Christ and Crisis

by Charles Malik

Charles Malik’s Christ and Crisis is an invaluable guide for Christians who seek to engage our world and come to terms with the challenges unique to the era they find themselves in. Each life, each unique historical situation presents its own crisis or set of crises. Today, we read of financial crises, the environmental crisis, the crisis of radical Islam, cultural crises, political crises, crises of identity, and many more. What Malik would tell us is that these are all spiritual crises, first and foremost. Thus, in this uniquely accessible and ecumenically sensitive book, Malik puts all of these concerns before the most profound crisis of all: the state of our own hearts before the cross of Jesus Christ, offering readers a helpful way of truly understanding the crises of our world today.

Genres: Theology, Christian

111 pages, Paperback

First published September 12, 2007

About the author

Lebanese academic, diplomat, and philosopher.

He served as the Lebanese representative to the United Nations, the President of the Commission on Human Rights and the United Nations General Assembly, a member of the Lebanese Cabinet, a national minister of Education and the Arts, and of Foreign Affairs and Emigration, and theologian.

He was responsible for the drafting and adoption of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Reviews

[Bob · Rating 4 out of 5]

Summary: Contends that the deepest crisis of his (our) age is a spiritual crisis that the church properly addresses by laying hold of all the resources and pursuing the calling of people of faith.

Charles Malik was a Lebanese diplomat and a drafter of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights as well as a later U.N. convention against genocide. He presided over the 1958 U.N. General Assembly and later taught at Harvard, Dartmouth, Notre Dame and American University. He was a thoughtful and deeply committed Orthodox Christian involved in several international ecumenical causes.

Malik wrote this book as the world faced the aggressive advance of Communism in the years following World War II, when nations were gaining dependence from colonial powers and the West was attempting to re-define the place of democracy in the world order. It was a time of crisis and activism and Malik was in the midst of it all.

That is what makes this book all the more striking because it is not a call to Christian social activism, to political engagement in the crises of the day. Rather Malik, especially in the opening address (the book is a transcription of seven addresses Malik gave in this period), argues that the most significant crisis the world is facing is a crisis of spirit and the most significant calling of the church is to pursue the disciplines of devotion, the practices of holiness, and courageous witness to the message of the gospel. At one point he speaks disparagingly of churchmen who wade into international affairs and social issues about which they know little.

In some respects, he sounds like more modern writers like John Howard Yoder and Stanley Hauerwas in calling for the church to be the church and as such be its own distinctive order in the world. But there is a crucial difference--he is not a pacifist but one who might be in the principled just war camp. He writes at one point:

War is terrible, and not only will a Christian not provoke it, but he will do everything in his power to prevent it from breaking out. But six things do not follow from this: (1) It does not follow that if war is forced upon him that he will not defend himself; (2) nor does it follow that he will not in advance prepare to defend himself, since there is nothing to guarantee that war will not b forced upon him; (3) nor does it follow that if an when war is forced upon him he will not fight like a man or will not fight for complete victory; (4) nor does it follow that, since cold war is a kind of war, he will not fight it to victory; (5) nor does it follow that under conditions of war, whether cold or hot, he will blaspheme God and cease to be a Christian, loving Christ above everything else and his neighbor as himself; (6) nor, finally, does it follow that, if he is opposed to war, he has any right to be opposed only to that form of war which is "international," namely, war between the nations, while saying nothing whatsoever about that other form of war which goes by the name of "class war," namely, war between social and economic classes which could be just as terrible and just as unjust and just as devastating as any so-called "international war." (p. 100)

Here we have thoughtful, nuanced, and "both-and" thinking, that while not finding agreement with everyone, transcended simplistic and polarized positions of his time and ours.

While addressing the great crises of his day, he also spoke trenchantly to the challenges all Christians face that he summarizes as coming on six fronts: the world and its temptations, our own memories, our tendency to sloth, our inveterate pride, our daily temptation to worship things and objects, and finally, the lures of the Enemy (pp. 65-66).

This is a book that speaks into our own activist age. Those who identify as progressive may not agree, but I hope they will engage with his critique of his own age and his analysis of the spiritual dimensions of the crises we face and our response to them.

[Samer Najm · Rating 5 out of 5]

A book through time.

Though this book was written close to 50 years ago, it reflects on the life of Christians through “crisis”. It talks to Christians and challenges them despite the atrocities and challenges we face today to reconcile with God to ultimately find peace; the peace that can only be from God and rise from within.

[Mike · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read about 50 pages of this on Kindle, and gave up. I think it’s because Malik takes a Big Picture approach, which may be appropriate for the subject matter, but that leads him to write broadly about everything, and there’s too little concrete detail for a detail person like me.