Merton and Mere Christianity

Christopher shared a Merton quote that is incredibly powerful in its call to 'mere Christianity.' In the article, "Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander," Merton devastates the modernist tendency to deny Jesus Christ as the Son of God, all the while claiming to be Christian:

I think, then, that in our eagerness to go out to modern man and meet him on his own ground, accepting him as he is, we must also be truly what we are. If we come to him as Christians we can certainly understand and have compassion for his unbelief -- his apparent incapacity to believe. But it would seem a bit absurd for us, precisely as Christians, to pat him on the arm and say "As a matter of fact I don't find the Incarnation credible myself. Let's just consider that Christ was a nice man who devoted himself to helping others!"

This would, of course, be heresy in a [Christian] whose faith is a radical and total commitment to the truth of the Incarnation and Redemption as revealed by God and taught by the Church. . . . What is the use of coming to modern man with the claim that you have a Christian mission -- that you are sent in the name of Christ -- if in the same breath you deny Him by whom you claim to be sent?

Wow. A truly prophetic voice.

Here Merton strikes the same prophetic note that C. S. Lewis often struck: Don't claim to believe in Jesus Christ if you don't believe in Him as the Son of God. Lewis’ quote in Mere Christianity is famous, but forever incisive:

I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: "I'm ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don't accept His claim to be God." That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic -- on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg -- or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.

What secularist Christians do -- often for the sake of relevance or rights -- is divest the Cross of Christ of its power. But in patronizing Christ we lose something infinite ourselves. And for our world.

Thanks Christopher, for the Merton quote. Incisive. Apt. Timely. True.