I have no doubt that persons can act like Christians, that is to say perform (act) as in a reality play, and do fairly well. If Christian life is dependent upon revealed truth (and it is), the drama actors can achieve for the enduring period of the drama. What reality offers in real life context includes eternity. This last is denied the actor who is functioning for the currency of the drama. He doesn’t have to believe what the character he is depicting and is known in the script as believing, but he is the best actor who can make the character believable to the audience, even to himself. He is a part of the audience in this sense. In decades now gone by, I have given the reading of Dickens’ Christmas Carol, even presenting it to the student body in my college days, and invited back again after graduation. I can feel myself to be Scrooge or Bob Cratchit, even Tiny Tim, as the story progresses. I sense them, feel their motivations, and make them believable for me, and hopefully for the audience. But, I am not Cratchit, Tiny Tim or Scrooge.
It is in this light that persons and institutions might follow the biblical culture even if they can’t accept the main point of Christianity, the redemptive provision of Jesus Christ. This last is the main point, but not the only point to be made. The Bible provides a sound pattern for personal and corporate life that we might call Christian humanism (common grace from God). It includes values, education, rights of peoples, honesty and justice, laws of equity and safety – the effective management of personal life and institutions – even if the advocates reject Deity, heaven and immortality. For those who find the whole story in their earthly sojourn, the Christian context remains the best of earth’s patterns for society and individuals. It is practical, just, honest, compassionate, balanced and peaceful. Life has both Old and New Testaments in it.
In much of my reading I find authors who, even without Christian faith, advocate that faith’s virtues for natural life. In a book review of Susan Hertog’s, Dangerous Ambition, Arthur Herman wrote about Rebecca West, the eminent reporter and writer:
West compared the malaise spreading through the liberal democracies in the 1930s to a cancer. Though not religious herself, she sensed the decline of that guilt without hope of redemption turned inward as self-doubt, to the point of cultural suicide.
The statement relating West’s point of view parallels many others, each making its own accent and providing a number of analytical observations that would support a Christian humanism. Not only did West point out the decline that followed the dilution of the Christian world (social context) in performance, but a rise of the spirit of doubt. This led to the reviewer’s last statement in the piece that the decline led to: betrayal [of] both public and private [life] and self-doubt [became] Western man’s new vocation.
In some way, Christian institutions need to find effective ways to communicate the outline of what makes effective nations. Greatness identity is not the main point for nations. Effectiveness and human context related to righteousness (right/truth/morality) are the roads to proper human goals. Our unwillingness or inability to retain spiritual factors of life tends to defeat efforts to find better ways of functioning, educating, creating institutions, finding values that are necessary for a peaceful and service oriented society in local, national and world contexts. We should not read Rebecca West’s remark about the decline of Christianity as the fault of Christianity, but the fault of mankind in failing to apply the human principles in Christianity. God doesn’t fret over those who do not acknowledge him. He is fulfilled within himself. If we wish to make life on our own, God offers a context in which there is some order in the lives of nations that will provide mortal gratification – if that is all that is desired. The omission of divine relationship will be answered with: I never knew you, depart from me. This seems rather stark, but it is the way we chose – unless we don’t. God honors righteousness, but redeems in faith. As Jesse Lakso observes in her review of Kim Hooper’s, People Who Knew Me – the choices we make, in turn, make us. *Mark W. Lee, Sr. — 2016, 2020