MereChristianity: * Book II. What Christians Believe " The Perfect Penitent

4. The Perfect Penitent

 

 

 

     We are faced, then, with  a  frightening alternative. This  man  we are

talking  about either  was (and  is) just what He said or else a lunatic, or

something worse. Now it seems to me  obvious  that He was neither a  lunatic

nor a fiend:  and consequently, however strange or terrifying or unlikely it

may seem, I have  to accept the view  that He was and is God. God has landed

on this enemy-occupied world in human form.

    

And now, what was the purpose of  it all? What did He come to do? Well,

to teach, of  course; but as soon as you look into the  New Testament or any

other  Christian writing  you  will  find they are constantly  talking about

something different-about  His  death and  His coming  to life  again. It is

obvious  that  Christians think the chief point of the story lies here. They

think the main thing He came to earth to do was to suffer and be killed.

    

Now before  I  became a Christian I was  under  the impression that the

first thing Christians had  to believe was one particular theory as  to what

the point of this  dying was. According to that  theory God wanted to punish

men for having  deserted and  joined the Great Rebel, but Christ volunteered

to be punished instead, and so  God let us off.  Now  I admit that even this

theory  does not seem to me quite so immoral and so silly as it used to; but

that is not the point  I want  to make. What I came to see later on was that

neither  this theory  nor any  other  is Christianity. The central Christian

belief is that Christ's death has somehow put us right with God and given us

a fresh start Theories as to how it did this are another matter. A good many

different theories have  been held as to  how it  works; what all Christians

are agreed on is that it does work. I will tell you what I think it is like.

All sensible people know that if you are tired and hungry a meal will do you

good. But  the  modern theory  of  nourishment-all  about  the  vitamins and

proteins-is a different thing. People ate their dinners and felt better long

before  the theory  of  vitamins was ever  heard of:  and  if the  theory of

vitamins is some day abandoned they will go on eating their dinners just the

same.  Theories  about   Christ's  death  are  not  Christianity:  they  are

explanations  about how it works.  Christians would not all agree as  to how

important these theories  are. My own  church-the Church of England-does not

lay down any one of  them as  the right one.  The Church  of Rome goes a bit

further. But I think they will all agree that the thing itself is infinitely

more important than any explanations that theologians have produced. I think

they would probably admit that no explanation will ever be quite adequate to

the reality. But as I said in the preface  to this book, I am only a layman,

and at  this point we are getting into  deep water. I can only tell you, for

what it is worth, how I, personally, look at the matter.

    

On  my view the theories are not themselves the thing  you are asked to

accept. Many of you no doubt have read Jeans or Eddington. What they do when

they want to explain the atom,  or something of that sort, is  to give you a

description  out of which you can make a mental picture. But then  they warn

you that this picture is  not what the scientists actually believe. What the

scientists believe is a mathematical formula. The pictures are there only to

help you to understand the formula. They are not  really true in the way the

formula is; they  do not give you the real thing but only something more  or

less like it. They are  only meant to help, and if they do  not help you can

drop them. The thing itself  cannot  be pictured, it  can only  be expressed

mathematically. We are in  the same boat here. We believe that the  death of

Christ  is  just  that  point  in  history  at  which  something  absolutely

unimaginable from outside shows through into our own world. And if we cannot

picture even the atoms of which our own world is built, of course we are not

going to be able to picture this. Indeed, if  we  found that  we could fully

understand  it,  that  very fact would show it was not what it professes  to

be-the inconceivable, the uncreated, the thing from  beyond nature, striking

down into nature  like lightning. You  may ask what good will it be to us if

we  do not understand  it.  But that  is easily answered. A man  can eat his

dinner without  understanding  exactly  how  food  nourishes  him. A man can

accept what  Christ  has  done without  knowing  how  it  works: indeed,  he

certainly would not know how it works until he has accepted it.

   

  We  are told that Christ was  killed for us, that His death  has washed

out  our sins,  and  that by  dying  He  disabled  death itself. That is the

formula. That is Christianity. That is what has to be believed. Any theories

we build up as  to how  Christ's death did all  this are, in my view,  quite

secondary: mere  plans or diagrams to  be left alone if they do not help us,

and, even if they do help us, not to  be confused with the thing itself. All

the same, some of these theories are worth looking at.

    

The one most people have  heard is the one I mentioned before -the  one

about our being let  off because Christ had volunteered to bear a punishment

instead of us. Now on the face of it that is a very silly theory. If God was

prepared  to  let us off,  why on earth did He not do so? And what  possible

point  could there be  in punishing an innocent person instead? None  at all

that I can see, if you are thinking of punishment in the police-court sense.

On  the other hand, if you think  of a debt,  there is plenty of  point in a

person who has some assets paying it on behalf of someone who has not. Or if

you take "paying the penalty," not in the  sense of  being punished, but  in

the more general sense of "standing the racket" or "footing the bill," then,

of course, it is a matter of common experience that, when one person has got

himself into a  hole, the trouble of getting him out usually falls on a kind

friend. Now what  was the sort  of "hole" man had  got  himself into? He had

tried to set up on his own, to behave as if he belonged to himself. In other

words, fallen man is not simply an imperfect creature who needs improvement:

he  is  a  rebel  who  must lay  down  his  arms.  Laying  down  your  arms,

surrendering, saying you  are  sorry,  realising  that you have  been on the

wrong track  and  getting ready to  start  life  over again from the  ground

floor-that is the only  way out of a  "hole." This process of surrender-this

movement  full  speed  astern-is   what   Christians  call  repentance.  Now

repentance is  no fun at all. It is something much harder than merely eating

humble  pie. It means unlearning  all the self-conceit and self-will that we

have been training ourselves into for thousands  of years. It means  killing

part of yourself, undergoing a kind of death. In fact, it needs  a good  man

to repent. And here comes the catch. Only a bad person needs to repent: only

a good person  can repent perfectly.  The worse you are the more you need it

and the less you can  do it. The only person who could do it perfectly would

be a perfect person-and he would not need it.

    

Remember, this repentance, this willing submission to humiliation and a

kind  of death, is not something God demands of you  before He will take you

back and which He could let  you off if He chose: it is simply a description

of what going back to Him is  like. If you ask God to take you  back without

it, you are really  asking  Him  to let you go  back without going back.  It

cannot hap pen. Very well,  then,  we  must go through with it. But the same

badness which makes us need  it, makes us unable to do it. Can we  do it  if

God helps us? Yes, but what do we mean  when  we talk of God helping us?  We

mean God putting into us a bit of Himself, so to speak. He lends us a little

of His reasoning powers and that  is how we think: He puts  a little  of His

love  into  us and that is how  we  love one another. When you teach a child

writing, you hold its hand while it forms the letters: that is, it forms the

letters  because you are forming them. We love  and reason because God loves

and  reasons and holds  our hand while we  do it.  Now if we had not fallen,

that would be all plain sailing. But unfortunately we now need God's help in

order to do  something which God, in His own  nature,  never does  at all-to

surrender, to suffer, to submit, to die. Nothing in God's nature corresponds

to this  process at  all.  So that the one road for  which we now need God's

leadership most of  all is a  road God, in His own nature, has never walked.

God can share only what He has: this thing, in His own nature, He has not.

    

But supposing God became  a  man-suppose  our  human  nature which  can

suffer and  die  was amalgamated  with God's  nature in one person-then that

person  could help us. He could surrender  His  will, and  suffer  and  die,

because He was man; and He could do it perfectly because He was God. You and

I can go through this process only if  God does it in us; but  God can do it

only if He becomes  man. Our attempts at this dying  will succeed only if we

men  share in God's dying, just as our thinking can  succeed only because it

is a drop out of  the ocean of His  intelligence: but we cannot share  God's

dying unless God dies; and He cannot die  except by being a man. That is the

sense in which He pays our debt, and suffers for us what He Himself need not

suffer at all.

    

I have heard some people complain that if Jesus was God as well as man,

then His sufferings and death lose all value in their eyes, "because it must

have been so easy for him." Others may (very rightly) rebuke the ingratitude

and   ungraciousness   of   this   objection;  what   staggers   me  is  the

misunderstanding it betrays. In one sense, of  course, those who make it are

right.  They  have even understated their own  case. The perfect submission,

the  perfect  suffering, the perfect  death  were not  only  easier to Jesus

because He was God,  but were  possible only because He  was God. But surely

that is  a very odd reason for not  accepting them?  The  teacher is able to

form the letters for the child because the teacher is grown-up and knows how

to write. That, of course, makes it easier for the teacher, and only because

it is easier for him can he help the child. If it rejected him because "it's

easy for grown-ups" and waited to learn writing from another child who could

not write  itself (and so  had  no "unfair" advantage), it would not get  on

very  quickly. If I am  drowning in a rapid  river,  a man who still has one

foot on the bank may give me  a hand which saves my  life. Ought  I to shout

back  (between my gasps) "No, it's not  fair! You have  an advantage! You're

keeping one  foot  on  the bank"? That  advantage-call  it "unfair"  if  you

like-is the  only reason  why  he can be of any use to me. To what  will you

look for help if you will not look to that which is stronger than yourself?

     

Such  is my own way of looking at  what Christians call the  Atonement.

But remember this is only one more picture. Do not  mistake it for the thing

itself: and if it does not help you, drop it

 

5. The Practical Conclusion

 

 

 

     The perfect surrender and humiliation were undergone by Christ: perfect

because He was God,  surrender and humiliation  because He  was man. Now the

Christian belief is  that if  we somehow share the humility and suffering of

Christ we shall also  share  in His conquest for death and find  a new  life

after we have died and in it become perfect, and perfectly happy, creatures.

This  means something much  more  than our trying  to  follow  His teaching.

People often  ask  when  the  next step  in evolution-the  step to something

beyond  man-will happen. But on the Christian view, it has happened already.

In Christ a  new kind of man appeared: and the new  kind of life which began

in  Him is to be put into us. How is  this to be  done? Now, please remember

how we acquired  the old,  ordinary kind of life. We derived it from others,

from our father and mother and all our ancestors, without our consent-and by

a very curious process, involving pleasure, pain, and danger. A  process you

would  never have guessed. Most of us  spend a good many  years in childhood

trying  to guess it: and  some children,  when they  are  first told, do not

believe it-and  I am not sure that I blame them, for it is very odd. Now the

God who arranged that process is the same God who arranges  how the new kind

of life-the Christ life-is  to be spread. We must be  prepared  for it being

odd too. He did not consult us when He invented sex: He has not consulted us

either when He invented this.

   

  There  are three  things  that spread the  Christ life to us:  baptism,

belief,  and that  mysterious  action  which different  Christians  call  by

different names-Holy Communion, the Mass, the Lord's Supper. At least, those

are  the  three ordinary methods. I  am  not saying there may not be special

cases where it is spread without one or more of these. I have not time to go

into special  cases, and I do not  know enough.  If you are trying  in a few

minutes to tell a man how to get  to Edinburgh you will tell him the trains:

he can,  it  is true, get  there by boat or by a plane, but you  will hardly

bring  that  in. And I  am not saying  anything  about which  of these three

things is the most essential. My Methodist friend would like  me to say more

about belief  and less (in proportion) about  the other  two.  But I am  not

going into  that. Anyone who professes to teach you Christian doctrine will,

in fact, tell you  to  use all  three,  and that  is enough for  our present

purpose.

   

  I cannot myself  see why these things should be the conductors  of  the

new kind of life. But then, if  one did not happen to  know,  I should never

have  seen any  connection between a particular  physical  pleasure  and the

appearance of  a new human being in the world. We have to take reality as it

comes to us: there is  no good  jabbering about what it ought  to be like or

what we should have expected it  to be like. But  though I cannot see why it

should be so, I can tell you why I believe it is  so. I have explained why I

have to  believe that Jesus was (and is) God. And it seems plain as a matter

of history that He  taught His followers that the new  life was communicated

in this way. In other words, I believe it on His authority. Do not be scared

by the  word authority. Believing  things on authority  only means believing

them  because  you have been told  them by  someone you  think  trustworthy.

Ninety-nine per cent of the things you believe  are believed on authority. I

believe  there is  such  a place as New  York. I have not seen it  myself. I

could not prove by abstract  reasoning that there must  be such a  place.  I

believe it  because  reliable  people  have  told me  so.  The ordinary  man

believes  in the Solar System, atoms, evolution, and  the circulation of the

blood on authority-because the scientists say so. Every historical statement

in the  world  is  believed  on  authority.  None of  us has seen the Norman

Conquest  or the defeat of the Armada. None of us could prove  them by  pure

logic  as  you prove a thing in mathematics. We  believe them simply because

people who did see them have left writings that tell us about them: in fact,

on authority. A man who jibbed at authority in  other things as  some people

do in religion would have to be content to know nothing all his life.

    

Do not think I am setting up baptism and belief  and the Holy Communion

as things that will do instead of your  own attempts  to  copy  Christ. Your

natural  life  is derived from your parents; that does not mean it will stay

there if you do nothing  about it. You can  lose it by neglect,  or you  can

drive it  away by committing suicide. You have to feed it and look after it:

but always remember  you are not  making it,  you are only keeping up a life

you  got from  someone  else.  In  the same  way  a  Christian can lose  the

Christ-life which has been  put into him, and he has to make efforts to keep

it.  But  even the best Christian that ever lived is not acting  on  his own

steam-he  is only nourishing  or  protecting  a  life  he could  never  have

acquired by his own efforts. And that has practical consequences. As long as

the  natural  life is in your  body, it will do a lot towards repairing that

body. Cut it, and up to a  point  it will heal, as a dead body would  not. A

live body is not one that never gets hurt, but  one that  can to some extent

repair  itself. In  the same  way a Christian is  not a  man who never  goes

wrong, but a man who is enabled to repent and pick himself up and begin over

again  after each  stumble-because the Christ-life  is inside him, repairing

him  all the  time, enabling  him  to repeat  (in  some degree) the  kind of

voluntary death which Christ Himself carried out.

    

That is why  the Christian is in a different position from other people

who are trying  to be good. They hope, by being good, to please God if there

is one; or-if they think there is not-at least they hope to deserve approval

from  good men.  But the Christian  thinks any good he does  comes from  the

Christ-life inside  him.  He does not think God will love  us because we are

good, but that God  will make us good  because He loves us; just as the roof

of a greenhouse does not attract the sun because  it is bright, but  becomes

bright because the sun shines on it.

    

And let me make it quite clear that when Christians say the Christ-life

is  in  them,  they do not mean  simply something mental or moral. When they

speak of  being "in Christ" or of Christ being "in them," this is not simply

a  way of saying  that  they are  thinking about Christ or copying Him. They

mean that Christ is actually operating  through them; that the whole mass of

Christians are the physical organism  through which Christ acts-that we are.

His fingers and muscles, the  cells of His  body. And  perhaps that explains

one  or two things. It explains why  this  new  life is spread  not only  by

purely  mental acts  like  belief, but by bodily acts like baptism and  Holy

Communion.  It  is  not merely the  spreading of an idea;  it  is  more like

evolution-a biological or super-biological fact. There is no good trying  to

be more  spiritual than God.  God never meant man  to  be a purely spiritual

creature. That is why He uses material things like bread and wine to put the

new life into us. We may think this rather  crude and unspiritual.  God does

not: He invented eating. He likes matter. He invented it.

    

Here is  another  thing that used to  puzzle me. Is it not  frightfully

unfair that this new life should be  confined  to  people who  have heard of

Christ and been able to believe in Him? But the truth is God has not told us

what His arrangements about the other people are. We do know that no man can

be saved except through Christ; we do not know that only those who  know Him

can be saved through Him,  But in the meantime, if you are worried about the

people outside, the most unreasonable thing you can  do is to remain outside

yourself. Christians are Christ's body, the organism through which He works.

Every addition  to that  body enables  Him  to do more. If you want to  help

those outside you  must add your own  little cell to  the body of Christ who

alone can  help them. Cutting  off  a man's fingers would  be an  odd way of

getting him to do more work.

    

Another  possible  objection  is  this. Why  is  God  landing  in  this

enemy-occupied  world in disguise  and starting a  sort of secret society to

undermine the devil? Why is He not landing in force, invading it? Is it dial

He  is not strong enough?  Well,  Christians think  He is going to  land  in

force; we do not know when. But we can guess why He is delaying. He wants to

give us the chance of joining His side  freely. I do  not  suppose you and I

would  have  thought  much of a Frenchman who  waited  till the Allies  were

marching  into Germany  and then announced  he was on  our  side.  God  will

invade.  But  I wonder whether  people  who ask  God to interfere openly and

directly in our world  quite realise what it will be like when He does. When

that happens,  it is  the end  of the world. When the author walks on to the

stage  the play is over.  God is going to invade, all right: but what is the

good  of saying  you are on  His side  then, when  you see the whole natural

universe melting away  like a dream and  something  else-something  it never

entered your head  to conceive-comes crashing in;  something so beautiful to

some of us  and so terrible to others that  none  of us will have any choice

left?  For  this  time  it  will  be  God  without  disguise;  something  so

overwhelming that  it will  strike either irresistible love  or irresistible

horror into every creature. It  will be too  late then to choose your  side.

There is no use saying you choose to lie down when it  has become impossible

to  stand  up. That will  not be the time for choosing: it will  be the time

when we  discover  which side we really have  chosen, whether we realised it

before or  not. Now, today, this moment,  is our chance to choose the  right

side. God is holding back to give us that chance. It will not last for ever.

We must take it or leave it.