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Jim's PERSPECTIVENovember 25, 2013In E. Stanley Jones’, Is the Kingdom of God Realism? he states in the first chapter that the book was partly motivated by an exchange between the author and a Russian actress. She asked if he were a religious man. When he affirmed that he was, she said, “You are religious because you are weak.” And in order to illustrate, she took his hand and told him, “You want someone to hold your hand.” This was written in 1940. I heard practically the same thing expressed in a different context just recently. A National Public Radio TED Radio Hour broadcast on the subject of belief and doubt featured a segment with one of the “unbelievers.” Alain de Botton, the Swiss/British author of a 2012 book entitled Religion for Atheists: A Non-Believers Guide to the Uses of Religion, pointed out that, in the context of moral guidance and reason for being, even the grandest and best institutions of higher learning (he mentions Harvard, Oxford and Cambridge) “Don’t feel that people have an urgent need of assistance…They see people as rational adults. They do not need help.” While he encourages other “secular” people to learn some of the lessons religion has to offer, he still thinks that people believe in God out of what he calls a “psychological necessity.” One thing that immediately came to mind as I listened to the interview is that this is nothing new. I have been hearing that almost all of my life. I know and have known many who feel the same way. And in my pre-converted past I thought that very thing, that a profession of faith in Jesus, or, rather, the need for the help of a savior, is for a weak person, something that I did not consider myself to be. Now I know better. John Newton, in his hymn “Amazing Grace,” states in the second verse, “It was Grace that taught my heart to fear, and Grace my fears relieved….” I totally get that because I experienced it myself and continue to experience it. I am myself amazed that many non-Christians sing and love that song, because I sense that most of them have no awareness of what drives it. John Newton’s guilty background (read: “psychological necessity”) as the former captain of a slave ship is indeed a part of it, but it is not primary. In my understanding, it is the power of God, that is, the Spirit of God that enables one to comprehend one’s need. And the power of God—the power of the Cross of Christ—meets the need. In my view, the failure to see one’s need for Grace, or to recognize one’s need for help, is one of the effects of blindness. But blindness really is a result of sin. When I encountered the resurrected Christ in August 1972, it was a shock—an eye-opener—for me to learn that I was a sinful person. Put another way, I “saw” that I was full of sin. Put still another way, I realized that I was, to the core of my being, a selfish and wicked individual. Up to then I had always thought of myself as a pretty nice guy. This revelation scared me, and not just a little. I was both horrified and terrified to realize the truth of my own nature. However, in the same encounter, and in the midst of this “discovery,” I experienced the totally loving, totally forgiving, God who Is. I learned that, as Charles Wesley said, “His Nature and his Name is love.” And I can now say, with Newton and countless others, “How precious did that Grace appear, the hour I first believed.” In the ninth chapter of John’s gospel, Jesus, after healing a man born blind, goes out to search for the man, who had been expelled from an earlier meeting with the Sanhedrin, the Jewish judicial/ecclesial ruling council. The Sanhedrin had summoned him and his family to give testimony concerning the alleged healing. When the council tried to force the man to retract his statement that Jesus was the one who had healed him, the man said, “One thing I do know. I was blind but now I see.” They unceremoniously threw him out. When Jesus found the man he told him, “For judgment I have come into this world, so that the blind will see and those who see will become blind.” John also records that some Pharisees who had overheard Jesus make this bold statement, indignantly (my word) asked, “What? Are we blind also?” Or, rather, again in my words, “Are you saying that we are blind?” Jesus’ response to the inquiring Pharisees has always struck me as astounding. He said, “If you were blind (or said—or admitted—you were blind), you would not be guilty of sin; but now that you claim that you can see, your guilt remains.” Claiming not to be blind, or, rather, claiming to be able to see, when one is actually blind is both ignorant and arrogant. But it goes to show that before Jesus opens ones’ eyes people are simply not aware of their blindness (or their wretchedness and need), or else they really do see it and just won’t admit it. John Newton was not aware of his, I was not aware of mine, and the author of Religion for Atheists is not aware of his—yet. Because the resurrected Jesus opened Saul/Paul’s eyes, he understands the paradox—and certainly the principle—that in Christ “once I was blind, now I can see.” And the logical extension of this idea for him (and for me) is that in Christ “when I am weak, then I am strong.” The real key to understanding the paradoxes of sight out of blindness, strength out of weakness, and fulfillment out of need are in these two words—“in Christ.” - Jim Radford |
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©2013 Jim Radford. All rights reserved. Unauthorized duplication prohibited.
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