Plantiga Ch. 1

Neil Plantinga starts out his book "Engaging God's World" with a first chapter called Longing and Hope. This chapter starts out with an example from a John Knowles book, which describes the longing to break out in joy during beautiful summer days. Plantinga uses several more examples, from writers such as Augustine and C.S. Lewis, all of which have the goal of trying to show us that we should have a longing. But not just any longing, a longing for Christ. Plantinga notes that we should have a longing that does not corrupt or diminish, but that builds us up as people in God's image.
Plantinga then goes on to talk of longing as an ingredient of Hope. In this section, Plantinga describes hope as an imagining for a good state of affairs. He gives the example of the end of racism, and Dr. Martin Luther King's hope for this state.
Perhaps the thing that I liked most out of an otherwise boring reading was Plantiga's discussion on shalom at the end of the first chapter. Plantinga tells how shalom means much more than peace; it has a much broader meaning that means a universal flourishing and wholeness. As Christians, I feel that we too often live in the here and now, and though we may evangelize occasionally, but overall, we do not focus on pushing this world towards shalom. Christians should be ashamed of the condition of this fallen world, and should work to redeem it. It fits in with the mantra 'Creation, Fall, Redemption.' Christians have mastered 'Fall', but now we need to work towards redemption, which is part of restoring shalom in our world.