Basic Christianity

by John R.W. Stott

‘Man is as lazy as he dares to be,’ wrote Emerson.

So God is not a fit object for man’s detached scrutiny. You cannot fix God at the end of a telescope or a microscope and say ‘How interestingl’ God is not interesting. He is deeply upsetting. The same is true of Jesus Christ.

Of all these hindrances to effective search the last two are the hardest to overcome, intellectual prejudice and moral self-will. Both are expressions of fear, and fear is the greatest enemy of the truth. Fear paralyses our search.

that evil was largely caused by ignorance and bad housing, and that education and social reform would enable men to live together in happiness and goodwill. But this illusion has been shattered by the hard facts of history.

Only temporarily

It is no use giving us rules of conduct; we cannot keep them. Let God go on saying ‘Thou shalt not’, yet we shall to the end of time. A lecture will not solve our problem; we need a Saviour. The education of the mind is not enough without a change of heart.

Our outlook is onesided. We exaggerate our own virtue and the other man’s vice.

Only when we have realized and faced up to the seriousness of our illness will we admit our urgent need for a cure.

We need more than an example; we need a Saviour. An example can stir our imagination, kindle our idealism and strengthen our resolve, but it cannot cleanse the defilement of our past sins, bring peace to our troubled conscience or reconcile us to God.

True self-denial is true self-discovery. To live for ourselves is insanity and suicide; to live for God and for man is wisdom and life indeed.

You can believe in Christ intellectually and admire him; you can say your prayers to him through the keyhole (I did for many years) ; you can push coins at him under the door to keep him quiet; you can be moral, decent, upright and good; you can be religious; you can have been baptized and confirmed; you can be deeply versed in the philosophy of religion; you can be a theological student and even an ordained minister — and still not have opened the door to Christ. There is no substitute for this.

Are you a Christian ? A real and committed Christian ? Your answer depends on another question — not whether you go to church or not, believe the creed or not, or lead a decent life or not (important as all these are in their place), but rather this: which side of the door is Jesus Christ? Is he inside or outside? That is the crucial issue.