I’ve been reading a few chapters a night out
of Mere Christianity, a seminal work
by CS Lewis that I’d heard much about and even quoted from but never yet read,
which [my friend] gave me. What I didn’t realize was that most of the chapters
were initially broadcast pieces that Lewis gave during WWII in Britain, and was
actually asked to give by the BBC. Different times, dear reader. With The Battle of
Britain in mind, I offer this fascinating excerpt out of Book one, chapter 5,
“We Have Cause To Be Uneasy,” fascinating by virtue of the strong similarity it
has to Ray Comfort’s The Way of the
Master evangelism method, Ken Ham’s argument for Creation as the foundation
to understand the Bible, and to a video clip I saw of Paul Washer explaining
that the most terrifying truth about God is that He is good. Without further
ado:
“For the trouble is that one part of you is on His
side and really agrees with His disapproval of human greed and trickery and
exploitation. You may want Him to make an exception in your own case, to let
you off this one time, but you know at bottom that unless the power behind the
world really and unalterably detests that sort of behavior, then He cannot be
good.
On the other hand, we know
that if there does exist an absolute goodness it must hate most of what we do.
This is the terrible fix we are in. If
the universe is not governed by an absolute goodness, then all our efforts are
in the long run hopeless. But if it is, then we are making ourselves enemies to
that goodness every day, and are not in the least likely to do any better
tomorrow, and so our case is hopeless again. We cannot do without it, and we
cannot do with it. God is the only comfort, He is also the supreme terror: the
thing we most need and the thing we most want to hide from. He is our only
possible ally, and we have made ourselves His enemies. Some people talk as if
meeting the gaze of absolute goodness would be fun. They need to think again.
They are still only playing with religion. Goodness is either the great safety
or the great danger—according to the way you react to it. And we have reacted
the wrong way.
Now
my third point. When I chose to get to my real subject in this roundabout way,
I was not trying to play any kind of trick on you. I had a different reason. My
reason was that Christianity simply does not make sense until you have faced
the sort of facts I have been describing. Christianity tells people to repent
and promises them forgiveness. It therefore has nothing (as far as I know) to
say to people who do not know they have done anything to repent of and do not
feel that they need any forgiveness. It is after you have realized that there
is a real Moral Law, and a Power behind the law, and that you have broken that
law and put yourself wrong with that Power—it is after all this, and not a
moment sooner, that Christianity begins to talk.
When you know you are sick, you will listen to the
doctor. When you have realized that our position is nearly desperate you will
begin to understand what the Christians are talking about. They offer an
explanation of how we got into our present state of both hating goodness and
loving it. They offer an explanation of how God can be this impersonal mind at
the back of the Moral Law and yet also a Person. They tell you how the demands
of this law, which you and I cannot meet, have been met on our behalf, how God
Himself becomes a man to save man from the disapproval of God. It is an old
story and if you want to go into it you will no doubt consult people who have
more authority to talk about it than I have. All I am doing is to ask people to
face the facts—to understand the questions which Christianity claims to answer.
And they are very terrifying facts.
I
wish it was possible to say something more agreeable. But I must say what I
think true. Of course, I quite agree that the Christian religion is, in the
long run, a thing of unspeakable comfort. But it does not begin in comfort; it
begins in the dismay I have been describing, and it is no use at all trying to
go on to that comfort without first going through that dismay. In religion, as
in war and everything else, comfort is the one thing you cannot get by looking
for it. If you look for truth, you may find comfort in the end: if you look for
comfort you will not get either comfort or truth—only soft soap and wishful
thinking to begin with and, in the end, despair. Most of us have got over the
pre-war wishful thinking about international politics. It is time we did the
same about religion.”
The doctor analogy is
also one used frequently by Todd Friel, not highly surprising since he and Ray
and Kirk Cameron are close friends on the theological stage. Todd’s response to
a Rob Bell video parodied its introduction but then gave a parable followed by
demonstrating the difference between the Bell/Friel approaches. Imagine four
doctors. Doctor Woo tells everyone how cool and exciting the hospital is. Don’t
you just want to check it out? Doctor Scare walks around telling everyone “yer
gonna die!! yer gonna die!!” He lets people know they’re ill but doesn’t make
them inclined to want to pursue a cure, if they even know how. Doctor Love
wants everyone to know that the doctors love them, and come to the hospital so
you can sleep on our nice comfortable beds, eat our great cafeteria food, and
feel better about yourself. But Dr. Love doesn’t tell the people that all the
while they’re carrying dangerous illnesses that will kill them if left
untreated. Is that really love? I don’t recall if the fourth doctor was another
example of a bad doctor or not, but the final example was I believe Doctor
Reason. He treats people with dignity and respect, but tells them the truth
that they have a deadly disease. But he doesn’t stop there—he tells the patient
that he has a cure. When the patient knows he’s ill, he desires the cure, and
receives it with gladness. All of these were metaphors for different approaches
by different churches on how to preach the Gospel (or fail to) to the Lost of
the world. Dr. Scare symbolizes hellfire preachers who fail to focus on
anything but condemnation, leaving
out love and grace and forgiveness. Dr. Love fails in the reverse way, not
warning people about sin and judgment and failing to generate true converts as
a result, just people who have a false sense of security. Dr. Woo represents
celebrity preachers or preachers who use gimmicks and showiness to try to lure
people in with flashy things that produce people who expect church to be
entertaining for them. Dr. Reason represents the “Law-and-Gospel” approach
promoted by Ray Comfort and all associated with him, that seeks to inform
people of their NEED to be saved, before urging them to take the cure
(repentance and faith), knowing that otherwise people simply won’t respond
because the message doesn’t connect.
~ Rak Chazak
* Mere Christianity is published by HarperOne, a division of HarperCollins. The citation is taken from pages 30 through 32 of the copy that I have.
