Against Christianity

My favorite story when I was little was "The Emporer's New Clothes." It fascinated me that a whole village could fail to admit what was right in front of them. I kind of wanted to be like that little boy who announced that the king was naked.
So, I have just finished the church's version of that story:

The book is Peter Leithart's Against Christianity, and this is the most controversial book on the church I have read in a long time.

Dr. Leithart speaks in this book about our cutural conceptions of "Christianity" as being heretical because these concepts are not the living out of the gospel on earth.
I know he's right, but I'm like those people watching the naked king, I have to adjust my thinking in many ways in order to catch up to this reality.
It has been there all along, and I have only slowly been waking up to it for the past several years. It's such a revelation.
It's not what I grew up with.
What a glorious relief to see that, where the Christian church looks hypocritical....it's because it IS.....it isn't a failure of Christ, it is a failure of men.

This book is brilliant and truthful. But it will certainly not be understood by the people in the church who need to hear it the most.

Leithart's argument is not with Biblical salvation, or with the people who are living it out. His trouble is with Western culture's concept of Christianity , and of theology, and sacraments as they function within the church.
These are, in so very many mainstream American churches, dead human constructions with only the narrowest shadow of connection to real fellowship with God or unity in the body of Christ.

He speaks of "transformed lives, personal, social and political."
That the faith we have in Christ isn't on an equal footing with other belief systems and philosophies, something that can be evaluated logically to determine it's value. That this faith results in transformed lives.
I have experienced this, and I have seen it. It's real.
I've also seen people and big churches who have claimed it, but show no fruit. That fruitless ness does not make the gospel untrue. But we can know that where we see no fruit, the Holy Spirit is absent.

Really, if God's promises are true, if we are all equipped to do every good work, if every big high profile church were full of spirit filled men and women living in obedience, wouldn't North America look different today? The 6:00 news sure would.

This book will either make you mad, or it will change your life.

It brings this article by Michael Spencer to mind. Here, an upcoming collapse of the evangelical church is described....very like the present economic collapse.

And, for some good listening on fundamentally the same subject....here is Paul Martin speaking just a few days ago.