"Disquieting Truth"

C.S. Lewis in Mere Christianity observes,

“If you look for truth, you may find comfort in the end:  if you look for comfort you will not get either comfort or truth—only soft soap and wishful thinking to begin with and, in the end, despair.”

If you were to sum it up, then I suppose you would have to call genuine Christian truth, disquieting.  How can it be other when one seriously and honestly considers one’s life and then compares it to the genuine truths of the Divine?  Indeed, one cannot help but be disquieted.  For one to be otherwise is to be naïve or deluded.

Even to the one who thinks it possible to explain away much of the Scriptures, there still will remain much which challenges one’s life and thinking.  Two current examples will testify to and illustrate the point.

I know of a person who often refers to Jesus words, “Neither do I condemn you, go and sin no more.”  My suspicion is that the focus is upon the former part of the statement and not the second part, the command portion. 

How could one possibly “soft soap” a command not to sin anymore?  In that day and time the weight of the Old Testament Law rested upon the shoulders of all who would follow God.  Jesus’ words that He came to fulfill, not to abolish the Law apply here.  How impossible the task to not sin.  Of course then as now there were those who either redefined sin or look past the inconvenient truths of the Bible.  In doing those things they presume to make it possible to conform one’s life to the same.

The other example to consider is the use of the word “love.”  Over and over one hears that we must love one another.  To be sure one can find comfort in the notion of being loved.  Yet, if one takes time to read and ponder the Scripture’s description of love, and then put that description into practice it become quite another matter.

Thus I go back to say that true and genuine Christianity is disquieting as it should be for in the spiritual disciplines of life we are brought into contact with the One who is described as Truth and genuine truth is always disquieting to our fleshly nature and its insatiable demands. 

Those things that we read in the Scriptures, what we discover as we ponder the words of Scripture, what the Holy Spirit reveals to us in prayer, and what we hear from the pulpit should be disquieting.  Why?  C.S. Lewis points out that unless we believe we are sick we do not receive the advice of the physician.  If we do not see ourselves as not measuring up to Great Physician, we simply do not see ourselves as spiritually diseased and disquieted and thus heed the commands of the One who became flesh and who lived among us.  This is the great lie which has deceived man in general and many who claim Christ in particular.

The truth of the matter when compared to the eternal and immutable truths of the Bible, is that I am not okay, You are not okay!  The beauty of it all is that when the Christian knows this he is afforded the opportunity to take action but not just any action.  It is the action in which Christ's provision of strength to live according to His Words--Words of Truth is afforded to the believer.  And in those areas of which one is not aware?  This is where God's grace enters into the life of the beliver.