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Like everyone, I am shocked and saddened at the fire that caused massive damage to the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris. 

However, the extent of national mourning in France is a bit puzzling. John Kass, writing in the Chicago Tribune, observed the current dismal state of Christianity in Western Europe in general (selected snippets):

And [President Macron’s] oratory won’t save Christianity in a modern, left-dominated and secular Western Europe undergoing great cultural change. It is a Europe that is spiritually and culturally adrift, while holding Christianity firmly at a distance. And the European political class wishes that its arms were much longer…According to a Pew Research Center survey published in 2018, Western Europe has become one of the world’s most secular regions…And the wholesale rejection of Christianity by Europeans who say they were born and raised Christian is also part of that equation.

So what explains the strong reactions? Some, to be sure, mourn the damage to a church. But most, I’m afraid, see the cathedral as a great historical monument and a work of art, representing the best of French culture and architectural achievement.

The problem is we tend to get more excited about erecting church facilities than building people. And when we don’t make disciples, especially disciples who make other disciples, a church’s people die or move away, and they aren’t replaced by new believers. 

A headline in The Atlantic, November 28, 2018, says it all:  As Congregations Dwindle, Churches Sit Empty. What Comes Next? The article goes on to describe “America’s epidemic of empty churches…As donations and attendance decrease, many churches struggle with the cost of maintaining their large physical structures.”

God’s real temples are made of people, not bricks:

So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord. In him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit. (Ephesians 2.19 – 22, ESV)

And the work of the church is to build these people:

And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ. (Ephesians 4.11-13, ESV)