A revolt in defiance / a revolt in hypocrisy
or
about apostasy from Christianity
That man is a defiant and refractory creature we know well enough, but that in a very high degree he is a shrewd creature — when it comes to a question of flesh and blood and earthly well-being — we do not always perceive. It is so nevertheless, though at the same time it is true that we have reason to deplore man's stupidity.
When there is something which is distasteful to man, he looks to see if the power which commands him is not too great for him to pit his power against it. If he is convinced that it is not too great, he revolts in defiance.
But if the power which commands what is distasteful to man is so superior to him that he absolutely despairs of making a revolt in defiance, he resorts to hypocrisy.
This applies to Christianity. The fact that the apostasy from Christianity occurred long ago has not been noticed because the apostasy came about, the revolt was made, in hypocrisy. Precisely Christendom is the apostasy from Christianity.
In the New Testament, according to Christ's own teaching, to be a Christian is, humanly speaking, sheer anguish, an anguish in comparison with which all other human sufferings are hardly more than child's-play. What Christ speaks of (for he makes no disguise of it) is about crucifying the flesh, hating oneself, about suffering for the doctrine, weeping and wailing while the world rejoices, about the most heart-rending sufferings due to hating father, mother, wife, one's own child, about being what the Scripture says of the Pattern (and surely to be a Christian must mean corresponding to the Pattern), that He is a worm and no man. Hence the reiterated warnings not to be offended, not to be offended at the fact that what in the highest, the divine understanding of it is salvation and help is, humanly speaking, so frightful.
This is what it is to be a Christian. That, however, is hardly a thing for us men, such things we might rather pray to be dispensed from. Indeed if such exactions had occurred to any human power, man would at once have revolted in defiance. But unluckily God is a power against which man cannot rebel in defiance.
So man resorted to hypocrisy. People had not so much as the courage and honesty and truth to say to God bluntly, "That I cannot agree to," they resorted to hypocrisy and thought they were perfectly secure.
They resorted to hypocrisy, they falsified the definition of being a Christian. To be a Christian, they said, is sheer blessedness. "What would I be, O what would I be, if I were not a Christian! Yea, to be a Christian is the only thing which gives real significance to life, gives a relish to joys, and to sufferings assuagement."
In that way we all became Christians. And then everything went gaily, with fine words and grandiloquent phrases and heavenly glances and torrents of tears, all by the artists engaged for this purpose, who could not find words to thank God enough for the great privilege that we are all Christians, etc. — and the secret was that we have falsified the concept of what it is to be a Christian, but hope by knavish and hypocritical flattery and sweet words, giving thanks again and again that we are. ..the opposite of what God understands by being a Christian — by this hoping, deluding ourselves, to put a wax nose on God's face; by so heartily thanking Him that we are that, we hope to get out of being that.
Behold, for this reason the church is the most equivocal place. For doubtless there are other places which are called "equivocal places" but are not really that, the fact that they are called "equivocal" prevents them from being really equivocal. A church, on the other hand, that is indeed an equivocal place, a royally authorized Christian church in "Christendom" is the most equivocal thing that has ever existed.
For to make a fool of God is not equivocal, but to do that under the name of worshiping Him is equivocal; to want to do away with Christianity is not equivocal, but it is equivocal to do away with Christianity under the name of spreading it; to give money to work against Christianity is not equivocal, but it is equivocal to take money for working against Christianity under the name of working for it.