The Dawn Treader

I suspect that if you asked five different people that question, you would get five different answers.  My newly converted friend recently brought this up.  Even being raised in the Bible belt, he was a little wobbly on what Christianity really was because of the different messages he kept hearing.  To some, being a Christian is being narrow-minded and hating gays.  To others, it is someone who "has Jesus in their heart."  To others, it is someone who goes to church or used to go to church.  To others, it is someone who "believes in Jesus" (fill in the blank for whatever that means).

Colson's desire in writing this book with Harold Fickett is to clarify the answer to the question, "what is Christianity?"  It is not a new question.  People have been discussing and debating the answer to that question for twenty centuries.  Colson, like my favorite writer C.S. Lewis, believes that progress does not always mean discovering something new; "sometimes it means rediscovering wisdom that is ancient and eternal."  I love that.  From the Apostle's Creed, to the Nicene Creed and forward, there is a rich heritage of understanding that we can drill into to wrap our heads around what Biblical Christianity is.  Colson and Fickett not only do a great job of tapping into ancient wisdom, but they answer the vital question "so what?"  They explain why it matters given today's challenges.

Here are three reasons for why it matters.  One, there has been a sustained, aggressive and successful assault on the faith by the band of brothers known as the anti-theists (Dawkins, Harris, Dennett, Hitchens, Ehrman).  These are the chaps who have taken the gloves off and are throwing over hand rights against the Christian worldview.  Their books have sold over one million copies and seem to defy gravity by remaining on the NY Times bestseller lists week after week.  Two, the god of tolerance has become an idol in our postmodern, pluralistic culture.  Historic tolerance, "we respectfully agree to disagree" is a good thing.  Postmodern tolerance, "meaning everybody is right except intolerant people", is self-refuting and corrosive.  Many in the church have bought into this.  The view of truth as "that which corresponds to reality" is quickly being corroded in the acid of secular tolerance.  Three, fascist-influenced jihadists fed on revivalist Islamist teachings are an ever present threat.  The irony is that this worldview is growing and not just in the Middle East.  It is thriving in Great Britain, for instance.  Case in point, the Archbishop of Canterbury's (Church of England) recent accommodating comments about Sharia law.  This shows one incremental step in bringing fundamental Islamic belief into the mainstream of Western society.

These are the times we face, and yet the church seems woefully unprepared to contend for the faith as we are taught to do in Jude 3.  Biblical literacy is low.  As a result, two deadly viruses are present in the church.  The first is moralism.  This is a view of Christianity as a commitment to being good.  It is an attempt at self-salvation wrapped in external "goodness".  The heart is never touched, however.  The second virus is individualism.  It is a view of Christianity as personal pietism.  It is all about "Jesus and me".  It is a truncated gospel that amounts to getting eternal fire insurance and then getting back to the business of pursuing the American dream.  The view of Christianity as more than "getting saved" is becoming increasingly rare.

The answer is to go back to that ancient wisdom about what Christianity truly is ... and then live it out!