An MP once impotently asked Tony Blair during Prime Minister’s Questions whether he could please outline his core values and beliefs.
Blair stood up, stuttered, and began talking about some initiative or other he was pushing at that moment. The House erupted with laughter. He was they knew a politician of convenience and pragmatism who resolved ideological challenges as he went along. He did not ‘do’ core values, or at least not in the way that MP wanted him too.
I worry sometimes that we are like that as Christians. We can debate points of theology, argue about the best way to organise our church, criticise each other and debate our futures.
Yet somehow people can walk up to us and ask the simplest question: ‘Why are you a Christian’ and it can stop us in our tracks.
This has happened to be several times. Once while on a mission in Manchester years ago when another Christian posed as a member of the public and walked up and asked me point blank. I was speechless. She laughed, I did not.
Another time was just the other week when an old friend of mine who I had grown up with posed the question in a slightly different way. He asked: ‘Why are you still a Christian.’ The implication was that he could understand how the 15 year-old Charlie got caught in this God stuff but not the Charlie of today. Now, he thought, I had seen enough of the world and enjoyed enough intellectual freedom and experience to be able to put to bed the mythology I adopted in my childhood.
I realised one thing. I need to have a killer answer to that question. To be honest it is still in the offing. But here is my first stab.
Let me begin by pointing out why I am not a Christian. I am not a Christian because my parents were. I learned a great deal from both of them, who have now passed away, but their faith was as complex as mine. There was a lot to learn but also lots which confused me. As I was growing up they seemed far too moderate for the brand of high-conviction, high-volume Christianity I was adopting. It was only years later that I fully understand the work Jesus had done in their lives. By that stage I was already a convinced believer in my own right. So while I thank God for what he did for them, they are not the reason I am a Christian.
Neither am I a Christian because it has consistently been the easiest option. Over the past ten years I have formed new groups of friends, started new jobs and gained public profile for new things. I could have quietly drifted away from church if I wanted to and. In many situations this would have been easier than holding the line against a tide of disbelief.
Over the years when I have faced bereavement and life’s other problems I have often considered rejecting God. But I have not. In a sense then the answer to the question ‘Why am I still a Christian’ begins with me asserting why I have remained a Christian at the key moments in my life where many others have chosen to reject God – the times of most profound personal hardship.
In truth it has not been because I have been well-prepared to walk with God in these times. Often I have found myself resorting to very human defence mechanisms rather than leaning on God. Rather it is because of something else. The primary reason I am still a Christian.
That is what Francis Thompson called the ‘ great hound of heaven’. Thompson, a 19th century English poet wrote this:
‘I fled Him down the nights and down the days
I fled Him down the arches of the years
I fled Him down the labyrinthine ways
Of my own mind, and in the midst of tears
I hid from him, and under running laughter.
Up vistaed hopes I sped and shot precipitated
Adown titanic glooms of chasme d hears
From those strong feet that followed, followed after
But with unhurrying chase and unperturbe d pace,
Deliberate speed, majestic instancy,
They beat, and a Voice beat,
More instant than the feet:
All things betray thee who betrayest me.’
Read the full poem.
Thompson is speaking of course of the pursuit of God; the process which we discover is working in our lives which proves that God has a hold on us. We discover that, rather than God hiding in some distant place, he is in fact persistently pursuing us, nagging at our heart, our conscious and our mind even as we reason and act against him.
The poem had a big impact on J.R.R Tolkien the author of the Lord of the Rings who wrote: The name is strange. It startles one at first. It is so bold, so new, so fearless. It does not attract, rather the reverse. But when one reads the poem this strangeness disappears. The meaning is understood. As the hound follows the hare, never ceasing in its running, ever drawing nearer in the chase, with unhurrying and imperturbed pace, so does God follow the fleeing soul by His Divine grace. And though in sin or in human love, away from God it seeks to hide itself, Divine grace follows after, unwearyingly follows ever after, till the soul feels its pressure forcing it to turn to Him alone in that never ending pursuit.’
Tolkien had sensed the same thing as Thompson. John Stott, the author of The Cross of Christ and probably the greatest living evangelical scholar also begins his own seminal book ‘Why I am a Christian’ with an acknowledgement of the pursuit of the hound. He demonstrates how the testimony of the greatest heroes of the faith include a description of how God plodded behind them, how they always heard his steps until finally he had them. Even Saul of Tarsus’ road to Damascus conversion was preceded by a series of events where God planted seeds in his head, nagged at his conscience and played on his reasoning.
Indeed Scott’s exposition of the hound of heaven’s work in ancient figures like Augustine of Hippo through to modern people is unmatched and well worth a read.
Jesus’ shows this aspect of his work in his description of himself as the shepherd hunting for just one lost sheep.
Why am I still a Christian? Because God has never stopped coming after me. Even when I am caught in a mindset which is proud and distant from God he still opens a little window to show me something of God. Whether it is through somebody working for him and connecting with the truth of the gospel, or some intellectual understanding planted in my head of how the Bibl provides an answer for a question that I face. It is sometimes through a physical sense of the closeness of God, or a sense of relief and peace that floods over me when I realize that there is a way to experience something truly and purely hopeful in life.
God has never stopped coming after me, he has never moved on to a better prospect. That is why I am still a Christian.
Of course what I have not written about here are my own responsibilities to persevere in my faith and how God uses my actions to help this process. How he – to put a long name on it – uses me to work out my sanctification. This is not because I do not believe this is crucial.
It’s just that I can’t escape the conclusion when I look back at my life that I am still a Christian not because of me but despite me. Of course that was always going to be the case because after all the journey of God is not one where we find God but one where he reveals himself to us. It could hardly be any other way.