Tuesday, June 22, 2010

The drama of dogma...


It is...startling to discover how many people...heartily dislike and despise Christianity without having the faintest notion what it is. If you tell them, they cannot believe you. I do not mean that they cannot believe the doctrine: that would be understandable enough, since it takes some believing. I mean that they simply cannot believe that anything so interesting, so exciting and so dramatic can be the orthodox Creed of the Church.
Somehow or other, and with the best intentions, we have shown the world the typical Christian in the likeness of a crashing and rather ill-natured bore-- and this in the Name of One Who assuredly never bored a soul in those thirty-three years during which he passed through the world like a flame.
it is the dogma that is the drama-- not beautiful phrases, nor comforting sentiments, nor vague aspirations to loving-kindness and uplift, nor the promise of something nice after death-- but the terrifying assertion that the same God who made the world lived in the world and passed through the grave and gate of death. Show that to the heathen, and they may not believe it; but at least they may realize that here is something that a man might be glad to believe.
~Dorothy L. Sayers, as quoted in Glimpses of Church History, Issue 246

No comments: