influenced by St. Augustine's understanding as put forth in his classic work Certainly all humans live within history.

Why a colon? Then, as the colon is not terminal punctuation, why the capital letter following. And who is paying attention to sequence. Note this: But the best way to improve the world is by an awareness--a membership in--another "city" or "kingdom" far more important: the kingdom of God or the city of God..

Why construct the sentence so that you mention city or kingdom and then reverse the order after a colon (which should be an m-dash).

I'm sorry to bend your ear with this kind of thing, but more and more recently I'm noticing that editors are not doing their jobs. House styles are collapsing in the reign of the Stephen King and Michael Crichton, who have grown too big to be "edited." For example, has anyone read the bloated version of Stephen King's The Stand? Here is the strongest possible evidence that good editors know what they are doing and that the author's original conception is not always the best way to do things. I think Lowery's book is likely to be very helpful in sorting out a great many matters, and it does not pretend to be a handbook of style and grammar. Yet, to quote Tevye, "Would it spoil some grand eternal plan, if it were edited well?" Sorry, tirade ended. Back to sleep mode.