It would seem, then, that there is an official Christian
faith, that it fits the facts as we know them, that there is good evidence
to support it, and that there is no really satisfying alternative.
So far from being a piece of out-of-date mumbo-jumbo, it is something not
only which is worth the consideration of the reasonable man, but which the
reasonable man cannot ignore or lightly dismiss.
If anyone, having to the best of his ability gone into the whole matter and
weighed up all the arguments and evidence comes to the honest conclusion
that he cannot accept the Christian faith, that is his right and even his
duty.
What no one has a right to do is to escape his duty, either by asserting
that there is no recognized Christian faith or by assuming, without any thorough
examination, that Christianity is bunk.
But we must now go back to where we started, and repeat that
our belief or disbelief does not at all affect the question whether the Christian
faith is or is not true.
If it is in fact true, we shall have to take the consequences, whether we
believe it or not.
If, therefore, there is any chance of its being true, it is mere common sense
that we should take this into account.
A man when he marries does not know whether or not he will die before his
wife, but there is a reasonable chance that he may, and so he takes out a
life assurance policy.
I am not going to suggest that a man should go to church on the chance that
Christianity may be true, so that if it turns out to be true he will have
taken out a sort of insurance against damnation.
But such a man would at least be acting according to common sense.
What is not rational is either to take it for granted, without any sort of
investigation, that Christianity is not true, or to admit that there is a
chance that it may be true and do nothing about it.
No one could conduct his ordinary business affairs on that basis.
If Christianity is not true, the sensible people are those
who get all they can out of life, who let no moral or unselfish scruples
stand in the way of their own success and enjoyment.
The other poor fools who have wasted their time in good works, in heroic
actions, in the service of others, will be sadly disillusionedor more probably
they will not even have the opportunity of being disillusioned, since they
will just be extinguished.
(It is odd how persistently even the most violent disbelievers seem to shrink
from the idea of extinction -
though what it can matter to them is not clear,
since obviously one could not be conscious of having been extinguished.)
But, if Christianity is true,
we shall have to take it seriously some time,
and the longer we put it off the more we shall deserve blame and indeed shall
blame ourselves.
For we must make no mistakethe condemnation we have to fear is our own.
God will forgive us, but shall we forgive ourselves?
Christians and non-Christians alike, we shall be up against this in the endour
own remorse for things done that cannot be undone, for opportunities neglected,
for affection rejected and spurned.
This is the judgement we all have to face,
if Christianity is true:
and who is prepared to say that he will be able to face it without the help
of Christ?
We may accept all this;
we may be willing (to put it no higher) to take a chance on Christianity
being true.
What does this mean in practice?
Does it mean going to church,
and if so why?
Many people profess themselves ready to accept (at any rate
to a large extent) the Christian view of life, but draw the line at 'institutional
religion'.
Their trump card is the disunity of the Church.
There are so many conflicting claims,
so many unedifying squabbles,
that they are disgusted and disheartened.
This is a serious matter,
but here again it is important to find out the facts before coming to a conclusion.
When Christians disagree,
at least they know (or ought to know) what they are disagreeing about,
and they disagree because they take their religion seriously.
It would be unwise for the non-Christian to assume that all the differences
between Christian sects and denominations are merely perverse and unimportant.
It would be equally unwise for him to assume that because Christians disagree
about many things they disagree about the fundamental things.
Before condemning the whole outfit, he would do well to find out as much
as he can for himself, and then reach his own conclusions, not take his conclusions
ready-made off someone else's peg.
First of all,
why should Christianity have become an 'institutional religion' at all?
It is surely first and foremost a matter of the relation between the individual
soul and God.
Even if this be granted, it has to be remembered that it
is not so much 'the' individual soul as 'each' individual soul.
It is a matter of the relation between God and humanity, and we come into
it as individuals who make up humanity.
None of us is alone.
We are all in this with others, and they with us.
And so there must be a collective relationship as well as an individual relationship,
and this collective relationship finds its natural expression through the
association of individuals in a community.
Then again, from a quite practical and commonsense point
of view, such an association is a necessary machinery for spreading the knowledge
of Christian truth and preserving continuity.
When Christianity began,
the Apostles went about to different places
and started what we should now call 'cells' of persons who had accepted their
teaching.
From these cells the message was passed on to others,
and these new communities acquired lives of their own.
Individuals came and went, lived and died,
but the community went on
and continued to spread its message
and to enlarge and divide like an amoeba under the microscope.
To function effectively, the Christian community, like other
societies, had to have some sort of organization.
There had to be rules to show who belonged to the society and who did not,
some statement of aims and objects to identify the society and distinguish
it from other societies, some recognized code of procedure, some means of
settling differences of opinion.
These are commonplaces of any society, and there is no sensible reason for
grudging them to the Christian society alone.
It is surely unnecessary to labour the point.
Everyone must agree that it is a natural and normal thing that there should
be a Christian Church.
The case against 'institutional religion' as such does not stand examination.
Once this is agreed, we can see a larger meaning in the Church.
We can see it not only as a convenient organization for human purposes, but
as a tool by which God does his work amongst men.
It is, or ought to be, a vast community of human personalities centred upon
God and connected to him through the human personality of Christ.
Saint Paul likens it to a body, of which Christ is the brain and nerve-centre,
and human beings are the limbs or 'members'.
So Christians speak of the Church as the Body of Christ.
But a body must be a unity.
A limb is of no use if it is separated from the rest.
The Church is at present far from being a visible unity, and the practical
question is whether all or any, and if any which, of the various sects can
claim to be 'the Church'.
There is, on the face of it, much to be said for the man who demands that
Christians should first settle their own differences and meanwhile suspends
his judgement.
We have already seen that as regards the 'statement of belief'
on which the whole organization rests there is sufficient agreement amongst
an overwhelming majority of Christians to justify us in regarding a particular
set of statements as official.
But those who agree on this set of statements disagree on other things.
What are these things?
They can be summed up under two headings, though, as will be seen, these
are not entirely separate from each other
Church organization
and the Sacraments.
That is probably the order in which most people would put
them, but it is not really the right order, and it will be best for us to
consider the Sacraments first.
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