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There is a fantastic
quote by C.S. Lewis in the introduction for my copy of On the
Incarnation, by Athanasius where he says,
“There is a
strange idea abroad that in every subject the ancient books should be
read only by the professionals, and that the amateur should content
himself with the modern books…. This mistaken preference for the
modern books and this shyness of the old ones is nowhere more rampant
than in theology.”
Our
modern day and age, maybe more so than others seems to have a desire
to throw out what is deemed as “old” and “antiquated”, and
rather utilize what is new, sleek and up to date. This is likely true
for every generation of humanity. It just seems the rate for us is so
much quicker. We always want to tear down the fence without ever
asking why it was there in the first place.
I
think the same thing goes for books. I love books. I have many books
and hope to have many more (my wife would disagree). It’s an
attribute and love that I get from my dad, which I am so grateful
for!
In
our day and age of the Church we are looking for the way to reach
out, modified and evolve how we are doing things to interact with a
culture that is very different than 100 years ago. Because of this we
are searching out for the answers of how to address this culture, and
the people who we know are in need of a Savior. And rightly we are
spending a lot of time searching out the answer, looking for new
ways. But what if the answers are already there, thought out, tried
and found working?
Be
it the early church father or the reformers, there is so much
examined and practiced wisdom found in the Christian tradition. So
many of the questions that many are asking that leads to
deconstruction have been grappled with by theologians within a few
generations of the life of Christ. What I think has happened though,
is we have traded the tried and ancient answers of the Church seeking
out flashier answers. And is many cases, the trade off has been
worse. Instead of deep and satisfying answers for the problem of pain
and suffering, we hand out shallow platitudes of evangelical niceness
that do more to hurt those in lament and sorrow than giving them deep
and abiding hope in Christ and the resurrection.
The
answer? Read old books! Things are really only as old and tired as
you are. Dead religion in reality is only as dead or alive as you
are. There can be life and Spirit-aliveness in a high liturgy
service, and complete spiritual deadness in a Charismatic service.
The question to be asked is how alive in Christ is that person? This
holds true to the answers of the ancients. So many of the struggles
we are grappling with have been examined and thought through my men &
women smarter that I hundreds or thousands of years ago.
If
you want a place to get started, you can go to ccel.org which has
HUNDREDS if not thousands of books, sermons and documents that are
free to access, Collections of the depth and breadth of Christian
wisdom through the ages.
Read
old books, live alive in the Spirit.
D.V.