I wonder it’s ok to swear when you are really frustrated. Maybe not. Anyway, C.S. Lewis resorted to “damned nonsense” to capture the frustration he felt, and we all feel, when Christianity loses its “fighting” edge. I’m increasingly angered by a Christianity that retreats to “fly fly away” and doesn’t become a force for good–both for eternity and for now. . . by a Christianity that accepts injustice and doesn’t fight it. But I must admit that it took me awhile to get here—30 years of following Christ and I never was frustrated enough with my “pie in the sky” theology to swear out loud or at least to use words like “damn” in a blog post. But that’s changing–due in part to believers like Lewis and William Wilberforce. Here’s how Lewis puts it:
Confronted with a cancer or a slum the Pantheist can say, ‘If you could only see it from the divine point of view, you would realize this also is God.’ The Christian replies, ‘Don’t talk damned nonsense.’ For Christianity is a fighting religion. It thinks God made the world–that space and time, heat and cold, and all the colors and tastes, and all the animals and vegetables, are things that God ‘made up out of His head’ as a man makes up a story. But it also thinks that a great many things have gone wrong with the world that God made and that God insists, and insists very loudly, on our putting them right again.–from Mere Christianity
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