Aslan Revisited
Do you remember Aslan, the lion in CS
Lewis' Narnia chronicles? Gentle, but wild, and potentially dangerous. Certainly not
someone to mess with! Our sinfulness
means that we are always in danger of trying to domesticate God and have him
under our control, rather than us being part of his kingdom. In The
Gravedigger File, Os Guinness argues that in the modern world Christians
often see God as part of their private life but as having nothing to do with
their public or working lives. Guinness describes this privatisation of
Christian faith as the private zoo factor! It is a bit like trying to have
Aslan as prime exhibit in our private zoo.
There he is, powerful and dangerous and wild, but never free to roam and
reign over the countryside in which he belongs.
The
Gravedigger File is
written as a series of memorandums among intelligence operatives in the service
of the Devil. The memoranda are about
strategies for undermining Christianity and its capacity to transform the
world. The Private Zoo memorandum explains
how in the modern world Christianity has increasingly become confined to the
private lives of Christians. According
to Guinness, a chasm has opened up between the public and private spheres of
life, with the private sphere being seen as the sphere of individual fulfilment
and freedom. It is in the private sphere
that the church has positioned itself.
We are familiar with the result. Privatisation of faith is a major victory for
'the other side!' Our societies are full of local churches that are personally
engaging but often socially irrelevant. As Guinness says:
[P]rivatisation
means that the grand, global umbrella of faith has shrunk to the size of a
plastic rain hat. ...Look for a place where the Christian's faith makes a
difference at work beyond the realm of purely personal things (such as
witnessing to colleagues and praying for them, or not swearing and not fiddling
income tax returns). Look for a place
where Christianity is thinking "Christianly" and critically about the
substance of work (about, say, the use of profits and not just personnel; about
the ethics of a multi-national corporation and not just those of a small,
family business; about a just economic order and not just the doctrine of
justification). You will look for a very long time. He or she may be "into
religion", but then so are colleagues "into golfing" or
"into theatre" or a score of other hobbies'
(The Gravedigger File,
81,82).
This privatisation is deeply entrenched
in church life - a whole industry has grown up around 'the empire building of
the local church'. We may talk a lot about Aslan, but a privatised Christianity
ensures that even if the lion roars, it is safely contained behind bars. As we reflect upon work in this edition of
The Big Picture, it is vital that we rediscover God as the hunter, the warrior,
the King, who approaches at infinite speed, and cannot, and will not (what
idolatry!) be confined to our private lives.
It is only as ordinary Christians like you and me repent of such
unbiblical privatisation of our faith, and take seriously our (however
ordinary) work as royal service, that we will make progress towards recovering
faith as a global umbrella rather than as a private zoo. I hope that this edition of TBP will push us
in this direction!
Editorial by Craig
Bartholomew
The Big Picture Volume2 Issue2