Exactly what is the fate of Christendom? It depends on who you ask. For some (esp. “relevancy” Christian circles), things could not be better: the “gospel” (pick your poison: social, love, or prosperity) is being received, church attendance is up, self-esteem is up, positive-thinking is up, and some 80% of people say they believe in “God.” If you listen to most of mainstream Christendom it would seem as though the Kingdom of God is just ‘round the corner.
Others, however, are not so optimistic. A few dissenters claim that Christendom is going the way of the dodo, that the Gospel is absent, that the churches are full of nothing but the religious and not the regenerated, that no one understands being acquainted with grief or living by faith, that suffering is avoided and replaced with apathy, that “relevancy” is a cancer to the Church, and that the “God” that 80% of people believe in is not the God of the universe Who will one day judge the world in power and righteousness. What these pessimistic few are trying to say is that true Christendom is, in fact, disappearing. Slowly but surely, it is fading away, merging ever so diabolically with worldly ideals, goals, projects, and processes, so that soon you will not be able to tell Christendom apart from the world it is reputedly trying to save. It will have been assimilated, and resistance is futile.
Now is the time where I am supposed to inject something about Tan and Miller’s books (
Foreign Bodies and
A Canticle for Leibowitz), but I find it difficult to do so. You see, what I gathered from the books and what I actually want to say somehow meshes, but unfortunately, the meshing does not allow direct quotes are citations. Instead, it deals with the over arching themes of both books. There is, however, something on my chest that must come off, something brewing in me ever since Endo’s Silence shocked me out of lethargy with his literary image of the “crucifixion of the soul,” of Christ being made sin. Tan and Miller’s themes, not so much the stories themselves, helped shape my thoughts.
The theme of Tan’s is about foreign bodies, and not just the wounds that shape our lives, but also the place of Christendom as a “foreign body” (demonstrated by Mei seemingly being the only Christian in Singapore). Therefore, Tan’s theme is twofold. Miller’s theme is twofold as well: (1) the depraved nature of man will invariably lead to man’s destruction, and (2) the place of Christendom as the preserve of what is good and right, i.e., as “salt and light.” The latter of these two author’s themes is where my thoughts are going: Christendom as a foreign body, and Christendom as the preserver of the good.
The question of Christendom’s fate is ultimately bound up in the question of Christendom’s purpose. Here is where the battle lines are drawn. On the one side, you have a Christendom whose purpose is based on relevancy and positive-thinking, on best-selling books and fat bank accounts, on well adjusted lives and amiable souls, on self-esteem and therapy, on grandfather God and peaceful Jesus, and on doing whatever it takes to reach the world with this message of peace, prosperity, and toleration, even the sacrificing of Christendom’s own integrity. This Christendom will be known in this paper as “Modern Christendom.”
On the other side of the battle line, you have a Christendom whose purpose is based on Scriptures and tradition, on the synthesizing of grace and law with truth, on Trinity and Incarnation, on sacrament and transcendence, on the Lord Almighty and the Passover Lamb, on sacrificial love and holiness, on sanctification and justification, and on the stubborn insistence that God is not to conform to the world, but that the world is to be transformed by God, or (as Dorothy Sayers put it), “[not] to adapt Christ to men, but to adapt men to Christ.”
[1] This Christendom will be known in this paper as “Christianity.”
If you cannot tell where my loyalties lie, then you are obviously not paying attention. I believe that Christianity is the right way and Modern Christendom is nothing but heresy, a farce, a lie, and damnable. It (like its kissing cousin “political correctness”) is a cancer of the West, a vicious, infectious tumor, and the sooner it is cut out, the better.
This is where my thoughts are headed: the basic question our professor raised in class is “Will Christendom fade away in the future?” My answer to that is a solid “Yes and no.” Tan would say “yes.” Miller would say “no.” I agree with both.
With Tan, Christendom will fade away. Its osmosis with the world will eventually lead to Christendom’s destruction, leaving behind it a Christendom that is only a foreign body, i.e., a lone outsider that no longer relates to the world. Christendom will fade away, and that is a good thing. It is good because the Christendom that will fade away is Modern Christendom. It is the one trying to augment the church with the world; and as I said before, the sooner that damned nonsense ends, the better.
In Tan’s world, the only examples of Christendom are Mei and Andy, and even they have their issues. Mei and Andy live in two places at once: (1) Singapore, a place that is paradoxically both a bastion of modernism and a haven for oriental tradition that is naturally adverse to “western” ideas, such as Christendom; and (2) a post-modern world, a place where values are subjective, and individualism is the sole standard for judgment calls. The post-modern mindset is chillingly embodied in Loong, a diabolical, amoral character whose worldview is summed up thusly: “God determines what is right and wrong. And so the trick is to be God. When you rule, you make the rules.” Loong is a direct result of the post-modern world that Mei and Andy live in, the world we live in. Such a world does not bend or conform; it sucks in and molds in its own image because it makes the rules, and if your want to be a part of it then you bow to its rules and do not enforce your own. That is the world that Modern Christendom is conforming to, and in conforming, it will fade away into nothingness. We can only pray that this happens soon. Why? Because in a world where Christendom is whittled down to a foreign body, it ceases to be Modern Christendom and becomes Christianity, it becomes real and solid, full of substance and meaning. Despite all of their flaws, give me the faith of Mei and Andy, and let all the noise of relevant, Modern Christendom fade as chaff in the fire. Thus, I say, “Yes, Christendom will fade away, and that is good. Let the conforming traitor that is Modern Christendom collapse under its own weight and to hell with it!”
For Miller, Christendom will not fade away. The faith grounded in reality, in the real God and what He really said and did, has stood the test of time and will stand it still. Even when man’s vacuously destructive course finally swallows itself in oblivion, Christianity will be there, stubbornly sticking to defending the truth in spite of the mindset of the culture. The book-leggers will defy the Simplification and protect knowledge of the past, the abbot will not concede to new renaissance thinking that man is not responsible for his own wickedness, and even when man’s evil brings oblivion again, Christianity will still be there, taking the truth to where it will be heard.
When Christendom tries to mesh with the world, it will be welcomed, but it will also become a mere shadow of itself as it is slowly consumed into the black abyss that the world is. Thus is Modern Christendom. When Christendom is despised and hated of men, then will its reliance be upon God and God alone, its truth upon His word only, and its faith real and reconciled to desolation and glory, pain and pleasure, sorrow and joy, tears and laughter, death and resurrection. Thus is Christianity, and thus is my petition: let Modern Christendom fade away; we were better off without it. Let Dorothy Sayers prayer be realized—let the dogma of the church be dragged out “from under the dreadful accumulation of slipshod thinking and trashy sentiment heaped upon it, and set [upon] an open stage to startle the world into some sort of vigorous reaction.”
[2] Let the slipshod thinking and trashy sentiment be absorbed into the darkness; that is where it belongs. The sooner Modern Christendom fades away and Christendom returns to being the minority, the outsiders, the foreign bodies, and those outside the camp, the better.
Will Christendom become a minority? We can only pray that it does. Free from institutions, politics, individualistic agendas, greed, power, and corruption, and solely the body of Christ—that is Christianity, that is what turned the world upside down, and that is what can turn the world upside down again. Christendom was never meant to be some corporation, some institution, some political party or platform. It was meant to be the minority, those who walk a narrow way that few will find, those who carry about in their bodies the death and life of the Lord Jesus, those who bring into the world the presence of God with all His terror and beauty, those who bring with them “not beautiful phrases, not comforting sentiments, nor vague aspirations to loving-kindness and uplift, nor the promise of something nice after death—but the terrifying assertion that the same God who made the world, lived in the world and passed through the grave and gate of death. Show that to the heathen, and they may not believe it; but at least they may realize that here is something that a man might be glad to believe.”
[3]I am unsure as to how you will take this paper. I am not quite certain as to how I take it either. I can only say that this paper is speaking of what has been brewing in my heart, not only within this class, but also throughout this semester. This class has helped it boil over, and Tan and Miller were helpful catalyst in crystallizing it into ink and paper. Desiring to be an author of Christian commitment myself, I have been reconciled to the fact that if I am to write about what Christendom really says, to be a follower of Christianity and not Modern Christendom, I will be left out in the cold, the foreign body, the lone book-legger, the small potatoes next to the big fish of Modern Christendom’s literati. Though I may be unfaithful to the Modern church, I will not have been unfaithful to my Lord, and that is all that matters.
