Christmas In Utero

“And when Elizabeth heard the greeting of Mary, the baby leaped in her womb. And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit, and she exclaimed with a loud cry, ‘Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb!” Luke 1:41-42

Jesus Christ, in utero, is, without question, the most popular fetus in the history of the world. Even the recent “royal baby”, for all of the attention granted him while he was still growing and forming in his mother’s womb, can hardly be mentioned in the same sentence. True, while still forming he was the subject of a fair number of front page stories and endless speculation, one can hardly expect Prince George’s birth to ever be celebrated as an international holiday. It would take some strange sort of madness to think that any nativity scenes will ever be replaced with ceramic figures of a Prince and Princess, giving birth in a modern hospital, surrounded, not by Magi or Shepherds, but by doctors, nurses, pain medication, and, of course, the flash bulbs of the media.

Jesus is hardly in danger of being overshadowed by any modern birth, for He was born. And perhaps one of the reasons for this is that we no longer see birth as we used to, but for isolated moments when it is a birth that extends some famous or royal bloodline.

Christmas is undoubtedly a season that is a celebration of childbirth—and as such, it is a time that really ought to make out society a bit more anxious. It is remarkable just how capably we can come together as a nation, erecting trees in our living rooms, hanging lights and gaudy, colorful ornaments upon every visible limb, without any semblance of recognizing the irony of a nation with no reverence for children, suddenly coming together to revere a child who spends much of His own story as a fetus.

Christmas is undoubtedly a celebration, not just of the birth of a child, but the anticipation, from the very moment of conception, of a child. It is not hard to believe that, if the miracle of the incarnation was to be repeated today, God would have to be exceedingly careful in deciding whom to bestow with the gift—should he choose another unmarried teenage girl, there is a very good chance that the child will never be allowed to come to term, as even an angelic announcement can be swept aside as a trick of the imagination or a schizophrenia-induced vision.

Do our modern sensibilities cringe when Elizabeth speaks of Mary’s fetus as if it was something more than a lump of tissue? If they do not, they certainly ought to. Do we think it strange that Elizabeth should call Mary “Blessed among women” when really she is just an unwed teenager who never really chose to become pregnant? We really should.

To those unable to fathom why anyone should ascribe any human value to a child in that murky area between conception and birth, it really would be best to simply ignore the story prior to Luke 2:6 and pretend it doesn’t exist. Forget the announcement of John the Baptist, who was destined to prepare the way of the Lord—until he is actually born, it is all just speculation anyway. Forget the angel coming to Mary and Joseph. Certainly forget the meeting of Mary and Elizabeth, where the author (who had the audacity to consider himself a medical doctor) makes far too much over a couple of fetuses.

Until that very moment that the child is actually laid in the manger, wrapped in swaddling clothes and laid in a bed of straw, there is no Christmas story—there is only the potential for a Christmas story. Nothing is real until then—the moment the story begins in earnest.

If it happened today, we might consider the fact that Jesus even survived long enough to be born one of his greatest miracles.   

And as the story progresses and the first couple years pass, the further Jesus gets from the womb the more valuable His life becomes. When Herod, in an attempt to destroy Jesus, orders the murder of every toddler in Bethlehem, it is recognized with universal scorn and contempt. It is called “The Massacre of the Innocents”, even by those who would take great offense to the same term being used to describe the present plight of the unborn.

The Christmas story is about new life, but this should only be a source of true joy to those for whom new life really is cherished. Christmas is a delight to those of us who recognize that Christ truly came into this world, not on the first Christmas morning, but 9 months earlier, where already He was recognizable, even by other infants.

The Godless Congregants

http://news.yahoo.com/atheist-mega-churches-root-across-us-world-214619648.html

http://missoulian.com/lifestyles/faith-and-values/religion/atheist-mega-churches-effort-spreads-in-u-s-after-success/article_ad9199fe-5395-11e3-ab58-001a4bcf887a.html

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/11/10/atheist-mega-churches/3489967/

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eliyahu-federman/atheist-megachurches-may-_b_4278761.html

Should I ever have the misfortune of becoming an atheist (you'll have to indulge me in a quick hypothetical flight-of-fancy), the first thing I should want to do is reclaim my Sunday mornings. I would want to sleep as long as possible and perhaps indulge in a weekly half-dozen donuts or some French Toast. If I decided that it would be a good day to spend with friends, I would want to wait, at the very least, until the afternoon. Second, even as an atheist I should want to immediately acknowledge that the Jews and Christians have gotten at least one thing right, and that is the beautiful idea of the Sabbath. Just as a stopped clock is right twice a day, so also the God of Israel, fabricated pseudo-deity that He is, somehow got one thing right. Why would anyone argue with a religion that is dogmatic about the fact that its adherents ought to get some rest?

I have been left utterly dumbfounded, therefore, as I have read (or skimmed) story after story about the sudden, unexpected rise in "Godless Mega-Churches" across the United States. At the very least, it is an admirable piece of publicity. Whenever a number of almost identical “news” stories about anything that is not really news begin appearing across the journalistic spectrum, one must really assume that it really has more to do with a sudden influx of capital into a marketing department than anything truly alarming. Further, I happen to know, from those who have had the misfortune to attend, that these sorts of congregations have been around for years, and though they may have grown, they remain just as inexplicably self-defeating as ever.

It’s not a particularly big deal, of course. It is not as if Christians ought to feel in any way intimidated by the fact that the godless have chosen to imitate them. Flattered, maybe, but confused, certainly. That a person should want to waste a perfectly good Sunday morning in celebrating something as incorporeal as a lack of belief is almost impossible for me to believe; as strange as if an historian suddenly began devoting a day each week to acknowledge that they refuse to believe in the War of 1812. I suppose it shouldn’t matter much to me that they refuse to believe in the event, but it is undeniably strange (and a bit sad) that they should feel like it is worth wasting a perfectly good weekend in celebrating.

But there is precedent for all of this. There was a strange tendency after the French Revolution, a time in which secularism seemed to have taken a foothold among the French (though only after the brutal murder of hundreds of priests and bishops—an achievement which ought to haunt the skeptic much in the same way the crusades haunt the Christian), to sell churches at public auction and to turn churches into “halls of reason”. Suffice it to say the effort was brief and destined for failure, though that didn’t stop it from being copied, first in Communist Russia and now, of course, in America.

Yes, these ill-fated “cults of reason”, after dying quickly in France (after their absurdity was realized), have been revived in America (and, according to many of the articles, in a number of other “progressive” nations), where it seems our godless communities are forever slow to learn the lessons of history.

I see only two possible explanations for the current influx of anti-god churches (and I suspect that the truth involves a combination of the two): First, I think that, in part, it is all intended as a parody, though as parodies are generally supposed to be funny, one can only assume that this particular parody has been either poorly considered or poorly executed (or both). As far as I know, having (thankfully) not exposed myself directly to these cults, there is nothing particularly funny about these services. Second, and far more important, I would suspect that there is a very genuine desire, even among the godless, to experience the beautiful things that have always been found perfectly naturally within Christianity, but which are only rarely tasted by those on the outside. It is about time, quite frankly, that the skeptic  should come around to understand this.

Christ told His disciples that they would be known for their love for one another, and this remains true today. The love of God, shared between believers, continues to be the defining feature of true Christianity, and it is often demonstrated in our Sunday gatherings. Indeed, this love has long been one of the forces most capable of drawing the wandering masses to the church. It was only a matter of time before someone outside the church considered that they might be able to fabricate this love by imitating the communion of the saints, even if it means leaving out both communion and saintliness.

I can only assume that these services have perfectly mastered some of the superficialities of the church—they surely have talented musicians leading the masses in hymns devoted to nothingness; they likely have inspiring “sermons” by talented motivational speakers. But I can only imagine that attending these services must be something like spending an evening at a movie theater, with arms full of candy and soda, only to find that someone has forgotten the film. I hardly envy someone being forced to stare at a blank screen.

It really should be the most obvious statement in the world, but God is the only thing that makes a church service worthwhile; without Him, there really can be no church. One may go for community, but it is only a belief in God that allow for a true community; it is only the example of His love that allows true love between brothers and sisters. To be perfectly honest, if it was not for the very presence of God, it would take a team of oxen to drag me to church. And yet, it is one of God’s great modern miracles that I do not merely go to church; I go joyfully, because He is there.

To make this phenomenon even stranger, it has been said that these new congregations have been known to draw, not just the purely godless, but also those who fall into the "spiritual but not religious" camp. But this is to be expected, for one can hardly imagine a sadder or more misguided camp than this, and while the Christian ought generally desire to see the Christian church filled with all types of people, these included, I have always found it difficult to understand or explain those who have lost all sense of truth and fallen into the deep, dark pit of “spirituality”; those who reject the objective, of whom God said, “because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth”.

Now, being aware of all this—that the Christian church is only worthwhile because of the presence of God, and that it only stands because it is built upon an objective truth—it is difficult to feel any fear or intimidation about these congregations. One can hardly compare a momentary, bitter, flash-in-the-pan imitation movement to the one, true, consistent Church that has been growing and thriving for 2,000 years, showing no signs of stopping. No matter how much momentary media attention they may garner now, the fad of secular churches and godless congregations is destined to destruction, for one cannot conceivably unite over a belief in nothing. Just as schoolboys may find momentary pleasure in forming clubs, uniting over the giddy simplicity of themes such as, "No Girls Allowed", it is inevitable that they will discover, later, that girls may not be so bad after all, so also will godless churches inevitably collapse under the realization that they were founded under a premise that could never carry any weight. 

Søren Kierkegaard: The Philosopher's Theologian

“If there were no eternal consciousness in a man, if at the bottom of everything there were only a wild ferment, a power that twisting in dark passions produced everything great or inconsequential; if an unfathomable, insatiable emptiness lay hid beneath everything, what then would life be but despair? If it were thus, if there were no sacred bond uniting mankind, if one generation rose up after another like the leaves of the forest, if one generation succeeded the other as the songs of birds in the woods, if the human race passed through the world as a ship through the sea or the wind through the desert, a thoughtless and fruitless whim, if an eternal oblivion always lurked hungrily for its prey and there were no power strong enough to wrest it from its clutches – how empty and devoid of comfort would life be!”

Søren Kierkegaard, “Fear and Trembling”

When one thinks of church reformation, one is likely to think of Germany in the 16^th century. When thinking of reformers, one thinks, naturally, of Martin Luther, dramatically nailing his Ninety-Five Theses to the door of All Saints’ Church in Wittenberg. There have been other reformations, of course, but these are certainly the most famous, and the one whose reverberations are still most broadly felt today. Certainly, when considering church reformation, one is hardly likely to think of the Danish church of the 19^th century, and one certainly is not likely to consider Søren Kierkegaard among the great reformers.

He is rarely counted among the theologians, and only rarely would he be counted among those whose lives have made a real impact upon the spiritual health of the world.

“Of all of God’s spies,” opines Malcolm Muggeridge, “Kierkegaard is surely one of the weirdest. Interminably wandering about the streets of Copenhagen, one trouser leg shorter than the other, he had the people in the cafes nudging one another and exchanging significant nods and winks as he passed by.”

Born in 1813, Kierkegaard seems to have gotten some of his stranger qualities from his father, who, as one biographer writes was a “melancholy, eccentric and increasingly reclusive father, who lavished attention – if not affection – on his youngest, cleverest son... By the time Søren was seven years old, his father was teaching him logic by engaging him in conversation and then subjecting his responses to rigorous, critical analysis... Reflecting on his upbringing towards the end of his life, Kierkegaard writes that his father’s fault ‘consisted not in a lack of love but in mistaking a child for an old man.’”

Kierkegaard began by studying theology at the University of Copenhagen, hoping to become a Lutheran minister, but eventually abandoned his theological studies in favor of philosophy, for which he had a natural gifting, though he grew frustrated when philosophy grew too academic—he considered that the pursuit of philosophy ought to be no mere intellectual pursuit; it ought to teach one how to live life.

Though raised in the church, and taught to revere Christianity from an early age, Kierkegaard experienced some sort of religious breakthrough in 1838 (at the age of 25), just before the death of his father. Soon after, he met his life’s love, Regine Olsen, though after the two were engaged, he decided to break off the engagement (“perhaps,” writes his biographer, “because he thought it was incompatible with his spiritual aspirations, perhaps because he feared emotional and sexual intimacy, perhaps because he was too depressive to be a good husband.”)

Much of Kierkegaard’s writing was shaped, at least in some sense, by these events. He had experienced lost love and he had decided that faith was a thing that he ought to take seriously.

As an adult, Kierkegaard seemed to greatly enjoy time spent alone—he would have considered himself a recluse—and hardly cared what others thought of him. His voice, which was a great, booming voice, speaking endlessly on the condition of the human heart when taking the form of words on paper, could not be heard from behind a pulpit, nor from a street corner or upon a stage. He was no preacher—he was a writer. His influence has survived because it came through his words. Countless words. Journal entries that cover decades; newspaper clippings; articles; papers, and, of course, books.

For better or for worse, this is surely why I have found myself relating so easily to Kierkegaard—he was never more at home than when putting pen to paper, his words and ideas flowed easily enough when they could be uttered at his own pace. He was a private, aloof figure, willing to comment on society but rarely willing to engage it. He was more than willing to speak his mind on paper, but he would hardly have been willing to speak of his ideas publically. He hardly would have found any ability as a preacher or as a professor. So he wrote and he published and, through the written word, he offered both enlightenment and inspiration to his readers, many of whom surely knew nothing at all of his personal eccentricities.

Today, Kierkegaard is remembered, first and foremost, as a philosopher—one of the founding fathers of Existentialism. He wrote endlessly on philosophical matters, commenting on modern philosophy using classical philosophy, reinventing philosophical ideas to make them applicable to how one truly lives life... he wrote and wrote. He wrote himself, quite literally, to death at the age of forty-two, having produced, not merely more words than most of us will ever find time to read, but words of a higher quality than ought to be expected from anyone so prolific.

Having by no means exaggerated the scope of Kierkegaard’s outpouring, it goes without saying that I should hardly begin to scratch the surface on his philosophy here. He was a thinker, I think it is generally well-accepted, of unique depth of insight. His philosophy is seen as valuable (in some sense or another) even from the perspective of a secular student of philosophy. At the very least, he remains a figure in the philosophical tradition that cannot simply be ignored. Either/Or is considered one of the great philosophical works, as is his Philosophical Fragments.

But here I only mention his more purely philosophical works in passing, as my own appreciation for Kierkegaard came not directly through his philosophy (though I have found it interesting, as far as philosophy goes), but through his so-called “Edifying” works. That is, the vast body of work that is intended to be read by Christians, so building them up in the body of Christ. Even here, though, Kierkegaard does not exactly make things very easy on his reader (“The task has to be made difficult,” Kierkegaard said, “for only the difficult inspires the noble-hearted”). His writing can be dense and monotonous, filled with repetition of the most important ideas.

Among 19^th century Christian writing, I consider almost no work greater than Kierkegaard’s 1847 masterpiece, Works of Love. While even here Kierkegaard does not make for the easiest reading, it is nevertheless easy to be inspired by the boldness with which he denounces a human conception of love while declaring, again and again, the eternal truth of love—that is, love from the perspective of God rather than the perspective of man; a love that he beautifully describes in his opening prayer:

“How could love be rightly discussed if You were forgotten, O God of Love, source of all love in heaven and on earth, You who spared nothing but gave all in love, You who are love, so that one who loves is what he is only by being in You! How could love properly be discussed if You were forgotten, You who made manifest what love is, You, our Saviour and Redeemer, who gave Yourself to save all! How could love be rightly discussed if You were forgotten, O spirit of Love, You who take nothing for Your own but remind us of that sacrifice of love, remind the believer to love as he is loved, and his neighbor as himself! O Eternal Love, You who are everywhere present and never without witness wherever You are called upon, be not without witness in what is said here about love or about the works of love. There are only a few acts which human language specifically and narrowly calls works of love, but heaven is such that no act can be pleasing there unless it is an act of love—sincere in self-renunciation, impelled by love itself, and for this very reason claiming no compensation.”

Kierkegaard’s religious philosophy divided the spiritual life into three stages: First there is the aesthetic, which is the stage to which all men are in some sense inclined. This is the stage of sensuality and pleasure; it is the stage dominated by pure reason, where one is driven by stimuli, propelled toward desires and driven by greed, hunger and lust. One may, in whole or in part, move out of this stage and into the next: The ethical. This is the stage dominated, in part, by a common grace, where man recognizes that he ought to be doing good; where he does good works and strives to be a better person. It is also, in a sense, the realm of the Pharisees, where doing good is considered interchangeable with Godliness and one may actively work his way to greatness. It is in the ethical stage that all human conceptions of love reside.

The church, as well, is often mired in the ethical stage of spiritual life. This is the disease Kierkegaard saw eating away at the Danish church. He saw that the church (which was, ironically, the Lutheran Church—one wonders how Luther might have reacted when he discovered that his own namesake denomination would require its own reformation so very soon) had become, essentially, a replacement for God. At the very least, the church acted as a mediating presence between man and God. Denmark was a Christian nation, not because the Danish people believed in God, but because everyone born there was born, in a sense, into the church. They attended regularly, they tithed, they did all of those things that were required of them... and Kierkegaard understood that they had fallen into the same fateful trap that had stifled real Christianity for so long.  

Thus, the heart of Kierkegaard’s philosophy—a message that cannot help but continue to resonate, as this progression is a struggle for us all—is that every Christian, individually (for reformation of the individual must precede reformation of the church), must make the “leap” from the ethical stage to the religious stage. Of course, he did not mean “religious” in the same sense that it is used today (for we see religion, generally, as a negative word for an organization); he did not mean it the same was as Christ did, who spoke openly against the dangers of religion. He meant it as a sort of word transcendence. By passing from the ethical stage into the religious stage one is turning his gaze to God, rather than man.

Kierkegaard’s most famous example of this great leap to the religious stage is, of course, in the person of Abraham, who is the focus of Kierkegaard’s most famous work, Fear and Trembling. “My hearer!” Kierkegaard writes of the terrible thing God required of Abraham—that he sacrifice his own son: “Many a father has felt the loss of his child as the loss of the dearest thing he has in the world, to be bereft of every hope for the future; yet no son was the child of promise in the sense that Isaac was for Abraham. Many a father has lost his child, but then it was God, the unchangeable and inscrutable will of the Almighty, it was his hand that took it. Not so with Abraham. For him a harder trial was reserved; along with the knife the fate of Isaac was put into Abraham’s own hand.”

From an ethical standpoint, what was Abraham to do? That is simple enough. He was to refuse. By every human standard of morality and decency, he ought to have cursed God for his demand. To murder a child? That is not morally questionable, it is morally repugnant! By every conceivable human standard, Christopher Hitchens is right when he damns the Bible for, “honoring Abraham’s willingness to make a human sacrifice of his son... There is no softening the plain meaning of this frightful story.”

But Abraham did not refuse. He made the journey to Mt. Moriah. He raised the knife over his son and intended to kill him. Was this, then, an immoral act? It certainly was, by every human standard. But, Kierkegaard argues, it was a religious act. It was an act that cared more about the relationship with God than with the relationship with man. What was required of Abraham was something Kierkegaard called a teleological suspension of the moral. “It is not to save a nation, not to uphold the idea of the State, that Abraham did it, not to appease angry gods. If there was any question of the deity’s being angry, it could only have been Abraham he was angry with, and Abraham’s whole action stands in no relation to the universal, it is a purely private undertaking... Then why does Abraham do it? For God’s sake, and what is exactly the same, for his own. He does it for the sake of God because God demands this proof of his faith; he does it for his own sake in order to be able to produce the proof...”

The heart of Christian living involves this leap from the ethical to the religious, and it is on the tension between these two stages that he bases much of his work.

Kierkegaard continues to speak to me, continues to inspire me, not merely because he raises interesting philosophical questions (which he does)—for there are plenty of philosophers out there asking plenty of interesting questions. Nor is it merely that he writes with occasional eloquence about God—there are plenty of preachers and theologians who do that. No, there is something intangible in Kierkegaard that inspires me; something about how his ideas and his beliefs and his priorities come together and form a complete whole. It is the fact that the ideas that he presents are absolutely fundamental; they speak to almost every question a Christian could have, and they absolutely demand a response. And it is also, I suppose, that he presents enormous, weighty truths and offers extraordinarily difficult challenges, and he does so with absolute boldness, unwavering in his assertion that one must give all of themselves in order to follow God. The demands he makes of his readers, especially in works like Purity of the Heart is to Will One Thing, is not unlike the demand Christ made of the Rich Young Ruler: Go, sell everything and give to the poor. The demands are bold, but nothing is impossible with God.

I truly cannot conceive of anyone reading and understanding Works of Love and not being immediately driven to love both God and others better; I cannot conceive of anyone reading Purity of the Heart is to Will One Thing and not immediately going away and trying to root out their own double-mindedness. The entire religious edifice around Kierkegaard had become a mediator between man and God, severing the God/man relationship, and Kierkegaard devoted his entire life—to the very day of his death—to seeing to it that the relationship was mended.

That devotion is something awesome. It is something inspiring. It is enough, certainly, to make one overlook a little oddness.

Malcolm Muggeridge: Apostle of Experience

If I am going to take some time to describe some of God’s Spies, it seems only fitting that I should begin, not just with the man who inspired me to do so, but with a man who served, not only as one of God’s spies on earth, but as a very real spy in very human terms, having been involved, during World War II, in espionage while serving with MI6, the British Secret Service.

In the case of Malcolm Muggeridge, there is something refreshingly concrete to the analogy.

Anyone familiar with Muggeridge’s faith or politics later in life—that is, after he became famous—is surely surprised to discover that he who was destined to provide a bold voice to the cause of conservative morality; who used the pulpit of the media to rail against the futile efforts of men, was raised into an environment of pure, unrepentant socialism. Malcolm’ father, Henry, was one of the founders of London’s Fabian Society—a group of wealthy Londoners who were sympathetic to communistic ideals—and a Member of Parliament for the Labour Party (when that still meant something).

It is worth noting, of course, that this was a time before the horrors of these utopian dreams, put into practice, was really known. There may have been debate over whether the tenets of communism were really ideal or not, but the concept had not yet been linked to the great human evils that became inevitable under such a system; even a critic of communism would have found it difficult to believe that the system, devoted to equality, would lead, not just to great inequality, but to the death of millions.

Muggeridge was raised to believe that man was imperfect simply because he hadn’t yet done enough to save himself; he was raised to believe that human societies could, with the right laws, create a true earthly utopia. He came to believe in these things just as others come to believe in the Virgin Birth. In fact, he was sufficiently devoted to socialist ideals that, after discovering a passion for writing, he obtained a position at the Manchester Guardian—an anti-bourgeois paper devoted to the cause of the worker—and soon enough married Kitty Dobbs, a niece of Beatrice Webb (one of Britain’s premier socialists). Their communist sympathies led the young Muggeridge family, in 1932, to depart the evils of British capitalism and join the pilgrimage of mainstream journalists to Moscow, where he sought to inform the world of the glories of the Communist revolution.

The glories of Communism were not, of course, as evident as many had hoped. Though many journalists allowed themselves to be deluded by the Russian Politburo into thinking that present horrors were only temporary, Muggeridge’s disillusionment was almost immediate, as no amount of government control or censorship could keep him from noticing the truth of the bread lines or the famine spreading across the country, driven by the control of the Communist stormtroopers. After escaping the terrors of Russia, Muggeridge dramaticized what he found in Russia through his novel Winter in Moscow, which followed a group of journalists who allow themselves to ignore the horrors of Russia—it was as much an indictment of western journalism as it was the Soviet regime, and as a result it was practically unpublishable.

The failures of Communism—man’s greatest attempt at building a Kingdom of Heaven on Earth—left Muggeridge, as World War II approached, in a state of despair. He had traveled the world, from Moscow to India to Cairo, but had found no means of fulfillment, either for himself or for humanity. What he had not found in Communism, he now sought in war. Though he was a bit older than most recruits, which nearly prevented his enlistment, in the end he was accepted into the Secret Service and was shipped off to Lourenco Marques, Mozambique, a post that allowed him to start a new life, to live as a stranger, to practice espionage. And though life in Mozambique carried many new adventures and experiences, Muggeridge was led him to such depths of despair that, in what would be another defining moment of his life, he attempted suicide.

“One particular night,” he wrote in the second volume of his autobiography, Chronicles of Wasted Time, “after returning home, I lay on my bed full of stale liquor and despair; alone in the house, and, as it seemed, utterly alone, not just in Lournco Marques, in Africa, in the world. Alone in the universe, in eternity, with no glimmer of light in the prevailing blackness; no human voice I could hope to hear, or human heart I could hope to reach; no God to whom I could turn, or Savior to take my hand. Elsewhere, on battlefields men were killing and dying. I envied them; it was a solution and a solace of sorts. After all, the only bearable thing about war is the killing and the dying. That is its point. In the Blitz, with, as I thought, London falling about my ears, I had felt a kind of contentment; here in this remote, forgotten corner of the world, I fell into the final abyss of despair. Deprived of war’s only solace—death, given and received—it came into my mind that there was, after all, one death I could still procure. My own. I decided to kill myself.”

Muggeridge writes of swimming out into the ocean in an attempt to be swept away by the tide in order to drown in the Indian Ocean, never to be discovered. He swims far out, ready to do the deed, when suddenly he makes the mistake of looking back, of seeing the lights of town. “They were the lights of the world; they were the lights of my home, my habitat, where I belonged. I must reach them. There followed an overwhelming joy such as I had never experienced before; an ecstasy. In some mysterious way it became clear to me that there was no darkness, only the possibility of losing sight of a light which shone eternally; that our clumsy appetites are no more than the blind reaching of a newly born child after the teat through which to suck the milk of life; that our sufferings, our afflictions, are part of a drama—an essential, even an ecstatic, part—endlessly revolving round the two great propositions of good and evil, of light and darkness. A brief interlude, an incarnation, reaching back into the beginning of time, and forward into an ultimate fulfillment in the universal spirit of love which informs, animates, illuminates all creation, from the tiniest particle of insentient matter to the radiance of God’s very throne.” He turned and swam back to shore.

Something in his heart had begun to change. There was, as indeed there had always been, a nagging sense of spirituality hovering around him; he may not yet have been a Christian, but he knew, certainly, that there was no hope to be found anywhere else.

Returning from the war, Muggeridge returned to journalism. He spent the following decades growing in stature and public profile, first as the editor of Punch Magazine, then as a commentator on the radio and on the growing medium of television. Muggeridge writes with a deep sense of loss of these years, as, not yet a Christian, he fell deeply into the momentary solace of alcohol and adultery. But, as is the case when God is in control, even the greatest immoralities would be used for good, for through time wasted and false pleasures sought after, the truth of human life was becoming clearer to Muggeridge. Seeking after momentary pleasures and passions brought no lasting satisfaction, and no matter how hard men attempted to organize themselves in order to create a more perfect society, their attempts were destined to end in failure.

As these things became more evident, Muggeridge grew more and more conservative in his personal views. The context here is important: the change in Muggeridge’s views were not the consequences of his upbringing, nor of his education. His views were not founded on any preconceived political allegiances (his time in Moscow had cured him of those); rather, they arose as the natural consequence of decades of life experience. He had tried Communism, but found the very opposite of utopia; he had tried war, and found only that, rather than bringing a reason to live, it made him want to die; he tried sensuality and debauchery, but found that any pleasure was momentary and led to even greater emptiness.  If Malcolm Muggeridge could be certain of anything, it was that there was no hope to be found in earthly pleasures, and that the governments of men were just as incapable of offering salvation than the men who made them.

It all seems very cynical, and indeed it is hard to read anything from Muggeridge without a pang of hopelessness, but this impression really could not be more false. Yes, there is a sense of despair, but the despair is only lasting for one who has no hope outside of men. For those who place their hope elsewhere, the despair is momentary, giving way to a startlingly beautiful revelation! After a life of great, unceasing despair, Malcolm Muggeridge discovered great hope!

The seeds were planted, but it was only in the 1960’s that the first real steps toward Muggeridge’s spiritual awakening began. In 1969, Muggeridge produced a television special on a little-known Catholic Charity worker in India. The result was, not just a television special, but an accompanying book—Something Beautiful for God—which brought the first bit of international attention to Mother Teresa, while proving instrumental in Muggeridge’s acceptance of Christianity.

There was no single moment, no exact date, in which Muggeridge’s path toward conversion reached its culmination. What is clear is that by the end of the 1960’s, when he published a collection of essays entitled, Jesus Rediscovered, Muggeridge, the former womanizer, was now an evangelical Christian. St. Mugg, some called him in derision. His was one of the most public, and most controversial, conversions of the twentieth century, for he took his faith seriously; it was to guide the entirety of his public life for his remaining years.

The true glory of Muggeridge’s conversion is that, because it was really only the next step on the trajectory of his life, there was nothing truly dramatic about it. It was not an about-face—he just began to realize that he had been turning for some time and now found himself facing in an unexpected direction. Muggeridge did not stop studying current events in order to study theology—current events defined his theology. Or, rather, they reinforced his theology. The truth is that Malcolm Muggeridge’s theology was never very refined, as far as theology goes. He was never destined to be the next Martin Luther or Jonathan Edwards. He would never have been the sort of man likely to engage in a debate about the nuances of Calvinism or the essence of the trinity or even the differences between protestant and Catholic theologies (he did eventually join the Catholic church, but this was not exactly theological; it was, as he wrote, “the Catholic Church’s firm stand against contraception and abortion”). He was familiar with the scriptures, of course, but he always saw them, not as a matter of historical scholarship, but as a way of explaining the great and timeless struggle between God and Man. He saw them as representing beautiful spiritual truths rather than historical events (not that he disbelieved in their history; it simply wasn’t something he was concerned with).

The heart of Muggeridge’s theology (if it could be called that) was experiential. It was his first-hand observation (not faith) of the world. It was based on the failure of Communism, the futility of governments, the vapidity of sensuality. It was based on the continued, perpetual, persistent, failure of every one of man’s endeavors when they belong only to men. It was based, in short, on the truths of history, which are things not even the dourest of atheists could deny.

So there really is hope in Muggeridge’s theology, but it must begin with despair. The story of man striving after God is really the same story as Muggeridge’s own suicide attempt—for man, apart from God, really is one cosmic suicide attempt. Man seeks his own way until the moment he finally recognizes that he cannot do so any longer; and then he is faced with the choice: Life or Death. God is calling men to life. Muggeridge knew better than almost anyone what sort of death resulted when man made a conscious effort to abandon God and yet still try to achieve some sort of salvation. For Him there was nothing theoretical about any of it. There was no great leap of faith or shot in the dark. He simply arrived at a point in his life where he could no longer deny what had been patently obvious all along—he could no longer accept the desires of his flesh as the ultimate truth.

Muggeridge’s great contribution to Christian apologetics was to show that one needn’t strain themselves in an intellectual attempt to reason our way towards Christianity; not that Christianity is not reasonable, but that its truth is far more evident than we make it. When we struggle, intellectually, with Christianity, it is almost as if we are purposefully ignoring what the entire history of mankind (and the history of our own lives) has made obvious: we are, for whatever reason, trying to replace the perfect, joyous freedom of Christ with the freedom of man, which is really no different from slavery.

“A sense of how extraordinarily happy I have been,” Muggeridge wrote near the end of his life, “and of enormous gratitude to my creator, overwhelms me often. I believe with a passionate, unshakable conviction that in all circumstances and at all times life is a blessed gift; that the spirit that animates it is one of love, not hate or indifference, of light, not darkness, of creativity, not destruction, of order, not chaos; that, since all life—men, creatures, plants, as well as insensate matter—and all that is known about it, now and henceforth, have been benevolently, not malevolently, conceived, when the eyes see no more and the mind thinks no more, and this hand now writing is inert, whatever lies beyond will similarly be benevolently, not malevolently or indifferently, conceived. If it is nothing, then for nothingness I offer thanks; if another mode of existence, with this old, wornout husk of a body left behind, like a butterfly extricating itself from its chrysalis, and this floundering, muddle mind, now at best seeing through a glass darkly, given a longer range and a new precision, then for that likewise I offer thanks.”

An Offensive Apologetic

In a previous post I wrote about the importance of a Christian having sound reason behind faith; I urged that we be ready to defend our faith to those who would question it. This is true, certainly--one must never be caught “blindly believing” in anything--but it raises further questions yet.

I previously asked how one ought to respond to a question such as, “Why are you a Christian?”

Certainly one ought to have an answer, but then comes the question of how to respond? In what tone and with what purpose?

There is one area where I think Christian apologetics often has it very wrong--and that is in the the notion that to “apologize” for something (such as a belief) means to offer a defense. To be an apologist, it seems, might be comparable to allow oneself to be put perpetually on a witness stand and cross-examined like a common criminal.

To be fair, this is certainly very close to what apologetics is (the word apologia, quite literally, means “defense”), but I think there are nuances to the concept that mean all the difference in the world. More accurately, especially when it comes to Christianity, an apology is not meant to offer a defense, but to lay a groundwork upon which faith may rest. More importantly, it should not be focused inward, on the Christian who answers, but outward, toward the skeptic who asks.  

It is said time and again by Christians (and by me, particularly), that we need always to be ready with a defense of our faith. The idea is appropriated from 1 Peter 3:15: “...always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you…” The translation may be accurate, but the idea is wrapped up, not in that one word--”defense”--but in the larger context. We are told to be prepared with an answer when someone asks for a reason for our hope. But here is the key: if someone is asking for a reason for our hope, we are not put in a defensive position. They are not asking about our sins or about our faults, but about our hope. They are asking about something that they desire for themselves! Our answer, therefore, is not defensive; our opponent has not dealt a blow, but has rather opened up their own defenses, and it is we who must strike!

This truth that is overshadowed by the word “defense” is that, truly, Christianity ought never be on the defensive. Christianity is really only effective when it is on the offensive; when it is eagerly and avidly moving forward. When it attempts a defensive posture, struggling to answer every foolish question and explain away every faulty premise devised by the logic of the world, it becomes gangly and awkward and truly difficult to manage.

When one is on the defensive, it means that he is being accused of something for which he ought to feel some shame. But Christianity is offering, not something shameful, but hope! It is offering grace and truth! Are these really things that need to be defended? Does a child have to be convinced to be excited about Christmas morning? Do the parents need to defend their decision to shower him with gifts? Of course not; the child, being wiser than many elderly skeptics, knows that a good thing may be either believed or disbelieved, but it need not be defended. Likewise, does the winner of the lottery have to be persuaded by the lottery commission to accept the prize?  Of course not; there is no hemming and hawing by the winner over whether or not this newfound wealth is really “right”. No time is taken for thinking or contemplating over whether or not the contest ever existed in the first place. The award is seen as good; it is simply claimed and spent. As Christians we often forget that this ought to hold true, as well, for a gift that is far greater than any lottery! Our posture should be that of conquerors who hold the secret that the world continually seeks! We have the answer, and we offer it freely to all--and yet, the world somehow succeeds, time and again, in putting us on the defensive.

When one responds to, “Why are you a Christian?” with a steady and rehearsed bundle of facts, it is a defensive response; it is the feeling that we are being told that we have done something wrong and feel, as a child being accused by a parent of breaking something valuable, as if we must explain ourselves for our own sake. But that is not how it ought to be.  Our response to “Why are you a Christian?” really has nothing to do with us. It has everything to do with the one who asks the question. We are answering, not for our own sake (for that would be defensive), but for theirs!

Jesus, it should be remembered, was never--not once--put on the defensive, though he was attacked at every turn. Though he was asked to explain himself on every controversy. Here, in the gospels, we see a true master of apologetics in action: one who knew that an attack was not an opportunity to defend oneself, but to parry and strike. No wonder so many of His attackers left the encounter sulking in bitterness and anger, for their attempts had failed to elicit so much as hesitation, and instead forced them to question their own assumptions. When asked about the ethics of paying taxes, Christ did not turn to scriptures in order to offer up some complex theological or political response; he merely asked, “Whose picture is on the coin?” and so demonstrated the foolishness of the initial question.

If He had been asked, “Why are you a Christian?” how might Jesus have answered (setting aside, for a moment, the absurdity of asking this of He who put the “Christ” in Christian)? I cannot imagine Jesus attempting an answer founded on science, logic, or theology. I doubt that he would have attempted to bait his questioners into some philosophical trap. He would not have felt the need to defend himself--for He would know that the question was not being asked for His sake. I am convinced that He would have answered with a question of His own--perhaps something as simple as, “Why do you reject Christianity?” For the question may have been asked in order to force a defense; but it is really the questioner who ought to be put on the stand, to defend their refusal--for indeed one ought to have an answer for why they have refused such a  gift--and Jesus would have seen this as an opportunity to strike.

An Old Fashioned Credo

I was called “old fashioned” the other day.

No, that is not entirely accurate. It was not said to my face, and it was not in any way directed toward me. It was said in a nearby conversation with which I was not involved, but it was said about a belief that I very much continue to hold. Had these individuals known that their accusations were applicable to someone who happened to be inadvertently (or advertently, as it may very well have been) eavesdropping, would they have still used the phrase? I wouldn’t think so, as our world has become far too (woefully) peaceable for that. They would have politely waited until I was out of earshot.

Old Fashioned.

I didn’t laugh when I heard it, as it took a few moments for me to absorb the term, by which time I was in control of my responses. But as soon as I understood it, I knew that it really was hilarious, though not entirely unexpected. It might have been intended as an insult, and as a result it really was funny, because I realize now that the insult is really on the accuser.

I am not, for the record, speaking about being called old fashioned in terms of clothing or tastes in movies or music or any other sort of passing fad, in which case the term might, indeed, be accurate (and does, in many ways, describe me). What I’m referring to is the much more foolish notion that one somehow may be accused of believing in something that has the audacity to also have been believed at some time in the past. “Oh, you believe in X? Well, don’t you know that people believed in X during the 19th century? Don’t you know that X was believed back when men practically still lived in caves and beat their women over the heads?”

In the same vein (but in somewhat different words), a response to one of my previous articles, on the Christian faith, made (with what I assume was a straight face, though I have no direct knowledge) the accusation, which he deemed a grave insult, that I was guilty of believing in “Bronze-age fables,” as if somehow being believed by men in the bronze age immediately renders something untrue today.

The accusation is really the epitome of audacity. What sort of fool would accuse another of believing something simply because it had the longevity to survive the generations? Is this really something to be pitied? Or is it more pitiful to immediately believe in something that has only just occurred to men? Is it more foolish to believe in something that has been discussed and debated among philosophers and theologians for thousands of years, or to throw the entire weight of belief behind something devised by some social scientist in the 1960’s? Would I rather have the weight of history behind my beliefs, or the opinions of progressive politicians and modern psychology?

Of course, it should be noted that the term itself is really inaccurate in the first place, for, in order for something to be “old fashioned”, it really has to have gone out of style at some point, but this is really hardly ever true about beliefs that are called old-fashioned.  I am, for example, quite “old fashioned” in my idea of marriage, but only because I believe in the same things that have been believed and continue to be believed and have not been persuaded by the strange new ideas of a very vocal minority. I am “old fashioned” in my idea of human life, but only because I agree with the consensus of history that there is something truly valuable about it, and I have not obtained the sort of faith required to believe in the modern notion that humanity is a bad thing, and that we really ought to be able to end life just as it is beginning.  

The truth is that many things deemed old fashioned are not really old fashioned at all. It may be true that some have ceased believing in it (and they are often very loud about it), though the belief itself has survived, for as often as not it has the benefit of being true. When someone says that something is old fashioned (when they really ought to say “traditional”), it only means that they have somehow come to live in a world that refuses to recognize that certain things have never died. They only wish that they had. Just because one wishes that some new and novel belief would overrun the world does not make the current beliefs old fashioned. In fact, it means (and it really must mean) that what is new faces an uphill battle to overtake the traditional. But this is a good thing. It should be difficult for the world to come around to something new. We often chastise ancients for not coming around quickly enough to some belief or another that turned out to be true, but why? Isn’t there something admirable about being steadfast, about holding to things and not letting them go without certainty?

One should never be quick to abandon the traditional in favor of the novel. If some new belief comes along and happens to bring along with it the virtue of truth, that is, if it really is better than the traditional belief, then it very well may be inevitable, and it is certainly worth fighting for, but it should not be accepted without a fight. That being said, these things are rare. We might use the abolition of slavery as an example of this, but this is only partially true, for in effect, slavery itself was a bit of a novelty, at least among the Christian world. The abolition of slavery was really in itself a return to something “old fashioned”, for the tradition of Christianity has always differed from the world in its idea of freedom and human dignity. The evil of slavery was a novelty that tragically wormed its way into the world in the same way infanticide continues to gain popularity today; and it is only the “old fashioned” among us who endeavor to protect the world from being swept away by every novelty.   

“Old fashioned” is, in short, a badge of honor, and ought to be worn with pride. The accusation ought to be accepted gladly. Those who accuse others of being old fashioned are really the ones who ought to be pitied for their absolute willingness to believe in the absurdest things.

Faith and First Principles

“Why are you a Christian?”

“Because I believe in God, and…”

“Yes, of course, but why do I believe in God?”

“Because I have faith.”

“But why?”

This is a conversation for which most Christians are woefully unprepared. Christians long to be known by their works (though for many of us this is just as challenging), but dread the moment when they must offer a clear, convincing argument for their beliefs. As such, we really ought to take a moment every now and again to consider how the conversation ought to go.

It is worth considering, first of all, that whenever anyone asks a question like, “Why are you a Christian?” they are not looking for answers that only beg more questions. At least, they shouldn’t be. A person who asks, “Why are you a Christian?” should really be looking for something more fundamental. They should be looking for first principles; they should be looking for an answer that is irreducible and axiomatic. Something observable and undeniable. The same is true in science, for anyone who asks, in a science classroom, a question like “What are we made of?” is not looking for a stopgap answer, but for an answer founded on first principles. Anyone genuinely searching for an answer may be satisfied, at first, with something as superficial as, “We are made of atoms,” but it is only a matter of time before they recognize the obvious next question, “But what are atoms made of?” And, of course, the answer that follows (atoms are made of protons, neutrons and electrons), leads to yet another question, and another. An infinite regression.

A first principle is what we are left with in those unique moments when the last question has been answered. It is something that demands no further questioning; and it is something that is surprisingly rare, especially in science.  As C.S. Lewis observed, “The laws of physics decree that when one billiards ball (A) sets another billiards ball (B) in motion, the momentum lost by A Exactly equals the momentum gained by B.  This is a Law. That is, this is the pattern to which the movement of the two billiards balls must conform. Provided, of course, that something sets ball A in motion. And here comes the snag. The law won’t set it in motion. It is usually a man with a cue who does that.” This is a question of first principles. When we say that something is a law, the law is not a first principle--the first principle is whatever lies behind the law. A first principle is are what is left when every question has been answered--something basic enough to be readily accepted by all. As far as the question, “What are we made of?” the truth is that the first principle remains very much unknown. The first few questions in the series can be answered, but the first principle still eludes us, if, indeed, there is a first principle to be found.

But the question “Why are you a Christian?” is infinitely more important than the question of matter (I would much rather be certain about Christianity than about atoms), and as such we really should be searching for first principles. The genuine seeker who asks “Why are you a Christian?” will only be satisfied for so long (if at all) with any non-absolute answer. “I am a Christian because I feel that it is true.” “I am a Christian because I believe in Jesus.” “I am a Christian because I know that God loves me.” These may be answers, and they may be, in part, true, but they are not the answer. They all lead to still more questions.

Often, the answers given by Christians are founded on faith. “I am a Christian because I have faith.” But faith is not a first principle. Faith cannot (at least, should not) exist on its own merits. It must be founded on something.

“Faith,” as is recited so often that it has become almost cliché, “is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” Further, “…without faith it is impossible to please (God), for whoever would draw near to God must believe that He exists and rewards those who seek Him.”

Faith is lauded throughout scripture, and we are promised that our faith will be rewarded; consequently, one is often tempted to rely on faith, as if it stood alone at the core of Christianity; further, we come to suspect that true faith requires no foundation of evidence, or, worse, that evidence must be avoided, for it means that faith is no longer needed. But the truth is that faith, while wholly necessary, is not a first principle.  One cannot be a Christian without faith, but one cannot have faith without knowledge. Real faith must be founded upon something more tangible. Just because faith is “the conviction of things not seen” doesn’t mean that it is a thing with no basis. Faith isn’t a feeling, and real faith is certainly never blind. This is something that I think is often misunderstood, even among Christians. It is not a burning in the bosom or the result of a vision from a dream. When faith is founded purely on the ethereal it is more often than not a means of justifying one’s own needs and desires. One may claim to act in the name of faith, but the faith is only a manifestation of some deeper desire.

It is clear in the Bible that to have faith is not as easy as just believing in something without reason. If it was that simple, one could simply follow their own urges and claim faith as justification for almost anything (in fact, this is exactly what does happen far too often in our world). The Christian often bristles at the thought that one should need to offer evidence to support Christianity, as if that would somehow circumvent the requirement that one have faith. But faith must be founded on something! It cannot possibly exist without a foundation.

There are matters of fact and there are matters of faith, and they are rarely as separate as they may seem; more often than not it is the fact comes first, and faith is what results. The new Christian takes the final step of faith only after a foundation of fact has been laid. One may scour the scriptures for the great demonstrations of faith, but only rarely (if ever) does one find that faith is not preceded by some fact. Abraham was not acting on feelings or urges when he agreed to sacrifice his son—it was only after hearing, directly, the voice of God, and well after God had already provided him plenty of proof.  Moses did not venture into Egypt to face Pharoah on faith alone—he did so after God Himself spoke to him out of a burning bush. Even Paul, so often lauded for the great faith that allowed him to be persecuted and, in the end, martyred, believed as the result of a face to face meeting with the risen Christ, and though it may have manifested itself as physical blindness, there was nothing blind in Paul’s faith. If Paul was asked why he was a Christian he would not have said, “Because I have faith.” He would have proclaimed, boldly, the facts of what he saw and experienced.

One generally does not begin believing in God by first believing in the parting of the red sea.  Rather, one first comes to believe in God, and only then obtains the faith that God worked that miracle. One does not first come to believe in the strange truth of the trinity and then accept Christianity; Christianity comes first, based on facts, and then one can come to faith that this profound mystery is true.  

Christianity really is based on facts first and then faith.  

Which leads us back, once again, to the initial question: What are the first principles of Christianity? What are the facts upon which the faith is founded?

There are two that seem to stand above the others: the fact of existence and the fact of sin.

I have spent too much of my own life in trying to prove things that ought to be taken on faith (obscure theological principles), and taking on faith things that really ought to be taken as fact (science and history). But it is a fact—no scientist would deny it (though the occasional philosopher might)—that we exist. It is a fact that there are, in fact, things in our universe and that somehow these things came to be, and though science has tried theory after theory, it is a thing with no absolute scientific explanation. That is the fact, and it is faith that leads me to believe that there is no scientific explanation to be found (just as it is faith that leads others to believe in the contrary). As Lewis explains: “…the laws of Nature explain everything except the source of events. But this is rather a formidable exception. The laws, in one sense, cover the whole of reality except—well, except that continuous cataract of real events which makes up the actual universe. They explain everything except what we should ordinarily call ‘everything’. The only thing they omit is—the whole universe.”

So, when someone asks, “Why do you believe in God?” I might begin here--with the fact of existence. Something that science still cannot explain, but which those who believe in God have understood for thousands of years.

Second, it is a fact that man, after coming to exist (see above), found, somewhere along the way, that something was terribly wrong. Man has always been defined most accurately by his imperfections. Is there a single historian who would deny that man is a broken, imperfect creature? The story of the growth of the Roman Empire is grand, but the story of its fall tells us far more about humanity.  Indeed, history offers no ambiguity as to the fact that man has been his own worst enemy for as long as he has been keeping records of his own failures. And it is a fact that evolution has failed time and again in ridding man of his weaknesses or curing society of its ills; we are neither better nor worse than we have always been.

It is a fact, as well, that both of these questions are resolved within the first pages of scripture, and with far more certainty than science or philosophy could ever hope to obtain.

So, when someone asks, “Why are you a Christian?” I might begin here--with the fact of sin, and the fact that Christianity has provided, not only the only clear explanation, but the only clear answer.

All of this, of course, demands greater exploration, and these are by no means the only facts to be found in Christianity, but the principle remains: Christian platitudes aside, faith is beautiful, but it is something that must stand upon a foundation. Every Christian should stop and ask themselves why they believe before attempting to explain it to others.

“Saul,” says the book of Acts, “increased all the more in strength, and confounded the Jews who lived in Damascus by proving that Jesus was the Christ.” Paul did not demand of his listeners that they must simply have faith. He understood that his faith had a reasonable basis. He understood that there were facts that could lead his listeners to faith, and that is a beautiful thing.