When asked how they felt about this concept of the Christian life, many of them admitted that they were not too enthusiastic about it, because it was hard to achieve. They admitted that they failed often and miserably. One man put it rather well when he said that he felt that trying to be a Christian was like whistling in the dark. They all admitted that their concept was widespread among their fellow church members and that it had little appeal. When they were asked why such an unappealing concept of a Christian was so prevalent, they replied that it was due to people’s feeling that they ought to be better than they are. Their discussion revealed further that they were unable to accept themselves as human beings, and that they felt they had to justify themselves by doing good works and by moral living.
That is the reason why Mrs. Strait holds to the moralistic concept of the Christian life. Separated from her husband and feared by her children, she feels acutely vulnerable and guilty. As a defense, she has built for herself a fortress made up of precepts, ideals, and rules, all based on a foundation of righteousness, and this has made her a formidable and rigid person. Like all self-righteous people, she tirelessly dispenses obvious truths, and keeps her own life and that of others narrowly proscribed.
Mrs. Strait is in no way an exception. The lives of moralistic people are not beautiful to behold. They are apt to be conventional, legalistic, and maintainers of the status quo. Because they have no sense of deliverance themselves, they are apt to be ungracious in relation to others. Because they live by the law, they do not show the fruit of the Spirit: namely, the love, joy, peace, and long-suffering which should mark the followers of Christ. They reveal how impossible it is for a human being to be a Christian by himself. He needs the spirit of Christ to live in him and to remake him. As we shall see later, there is available to us the spirit of Christ, who accomplishes in us the righteousness of Christ which is of the spirit and not of the law.21
Moralism also is a sign of our fear and defensiveness. We reduce life to the dimensions of a moral code, because we are afraid to trust the Spirit and to risk the dangers of love and its communication. As one person said, “Let’s be proper so we won’t need to pray, for there is no knowing what God might ask us to do if we really listened to Him.” In other words, moralism is a way of “playing it safe.”
Intellectualism
A fourth concept sometimes held by church members about the faith was exhibited by Mr. Knowles. Its name is intellectualism. This intellectualism, sometimes called gnosticism, claims that knowledge is the source of life, and that the possession of knowledge delivers us from the power of evil. This is an ancient heresy that lives on in every generation. The desire to know and the achievement of skill in the use of knowledge are indeed commendable. But to know is not justifiable as an end in itself. Knowledge about God and man, about the Bible and the Christian faith, about the church and its history, is good and necessary for informed Christian living, but it can in no way substitute for our dependence upon Christ and the work of His spirit in us. We need to know about Christian faith, but it must not replace the need to love and to be loved. Knowledge about God must not become more important than our knowing God.
When religious and theological knowledge becomes an end in itself, the church is apt to become coldly intellectual and sophisticated. I am reminded of a group of laymen who became avid students of Christian theology, and who became so prideful in their achievement that they exhibited in their relations with one another, as well as with their other associates, a spirit of pride, arrogance, and competitiveness. They had acquired the knowledge of Christianity, but they had lost the spirit of the Christ.
The work of Christians is not so much to hold and transmit a knowledge of the faith as it is to be the personal representatives and instruments of Christ in the world. To be sure, Christ’s22 representatives should know what they are talking about and intellectually be able to enter into dialogue with all men. But their knowing should incarnate them, both as persons and in their capacity to represent God and His Christ to men.
This brings us also to a controversy that exists in the field of Christian education. Many people feel that the purpose of the church school is to transmit the content of the Christian faith. Christian education, however, must be personal. It must take place in a personal encounter, and only secondarily is it transmissive. It is true, however, that Christian education is responsible for the continued recital of God’s saving acts, and for the transmission of the subject matter of the historical faith and life of the Christian community. The content of our faith was born of God’s action and man’s response—a divine-human encounter. It is neither possible nor correct to reduce this to subject matter and substitute the transmission of subject matter for the encounter, with the assumption that it will accomplish the same purpose (it cannot, it never has, and it never will). Actually, the relations of transmission and encounter are complementary. Both are needed. The church, as the tradition-bearing community, contains both poles and should not subordinate one to the other. When the content of the tradition is lost, the meaning of the encounter is lost, and in the end even the encounter itself. Then tradition becomes idolatrous and sterile. Both are necessary to the community of faith, and both are meaningless, even dangerous, if separated. Christian teaching is concerned with both.
Mr. Knowles, however, is not happy about the required complementary relation between the content of the Christian faith and his life. As Mrs. Strait uses moralism for a defense, so Mr. Knowles uses his emphasis on the content of the Bible as a way of protecting himself from the deeper and more personal challenges of life. He is estranged from his family, and he is regarded as austere and unfriendly by his employees and many of his business associates. Personal relations frighten him, but by mastery of knowledge he gains superiority and power over others.23