The essential issue that has to be dealt with head-on

It seems that in most of my posts about my faith journey, I discuss at some length the last few sticking points I've had that have kept me from a full embrace of a walk with Jesus. I share them not to overly indulge in my personal story, but rather because they may have application for readers from a variety of backgrounds, because they may resonate with anyone who insists on a palatable basis for saying "okay" to this charge to die to self and let Christ fill one's being.

I've worked my way through them, at least sufficiently to be able to articulate them from some angle or another, even if it may not reflect the kind of depth of a more seasoned believer. Since I'm an academically trained historian, I generally defer to the evidence of history for my explanations of such sticking points as why men are the proper heads of families, and larger societal units generally, or the existence of a devil. These were jarring notions for a secular agnostic raised in the second half of the twentieth century, and it wasn't until I admitted to myself some patterns history was showing me that I had to concede them.

Another one of the last such hangups, though, has not lent itself to history-based explanation, and I don't think it will. Looking at history rather than the basic issue at hand is probably the problem.
I'll confess to still balking sometimes, upon leaving a church service, or a meeting of a Christian discussion group, at the one-note-Johnny nature of what has been discussed. Isn't there more to be considered in understanding reality, I'll ask myself, than this message of grace?

In a world in which rogue nations pose a nuclear threat, in which the nation faces an insurmountable debt, in which societal polarization is so acute that social media has become a minefield, in which sexual predation is discovered to be ever-more pervasive on a daily basis, in which numerous scientific mysteries remain unsolved, what is the big deal about God loving us so much that He'd sacrifice His own son to see that each of us wasn't lost? I mean, that takes care of eternity, but a number of matters are going to be vexing us next week.

This is no small matter in a society in which church attendance and even Christian belief is in decline.
I'm sure my reaction, or let me say, the reaction I'm sometimes tempted to have, is similar to that of the typical secular agnostic: It seems rather escapist to spend hours a week thanking God for offering redemption. The way I've sometimes put it is, "I got over the thrill of 2 plus 2 equalling 4 a long time ago."

So, how indeed is it relevant?

Let's try this: It offers the only true alternative to the cacophony of viewpoints that don't even offer solutions to the world's temporal problems. Is political tribalism going to cut it? Is arcane wonkery really the solution to the lack of affordable health care? Is there any meaning of life worth talking about in a day in which nuclear annihilation breathes down our necks? Is more sexual-harassment training going to eliminate the obvious ubiquity of sexual predation?

The essential point of Christianity is the essential starting point for a workable comprehensive worldview. Being convinced, down to the core of one's being, that one's very real Heavenly Father has seen fit to spare one an unbearable eternal aloneness based on what one deserves, alters one's premise in engaging this world.

You know what is really escapist? Trying to put some kind of supposedly more intellectually stimulating sheen on the basic message of salvation rather than staring directly at it. Searching for something more interesting. You know, can't we move to something a little more advanced than 2+2 equalling 4?

There comes a tipping point, though, at which you realize that what you thought was boredom was actually squirminess.

Seeing this can't happen one moment before one is truly and utterly convinced that nothing else is going to heal that inner brokenness. Only then can one see that it makes no sense at all to try to find solutions to world-stage problems or even personal-life dilemmas while broken. You're going to get partial or piecemeal solutions at best, nothing you can unequivocally rely on.

There is, as we know, an opposite tendency in some quarters of what we can broadly call the Christian religion. C. S. Lewis calls it the temptation to get mired in "Christianity and."

Christianity and the Crisis, Christianity and the New Psychology, Christianity and the New Order, Christianity and Faith Healing, Christianity and Psychical Research, Christianity and Vegetarianism, Christianity and Spelling Reform.

This reduces the Truth to the status of Just Another Belief System. It bogs us down in discussions of parallels to Buddhism or whatever, but permits us to skirt the essential issue of every human life.

Church, time alone with scripture, and praising one's Creator with song, is our chance to get hit right between the eyes with the most urgent question facing anyone, ever.

You come to a point where your attempts at answers to the temporal stuff are inadequate unless you're enlisting His wisdom, and to access that, you have to let Him into the recesses of your being.

Now, that's worthy of your attention.