Practical Christianity: A Work in Progress

Among the (many) excuses people have for not exploring Christianity, there are two that are polar opposites, yet equally effective at keeping God at arm’s length:

1.      “Christians are perfect, and I’m simply not good enough.”

2.      “Christians are hypocrites. They pretend to be all goody-goody, but turn out to be just as bad as the rest of us.”

While William Wilberforce’s A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Higher and Middle Classes is an essay aimed at exposing the hypocrisy mentioned in point 2, he does manage to address these two claims: 

“The enemies of Religion are sometimes apt to compare the irreligious man, of a temper naturally sweet and amiable, with the religious man of natural roughness and severity; the irreligious man of natural activity, with the religious man who is naturally indolent; and thence to draw their inferences. But this mode of reasoning is surely unjust. If they would argue and question fairly, they should make their comparisons between persons of similar natural qualities, and not in one or two examples, but in a mass of instances. They would ben be compelled to confess the efficacy of Religion, in heightening the benevolence and increasing the usefulness of men…. …true Religion, while it would have implanted these qualities in persons in whom before they had no place, would in general have given, to these very characters in whom they do exist, additional force in the same direction.”

True Christianity is “a state into which we are not born, but into which we must be translated; a nature which we do not inherit, but into which we are to be created anew.” Christians are exactly the same as non-Christians in that they are sinners needing salvation. They’re messed up, broken, and yes, they can often be hypocritical. But Christianity is about following Christ, not about the other people doing the following.

As for the first excuse: Again, it’s not about the followers. When running a race, it can be easy to be distracted by how well other runners are doing. Comparison is often counterproductive. The best way to run the race to the best of your ability is to “keep your eyes on the prize” as it were.

“God can give effect to the weakest effort”

It is so overwhelming, trying to be good when all natural instinct leans toward sin. And the sense of being a failure can make any progress seem unachievable. Yet God does not give us some impossible mission, setting us up to fail. He provides us with the equipment to do what He asks us to do in life, and as long as we do our best to obey Him, he can take even the smallest effort and make it prosper.