Did the plan to save the church work? Sort of. The Ephesians
did reject the false teachers who claimed
to be apostles, which was good. But they also went too far in their hardness and lost their love of Christ, which was catastrophic.
Yes it was better for them to be hard and cold rather than soft and lukewarm, (because that gave them the sense to hate the deeds of the Nicolatians) but
it was ultimately to no avail since the church isn’t built on what it rejects, but
on the One whom it embraces.
You’ve probably seen the Ephesian effect for yourself, no
doubt. You look at a church online and things seem okay, but when you arrive in
person it’s a small affair, full of cold and ungrateful people, clinging to
their dislike of error rather than their love of God. Or perhaps you've seen the opposite problem. You join a church and then later find out the people are much more of a social club than they are a serious group of sanctified believers, skipping Bible study because they're busy trying to figure out how to have their best life now. In both cases the problem is larger than the occasional quarrel or spotty attendance, it’s that they have a lack of imagination, a lack of humility, no sense of wonder, and no grateful delight in God. Their sin has poisoned not just part of their lives, but all of it.
The antidote to every error is Orthodox Christianity. We must see it be
like blind men seeing for the first time. We must embrace it completely and let
it purify our minds as well as our affections, and we must do this continually. And a big (and I
mean a really huge) help in doing
this is Orthodoxy by G.K. Chesterton.
“Why else should I read it?” you ask. To which I say: I honestly have no idea. Aside from the fact that it would be good in general to work through this excellent book I am completely at a loss to make the case for it. As Chesterton astutely observed, “It is very had for a man to defend anything of which he is entirely convinced. It is comparatively easy when he is only partially convinced. He is partially convinced because he has found this or that proof of the thing, and he can expound it. But a man is not really convinced of a philosophic theory when he finds that something proves it. He is only really convinced when he finds that everything proves it. And the more converging reasons he finds pointing to this conviction, the more bewildered he is if asked to suddenly to sum them up. Thus, if one asked an ordinary intelligent man, on the spur of the moment, “why do you prefer civilization to savagery?” he would look wildly round at object after object, and would only be able to answer vaguely, “Why, there is that bookcase… and the coals in the coal-scuttle… and pianos… and policemen.” … That very multiplicity of proof makes reply impossible.”
I am so totally convinced of the essentiality of this book that
I have no reason for you to read it at all. How could I? What shall I say? That it is a good book? It's a good book. That you will benefit from it? You will benefit from it. But that doesn't do it justice. I simply believe it to be one of
those things that everyone in our age should read, like Knowing God by Packer or Basic Christianity by Stott. So let’s
read it together. “Why else should I read it?” you ask. To which I say: I honestly have no idea. Aside from the fact that it would be good in general to work through this excellent book I am completely at a loss to make the case for it. As Chesterton astutely observed, “It is very had for a man to defend anything of which he is entirely convinced. It is comparatively easy when he is only partially convinced. He is partially convinced because he has found this or that proof of the thing, and he can expound it. But a man is not really convinced of a philosophic theory when he finds that something proves it. He is only really convinced when he finds that everything proves it. And the more converging reasons he finds pointing to this conviction, the more bewildered he is if asked to suddenly to sum them up. Thus, if one asked an ordinary intelligent man, on the spur of the moment, “why do you prefer civilization to savagery?” he would look wildly round at object after object, and would only be able to answer vaguely, “Why, there is that bookcase… and the coals in the coal-scuttle… and pianos… and policemen.” … That very multiplicity of proof makes reply impossible.”
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