Today I found myself bemused by the thought that C. S. Lewis, regarded by many Evangelicals as their patron saint, could teach at nary an Evangelical school or lead nary an Evangelical church. In the majority of their schools today, his opinions on gender matters would be an issue of first concern, and his stolid regard of egalitarianism as non-Christian would land his resume straight in the circular file without further review. In most of the schools and churches that remain more conservative, his plain Anglicanism, which would look too Catholic–not to mention his smoking and drinking–would do him in….
If unfailing kindness and forbearance is what we seek in the Good, Christ was deficient; if we have high standards for honoring father and mother, it is far from clear that he met them; if we prize strictly predictable traditionalism in religion, he disappoints, likewise if our views on such matters are more liberal. He often demonstrated a lack of what we would consider charity. He deliberately used degrading ethnic slurs, had too much or too little to do with women, wasted time on small things when larger ones needed doing, frequently criticized people with no apparent regard for their feelings, alienated those who might come around to being his allies if he had been more diplomatic, went to sleep instead of taking care of his friends, but later turned around and criticized them for sleeping when he needed them. He made and consumed alcoholic wine. He murdered an innocent tropical plant. He ate the flesh of animals. He didn’t show proper respect for duly constituted authority. He showed excessive respect for duly constituted authority: He was highly inconsistent. Examples of his imperfections could be multiplied, multiplied, in fact, to the point where he could have no more repute in our eyes (apart from the pious traditionalism that whitewashes the tombs of the prophets) than he did in the eyes of most of his countrymen. One could appreciate him for his thaumaturgic abilities, and admit that he said some good things. But God come in the flesh? Hardly.
The difference between Lewis and St. Paul on one hand and Christ on the other, is that the courageous and discerning eye could find good men in the former–but not in Christ, whom to see as the Good Master he claimed to be requires more than wisdom. While we might find a great teacher in Lewis or (exponentially more difficult), an Apostle in Paul, Christ–although no one can at last understand Lewis or Paul without knowing Christ first–is categorically different. He meets no man’s requirements for the righteousness of God, so that when he comes among us he not only is not, but cannot be, recognized–not in the first order because of our sensitivity to sin, but our standards for goodness, which he does not meet.
It is because all our righteousness is filthy rags that we are utterly hopeless sinners, hopeless because we cannot know God when he appears in flesh and blood, so cannot lay hold of him for our salvation….
Read it all. This is a much needed word–we were discussing exactly this last point in Adult Sunday School yesterday–KSH.
“Hutchens,” not “Hitchins,” is his name.
The “Read it all” link did not work for me.
[url=http://merecomments.typepad.com/merecomments/2008/08/short-of-the-ma.html#more]here[/url] is a link to the Touchstone article.
Thank you for posting this — it is, I think, a good clarification of a powerful and startling insight that many of us skirt round the edges of without really confronting it and what it means for us.