Ubi Bene, Ibi Patria

This cartoon surprised me. I read the quote, had the idea, started drawing Saturday night, and finished it on Sunday. I had a few issues with the perspective, but overall, I think it works. The quote is from Moses Hess' book, Rome and Jerusalem, written after Hess realized the futility of trying to fit in to European culture. Abandoning Judaism, embracing socialism, and even marrying a Catholic did not protect him from anti-Semitism. 

It seems to me that Hess was pretty spot on. The last thing the world wants is a knock-off of the world. Yet when Christians try to fit in to maintain their level of comfort, that's exactly what they are - counterfeit citizens of the world. We'll never really fit in, and worse, we'll be seen as Christian frauds. The Berlin Wall was a public-relations disaster for communism. How can you sell a worldview as "the best" when you have to build walls to keep people from escaping it? That's what we do to Christianity when we try to fit in to the world. It's signaling that we really like their system better. What many in the world really want is peace, joy, love, purpose, and meaning - to have someone worthy of loving, to serve one worthy of serving. That's what we can offer them, but only when our purpose is aligned, not with the world, but with the Kingdom of God. 

One little post-script about this drawing. The right-hand side of the drawing got erased a lot, because I didn't know what I wanted there. I tried a city in the clouds, then a city in the clouds with a gate, but they just didn't convey the idea I wanted. Then I thought about Ezekiel's temple. I ended up combining it with the description of the tree in Revelation 22:1-3. I ended up putting a gate back in just to fill in the foreground, but I botched it and had to edit it in the digital scan.  

---