thread: 2006-09-08 : Salvation, damnation, justification, a la Sydney
On 2006-09-09, Ian Burton-Oakes wrote:
Okay, I have been struggling with how to post this, even whether to post it, but it won't leave me alone. I keep coming back round to it in my thinking. I have been struggling with this since you first replied, Sydney, and now I am finding the proper words. In true confessional fashion, let me mingle my history with the message. Because everything I am about to say is qualified by this being my experience, my truth. I say it, though, because it might have some truth for you, too.
Sydney, the reading list you detail is the one that drove me to abandon christianity. I was a seriously devout child, read the Bible like the thirsty man drinks water, had all sorts of mad skills to make it fit together. Reading Lewis, though, made me realize how much artifice (in the negative, Rube Goldberg sense) I had put into making it all work. And how good it felt when I let go of it all—that there was a real spiritual core to all that I had been working on, but that staying close to christianity, both as institution and a tradition, did more to hide that core than nurture it.
Augustine...wow, I came back to him more recently and he still has fire to give. But it's all in the Confessions—those are strong, powerful, personal, sincere, one of the best exemplars of 'bearing witness.' The City of God, though, leaves me cold, even a touch angry. In it, I can see Christianity reaching toward the sword, and that is a decision from which Christianity has yet to recover. Don't get me wrong, I don't think Augustine has picked up the sword, yet, but he's stretching toward it.
And that is what keeps from Christianity—the corruption of the sword. I see it even in Lewis, in his desire to explain, for there is a hidden blade in all apologetics. I am, by my nature, prone to apologetics, to the process of explanation and justification. I shy away from Christianity to protect the spiritual core that keeps me alive from the corruption I have seen it undergo in the hands of Christian apology.
And, god, it's not that I think Lewis isn't sincere. He is, but I really and truly believe that he found that sincerity outside of his apologetic work, and that he found the heart of his faith elsewhere. And I don't think it's wrong to read apologetics, esp. when you belong to the faith, when it is not about defending your faith, but stoking it. It's like poetry.
Why am I saying all this? I am speaking to you, asking you to consider whether this sort of discussion is good for your faith. I am not saying in any way, shape, or form, that your faith is not powerful, important, and meaningful. I am saying that placing it in this context (defending, explaining the faith) may be bad for it, puts you in danger of separating yourself from the truly personal roots that nourish and sustain faith. You, of course, are the only proper judge as to whether the lesson that I share from my experience has truth for you.
I think there is good reason why Jesus asked that you pray in private, because it is easy to lose the true power of it before those who do not share it with you. The goodness that you are and the goodness that you live are the best expressions of your faith—not words said to defend and forward the faith. The Good Word is not found in words, but action.
If those around see the goodness it serves for you, and wish to share in that with you, it is a beautiful thing. If they see it and admire it, while seeking their own nourishment elsewhere, it is a gift. That gift is to my mind the foundation for a strong modern society into the future. I fear that without that admiration of other sources, we steal from others and lose ourselves.
