Lessons in Authenticity

Christianity magazine is nothing if not painfully honest about the Christian life. In keeping with this ethos the magazine published an article by Jeff Lucas (October 11). In this article Lucas tells his readers about a church he visited where the preacher “Painted the Christian life as endlessly epic”. The whole article is worth reading, so here is a photo of it (click to enlarge):

Clearly Lucas isn’t fooled by the extravagantly superlative terms of the Christian triumphalists. The excessive use of such language inflates its shock value; more and more of it is needed to achieve its desired effect of intimidating the faithful into belief and wrenching from them an emotional reaction. Ergo, this language gets increasingly empty of meaning and the affectations of the rank and file as they try to follow what they hear from the pulpit ring hollow. Jeff Lucas (like most of the writers for Christianity magazine), on the other hand, comes over as entirely genuine and above all self-critical – any claims that he makes about being a witness to the epically miraculous feel that much more authentic. He's a man one can take seriously.