New Testament Christianity
by J B Phillips
11. SOME CONCLUSIONS
The foregoing chapters have all
been given as addresses to groups of people in different parts of this country
and in
1. The way of recovery for modem man
lies undoubtedly through the recovery of the whole Christian Church.
Throughout the centuries there has been no deep and lasting revitalisation of
the Christian religion unless the rekindled faith has been welded into the life
of the existing Church. Enthusiastic "splinter‑groups" and
separatist movements may blaze impressively for a time, but if the new life is
to be effectual it must flow into the body of believers already existing,
however moribund and defeated they may appear to have become. It is not so
much the isolated Christian as a purified and refreshed fellowship which will
be the effective witness to a largely despairing world.
2. I find that there is a definite
movement towards a united Church, and a very deep desire to see the end of
"our unhappy divisions". I have found this strongly marked desire in
all denominations, including my own, and for myself I would say that unless a man
is completely blind and bigoted, he could scarcely deny that the living Spirit
of God is using gentle but considerable pressures to bring all Christians
together. Young Christians particularly, many of whom are in daily contact in
office, garage, factory, and workshop with ardent young Communists, find the
tragedy of a divided Christendom a painful obstacle to their witness. As has
been brought home to me so many times, the points of agreement among the
Christian denominations are so very much larger than the points of disagreement
that, surrounded as we are by a largely pagan world, it is the height of folly
to say or do anything which postpones the process of unity or perpetuates our
differences. Prayer is probably the best weapon here, since a real influx of
the living Spirit into existing denominations would quickly expose the
stupidity and sin of maintaining denominational barriers of which, be it
firmly said, many keen young Christians are not even
aware.
3. I am not at all convinced that the modem
evangelistic techniques of arousing sin and guilt are the best. The successes
of such campaigns are paraded before us, but in common with many other clergy
and ministers, I know something of the failures. I know of scores of people who
are naturally resistant to guilt‑injection, but would, I believe, be
among the first to follow Christ if only they could see Him. But they are not
going to be shouted at or crooned over, and they give mass meetings a wide
berth. I believe that, although of course we are all "sinners", the
clamant modern need is to be "saved" from the materialism and
hopelessness of modern civilisation rather than from the sins the evangelist
denounces. Most people in my experience are not so much sinful as bewildered.
They need to be shown Christ as He really is. They need to be shown in fresh
ways the basic Christian belief that God, Who is far greater and more complex
in His wisdom than our grandfathers ever imagined, became focused for our
understanding as well as for our salvation in the Man Jesus. They need to be
shown afresh the vast scheme of the redemption of human living, the building of
the
All the above, and a great deal
more, needs to be thought out with the utmost care. We must studiously avoid
the cliché and the over‑used familiar phrases which are meaningless to
the man who is outside the Church. We need to reword, to retranslate, as it
were, the Good News. We need so to present the Character and Purpose of God
that men and women will seek in it, not so much individual salvation (though
that is included), but a worth‑while Cause with which people will
joyfully cooperate and to which they will willingly give their adult loyalty.
4.
Closely allied to the problem of presenting the Good News in relevant attention‑compelling
terms is the need to enlist in the service of Christ's Church the diffused good‑will
of the vast army of "unconscious Christians". Again, as far as I can
see, the technique of modern high‑pressure evangelists has little to
offer to such people. I know a number of them personally, and they are already,
for reasons of which they are largely unconscious, undeniably exhibiting the
fruits of the Spirit. What I am sure they need to be told is that the very ideals which they follow so devotedly derive from an actual Person
Who is alive today. How enormously enriched would the life of the Church
become if she could receive within her fellowship not merely a small proportion
but all the social workers, nurses, doctors, almoners, probation officers, all
those who care for the blind, the deaf and dumb, the crippled children, the
mentally defective, and the insane. And how fortified and
re-inspired would so many of these wonderful people be if they were doing their
work, not merely in obedience to a vague ideal, but for the love of Christ and
in the fellowship of His Church.
5. Near the beginning of this book there
is a little fantasy called "The Angels' Point of View". I am sure
that it would do us all a power of good if we would take time off, and use our
imaginations to see what is really happening on this earth from the point of
view of Heaven. We might see how pathetically ready man is to be fascinated by
what we might call the technical marvels of the age ‑ how thrilled he is
with the so‑called electronic "brain", with the breaking of
speed records, by the possibility of an artificial satellite, and such‑like
achievements. Yet if we were observing life from the true point of view, we
should see how infinitely more important it is to recognise what is really
going on in the world of human beings than to goggle at any number of physical
marvels. We should see how few, how tragically few, are even trying to find out
what the Creator's Plan might be for this world, and how even fewer are
prepared to cooperate with it. From the angels' point of view, what enormous
waste of energy, courage, talent, and personality there must be in many of
Man's highly‑lauded
projects. The angels might well ask themselves: "Why does
he want to go so fast, to climb so high, to dive so deep, and to complicate his
life with so many inventions while he leaves the heart of the matter
untouched?" For since Man has been promised a share in the timeless life
of God, how blind and earthbound he must appear as he spends his best
ingenuities, his highest intellects, and the bulk of his resources upon what is merely ephemeral! If a thousandth part of the devotion
and energy which are so freely given to athletic achievement or scientific research
were devoted to the building of the
But because Man's faith‑faculty
is atrophied and because his knowledge of spiritual resources is
infinitesimal, he devotes enormous energies and ingenuity to amassing knowledge
and solving problems on their purely physical level. Where the human shoe
really pinches; where the problems are moral, psychological, and spiritual;
where, in fact, the painful patient building of the
If we will train ourselves to
see life steadily from the true point of view, we cannot help seeing how very
slowly it dawns upon modem man that his real problems, his real conflicts, can
never be resolved on the physical plane. A man may travel far faster than
sound, but that does not help him in the least to deal with the problem of his
own marriage which is fast breaking up. He may successfully launch an
artificial satellite, but that does nothing to solve the squalid conditions in
which his fellow‑men have to live only a few streets away. He may invent
and produce commercially 3‑D television for every home, but he has not
made the slightest contribution towards solving the problems that arise in
home, industry and nation ‑ the selfishness, cruelty, and greed, the
fears, resentments, and suspicions, that poison our common life. Perhaps the
time is not too distant when the bankruptcy of scientific achievement to solve
human problems will become increasingly obvious. Perhaps Man will then return,
not indeed to rediscover any oldfashioned "hell‑fire"
religion, but to seek realistically that quality of living which transforms
personality, and which we may fairly call "New Testament
Christianity".
New Testament Christianity
by J B Phillips