"Christianity And"

From C.S. Lewis's The Screwtape Letters

"My dear Wormwood, the real trouble about the set your patient is that it is merely Christian. They all have individual interests, of course, but the bond remains mere Christianity. What we want, if men become Christians at all, is to keep them in the state of mind I call "Christianity And." You know - Christianity and the Crisis, Christianity and the New Psychology, Christianity and the New Order, Christianity and Faith Healing, Christianity and Psychical Research, Christianity and Vegetarianism, Christianity and Spelling Reform. If they're going to be Christians, let them at least be Christians with a difference. Substitute for the faith itself some Fashion with a Christian colouring. Work on their horror of the same old thing."

Allow me to add to his list - "Christianity and contemporary worship, Christianity and relevance, Christianity and post-modernism, Christianity and the poor, Christianity and community."

I say this somewhat flippantly, but it troubles me immensely. I desire mere Christianity, yet I see the fingerprints of "Christianity And" all over my life (usually after I've spent a lot of time condemning its rampant, disgusting, unseen presence all over the midwest). I wonder if Lewis ever really discovered the secret to mere Christianity, or if the dirty little secret is that struggling with this very thing is characteristic of a western Christian.

I have friends who live outside of the bible belt who talk about how the IC's they go to ARE community, simply because if you want to know other Christians, you have to attend an IC. There are people that really do look down on them for being Christians. And the thing about it is that this type of environment really simplifies things.

I love Bread of Life Fellowship. People live their lives there with authenticity, and real life is allowed to exist there. So much of the crap that characterizes many midwest IC's simply doesn't exist there. Not that it's this utopian Christian fellowship, because ugliness exists there. But they make an honest effort to see ugliness for what it is without justifying it or rationalizing it or ignoring it. They desire Christ because he is Christ, not because he will accentuate their lifestyle or cause political change or bring social justice.

Again, from Screwtape, "The thing to do is to get a man at first to value social justice as a thing which the Enemy demands, and then work him on to the stage at which he values Christianity because it may produce social justice. For the Enemy will not be used as a convenience. Men or nations who think they can revive the Faith in order to make a good society might just as well think they can use the stairs of Heaven as a short cut to the nearest chemist's shop. Fortunately, it is quite easy to coax humans around this little corner. Only today I have found a passage in a Christian writer where he recommends his own version of Christianity on the ground that "only such a faith can outlast the death of old cultures and the birth of new civilizations." You see the rift? "Believe this, not because it is true, but for some other reason." That's the game.
posted by Stephen at 10:07 PM | |