The Essence of Christianity - Part Two

I said yesterday that the most important aspect of my faith (Christianity) is the Gospel. I defined "Gospel" as "the historical, reliable, propositional, Biblical truths regarding Jesus Christ." Today I'll pick up with the third part of that definition: the essence of Christianity is the propositional truths about Jesus.

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I also say the Gospel is propositional.

This is maybe the most academic-sounding part of the definition. Which also means it's probably where most of you will stop reading. But stick with me!

To say that Christianity is propositional means that it offers assertions that may be deemed true or false. (Obviously, I vote true.)

Why would I bother throwing in this terribly unexciting concept at all, much less saying it is one of the most important elements of Christianity? I include it because I think we have a tendency to think the most important aspect of religion is not truth, but experience. We don't want "cold doctrine", we want meaningful, vibrant, emotional experience. Look at what most churches spend their money on: lighting, sound equipment, staging, huge screens, video production, etc.

We're not so much concerned with, "Is it true?" as we are with, "Does it work? What does it do for me? Does it make me happy and improve my life and help society function and help me get through hard times?"

Don't get me wrong: experience is crucial to Christianity.

Jonathan Edwards (arguably America's greatest theological mind) was a man passionate for truth. But one of his most famous books is Religious Affections, and a major point of that book is that Christianity without "affections" (i.e. meaningful, emotional experience) is not Christianity. It is cold, dead intellectualism.

I'm not hating on emotional experience. My blog is called "Exceedingly Glad" for crying out loud. I want an emotional, experiential Christianity!

But we can't divorce emotional experience from truth. Our joy and comfort and peace and love as Christians must be rooted in the truth of the Gospel. It is totally possible to go to church and leave feeling encouraged and excited, and it have absolutely nothing to do with Jesus. Maybe it's because the music was great, or someone complimented you or thanked you for being so friendly. Maybe it's because the preacher was really funny and engaging and you feel motivated to finally take those old clothes to the Salvation Army. There are a million things that can give you a meaningful, emotional experience without regard to ultimate truth.

That's a problem, because when you stop being concerned with whether your emotions are tethered to the truth-claims of Christianity, all you have left is an experience that makes life a little better and helps us be a little happier, etc. And if you find that experience in Christianity and I find it in Buddhism, who's to say one is right or wrong? It's all good, so long as we both find something that makes us happy! (For you geeks in the class, that's called post-modernism.)

That idea would work really well if it weren't for one completely insurmountable obstacle: Jesus.

Sure, if you want to take the name "Jesus" and then superimpose whatever ideas you like on him, regardless of anything he actually did or said, you can make post-modernism work. But when you start actually reading what Jesus taught and how he spoke to people and the specific claims he made (namely that He IS God and there is no other true religion), you realize that he won't let us make him whatever we want him to be. He didn't leave us the option of regarding him as just an inspirational figure, or one of many valid ways to God, or even simply a meek-mannered, gentle man.*

What he does leave us is a proverbial mother-lode of statements, claims, and assertions for us to evaluate and determine if there's any measure of truth or reliability in them.

In other words, Jesus (and the apostles) literally left us a book full of propositions.

So we can't just talk about Christianity in terms of getting our emotional needs met or having some personal spiritual or mystical experience. We have to deal with truth-claims if we're going to deal with real Christianity.

Tomorrow I'll give you a little more insight into why I came to this conclusion, as well as some examples to make it a little more practical and personal.

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*Jesus is indeed meek, gentle, and peaceful in many circumstances. But we can't take just those examples and pretend like Jesus wasn't also bold and controversial. The Jews didn't try to stone him on multiple occasions because he was so loving and friendly.

Everybody wants Jesus on their team (one of the many reasons I believe He is truly God), and many people will just take the parts of Jesus they like in order to reinforce their own particular biases. I'm as guilty as anyone of this, because we all have blindspots.

But the point is, there is a full-faceted person here. And we have to deal with the whole man.

C.S. Lewis makes a great argument in this regard: Based on everything Jesus said and claimed, he is either incredibly arrogant and deceitful, or insane, or he might actually be who he claimed to be. He can't just be a great model for peace or love or acceptance or whatever particular bent you and I might have.

He is either liar, lunatic, or Lord.