CHRISTIANITY IS JUST A CRUTCH!
‘Christianity is nothing more than a crutch to help people who cannot stand up to life.’ How do we answer this objection?
It would be easy to fill these pages with the names of outstanding men and women who have been zealous Christians. We have only to mention the world’s leading reformers, thinkers, and pioneer scientists to show that Christianity has been the faith of some of the greatest men in history.
But there is a much more important issue raised by the ‘crutch’ idea, because it tells us something about ourselves and how we look at life.
If we are inclined to see Christianity as an unnecessary crutch, then it is because we view this world as a purely material world. It is because we have left out of our reckoning the existence of a real God, and we have lost all awareness of a spiritual dimension. We have forgotten about the soul.
Once these things are completely cut out of our thinking, then of course Christianity will seem to be nothing but a psychological crutch. But we will have limited ourselves and our lives to material things only. We will have climbed into the most restricting straightjacket of all, and in that state countless thousands of people spend their entire lives.
When I was a child I remember that in a nearby street there lived a man who was said to be fabulously rich, and he certainly lived in a very large house. However, he was a miser. his house had not seen a fresh coat of paint in years and his front drive was completely overgrown with weeds. He walked about in ancient, threadbare clothes looking a picture of misery.
What was the purpose of his self-imposed misery? What could possibly be said in favour of his hoarding up money, while he bent his back and suffered unnecessary penury? What caused him to take up this voluntary poverty?
The answer is - it was completely irrational. And that is all that can be said about the strange determination which seizes us to confine our lives to the things which are visible and temporary, and to shrink away from things which are invisible, spiritual and everlasting. Why are we like this?
Suppose a bird has an injured wing and cannot fly. And suppose a small boy gently takes it into his house, brings a saucer of water and tries to coax the bird to drink. It is hopeless, for the poor bird is just a bundle of trembling fear and apprehension. The boy wants to help, and the fluid is what that bird longs for, but its terror and apprehension is all-powerful.
Why is it that we are so terrified of the things we most need - invisible, spiritual and eternal values? Man seems so determined to be limited and to live without any experience of finding God.
A mind closed!
When medical scientists first began to realise that infections were caused by germs, there were some surgeons and doctors who stubbornly refused to accept the new ideas. There was one notable case of a professor of gynaecology who insisted that a certain, fatal childbirth fever could not be caught or passed from one person to another.
He simply would not accept the germ theory of disease. So if he had two or three bad cases in a ward, he would fill that ward with perfectly healthy mothers-to-be. Soon they would all catch the disease, and most would die, but to this professor it proved nothing. He was absolutely determined to keep his mind closed against the existence of microscopic germs. It was madness. It was just crazy prejudice. But it actually happened.
Why are we all just the same over spiritual things? Why do we cut ourselves off from so much knowledge and truth, and stick solely to the things which we can see and touch?
Why are we all instinctively frightened to hear about God, about Heaven and hell, about how we can be forgiven by God, and about how we can come to know Him? Why do we cringe away as though almighty God were some monster to be avoided at all costs?
It is the most tragic and unreasonable self-imposed restriction possible, because without spiritual life every man and woman is hopelessly incomplete. We were never designed to be complete without spiritual life. We were never meant to live merely like higher animals, trying to get satisfaction from material things alone.
A man or woman without spiritual life, who does not know God, may as well be a robot. We get up in the morning, work all day, eat, watch television and go back to bed. Most of the days of our lives are spent like that until it is time to lie down for the last time.
Alongside that, our lives are filled with worries and cares over nothing but earthly things. We can only lighten the burden by getting solace from possessions and pleasures. There is nothing else to life.
Life is restricted and absolutely predictable when lived within the narrow limits of physical and material things. We have no awareness of God, and certainly no ability to feel Him or to receive His help, power and guidance.
Without spiritual life we cannot conquer our failings, and even our strengths eventually become weaknesses. A man may have, for example, great inventive abilities, but without spiritual life he is just a bundle of human complexes. Like weeks in a garden these soon tangle themselves round the man’s gift and in no time he is motivated by pride, jealousy, and money. His ability is soon tarnished, spoiled and dominated by all these things.
Here is another problem. Whether we like it or not, without spiritual life we are at the mercy of the material world. We are totally at the mercy of material things. Appetites dominate us.
Forces which rule us
An inner voice is always saying, I must have this; I must have that.’ Houses, cars, furniture, clothes; indeed, all the fickle tinsel of this world has the power to own us. We work and spend our years in the service of such things, dreaming of them day and night. Ambitions for promotion, status and authority put a tension into us which at times may take over our nervous system and cause us to think that there is nothing more important in the world.
Yes, we are ruled by earthly appetites and desires because we have no spiritual life in us to lift us up above these things, and to give us an altogether higher purpose in life.
Without spiritual life we are like that cavalry unit at the Battle of Sebastopol in the last century - the famous charge of the Light Brigade. They hurled themselves into a valley ambush because their officers did not perceive the trap which had been laid. Driven on by blind optimism those officers took their men into annihilation. Even as the enemy cannon around them began to fire, and the horses fell, they urged their men on into certain destruction.
They called it heroism! They called it glorious! Nowadays we call it utter madness and folly. We gasp at the pompous, mindless standards of their so-called leadership. We say, ‘What did the sacrifice of all those young lives, spent in a few moments, achieve?’
But we find it harder to see the same folly in ourselves, as we drive our personal lives forward into the valley of life on the same unthinking basis. The years ahead of us are full of hidden dangers and tragedies which lurk along life’s pathway. What will happen to us?
Will I make a bad marriage and become desperately embittered? Will my children go wrong? Will war shake Europe and my life be turned completely upside down? Will I be made redundant? Will be injured or become seriously ill? Will the road of life change me as a person?
Without spiritual life in me, I do not even see the dangers. I do not detect the gradual hardening of my character, and the ever-quickening slide into compromise and lies. The partial idealism of youth is soon gone, and the young person becomes a cheat and a hypocrite hooked on materialism like the middle-aged generation he once despised.
Without spiritual life we are incomplete and dependent upon material things. We are so naive and unaware of our true situation.
I am sorry for my closing illustration for it is a terrible and tragic one. During the last war, and during the ill-fated Operation Market Garden, the most terrible moment of all must have been the disastrous landing of Polish paratroopers on to enemy guns. The landing zones which had been selected for the Polish division turned out to be full of enemy troops.
We tremble to imagine what it must have been like for those paratroopers when they found themselves falling into heavy fire. There was no turning back. There was nothing they could do. What must the last moments of so many of those young paratroopers have been like?
I hesitate to use these men as an illustration, and I imply nothing about them, for I do not know how prepared they were to meet death. But for countless people the last moment of life will be like this, but in a spiritual sense. Many will find themselves leaving this life to face the Judge of all the earth - with no spiritual life or hope.
It will be too late. In that final moment, total fear will grip the soul. Crossing from time into eternity will be the last, terrible surprise. But there will be no escape, no turning back.
There is a verse in the Bible which reads, The things which are seen [visible] are just temporary and passing, but the things which are invisible are everlasting. This comes from the pen of the great apostle Paul and is found in 2 Corinthians chapter 4, verse 18.
Spiritual liberty
The visible and material things by which we are determined to be restricted are only temporary things. They are fallible, fading and weak things. And finally, they are disappointing things.
Spiritual things, on the other hand, are as different as words could describe. We begin to experience spiritual things when we are forgiven and converted by the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ.
Any man, woman or young person who feels his or her great spiritual deadness, who feels deeply ashamed of all sin, and who truly desires to be forgiven and converted, may approach Christ. We may go to Christ, praying earnestly for forgiveness, and yielding our lives to Him.
it is possible to find Him personally, and to experience His friendship, guidance and power. (the centre-page article in this magazine, What exactly is conversion? will help you.)
Christianity is no mere crutch! It is the message which shakes us out of our strange, irrational desire to live for the material world only, so that our souls remain dead and lifeless.
Why are we so determined to stay incomplete and without spiritual experience? Why do we give ourselves, body and soul, to this passing, material realm? The things which are seen are only temporary. The things which are invisible - that is spiritual - are real and everlasting.
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