September 2, 2008: "What Is Christianity Mainly About?" (Part 3)

Christianity is mainly about glorifying God by believing what is true and doing what is right.

For the past two weeks I have been discussing the core of Christianity, taking as a jumping-off point a comment made by Bill Maher to the effect that religion is bad because "it's not mainly about doing the right thing...it's mainly about getting your butt saved when you die." I believe Maher is wrong on several counts. In the first essay I said that doing the right thing is essential to Christianity - though it is not essential to atheism. In the second essay I said that the prime motive for Christian practice must be the glory of God rather than the salvation of our souls (or of our butts, as Maher more colorfully put it).

Now I would like to put in a word for truth. I am a Christian because I believe that Christianity is true - regardless of whether I am saved, regardless of whether I want it to be true, regardless of whether it helps me be good or hopeful or happy or anything else. I take Christianity as fact, and believe that all statements of fact, simply by virtue of their correspondence to reality, demand assent from all honest men and women. This includes facts that are pleasant and facts that are horrific, those that are completely irrelevant and those that are life-changing. You must believe the truth no matter what it does for you or against you. If I knew beyond doubt that I was eternally damned, it would still be my duty to believe that Jesus was the incarnate Word of God who died for sinners. And - though I admit this would be very hard - it would still be my duty to obey the God who damned me.

C. S. Lewis' "descent" into Christian faith is instructive in this regard. He became a reluctant theist when he found to his dismay that he could not, in good conscience, hold on to atheism any more. He wanted to. Atheism for Lewis was freedom, and theism was a shackle. Who wants to believe in a God who is looking over your shoulder all the time, a God from whom you can never escape and breathe free, a God whom you can't dismiss by saying, "Go over there and tend to your own business, and just leave me alone"? But all of Lewis' wistful hope for God's non-existence could not keep the wrecking ball of Reason from pounding his edifice of atheism to shambles.

Significantly, Lewis was a theist for two years before he came to believe in the afterlife! He was ever afterward grateful to God for bringing him so gradually to the faith. It armed him against the charge (and the internal doubt) that he had become a Christian just to get his butt saved when he died. That was the furthest thing from his mind. He believed in God because God existed, and in Jesus because he was God incarnate. Facts compelled the assent of his mind and the obedience of his will long before the matter of eternal bliss came up.

When we stewards of the gospel proclaim Christ, we must be careful to set before people the reality they must believe and the moral code they must obey. Truth and goodness are not options, spices tossed on to the main dish of salvation. Of course we all want to be saved - assuming we believe in such a thing as salvation and fear such a thing as damnation. There is nothing particularly praiseworthy or even God-pleasing about wanting to be saved. That is just a reasonable (and inescapably selfish) human desire. True Christianity aims at more. True Christianity aims to magnify God, believing in him because he is there and obeying him because he is good.