From the President: Is Our Piety "Pagan"?
By Dr. Chris Seiple on 03 February 2006
“If there’s anyone who can appear before Aslan without their knees knocking, they’re either braver than most or else just silly.”
“Then he isn’t safe?” said Lucy.
“Safe?” said Mr. Beaver; “don’t you hear what Mrs. Beaver tells you? Who said anything about safe? ‘Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good. He’s the King, I tell you.”
There is nothing safe about worshipping a King. Yet for many of us who are Christians, safety is what we daily seek. We take safety in knowing the rules, drawing the boundaries. A black-and-white world feels safer than a world of gray.
We feel safe when we keep score, if only to prove our success in His name. We pray for quantifiable favor and prosperity from God, but forget about our own sin. We draw theological boundaries—determining who’s in, and who’s not—but lose sight of the fact that His body is bigger than our church. We count the souls we’ve saved for our Savior, but do not live out radical obedience to the King who is sovereign over all spheres of life.
Certainly, issues of accountability, prosperity, theology and evangelizing are biblical and important. But in our pious pronouncements of certainty about them, are our means of worship becoming more important than the ends of worship? We “bow down to the work of [our] hands, to what [our] fingers have made” (Isaiah 2:8). Within the simplifying safety of religion, we remove the mystery and majesty of our faith. Or as Jesus said: “You have forgotten the more important matters ... justice, mercy and faithfulness” (Matthew 23:23).
Oswald Chambers wisely warns us: “We have shown our ignorance of Him in the very way we determined to serve Him…. Have I been persecuting Jesus by a zealous determination to serve Jesus in my own way?”
Do we dare to be true disciples of Christ, and not merely “pagan Christians” who seek reassurance in empty idols and rituals? Will we center on Jesus and remember that He is the keeper of the scorecard? Will we focus on being a member of His body, letting Him draw the boundaries? Will we see life as a chance to love Him by loving others, knowing that He will provide?
It won’t be safe: we might meet a woman by the well; we might drink wine with a tax collector; we might have to pray for an enemy. We might even meet someone outside of our churches.
But it will be good: because our King does not need our regulating religion, only our faithful obedience.
“He’s the King, I tell you.” He does not promise safety, only the security of eternity with Him.
Last updated 21 April 2009