To pay Jesus Christ his proper rent;
To spread his word is my intent
—Chaucer
The Church follows the world like Piglet following Pooh around the larch tree tracking Woozles—but we’re always a few steps behind.
We take up the world’s causes belatedly, some months or years after it brings them to our attention, and we make them our chief talking points. Next year, or the year after, there will be another set of wrongs to be righted and we will uncritically embrace them as well, often overlooking the underlying, unbiblical premises that inform them. Why do we, who claim to follow Jesus, allow the world to set our agenda?
In C.S. Lewis’ Screwtape Proposes a Toast, the demon Screwtape advises his demonic nephew to make men “treat Christianity as a means,” but allow them to go no further. Indeed, the world will use us as a means to its ends, but it will never adopt our end: to bring men and women, boys and girls into contact with the One who loves them beyond measure and gave his life to save them.
The world will always try to distract us by drawing our attention to penultimate causes (Woozles), but “What Jesus said” is our ultimate guide.
David Roper
10.22.20
3 comments:
A friend passed this post along because it echoes a sentiment we have been discussing - and it mentions CS Lewis, which he knew would warm my heart. The addition of Pooh and Piglet is an added bonus.
You are spot on. We are in the Evangelical Covenant Church, which follows the other churches into culture more slowly, but with the same ultimate result. I started in UCC and then was Lutheran, so I have seen this before.
Though I believe it is reasonable for preaching to include topical allusions, both to give people an easy point of reference and to attempt to speak to the culture we actually live in, I have concluded that the habit leads too readily to pastors attending to popular culture, which slowly exerts its influence. It suddenly occurs to me that our practice of putting people just out of seminary into youth ministry has the same effect. They want to stay relevant to the young, and thus spend more time in the culture of this Tuesday than is good for them.
In fact, that's my next post, and I will link back to this.
I have updated the post since my first observation, with an even more radical and disquieting idea. I have read enough of your posts to think that your observations might be valuable here, so please come over to my site and comment on the post from 10/24.
Hello David, First of all I want to say I'm sorry about that nasty fall, but I'm grateful to read you are still here. Having said this, I do want to say you are so right about your age, it's a great blessing to still be around, but who knows, the Lord may yet give you another decade ( or more?) I sure hope so! the older we get, the more we say, ''not yet Lord'' even though we know we are going to the best place possible, we cling to this life for many reasons, family, friends, etc. May our Lord bless you in your healing, and give you many more healthy years together with ALL your loved ones .
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