Wright - Simply christian: why christianity makes sense

T here are two sorts of traveler. The first sets off in the general direction of the destination and is quite happy to figure things out on the way, to read the signposts, ask directions, and muddle through. The second wants to know in advance what the road will be like, where it changes from a country road to a busy multilane highway, how long it will take to complete the different sections, and so on.

Concertgoers are often like that, too. Some listeners prefer to allow the music to make its own impact, carrying them along from movement to movement without their knowing where it will go next. Others find greater enjoyment by reading a program note in advance so that they can anticipate what is to come and have a mental picture of the whole while listening to the parts as they unfold.

People who read books divide into more or less the same types. The first type can probably skip this introduction and go straight to the first chapter. The second type may like to know in advance more or less where were going, how the music is shaped. This introduction is written for them.

My aim has been to describe what Christianity is all about, both to commend it to those outside the faith and to explain it to those inside. This is a massive task, and I make no pretense of having covered everything, or even of having faced all the questions some might expect in a book of this sort. What I have tried to do is to give the subject a particular shape, resulting in the books threefold structure.

First, I have explored four areas which in todays world can be interpreted as echoes of a voice: the longing for justice, the quest for spirituality, the hunger for relationships, and the delight in beauty. Each of these, I suggest, points beyond itself, though without in itself enabling us to deduce very much about the world except that it is a strange and exciting place. Part One of the book, with its four chapters, functions rather like the opening movement of a symphony: once you have heard these themes, the trick is to hold them in your mind while listening to the second and third movements, whose rather different tunes will gradually meet up with the opening ones, producing echoes of a different sort. The first part, in other words, raises questions which are then, bit by bit and not always directly, addressed and at least partially answered in what follows. I only ask that the reader should be patient, as the second and third parts unfold, in waiting to see how the book eventually ties itself together.

Part Two lays out the central Christian belief about God. Christians believe that there is one true and living God, and that this God, revealed in action in Jesus, is the God who called the Jewish people to be his agents in setting forward his plan to rescue and reshape his creation. We therefore spend a whole chapter (Chapter Six) in looking at the story and hopes of ancient Israel, before spending two chapters on Jesus and two on the Spirit. Gradually, as this part unfolds, we discover that the voice whose echoes we began to listen for in the first part becomes recognizable, as we reflect on the creator God who longs to put his world to rights; on the human being called Jesus who announced Gods kingdom, died on a cross, and rose again; and on the Spirit, who blows like a powerful wind through the world and through human lives.

This leads naturally into Part Three, where I describe what it looks like in practice to follow this Jesus, to be energized by this Spirit, and above all to advance the plan of this creator God. Worship (including sacramental worship), prayer, and scripture launch us into thinking about the church, seen not as a building and not even so much as an institution, but as the company of all those who believe in the God we see in Jesus and who are struggling to follow him.

In particular, I explore the question of what the church is there for. The point of following Jesus isnt simply so that we can be sure of going to a better place than this after we die. Our future beyond death is enormously important, but the nature of the Christian hope is such that it plays back into the present life. Were called, here and now, to be instruments of Gods new creation, the world-put-to-rights which has already been launched in Jesus and of which Jesuss followers are supposed to be not simply beneficiaries but also agents. This provides a new way of coming at various topics, not least prayer and Christian behavior. And this in turn enables us, as the book reaches its conclusion, to find the echoes of the first part coming back again, not now as hints of a God we might learn to know for ourselves, but as key elements of the Christian calling to work for his kingdom within the world.

This has been an exciting book to write, not least because it is quite personal; but in those terms it is, as it were, back to front. I have been a worshipping, praying, and Bible-reading Christian (often muddled and getting things wrong, but hanging in there) all my life, so that in a sense Part Three is where I began. I have spent much of my professional life studying Jesus historically and theologically, as well as trying to follow him personally, and Part Two embodies that multilayered quest. But, as I have done so, I have found that the issues in Part One have become more and more insistent and important. To take the first and most obvious example, the more Ive learned about Jesus, the more Ive discovered about Gods passion to put the world to rights. And at that point I have also discovered that the things to which my study of Jesus has pointed methe echoes of a voice in Part Oneare among the things which the postmodern, post-Christian, and now increasingly postsecular world cannot escape as questionsstrange signposts pointing beyond the landscape of our contemporary culture and out into the unknown.

I havent attempted in these pages to differentiate between the many different varieties of Christianity, but have tried to speak of that which is, at their best, common to all. The book isnt Anglican, Catholic, Protestant, or Orthodox, but simply Christian. I have also attempted to keep what must be said as straightforward and clear as I can, so that those coming to the subject for the first time wont get stuck in a jungle of technical terms. Being a Christian in todays world is, of course, anything but simple. But there is a time for trying to say, as simply as possible, what its all about, and this seems to me that sort of a time.

Between writing the first draft of this book and preparing it for publication, I had the joy of welcoming my first two grandchildren into the world. I dedicate the book to Joseph and Ella-Ruth, with the hope and prayer that they and their generation may come to hear the voice whose echoes we trace in the first part, to know the Jesus we meet in the second, and to live in and for the new creation we explore in the third.

I had a dream the other night, a powerful and interesting dream And the really frustrating thing about it is that I cant remember what it was about. I had a flash of it as I woke up, enough to make me think how extraordinary and meaningful it was; and then it was gone. And so, to misquote T. S. Eliot, I had the meaning but missed the experience.