Moderately Important

"One must keep on pointing out that Christianity is a statement which, if false, is of no importance, and, if true, of infinite importance. The one thing it cannot be is moderately important."  CS Lewis

I bumped into this quotation from Christian Apologetics at the back end of the summer and I must confess I didn’t like it very much at all. Don’t get me wrong, I agree with it, I agree with CS Lewis as a default setting – the sum of my life’s thinking wouldn’t be a fair exchange for a half-decent paragraph of Lewis. What I didn’t like was it’s diagnosis of my spiritual condition, a soul drifting in the summer sun and allowing the crucial to become the peripheral and vice versa. There is nothing particularly wrong with Test Match Special and a glass of Rioja, but perhaps they shouldn’t be allowed to define us.

But having put on my hair shirt and thwacked myself a few times as penance, I noticed the first six words of the quotation above which are often omitted when repeated elsewhere – ‘one must keep on pointing out’. At some time in my past, and possibly yours, there was a season when my innermost being realised that to follow Christ was of infinite importance, life was (gloriously) different from that moment on. There have been various dark times since, and undoubtedly there will be in the future, but at no point have I concluded that Christianity was of no importance, I think that would be too recognisable as a dimension of the spiritual battle. But if I’m honest, living at times as if following Christ was of moderate importance is something I can be fairly accused of. Cranmer, in the Book of Common Prayer, would have us confess our sins of negligence, weakness and deliberate fault. We tend to put our hands up to the deliberate fault stuff – sorry, O Lord, that I kickest the cat verily–  but it’s harder to recognise that subtle negligence and weakness, and it is in this we reduce Jesus Christ to moderate importance. CS Lewis identifies this not as a one-off problem, but as a condition of the church that frequently needs pointing out.

So I point it out to myself again, and I point it out to my brothers and sisters at Malmesbury Abbey, that this isn’t and never was moderately important. And it crucially matters that we make very effort to stay spiritually alive and well this autumn. How vicar? I’m not sure that there is anything new under the sun really: simply engaging each week in corporate worship, serving together in ministry and mission, and allowing some space in our (daily) lives to meet with God, will go a long way to rescue us from moderation. And also not kidding ourselves that spiritual consistency and growth will happen between now and Yule unless we actually make changes to effect it.

‘Who do you say I am?’