In the appendix, Jack describes his “Bible talk” – his small group that would meet weekly to study the Bible. The members of the Bible talk – who come from all sorts of backgrounds – encourage each other, pray together, help the poor together, and invite friends and strangers to the Bible talk. Jack’s Bible talk, a group not more than twenty, has baptized three or four people into Christ every year.

This post, however, is not about Jack’s Bible talk, but about something Jack said after explaining how his Bible talk accomplishes what it does: “It’s not easy, but it is simple.”“It’s not easy, but it is simple.” It struck me as an observation that was both obvious and eye-opening.

What is Christianity about? Simple! Love the Lord your God, and love your neighbor as yourself. Simple – just not easy.

How do I love God and other people? Simple! Praise God and give thanks to God in prayer. Meet weekly with other Christians for prayer and true fellowship. (That’s what Jack does.) Invite friends and strangers to your church or to your Bible study group – and, if you don’t have one, start one! Stop spending your money on yourself and start spending it on others. It is all very simple (really) – just not easy.

Too often, I can feel impotent to change myself or the world around me – and I am hardly alone in this matter. Christians around the world, and especially in the United States, are wondering how to recapture the heart of a society that is increasingly post-Christian. We are wondering how to read the Bible (it seems so stale) or how to pray sincerely (it seems so forced), how to bring people to Christ (they seem so hard-hearted) or how to serve the needy (they seem so beyond reach). We realize that our faith is not where it should be and that our lives are not Christ-like. And so, naturally, we ask ourselves, “What is the problem?”

At various times in my life, I have more or less believed that the problem was my parents, my sister, my youth ministry, my campus ministry, my church’s theology, my church’s preaching, my church’s music, postmodernism, fundamentalism, socialism, evolution, hip-hop…. And perhaps those are all problems.

The real problem, however, is generally my unwillingness to do the good and simple things that are staring me right in the face: being friendly to strangers (let alone sharing my faith with them), spending time with fellow Christians whom I do not know well, asking people for advice and correction, praying and reading daily (and, if that becomes too difficult, enlisting the support of friends to ensure that I do read and pray daily)…. These are not complicated things; they are merely uncomfortable. They are simple, but they are not easy.

G.K. Chesterton famously wrote, “The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried.” There is no mystery about any of the things I have mentioned. Not one of them requires a degree in theology or even a high school diploma. We know how to be kinder people; we know how to love genuinely; and not much more is required of us if we wish to seek first the Kingdom of God. (Christianity may not be so easy a caveman can do it, but it is so simple a caveman can do it.) The only thing really stopping us is us.

Christianity is about Love – and Love, though it is not always easy, is fundamentally simple. My prayer is that all of our philosophy, theology, and praxis – all of our fancy words – can be rooted in a simple, active, and overflowing love. Jesus demands nothing more and nothing less.

I am becoming more and more convinced that Christianity is a balancing act, that following Christ requires the grace of a dancer as well as the grace of God. Danger, for the Christian, lies on all sides – for he lives behind enemy lines. The Christian must be doctrinally sound, but not dogmatic; wise but not detached; zealous, but not reckless; obedient, but not legalistic; righteous, but not self-righteous. He must love all men and hate all evil, live in the world but be not of the world; he must be a soldier and a peacemaker, a shepherd and a prophet, a meek revolutionary and a submissive rebel.

It is a tall order – indeed, the tallest of all orders, for we are called to perfection. What are we to make of it?

We are all in a war between good and evil. This war is at least as old as Adam, and all men know it firsthand. What all men do not seem to know is that the war began as a war between good and good – between God’s command and man’s desire for wisdom. The root of evil, as St. Augustine observed, was not evil itself, but disordered good; idolatry does not begin with the worship of Satan but with the worship of the secondary: family, country, comfort, romantic love, the Law… Lewis’ example is instructive: It is not a sin to love a dog; it is a sin to love a dog more than one loves one’s fellow man. And a man has not understood himself until he has identified his dog.

Thus, in the history of the Church, we see Arius sacrifice Christ’s divinity for the sake of his humanity; we see Calvin sacrifice free will for the sake of God’s providence; we see the sinfulness of the flesh become the heresy of original sin, and the Bible’s call for justice become liberation theology. We see movements that are too moralistic, and movements that are too worldly; movements that dream of the past, and movements that dream of the future; movements that have forgotten Heaven in their quest to bring it to Earth, and movements that have never given a thought to Earth in their anticipation of Heaven. The centuries are littered with ascetics and materialists, fideists and rationalists, sinners and clumsy men who never learned to balance.

This is not an issue only concerning doctrine and history; it is not even an issue primarily concerning doctrine and history. Every church and every man today and forever walks upon a tightrope: the Lord himself assured us that the way was narrow. Our modern Christianity can be too individualistic – but it can also neglect the centrality of personal faith. We can forget that we have freedom in Christ – and we can also forget that we are slaves to righteousness.

In my own life, I see my healthy skepticism sometime devolve into cynicism. I see my hunger for righteousness become an implicit belief in salvation through righteousness. Maintaining my balance – not squelching one good out of love for another – is a delicate task. In fairness to myself, I am hardly alone in this matter; everyone around me runs similar risks. The introverts think that Jesus was an introvert, and the extraverts (unsurprisingly) disagree. Surely, he was a Republican – unless he was a Democrat. Christians ought to pray more, read more, evangelize more, be stricter, be more tolerant, be bolder, be more open-minded, be more merciful, be holier, be more reverent, be more joyful, and so on. We each overemphasize our pet virtues and pet vices (which generally reflect, respectively, our strengths and weaknesses), neglecting other virtues and vices until we have distorted the faith entirely. Thus do we make our God in our own image, and thus is the Body broken – for if its members cannot balance, it will be torn apart in every direction.

The problem, then, is a failure to balance. What is the solution? I am no prima ballerina, but I do have a few suggestions.

The first is simply to recognize that danger lies in more than one direction – that virtually any good can be taken too far. The second is to maintain always a sober judgment about ourselves (something impossible, by the way, with pride). The Church is a Body, and the foot is useless if it does not understand that it is a foot. In the same way, every Christian must see his idiosyncrasies, biases, and prejudices – see and understand his predispositions, inclinations, and preferences. In doing so, he will inevitably begin to recognize the ways in which he is tempted to trip and fall; that is, he will begin to recognize his spiritual center of gravity.

The corollary is to remember the importance of unity: “Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace” (Ephesians 4.3, NIV). Once the foot achieves a sober self-judgment, it cannot help but see that it desperately needs the rest of the Body. The Church is not the Church until She is constituted of the whole motley crew of mankind: the traditionalists and the progressives, the jocks and the geeks, the cautious and the firebrands, the loudmouthed and the shy. A Church composed only of feet is not just weak and unfruitful, but creepy.

My most important suggestion, however, is to meditate upon this one simple fact: We will only ever achieve balance if we fix our eyes upon Jesus – a master of grace in every sense of the word. A King and a Shepherd, a Lord and a Servant, a Lion and a Lamb, he transcends every tired party line, and truly is an everlasting man. If we set our sights on being conservative, we will fall; if we set our sights on being liberal, we will stumble; if we set our sights on being Lutheran, Calvinist, Protestant, Catholic, Orthodox, or Evangelical, we will surely fail. Aiming for evangelism or prayer or Bible study or social justice or peace or sound doctrine is not enough; we must aim for Jesus Christ, the founder and perfecter of our faith. After all, how can we balance if we do not know where the tightrope is? And how can we know where the tightrope is if we do not follow the only man who ever successfully navigated it?

Yet we are so easily distracted. Lewis writes, “There have been some who were so preoccupied with spreading Christianity that they never gave a thought to Christ.” The same could be said of any other good that has turned men away from the Good. How easily we act in the name of Christianity or of world peace, toleration or tradition, when we should act only in the name of Jesus Christ!

Our Lord’s words have never rung more true: “I am the Way, and the Truth, and the Life” (John 14.6; emphasis added). If we truly seek to follow him, we just might be blessed with balance. ]]> http://www.harvardichthus.org/fishtank/2010/06/balance/feed/ 3 http://www.harvardichthus.org/fishtank/2010/05/the-myth-of-half-christianity/ http://www.harvardichthus.org/fishtank/2010/05/the-myth-of-half-christianity/#comments Fri, 28 May 2010 13:00:27 +0000 J. Joseph Porter http://www.harvardichthus.org/?p=3590

Continuing with the theme of things my high school friends have told me:

Another friend of mine once said to me, “You know, Joe, I’m not very religious.” I remember being slightly surprised by his response – not because I thought he was particularly religious, but because I was not aware that “not very religious” people self-identified as “not very religious.” I was tempted to ask him if he thought he was not very saved as well, but I decided to refrain.

There are plenty of intramural sports, but there is no such thing as intramural Christianity.

Such a retort, of course, would have been in jest: Who in the world thinks that salvation comes in degrees? (Perhaps there will be different rewards in Heaven – Mark 10.29-30 (for instance) suggests as much – but no one thinks that people go halfway to Heaven.) However, genuine questions existed in my mind behind the unmade joke: If you consider yourself “not very religious,” do you think there is a point to being very religious? Are you religious enough?

Indeed, if we ask “average” Americans how to get to Heaven, we will inevitably hear responses like “By being a good person”: by not murdering or stealing, by being a relatively nice person, by (maybe) doing some community service, and by (even less likely) attending church services on a semi-regular basis. Christianity functions typically as a condiment sprinkled onto the American dream; it spices things up, but people who like it too much (like people who like ketchup too much) are weird. And religiosity exists on a spectrum, where different levels of commitment are just as accepted and expected as different levels of commitment to exercise, sports, or music. You should be Christian – but you don’t have to be that Christian.

Such an understanding of Christianity is so completely at odds with Jesus’ teachings that I can only consider the result of sin, willful self-delusion, or self-imposed ignorance – the spiritual equivalent of believing that the Earth is flat. I want to use such strong language not because I am a perfect Christian (I am not), but because such spiritual apathy and half-heartedness compromises the Church’s mission more than anything else.

Jesus spoke some of the most refreshing and invigorating words ever recorded in history. He also called his disciples to take up their crosses daily and follow him. Whatever taking up one’s cross daily means, I am certain it does not mean going to church every other week – or (for that matter) going to church every week! Of America’s millions of Christians, how many can credibly claim that they have given up their lives on Earth for true life in Heaven? (I am not sure I can.) We are instructed to lay up for ourselves treasure in Heaven, not Earth (Matthew 6.19-20): “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” (v. 21). Of America’s millions of Christians, how many can honestly claim that they have spent more time thinking about their eternal destinies than about their mortgages or retirement plans (or internships or college applications or grades)?

None of this is to say that I have mastered the art of laying up for myself treasures in Heaven; it is only to say that Christianity is not a half-in, half-out sort of fair. There is no half-Christianity, just as there is no half-salvation, half-forgiveness, or half-grace. There is no middle ground. We are not called to half-faith or half-repentance. We are called to be the light of the world (Matthew 5.14).

I picked two verses out of hundreds that make this point abundantly clear; if you need more convincing, I encourage you to open up a Bible and start reading…pretty much anywhere.

Recently, I have been reflecting on the concept of magic – on the face of it, a profoundly un-Christian and un-philosophical subject, but one which I have found to be very instructive.

G.K. Chesterton

My thoughts were prompted by a couple excerpts I re-discovered from G.K. Chesterton’s Orthodoxy:

“Granted, then, that certain transformations do happen, it is essential that we should regard them in the philosophic manner of fairy tales, not in the unphilosophic manner of science and the ‘Laws of Nature.’ When we are asked why eggs turn into birds or fruits fall in autumn, we must answer exactly as the fairy godmother would answer if Cinderella asked her why mice turned into horses or her clothes fell from her at twelve o’clock. We must answer that it is MAGIC. It is not a ‘law,’ for we do not understand its general formula.”

That made me think: What, ultimately, is the difference between a magical world and a lawful (or nomological) one? What, that is, is the ultimate difference between our world and Narnia or Middle-Earth? I realized that I did not have clear answers to these questions – and, more importantly, that there were no answers for me to find. The wizard’s craft was just as orderly and determinate as the scientist’s – and perhaps more so.

In The Lord of the Rings, Lady Galadriel tells Sam that she does not know what the hobbits mean by “magic” – for those features of her world which we would deem magical are, for her, merely ordinary. After all, a magic mirror in her land behaves just as regularly and predictably as the (supposedly non-magical) weather in ours. One man’s magic is another man’s law: “[T]he cool rationalist from fairyland does not see why, in the abstract, the apple tree should not grow crimson tulips; it sometimes does in his country.”

The inevitable conclusion is that our world is just one magical world among many:

“A tree grows fruit because it is a MAGIC tree. Water runs downhill because it is bewitched. The sun shines because it is bewitched. I deny altogether that this is fantastic or even mystical. We may have some mysticism later on; but this fairy-tale language about things is simply rational and agnostic.”

Why is this all important? This is Chesterton’s opinion:

“All the terms used in the science books, ‘law,’ ‘necessity,’ ‘order,’ ‘tendency,’ and so on, are really unintellectual…. The only words that ever satisfied me as describing Nature are the terms used in the fairy books, ‘charm,’ ‘spell,’ ‘enchantment.’ They express the arbitrariness of the fact and its mystery.”

Our world is governed, not by irrevocable laws (such as those that govern thought), but by one brand of magic among many; it is governed arbitrarily, or (in the parlance of contemporary philosophy) contingently. In our world, the word “Mellon” has no special power; but it could just as well open the door of the mines of Moria. In our world, we have gravity; but we could just as well have anti-gravity.

None of these considerations should be taken as endorsements of what is typically meant by “magic”: trust in astrologers, mediums, and demons rather than in God. Such dark arts are repeatedly condemned in the Bible: Our trust is not in the dread spirits of the night, but in the living God of Light. Instead, my intention is mainly to show how we moderns have (yet again) turned reality on its head. We have placed our hope in understanding Nature to Her very roots, all the while despairing at ever knowing Her Maker. But our hopes are entirely misplaced. The magic that we call “Nature” is incomprehensible; it is only the Magician Who has been revealed to us.

We do well to study the Book of Nature; in such a world as ours, we might as well get a handle of some magic tricks. But we must not forget that we are studying the Book of Nature and not another grimoire only because God chose to cast one spell and not another – only because God said Fiat lux and not Abra Kadabra.

I once heard a friend of mine claim that he believed in “individual Christianity.” He was not talking to me, so I do not know if he offered any elaboration of what he meant. however, I suspect that his meaning was clear enough: He was a Christian, but not particularly invested in any particular church, nor did he see any real need for such an investment.

Belief in individual Christianity must be extremely widespread, given the vast disparity in America between belief in Christianity and church attendance. Based on those numbers, anywhere from 30% to 60% of Americans could be considered individual Christians – people who believe in Jesus Christ but sleep in on Sunday mornings.

The problem is that individual Christianity is a contradiction in terms.

How are we supposed to be united with other Christians if we never see them?

The motivations underlying the popularity of individual Christianity are clear enough. Spirituality is personal; organized religion has left a bad taste in many people’s mouths; churchgoers can be pretty annoying; sermons can be pretty boring; late Saturday nights don’t work well with early Sunday mornings.

Some of these excuses are more legitimate than others. A difficult experience with a church can be emotionally and spiritually crippling, and the guilt often lies with the church, whose love is supposed to be proof of discipleship (John 13.35). There certainly is a personal (and individual) component to faith; Jesus, after all, prayed by himself (Matthew 14.23).

Yet the solution to a problem with a church is not abandoning the Church, just like the solution to a problem with a school would not be abandoning one’s education altogether. Jesus did indeed pray by himself – but he also prayed that “[believers] may all be one, just as You, Father, are in me and I in You” (John 17.21). Jesus calls us to a unity comparable to the unity of the Trinity – a unity that transcends race, culture, wealth, and age.

For the earliest Christians, this was not just a unity “in spirit.” On the contrary: “All the believers were together and had everything in common. Selling their possessions and goods, they gave to anyone as he had need. Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts” (Acts 2.44-46; emphasis added). Indeed, the writer of Hebrews exhorts us to “consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near” (Hebrews 10.24-25).

The clear implication is that it is virtually impossible to do any of the things that we are supposed to do for our brothers and sisters – encouraging them, rebuking them, confessing to them, and so on – without meeting together with them. Likewise, our walks with God will be completely stunted without the advice and perspective of other Christians: “Iron sharpens iron, and one man sharpens another” (Proverbs 27.17). Sin, by nature, deceives us, and we cannot un-deceive ourselves; only our fellow disciples can do that.

This is hardly a uniquely Christian concept. Sports teams that are successful practice together. Committees that are unified and effective meet together. The writer of Hebrews is advocating the will of God, but he is also advocating common sense. We need each other, plain and simple.

The Church is a Body – an organism, if you will – and, like any body, She will not survive if She is dismembered:

“For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body – Jews or Greeks, slaves or free – and all were made to drink of one Spirit.

For the body does not consist of one member but of many. If the foot should say, ‘Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,’ that would not make it any less a part of the body. [...] If the whole body were an ear, where would be the sense of smell? But as it is, God arranged the members in the body, each one of them, as he chose. If all were a single member, where would the body be? As it is, there are many parts, yet one body.

The eye cannot say to the hand, ‘I have no need of you,’ nor again the head to the feet, ‘I have no need of you.’ On the contrary, the parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, and on those parts of the body that we think less honorable we bestow the greater honor…. But God has so composed the body, giving greater honor to the part that lacked it, that there may be no division in the body, but that the members may have the same care for one another. If one member suffers, all suffer together; if one member is honored, all rejoice together” (1 Corinthians 12.12-26).

The fact of the matter is this: Individual Christianity is not Christianity at all. A Christian who is not committed to the Body of Christ is a Christian in name only.

This does not mean that the ultimate objective is 100% attendance on Sunday mornings. The ultimate objective is deep relationships that allow us to change those around us and to be changed by those around us. The ultimate objective is openness, accountability, honesty, and repentance. The ultimate objective is spiritual unity.

I could say a lot more about the importance of fellowship with other Christians. (I have said next to nothing, for example, about the centrality of communal worship to Christianity.) I will end, however, with a plea to “individual Christendom”:

I need you. The Body needs you. Christians need you, and the world needs you. Within the Church, there are worship ministries, youth ministries, campus ministries, and other ministries that need your support and wisdom. There are new Christians who need strong examples, old Christians who need zeal, congregations who need elders, evangelists, teachers, and deacons. Outside the Church, there are the hungry to be fed, the sick to be healed, the sinners to be saved. I have been given a mission, and I cannot complete it alone; you have been given a mission, and you cannot complete it alone.

Please come back.

I originally wasn’t planning on writing multiple posts about infant baptism, but Richard Beck’s kindly saying that he was eager to follow my thoughts on the matter made me reconsider. I don’t have anything terribly profound to say about infant baptism on top of what I’ve already said, but I would like to discuss (in a very simplified manner) the nature of God’s covenants with us and how that applies to infant baptism.

A portrayal of Jesus' baptism

Salvation and spiritual rebirth – which occur at baptism (John 3.5) – are, I think, best understood as gifts given to us when we enter into covenants with God. I say “covenants” because my current understanding is that we have not entered into a single collective covenant with God (as could perhaps be said of Israel), but rather into multiple individual covenants with God – all covenants of grace, but different covenants nonetheless.

It could very well be that this understanding of the New Covenant(s) is prejudiced by Western individualism or by my non-pædobaptist upbringing. (In fact, there are many dimensions of our spiritual states which I consider to be fundamentally communal; for example, it seems that we do not suffer because our own sin alone, but rather suffer because the world is drenched with the sin of mankind. If this reminds you of original sin, bear this in mind: The observation that a child of abusive parents suffers for sins that are not her own is empirical, not theological.) Nonetheless, the centrality of faith in the New Testament – something difficult to forget after the Reformation – leads me to conclude that we enter into covenants with God only after volitional, individual responses from us. If that is the case, infant baptism simply cuts across the grain of New Testament theology.

What are the alternatives? Covenants could be not at all contingent upon us – but that runs into all sorts of problems that I won’t bother addressing here. Another option is covenants based on the volitional responses of others (e.g., the parents) – but the main example of such a covenant (circumcision) is also the main example of what the new covenant is replacing. Proponents of infant baptism (or just any opponent of what I’m saying) can appeal to Acts 16.15 and 16.33, as well as 1 Corinthians 1.16 – but the evidence from those passages is inconclusive.

This is all a very roundabout way of getting at the real heart of the matter: Why should baptized infants be afforded any spiritual status different than that of unbaptized infants? Better yet: Why should any infant be afforded any spiritual status different than that of any other infant?

Those are the questions that I have yet to see be successfully answered.

Given all the recent brouhaha about baptism on The Fish Tank (for which I am largely responsible), a friend of mine expressed her concern with the lack of brouhaha about infant baptism – the mode of baptism practiced by the majority of Christians today.

As I thought about infant baptism – in particular, as I thought about why I reject infant baptism – I realized that my beliefs about infant baptism were largely bundled with my beliefs about original sin. Therefore, I thought that the best way to explain my thoughts on infant baptism would be to sketch some of my thoughts on original sin, in anticipation of some productive dialogue on the matter.

Before I advance my argument, I should answer a couple questions. First, what is original sin? Not all proponents of original sin agree about what original sin means. For the purposes of this discussion, however, I will assume (for simplicity’s sake) merely that those who accept original sin believe that we are born guilty, while those who deny original sin believe that we are born innocent. That will be the “litmus test.” (I understand that some people who accept “original sin” probably would not fit into my litmus test; my hope is that we all take the time to figure out exactly what we believe about something like this rather than appealing to ambiguous and unclear labels such as “original sin.”)

Second, why are infant baptism and original sin bundled together in my mind? The reason is that I believe that baptism is for the forgiveness of sins (cf. Acts 2.38, inter alia), so I see no real justification for infant baptism if infants are not yet culpable for any sin.

Why, then, do I reject original sin?

Well: At first glance, original sin strikes me as unfair. Infants strike me as innocent – and they seem to have struck Jesus in the same way. Infants appear to be incapable of doing wrong, and thus incapable of being blamed for anything.

Of course, the doctrines of Christianity are not always intuitive, so a mere prima facie objection to original sin does not constitute a sufficient argument against a particular belief. Fortunately, however, I am far from convinced that the Bible advocates original sin. To me, Ezekiel 18 presents a huge problem for the proponent of original sin: “The soul who sins shall die. The son shall not suffer for the iniquity of the father, nor the father suffer for the iniquity of the son. The righteousness of the righteous shall be upon himself, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon himself” (v. 20). It doesn’t get much clearer than that.

What is there to be said on behalf of original sin? The main passage cited in support of original sin is Romans 5.12ff, which discusses our death in Adam and life in Christ. Notice v. 12: “Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned…” (emphasis added). Why say “because all sinned” if Adam’s sin alone is sufficient for us to die (contra Ezekiel 18)? I see no very good reason. This leads me to conclude that Romans 5 concerns a transmission from Adam of a sinful nature – a predisposition toward sin – that does not itself entail guilt at birth. What about vv. 15, 18, and 19 – which suggest, respectively, that we all die, are condemned, and are made sinners by Adam’s sin? I think Adam’s sin is responsible for those things indirectly – because it resulted in our sinful natures, which resulted in our individual sins.

So far, of course, I’ve provided only a brief summary of my thoughts about original sin. But, for the moment, I see no compelling reason to accept either original sin or infant baptism.

Around this time in April, a little less than two thousand years ago, a man on a cross was crucified on a hill on the outskirts of Jerusalem.

Why?
This is not a question relegated to Sunday School, intended for a trite summary of imputed righteousness or a discourse on the atonement. There is a time and place, of course, for doctrine and theology – but not today. Not today.

Today is a day to stand up and face the man on the cross – not the Book written about him (though it is a good book), not the messengers he has sent (though, by and large, they are good people), not even the religion he founded (though I believe it to be the true religion), but the man himself, the man who hangs upon the cross.

Whatever else he was, we know he was a man: He lived and breathed and walked upon the Earth, laughed and cried, whispered, shouted, and sang. And, whatever else he did – wherever he may have traveled, whatever he may have believed – we know he died an early death, a criminal’s death on a cross.

Why?

You have heard the answers before. “Jesus died for our sins.” “Jesus took our place.” But today may not be a day for those answers (though I ultimately accept them as Gospel), those calm and reasoned reflections on the matter. Today is a day simply to face the reality of the man on the cross, unmasked and unadorned and terribly real.

The man on the cross does not exist in a fairytale. He does not exist in the abstract. He exists in the here and now: He exists to be confronted. He demands an answer – any answer, but an answer must be given.

Today is the day to seek an answer. I am not here to tell you what that answer is, or even how to search for it – though, of course, I have my convictions on those matters. I am here to tell you that you cannot leave the man on the cross without such an answer. His death – a real death, not a storybook death – deserves at least that much.

For the mere possibility that the Christians are right – the mere possibility that a man on a cross died for you and for your sins – is at once too beautiful and too urgent to be passed over. The veracity of the claim can be discredited; the evidence for the claim can be undermined; but its pressing nature cannot be denied. I cannot be considered impassively from an armchair; a man is dead, and we must reckon with that death. The man on the cross can be vilified or rejected or removed from his later Christian trappings – but he cannot be ignored.

And so I beg you: Today, do not forget the man on the cross.

I know, at any rate, that it is my desire. Were I left to my own devices, I surely would never rise above this pathetic ostentation and vainglory, the idolatry of self that is the sin of modern man. I wish I could tell youthatIama good and kind- hearted person. But the truth is that I am a sinful wretch: proud, conceited, and judgmental, prone to anger and to deceit. I am a slave to the flesh, a poor wayfaring stranger.

The bad news is that, if anything even remotely resembling Christianity is true, you are, too — fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23). Even our righteous acts are as filthy rags (Isaiah 64:6). And it is obvious that we know this; the gulf between our public and private personae give us away. And so we are comedians playing to an audience too afraid to laugh — adulterous brides who have spurned our grooms and reveled in our infidelity. We are a contradiction, a fusion of the divine and the demonic, at constant war with ourselves. We are a race of Fyodor Karamazovs, blithering clowns hiding behind masks because we are terrified, absolutely terrified that someone might see the truth beneath the disguise.

The good news is that God’s grace is for adulteresses and clowns — in short, for the world. God has forgiven us and intertwined His Spirit with the Sodom in our hearts. We are sinners in the hands of an angry God — and we can be redeemed. Try as we may, we can never vanquish Beauty, only wound it; despite all our transgressions, we still can sing, write, dance, and laugh.<

The Ichthus, then, like any publication, is a journal devoted to the victories — the stories, essays, and ideas — of its staff. But it also is a journal devoted to the weaknesses of its staff, a journal created in recognition of the fact that we Christians are nothing without Christ. We acknowledge that we need to be saved — and we acknowledge that we have been saved.

We need no façade. Rather, we boast in our weaknesses: God’s power is made perfect in weakness (2 Corinthians 12:9). We rejoice in our mortality: Death has been swallowed up in victory (1 Corinthians 15:54). And we remember that our triumphs come not from our brilliance or wisdom, but from the goodness, grace, and majesty of our Lord Jesus Christ.

J. Joseph Porter ‘12, a Philosophy concentrator living in Quincy House, is the Features Editor of The Ichthus.

This is an idea for a brief sermon I hope to deliver to an actual audience someday – hopefully at Harvard.

Two years ago, most of our campus was swept away by the election of President Barack Obama. The night he won, it sounded like everyone in Cambridge was outside my room shouting, dancing, celebrating, and going crazy. I don’t think I’ll ever forget the excitement surrounding Obama’s election.
Why were people so excited? The answer’s pretty obvious: They – we – wanted change. We saw that our world was messed up, and we wanted to fix it. We wanted something to believe in.

Barack Obama’s presidency may turn out to be good for America. But I don’t believe that Barack Obama is the person who will ultimately bring change. I don’t think Sarah Palin is, either – or, for that matter, Adam Smith or Karl Marx or anyone else. Instead, it is my firm belief that true change – change we can believe in – is found only in the person of Jesus Christ.

Things have certainly changed a lot in the past few hundred years. We’ve gone from horses to cars, from telegrams to the Internet, from Beethoven to rock and roll… Brave men and women have fought and sometimes died to bring us democracy, freedom, and equality that would have been pipe dreams just centuries ago. In many ways, things have changed completely.

In other ways, however, things really haven’t changed at all. We know happy people and sad people, poor people and rich people, greedy people and generous people, humble people and prideful people. Art has changed, technology has changed, culture has changed, politics has changed – but people haven’t changed. The basic facts about human nature are just as true today as they were thousands of years ago, which is why an ancient work of literature like the Iliad or the Bible can resonate with us thousands of years later. Truly it was said that there is nothing new under the sun.

It seems, then, that we have learned how to change everything except ourselves. The problem is that changing ourselves is all that matters; changing laws and countries doesn’t mean anything if you don’t change people. As Solzhenitsyn said, the battle-line dividing good and evil is drawn, not through states or through classes, but between every human heart – and through all human hearts. The problem isn’t “the system” or “the man,” but our hearts.

I believe that Jesus changes hearts. I don’t believe that because the Bible tells me so or because my mommy told me so; I believe it because I have seen it with my own two eyes. I know Christians on the verge of suicide who now lead hopeful and purposeful lives. I know Christians who were once drug dealers and gang members who are now gentle, kindhearted men, Christians whose marriages and families have been healed. I know Christians who were once slaves to drugs, or porn, or women, or selfishness, who have now been set free.

Are there non-Christians who have changed in similar ways? Of course. Are Christians perfect? Of course not. And yet I cannot deny my impression that most (if not all) the people I have known who were seriously committed to changing themselves have been Christians. Lots of people want to be good; very few people want to be better, to own up to and confront the darkness that invariably exists within them. I cannot deny my impression that there is something about the community of Christians quite unlike anything else I have ever seen. I hear a lot of talk about self-improvement and making the world a better place, but the bulk of the change I have witnessed has taken place among unassuming Christian men and women who simply cheat less, gossip less, covet less, lie less, and hate less than they otherwise would.

My point isn’t that I’m better than you or that Jesus is the only way. If you’re like most people, you’ve heard plenty of that before, and you’re probably sick of it. My point, rather, is this: If you are serious about changing the world – if you want to make the world a better place – if you want to make yourself a better person – consider Christianity. Read the Bible, talk to a friend, do anything but ignore it.

It has already changed the world – it might just change your life.