Simply Christian made simpler

I hope Tom Wright won’t mind my paraphrasing his beautiful work, Simply Christian. His writing is inspirational, and yet I find many of my Christian friends don’t read him. I attempt here in my next few posts to summarize and make concise this thoughtful work that is the Mere Christianity of our day. And I hope these summaries will lead you to read his works in full.

Introduction:  Simply Christian is divided into three questions.   Why do we long for things like justice? What does Christianity have to do with these longings?  And how are we agents of God?

Echoes of a Voice (chapter 1)

There’s a voice inside us that calls for justice.  We hear it on the playground when children shout, “That’s not fair!” Our hearts sink when the innocent person gets locked up and the guilty person goes free.  We shiver at the injustice of earthquakes and plagues that take more lives than wars. There is a sense of out-of-jointness about injustice that we can’t seem to get over, and it permeates our own individual lives because, even though we have high moral standards, we still can’t seem to live up to them–I know what I ought to do, but at least some of the time, I don’t do it. And if I’m honest, I sometimes condemn others for things that I do myself.

We can say this echo of a voice for justice is only a silly dream and that we need to put aside our fantasies of fighting for justice and live in the real world.  But then we are condemned to cynicism and despair.

We can also say that this echo of a voice for justice belongs to another world, that someone is calling us to a higher standard, to peace, and this is how Islam, Judaism and Christianity explain the voice. The voice from somewhere else whispers, “Step up.  There’s a better way to live. It’s not just a dream.”

Christianity claims this voice we hear came to live with us two thousand years ago: Jesus of Nazareth.  He came to show us what is meant by the voice we hear.  He gave people hope that things were finally going to be put right.

The early Christians report Jesus as being someone who went to lots of parties and celebrations. They report him as an exaggerator, saying things like “stop trying to get a speck out of your brother’s eye when you have a plank in your own.” He changed people’s names, sometimes to amusing things like calling Peter, Rocky, and James and John, the Thunder Boys.

But the other side of Jesus was that he embodied our sorrow. He met sick, sad, despairing, uncertain people.  He shared their pain and healed them.  He wept, he grieved and was himself in agony.  He sorrowed with the world he had made.  He took on the tears of the world and made them his own in order to carry out God’s rescue operation –to restore things, to put them “to rights.”

And so, those of us who acknowledge the echos of a voice crying for justice as Jesus calling to us feel deeply compelled to be part of His plan to restore things, to make things right.

Coming . . . Echoes of a Voice (part 2)  But aren’t Christians part of the problem?