Thursday, January 31, 2008
C.S. Lewis - NOT Evangelical?!?!?!
Jollyblogger went through a spate of reading C.S. Lewis a while back and began one of his posts on it this way:
Maybe it is because I am basically a para-church guy when it comes to evangelism that I felt that way. Lewis was my first exposure, and Stott one of my favorites, to efforts to "distill" Christianity to that which we all share - the essential message of the evangelist - the message of the para-church - which then once communicated to the world enables people to come to the buffet that is the modern church and from that basis choose the home that best suited them.
Lewis certainly never intended his efforts to be the end of faith, but the beginning, and therein, I think, lies the rub. So much of evangelicalism today seems to think the beginning is the end, and the the church is the evangelist. If that was all there is, Christ's ministry would have ended at the cross.
But it didn't. The price paid for our sins, Christ came back to show us all of what was available to us, a new body, a new life - the true glory for which we were created.
I mourn that we so often stop at the cross. I wish to walk with the resurrected Christ, not merely be forgiven by the dead one.
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When I read C. S. Lewis I am often surprised that evangelicals like him so much, because so much of what he says goes against evangelical conventional wisdom.I was stunned. From my perspective, Lewis is the fount from which evangelicalism sprang - but then as I have learned in recent years, "evangelicalism" is a pretty plastic term, it means a lot of things to a lot of people.
Maybe it is because I am basically a para-church guy when it comes to evangelism that I felt that way. Lewis was my first exposure, and Stott one of my favorites, to efforts to "distill" Christianity to that which we all share - the essential message of the evangelist - the message of the para-church - which then once communicated to the world enables people to come to the buffet that is the modern church and from that basis choose the home that best suited them.
Lewis certainly never intended his efforts to be the end of faith, but the beginning, and therein, I think, lies the rub. So much of evangelicalism today seems to think the beginning is the end, and the the church is the evangelist. If that was all there is, Christ's ministry would have ended at the cross.
But it didn't. The price paid for our sins, Christ came back to show us all of what was available to us, a new body, a new life - the true glory for which we were created.
I mourn that we so often stop at the cross. I wish to walk with the resurrected Christ, not merely be forgiven by the dead one.
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