This is the first chapter of "Make me a channel", by Roy Lawrence (author of "How to pray when life hurts"). It was published in the United Kingdom by Scripture Union. It is out of print but copies are available second hand if you google “Make me a channel, by Roy Lawrence”
'The Input/Output People’
The Bible makes extraordinary claims about the experience of being a Christian.
Listen to Paul: 'When anyone is joined to Christ, he becomes a new person altogether. The past is finished and gone. Everything has become fresh and new!' (2 Corinthians 5:17).
Jesus confirms it. He said, 'I have come in order that you might have life - life in all its fullness' (John 10:10).
So why is it that so often this is miles away from what we actually feel, if we try to live as Christians?
Susanna comes to my mind. Her husband was a prominent leader in a prosperous church nearby. She came to see me because she felt a total failure as a Christian. 'In our church', she said, 'we are supposed to live victorious and glowing Christian lives. But I just don't feel victorious. I feel ill and depressed and angry and ashamed. I'm letting my husband and my church down. 'I'm probably letting God down too. I'm a failure.'
She was very surprised when the very first thing I did was to congratulate her.
In fact, she had taken the first essential step towards becoming an effective, liberated person. She had been honest.
Honesty will always be necessary if we are to become effective and liberated Christians - the honesty which sometimes laughs at itself and sometimes can bring us to tears.
Paul had that sort of honesty.
Although he believed that Jesus creates new persons, he knew that Jesus does not do it with a magic wand. He does it by a partnership. It is not an equal partnership. On his part Jesus is totally committed to it and to us. His death on a cross proves it. By contrast we are far from totally committed. We are weak, wobbly and wayward in our part of the partnership. We sing 'Onward Christian soldiers' with great gusto, but often what we manage is more like a samba than a march - one step forward, one step back.
Paul wrote, 'I don't do the good I want to, instead I do the evil I don't want to do ... My inner being delights in the law of God, but I see a different law at work in my body ... what an unhappy man I am ... who will rescue me?' (Romans 7:19-24).
Fortunately he knew the answer: 'Thanks be to God who does this through our Lord Jesus Christ' (Romans 7:25). We can know it too, but in order to do so we have to recognise a basic principle of life. It is so basic that you can see it at work in ordinary household gadgets.
My wife and I have a radio by the side of our bed. When we get up in the morning we listen to the news and current affairs on BBC Radio 4 or on Local Radio. Occasionally if we find ourselves awake in the middle of the night we switch on the World Service and find it often sends us off to sleep again. Sometimes on my day off I spend some of my free time enjoying the music on Classic FM or Radio 3.
If we had to do without our radio we really would miss it, but of course it would not be any use to us unless two things were true. The station we want must be broadcasting and we must have switched on and tuned in the radio. In other words there has to be input and output before the radio will work. In the middle of the night we could twiddle the knobs on the set to our hearts' content but we would not receive Radio 4, because Radio 4 does not broadcast at night, and on my day off the airwaves could be resonating with the glories of Bach, Beethoven and Brahms but they would not reach me if I had failed to switch my radio on.
There is horrible weather outside, as I write. The rain, sleet and snow have been bucketing down all morning. However, in my study it is snug and warm because of our central heating system. Once again it works on the input/output basis. The North West Water Board provides the water. British Gas enables the boiler to provide the heat. The radiators in the study are switched on. Everything is working well. It was different a couple of years ago when the water pipes were frozen outside and the input was interrupted. It is different at the moment in our spare bedroom where the radiator is switched off, and so the output is interrupted.
The input/output principle is obvious in terms of household gadgets, but it is equally true of people and it is absolutely fundamental in understanding Christianity.
If we want to be effective and liberated, we must first be honest, as honest as Susanna or Paul. But we need not linger in the pain that honesty inevitably brings.
We need to go back to basics, back to the Bible, back to the Lord of the Bible, back to his own input/output principle. Listen to Jesus:
Output - 'I give you a new commandment. Love one another ... '
Input - ' ... as I have loved you' (John 13:34).
Output - 'If you obey my teaching, you really are my disciples ... '
Input - ' ... You will know the truth - and the truth will set you free'
(John 8:31,32).
Input - 'Freely you have received ... '
Output - ' ... freely give' (Matthew 10:8).
Over the centuries, there has been a strange tendency in the church for many of its members to listen to only half of the teaching of Jesus about input and output.
There have been those who put all the stress on output. A group known as the Pelagians (followers of a monk called Pelagius) were very hot on output, on good deeds. They thought that if you performed enough good deeds you could work your ticket to heaven. But they were weak on input. They failed to see that we can't pull ourselves up by our own bootlaces. Good deeds have to be enabled. The gospel is a gift, not a requirement.
On the other hand there were those who put all the stress on input. A group known as the Antinomians (Greek for 'those who are against the law') knew all about the gospel being a gift. They were hot on input, but they were distinctly cool about output. They taught that receiving the saving love of Jesus need not make any difference to the way you live. You could celebrate being saved by deliberately going on sinning!
The church had the wisdom to recognise that both groups were talking nonsense.
All of this happened in the early centuries of church history, but many today need to learn the lesson which was learned then. Pelagius was a Briton and his heresy goes well with the traditional British stiff upper lip. But beware of him. Without proper input we may end up as guilt-ridden neurotics endlessly chasing an unachievable target in our own strength and getting nearer a workaholic breakdown day by day.
For others in our permissive society Antinomianism can have an appeal. Once again we need to beware, because without output we can degenerate into loveless hypocritical slogan-slingers, all mouth and no muscle, all theory and no reality.
Listen to the Bible again:
Input - 'See how much the Father has loved us. His love is so great that we are called God's children, and so in fact we are ... This is how we know what love is: Christ gave his life for us ... '
Output - ' ... We too then ought to live our lives for our brothers ... Our love should be not just words and talk; it must be true love, which shows itself in action. (1 John 3:1,16-18).
Bishop Frank Sargeant has composed a memorable little prayer: 'Lord make me a channel, not a bucket! Amen.' The great thing about a channel is that it has both input and output. Jesus invites his followers to be input/output people. That's the principle behind Christian living. But how does it work out in practice?
The rest of the book tries to answer this question.
