Opus 2022-048:  The Church Needs to Be the Church

One of my daily prayers is for the church to wake up and become salt and light again.  At the root of all the problems in our country is a failure of the church.  One of the calls that will often go out is for the pulpits to stand up and declare truth.  The problem we get into is not wanting to get political.  The weakness of the church is that they refuse to address moral issues such as homosexuality because the secular culture says they are political.

How can the church change society?  I came across this statement as I was re-reading Mere Christianity.  I think Lewis gives the pastors too much of an escape clause but I totally agree with what he is really trying to say.

“People say, ‘The Church ought to give us a lead.’  That is true if they mean it in the right way, but false if they mean it in the wrong way.  By the Church they ought to mean the whole body of practicing Christians.  And when they say that the Church should give us a lead, they ought to mean that some Christians - those who happen to have the right talents - should be economists an statesmen, and that all economists and statesmen should be Christians, and that their whole efforts in politics and economics should be direct to putting ‘Do as you would be done by’ into action.  If that happened and if we others were really ready to take it, then we should find the Christian solution for our own social problems pretty quickly.  But, of course, when they ask for a lead from the Church most people mean they want the clergy to put out a political programme (sic).  That is silly.  The clergy are those particular people within the whole Church who have been specially trained and set aside to look after what concerns us as creatures who are going to live for ever:  and we are asking them to do a different job for which they have not been trained.  The job is really on us, on the laymen.”  p. 83

The times when the Christian church has been most influential was not when the pulpits were the most political or even when the laymen were most political.  It has been when the average Christian has been serious about applying their faith to their daily walk.  It means speaking the truth.  It is to be spoken in love but that does not mean watering it down to the point of vacuity.  

If we want the United States to once again be blessed by God then each of us who claims to be a follower of Jesus needs to become salt and light in our daily activities.  It may not be sexy but it is righteous.

Lewis, C.S.  Mere Christianity.  Norwalk, Connecticut:  The Easton Press, 2002.

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