December 26 Daily Devotional

Christianity isn’t for anything ... except the love and worship of Him.

... a very common danger at this present time is to be interested in the social and general rather than in the personal aspects of Christianity. This has been particularly important in the present century. Many people today, confronted by the problems of this country and of society, are saying more and more that what is needed is biblical teaching and a Christian attitude towards these national and social problems. Watch the statesmen, and the politicians—even some of the leading ones. Although one is given to understand that they practically never attend a place of worship on a Sunday, they are using increasingly the words ‘religion’ and ‘Christian’. They seem to think vaguely that Christian teaching can help to solve the problems of State. Though they are not active and practising Christians themselves ... and are not giving any personal obedience to the Lord, they seem to think that Christianity can be of help in a general way. We are always on dangerous ground when we begin to talk about ‘Christian civilization’ and ‘Christian’ or ‘Western’ values.... I refer particularly to the tendency to regard Christianity as if it were nothing more than anti-communist teaching. This can be seen in the way in which Christian organizations sometimes advertise, and in their use of slogans such as ‘Christ or Communism?’, etc.... It works in a very subtle way. A man persuades himself that, because he is an anti-communist, he must be a Christian. But it by no means follows.... The substitution of the social and general for the particular and personal in Christian matters is always a terrible danger.... If I find my interest tends to be more and more general, or social, or political, if that is increasingly my main interest in Christianity, then I am in an extremely dangerous state because I have probably ceased to examine myself.

Studies in the Sermon on the Mount, ii, pp. 286–7