We No Longer Need Apologetic Books on Christianity
The title of this short review was motivated primarily by a deep feeling of sadness for the discredit with which Christianity is perceived by our society. Today, Christ's transformative, reformational, and revolutionary message is largely summed up in the gospel of prosperity, comfort, pseudo-family values, and even support for fascist politicians. Popular books are more about business, evangelism, and personal enrichment.
Prof. Lewis wrote the following commentary that may shock some readers, but which goes deep into the redemptive and transforming mission of the Gospel when it comes to the production of books:
"I believe that any Christian who is qualified to write a good popular book on any science may do much more by that than by any directly apologetic work. The difficulty we are up against is this. We can make people (often) attend to the Christian point of view for half an hour or so; but the moment they have gone away from our lecture or laid down our article, they are plunged back into a world where the opposite position is taken for granted. As long as that situation exists, widespread success is simply impossible. We must attack the enemy's line of communication. What we want is not more little books about Christianity, but more little books by Christians on other subjects—with their Christianity latent. You can see this most easily if you look at it the other way round. Our faith is not very likely to be shaken by any book on Hinduism. But if whenever we read an elementary book on Geology, Botany, Politics, or Astronomy, we found that its implications were Hindu, that would shake us. It is not the books written in direct defense of materialism that make the modern man a materialist; it is the materialistic assumptions in all the other books. In the same way, it is not books on Christianity that will really trouble him. But he would be troubled if, whenever he wanted a cheap popular introduction to some science, the best work on the market was always by a Christian."
I recently finished editing a book with Christian friends (and even non-Christian authors) on the social implications of engineering practice. I know the book will not convert anyone to Christianity, but I want to believe that its content, which covers social, economic, environmental, etc., may lead some to reflect more deeply on our responsibility to cultivate and maintain creation – our Cultural Mandate.
Paulo
[*] C.S. Lewis, God in the Dock
