The Whole of Christianity

The Christian way is different: harder, and easier. Christ says, “Give me All. I don’t want so much of your time and so much of your money and so much of your work; I want You. I have not come to torment your natural self, but to kill it." No half-measures are any good … Hand over the whole natural self, all the desires which you think innocent as well as the ones you think you think wicked- the whole outfit. I will give you a new self instead. In fact, I will give you Myself; my own will shall become yours …

The terrible thing, the almost impossible thing is to hand over your whole self- all your wishes and precautions- to Christ. But it is far easier than what we are all trying to do instead. For what we are trying to do is to remain what we call “ourselves,” to keep personal happiness as our great aim in life and yet at the same time be “good” … And that is exactly what Christ warned us you could not do … If I am a field that contains nothing but grass-seed, I cannot produce wheat … I must be ploughed up and re-sown …

This is the whole of Christianity. There is nothing else. It is easy to get muddled about that. It is easy to think that the Church has a lot of different objects- education, building, missions, holding service … the church exists for nothing else but to draw men into Christ, to make them little Christs. If they are not doing that, all the cathedrals, clergy, missions, sermons, even the Bible itself, are simply a waste of time. God became man for no other purpose.

(from Mere Christianity)

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