A crucial divine revelation in the Cross and Resurrection is that complete defeat, by every earthly measure, was the way, and only way, to Christ’s supreme and never-ending victory. It turns every human paradigm of success, achievement, fulfillment and satisfaction utterly upside-down and inside-out. We don’t have to “win”. We only have to be true.
Christ Himself didn't “survive”—in common parlance—his own ministry: He died, He was executed. Jesus’ expectation of final vindication was fixed exclusively on the REALITY (aka Truth) that His Father would raise Him from the dead on the third day. Apart from God’s doing THAT, there was indeed no hope, indeed no point even....
If, then, this is the One we follow, any anxiety or fear over “Christianity’s” survival in the world is silly. We certainly cannot go to the Scriptures for emotional reinforcement, i.e., that Christianity‘s fate prior to Christ’s return is a rosy one—quite the opposite, unfortunately. Jesus Himself asked, rhetorically, “When the Son of Man comes, will He find faith on the earth?” The hint is rather clear, isn’t it? Sometimes Christians almost seem to fear, a bit unreflectively, that if “Christianity”, as a kind of “-ism”, is extirpated from the earth, that it means it’s all not going to “work”—it will turn out untrue, Christ won’t return.
No, I am not saying that any Christians I know have actually verbalized it that way. But the anxieties I sometimes hear nearly amount to it: “What if Islam takes over the world? Or atheism? Look, the churches are shrinking! Or going liberal! Oh no, we live in a post-Christian world! What are we going to DO?! What’s going to HAPPEN?!”
Well, my working assumption is, the Risen Christ is returning to reign forever and vindicate the glory and the name of His Beloved Father before all creation, even as His Father exalts the Son with the Name that is above every name. That is my operative frame of reference when it comes to “what’s going to happen.” And as for what we should do, I think it begins with maintaining that frame of reference uncompromisingly.
C.S. Lewis put it, with exquisite simplicity, that “survival”is not the Christian’s summum bonum in this world: “We CAN die.” (By the way, do any Lewis fans catch a distinct whiff of Weston in Elon Musk’s desperate scramble to assure the everlasting survival and expansion of our glorious, indispensable race? What, oh what, would the universe do without us!) The same is true—indeed, going by the Scriptures, largely probable, in one sense or another—of Christianity... as an “-ity.”
But CHRIST IS GREATER THAN CHRISTIANITY, and His Return is REALITY, not a religion....
On Easter Day, we exult in reality, and in the glorious goodness of our truly living, truly returning Lord. THANK GOD: our feelings don’t make Him real, and human history doesn’t decide HIS future!
