The Buck Stops at Our Desks

Change That We can Believe In

Whilst a soul can be regenerated and converted in an instant, building Christendom take generations and many lifetimes. As it was with the first Christendom, so it will be with the next. There is no magical bullet. There is no quick fix.

We see this reality all the time (even if we may rarely stop to think about it). Many know that at a certain point in time--an instant even--they were first converted. They were conscious of believing personally in the Living God for the first time. C S Lewis testified that one day he got on the bus whilst not a Christian; but by the time he alighted, he was. He had been transformed. Many of us can give similar accounts.

But, whilst we had passed quickly from death to life, for the rest of our lives we labour to work out our salvation in fear and trembling. Transformation comes slowly, often amidst fearsome battles, with great struggle. Old habits die, but they die hard. God has ordained it so. The same is true with re-building Christendom--it takes a long, long time. God has ordained that it should be so. Why? Partly because whether speaking of the individual or an entire culture, the transformation required is comprehensive; it is root and branch stuff. If it were to be achieved instantaneously the very fabric of the creation would have to be torn apart. Gradual change allows the continuing of human life upon the planet. Grace restores Nature, it does not obliterate it.

This is what Jesus indicated when He gave the parable of the wheat and the tares (Matthew 13: 24--30). The landowner forbade his servants ripping out the tares because of the harm and destruction it would cause to the wheat. The christianising of a culture is such a deep, complex work it takes generations to accomplish, much as the great medieval cathedrals required multiple generations to complete the task.

Once again, our own experience testifies to this. All of us have inherited life habits and patterns from our parents, for good or ill. These have been ingrained in us without thinking. We stand on the shoulders of those who have gone before. This reality applies when a culture is disintegrating and devolving from Christendom just as much as when a culture is reforming gradually into a new Christendom.

Above all else the coming reign of the Kingdom of God requires comprehensive Christian self-government and self-rule--by the overwhelming majority of the population. But self-government necessitates that we each take responsibility for those things with which God has charged us: personal sanctification, holy families, holy worship, the education of our children, faithful labour, faithful church service, thrift and laying up an inheritance for our grandchildren, taking care of the needy--all of these require a lifetime of habits and diligence--inherited from our parents and grandparents.

Christendom is not built by getting a few laws changed--although law will certainly be changed as a result of Christendom growing stronger. We betray just how much statism has infected us when we fall into the trap of thinking that the repeal or change of a law or two will ensure Christendom's future. It will not.

Root and branch change is Christendom's modus operandi. As the leaven leavens the whole loaf, changing a few laws will seem like the most obvious and natural thing to do at the time. But if the leaven has not yet done its work, even the simplest change to the most egregious and ungodly laws is usually a mountainous task, far beyond our capability and resources at the time.