. . . the promise of the cross:
There is a choice. Mine is that the order of the universe, the arching of the human spirit, the enduring mysteries of love and the unique serenity of faith, are the result of . . .
. . . Central Planning, which took seven days, not seven seconds, to make a world exciting enough to doubt Him.
That is the flirtatious side of God, to reach for a terrestrial metaphor. We should laugh at its presumption, as, after trying it out several times, I can laugh at the black nihilistic teases of Hewlett and Packard [referring here to a computerized handheld computer to calculate nautical courses].
I am programmed to love God and to seek, however vainly, to obey him, and to trust that the course he laid out for me in the grandest voyage, through time and space, and uncertainty, to infinity and transfiguration, and resolution, is as certainly charted as the toyland course [calculated from the Hewlett-Packard device] that will lead me from Miami to the Rock of Gibraltar.
I shall follow the star of Bethlehem, waywardly: and if I fail to reach it, I shall be guilty of every delinquency save that I never doubted it was there.
(William F. Buckley, Jr., Untitled Contribution, "Commentary: Christians, Why Do You Still Believe in God, in the Promise of the Cross?" Harper's, April 1975 (reparagraphed)).
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