A note from Joe: BA Stewart is a friend of mine from seminary in New Orleans. He’s one of the most intelligent and thoughtful guys I’ve ever known, and I’m grateful for our many conversations that elevated my knowledge and comprehension of philosophy (and photography). Please enjoy his guest post.
C.S. Lewis’ book, Mere Christianity is among one of his more popular non-fiction works. Lewis’ objective in his book is to discover what it means to be merely Christian–that is a Christian without the perceived trappings of Christianity. He does so by starting with general revelation and concluding Jesus through a series of arguments from emotion and joy and avoiding Christian jargon and divisive theological issues so that the reader is not distracted by such things. Lewis has found many friends among Christians who share his sentiment that Christianity in and of itself is a beautiful, but is often tarnished, duly or unduly, by the perception that Christians are divided, bigoted, old fashion, hypocritical, or one of a million other indictments that keep people away from the faith. Interestingly enough, even some of these attempts to recover the basic teachings of Christianity are now used to as fodder against Christians. Take for instance Christian fundamentalism. This movement was bread out of a series of pamphlets released at the turn of 20th century entitled, “The Fundamentals”, which attempted recapture the basic doctrines of Christianity. This among other movements to one degree or another have all in one shape form or fashion attempted to discover mere Christianity.
Reclaiming the essential doctrines of Christianity is a tough gambit, as inevitably one will include a doctrine that some consider extraneous, or one will exclude a doctrine another considers essential. I have my theological convictions of which I will not relinquish, but there are other doctrines I hold more loosely. To me, however, the more important question to Christianity is, what does it mean to be merely Christian, practically speaking? I ask this not to diminish doctrine. I personally believe that doctrine is more important that praxis because theology undergirds praxis–without the doctrine the praxis is meaningless. I ask this because as Christians, we have a theological conviction that we have a highly doctrinal message that the world needs to hear and believe. Interestingly, Jesus cared a lot about praxis too. The bulk of his teachings are practical theology as opposed to philosophical theology. But with this said, Jesus did not give a huge list of do’s and don’ts or a how-to guide for delivering the message. Rather, he summarized his commands into two commands and spoke largely in the form akin to wisdom literature. Paul was not a whole lot more specific. We do get somewhat synoptic view of his ministry in Acts and autobiographical glimpses in his letters, but this raises the question, are such things prescriptive or descriptive? At the end of the day, I am not sure, but taking in to account the message of Romans, perhaps the most systematic theological work in the Bible spends 12 chapters talking about one particular doctrine, (namely the gospel) and reduces the implications of the gospel to a matter of conscience in Chapter 14, so if I was to err, I would err on the descriptive side. But nevertheless I do understand that everything they did was for the purpose of spreading the the gospel.
As a person interested in such things, I have run the gauntlet about how I’ve approached praxis. I was raised in a rather fundamental environment. While I don’t think that there is anything inherently evil about my upbringing much of what I was told as to what Christians do as a child was a product not so much of biblical teachings but of rather traditional forms of Christian behaviors. I however did not become a Christian until I was 18. After becoming a Christian, I rather embraced the more fundamentalist precepts I already knew because to me, such things were what Christians did. But then I changed. I went a trip to another land and came back and did a pendulum swing the other way. I became highly critical of Christian practices in America and rejected many of them on my own accord. It took some time to center myself again, although Joe probably still thinks I’m a fundamentalist
. While I probably over-reacted to my experience, I think lesson burned in my brain is one of self-evaluation. I constantly ask myself a personalized form of the one I asked earlier: are the actions that I perform merely Christian? Relating back to my experience, I was amazed when I stepped off the plane in another land how the in-house “wars” American Christians fight diminished. These Christians weren’t debating young earth creationism against old earth creation against theistic evolution against intelligent design. There weren’t arguments over traditional and contemporary forms of music. There weren’t “emergents” critiquing the “seeker sensitive”/relevance movement critiquing church growth movement critiquing whatever came before that. There weren’t debates over which translation was the best and which ones were from the devil — in fact, most were happy to have a translation, period. There wasn’t much discussion at all, really, other than discussion over what the Bible say, talks about whom they shared with this week, who they would share with next week, prayer, and where they would meet next week as to not draw too much attention to themselves. In personal reflection when I ask myself the aforementioned question, I am amazed how much of my quote “Christian” practices melt away. This is not an indictment of American Christianity, but a self-evaluation, and one that I think needs to be asked. This helps me stay focused on the task that God commissioned his disciples to do.