RELIGIONLESS CHRISTIANITY by Eric Metaxas Book Review
What does it mean to be a Christian? Is being a Christian today different than 2,000 years ago? Or perhaps even 85 years ago? Can the trials and tribulations of today’s society impacting the Christian world be overcome with passivity? How has that worked out? A famous quote that applies to these questions as well as the messages contained in Eric Metaxas’ books (Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy; Letter to the American Church; and Religionless Christianity comes from George Santayana: “Those who forget their history are condemned to repeat it ” Thus, are we cowering today as has been done in the past instead of confronting the evil around us?
With his book, Religionless Christianity, Metaxas puts forth a powerful message to the reader, as he has in his previous books A message that has an impassioned or emotional cry for action by Christian leaders A message that stirs the soul A message that reminds us that God is in control, and yet we are to exemplify such a belief in the actions we take in our lives today. As Metaxas says, “we are in a war......a spiritual war.”
Throughout the book, Metaxas reminds us of the outcome of silence and hushness by the German church A deadening timidity that was a free pass for the horrors put forth by Hitler and his cohorts Metaxas interweaves the message to stand up and heed God’s call with the lives of two men The first is Dietrich Bonhoeffer - who was a preacher and an impassioned German who saw the need for the German church to stand up against the evils of the Nazis Yet, he “knew that the congregations in Germany that were merely ‘playing church’ and not being the Church were precisely the reasons the Nazis were able to take over ” The second man is Martin Niemoller - a German-born World War I veteran who became a Lutheran pastor He was a man fooled by Hitler, but would later speak out after realizing that he had been lied to
“Playing church” - these words should be a stinging rebuke of how we’ve addressed God’s church and message today Together they ring with sadness and dismay No doubt we are mimicking the sheepishness of the past And where did the past lead? Are we “going along to get along?” In chapter 1, titled “Are We in the Last Days?” Metaxas puts forth the question to you and me “Isn’t the temptation toward this kind of ‘reasonable’ faith really our capitulation to secularism and to the idea that our faith really ought to be tame and reasonable and inoffensive such that it can be kept in a safe corner away from the rest of the world?” I know how I would answer this question.
How would you?
“For one thing, he [Bonhoeffer] saw that the Protestant American churches were very similar to those in Germany”
Eric Metaxas From “Religionless Christianity”
After reading this quote, consider these questions:
a Are we as the church any different than those that existed several decades ago?
b. Why are lessons hard to learn?
Like David Fiorazo’s book, The Cost of Our Silence, Metaxas makes the case in this book that our silence on what we know is wrong is as harmful as those committing the actual atrocities Are we in the last inning? No one knows But God does Will we, as the Church, stand against the evils of our day? To understand not just the need to heed God’s voice, but to actually speak up! It is hoped that Christians will buy this book!
Romans 12:3 tells us “Do not be conformed to this world,.”