A Matter of Faith

Categories:God and Faith
Jan

Mere Christianity book coverI grew up in what I would today term a fundamentalist Christian household. The religious tenets were based on literal interpretations of the Bible. I turned my back on those interpretations and on Christianity in my young adulthood until a life-altering event changed my perspective. But even then, I would not say I was truly Christian; I never fully understood what I was getting into.

I’ve attended Methodist church off and on for many years. That has helped me understand the Bible a little better, but I don’t think—or have ever thought—that religion makes a person a better Christian.

Then, one day a few years ago while I was at the Emporium, a consignment sort of variety story in downtown Paola, I saw a leather-bound book lying out of place on top of a bookshelf. Mere Christianity was the title. “Huh,” I thought, “Wonder what that’s about?” I enjoy reading romances, have never had much interest in non-fiction. But it was a really beautiful book, and I have a weakness for beautiful books, particularly when they are at bargain prices. I bought the book, but didn’t read it for months. I can’t remember what prompted me to read it—probably just wanted something different.

I usually skip right to the first page, ignoring introductions, but the first page of this book gave me pause. It had a paragraph about the book, mentioning the author, C.S. Lewis, and one sentence: “It is the book God has used most powerfully in my life apart from His own Word.”

I take such words with a grain of salt, particularly when it comes to any sort of religious book. But I was curious enough to read Charles Colson's introduction—and even more curious after reading the introduction to read the rest of the book. Reading Mere Christianity gave me a greater understanding of Christianity than anything else ever has. It has changed my life and has made me think about how I conduct my life in relation to the world around me.

On this Easter Sunday, I want to share a little of it with you. My favorite passage is in Chapter 4, The Perfect Penitent:

We are told that Christ was killed for us, that his death has washed out our sins, and that by dying He disabled death itself. That is the formula. That is Christianity. … Remember, this repentance this willing submission to humiliation and a kind of death, is not something God demands of you before he will take you back and which he could let you off if he chose: it is simply a description of what going back to him is like. If you ask God to take you back without it, you are really asking Him to let you go back without going back. It cannot happen. Very well, then, we must go through with it. But the same badness which makes us need it, makes us unable to do it. Can we do it if God helps us? Yes, but what do we mean when we talk of God helping us? We mean God putting into us a bit of Himself, so to speak. He lends us a little of His reasoning powers, and that is how we think: He puts a little of His love into us and that is how we love one another. … We now need God’s help in order to do something which God, in his own nature, never does at all—to surrender, to suffer, to submit, to die. Nothing in God’s nature corresponds to this process at all. So that the one road for which we now need God’s leadership most of all is a road God, in His own nature, has never walked. God can share only what He has: this thing, in His own nature, He has not.

But supposing God became a man—suppose our human nature which can suffer and die was amalgamated with God’s nature in one person—then that person could help us. He could surrender His will, and suffer and die, because He was man; and He could do it perfectly because He was God. You and I can go through this process only if God does it in us; but God can do it only if He becomes man. Our attempts at this dying will succeed only if we men share in God’s dying, just as our thinking can succeed only because it is a drop in the ocean of His intelligence: but we cannot share God’s dying unless God dies; and He cannot die except by being a man. That is the sense in which He pays our debt, and suffers for us what He Himself need not suffer at all.

That last phrase, “…suffers for us what He Himself need not suffer at all,” is, for me, the crux of Christianity.

“For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son.”—John 3:16.

To be so loved, despite my imperfections is a very great gift, indeed.

Author: