A Full Life for the Glory of God
The sun shall be no more your light by day; neither for brightness shall the moon give light to you: but the Lord will be to you an everlasting light, and your God your glory. — Isaiah 60:19
For the word of the cross is foolishness to those who are dying, but to us who are saved it is the power of God. — 1 Corinthians 1:18
Author
Faustino de Jesús Zamora Vargas
Summary: I grew up in a Cuba where submitting to God seemed humiliating, and many abandoned the faith for materialism. People exalted humanity’s ability to achieve its own redemption, while the Bible was read less and less and some proclaimed the end of the churches. But God’s wisdom was not nullified by that apparent victory of atheism. In the 1990s, faith was rediscovered: churches filled up, and those who had once seemed crazy were seen in a different light. I came to understand that the gospel is foolishness to those who are perishing and the power of God to those who seek His face. To Him be the glory.
I belong to a generation in Cuba that grew up amid the seeming normality of orchestrated humiliation and the audacity of the island’s troubadour songs of the 1960s—“protest songs,” as those in the know used to call them. “…I get distracted, the city is crumbling, and here I am singing…” a well-known singer of the time would sing with a certain indifference
, the presumptuous identity of those years’ last Cuban-style “hippies,” when we roamed up and down with unstarched faces, footwear like that of our mambises—Cuban fighters from the time when Cuba was a Spanish colony—and Beatlemania in the air as we sang “…all you need is love.” It was the 1960s of the last century, a time of romance tinged with the forbidden, of a boost to faith, of many believers leaving for the then-flourishing fields of materialism to begin a life without religious commitments. The imported expression “Religion is the opium of the people” became an almost official dogma. A time (that phrase included) very much like today in many places around the world.
We tried to plunge the living God into the frenzy of rumba and the rattle of maracas. Afro-Cuban folklore, carrying its pantheon of deities on its back, obediently embraced the benefits of being named, almost officially, the hallmark of true Cuban identity. How could anyone submit to God when no one submitted to anyone? The maxim about submitting to God sounded like humiliation, degradation, and an affront. The idea of submitting to another smacked of a breach of virtue.
Each morning, man rose with rifle at the ready in the jungle of a life without Christ, prepared to fire point-blank, without qualms or warning, at his own brother’s fate. One had to survive. We all sang a popular anthem then about man’s need to seek his own redemption (without God, of course). It was an open door to madness, to stark atheism, to man’s empowerment to cultivate his own glory. Many announced the final death of God; there was no need for that faith in promises contained in a book (the Bible) that very few still read. The churches—the temples and buildings were meant—would cease to exist. But you know as well as I do: “…the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom…” (1 Cor 1:25). And God’s time came. Why are we so impatient?
God existed only for those “madmen” who dared to visit the churches. Then came the 1990s and the rediscovery of faith in my beautiful country. And suddenly the madmen began to be seen as sane, and the churches filled with sane people who very quickly became mad (for Christ). And so it remains today.
Then I understood why the gospel is foolishness to those who are perishing, but the power of God to those who seek His face. To Him be the glory.
God bless you!