The Gospel Dilemma
My Faith Challenged

In a climactic, bittersweet scene from the Hollywood movie Shadowlands, C. S. Lewis, the Oxford professor and noted author (played by Anthony Hopkins) faces the impending death of his wife and discovers anew that experience is a brutal teacher.

      “I don’t want you to go,” he says to his attractive younger wife (played by Debra Winger). Lewis had been hesitant about allowing himself to fall in love with the woman, and now she was dying. “Too much pain,” she replies softly. The ravages of cancer have taken their toll.

      “I don’t know what to do, Joy. You have to tell me what to do.” Now the professor was the student. He had questions rather than answers. “You have to let me go,” she answers simply. “I’m not sure that I can,” he replies.

      Over the course of the film, William Nicholson’s masterful script reveals that Lewis had suffered the tragedy of his own mother’s death at age nine. That event was a turning point for him, and as an adult he chooses the single life and the isolation of academia over the pain of close relationships.

      As a noted skeptic who experiences an awakening to Christ, Lewis became a popular lecturer. His treatise on faith, Mere Christianity, the popular Chronicles of Narnia, and his other writings made him renown. One of his readers, American divorcee Joy Gresham, comes to Oxford to meet the world-famous author and upsets his cloistered existence. Despite his best intentions as a confirmed bachelor, the film chronicles how the outspoken woman challenges his thinking and reawakens the feelings which have been dormant since his mother’s untimely death. When Joy’s son Douglas arrived, the boy explored the house, including the attic where he found an old wardrobe closet like the one in Chronicles of Narnia. Douglas tries to push through the coats stored in the wardrobe to see if it just might lead to Narnia. Later, shortly after Joy’s death, the filmmaker places Douglas back in the attic in front of that same wardrobe. If he could, the boy would surely crawl through that closet and off to Narnia to reach his mother. “Douglas,” Lewis begins, speaking more to himself in a feeble attempt to salve the boy’s grief, “when my mother died I was your age. I thought that if I prayed for her to get better, and if I really believed she’d get better, then she wouldn’t die. But she did.” “It doesn’t work,” says Douglas, agonizing over his own unanswered prayer.

      “No, it doesn’t work,” Lewis agrees. The scene ends as they shed bitter tears of grief over their mutual loss.¹ The reality of Joy’s death overwhelmed C. S. Lewis, and in the process challenged his theology. Experience was a brutal teacher for the wise old professor as he struggled over unanswered prayer. Lewis made a telling observation when he said: “Every war, every famine or plague, almost every deathbed, is the monument to a petition that was not granted.”²

      Unfortunately this is the experience of many, both inside and out of the church. The problem stems from the promises Jesus made—such incredibly limitless promises— that he would give us what we prayed for. Lewis admitted to struggling with these biblical promises; he searched to find someone who might be able to explain this apparent contradiction between the Lord’s statements in the Gospels, the events in Gethsemane, and the reality of unanswered prayer. But no one was able to offer an acceptable answer to satisfy his keen mind. Sometimes this problem is compounded by well-meaning Christians who encourage others to embrace the Lord’s promises. I’m acquainted with a woman who was told in her youth that she should pray for her terminally ill mother; if she prayed and believed, they claimed, her mother would get well. So the girl prayed for her mother to be healed—but then her mother died. While Lewis continued in his faith after his wife’s death, for this woman, the experience became the defining moment in her unbelief. For many, the Lord’s promises turn out to be both hollow and frustrating. When prayer doesn’t work, we wonder if something is wrong in our lives, or if the Lord doesn’t care about us. Worse, we may begin to doubt our faith. Anger and despair often envelop Christians who are confronted by God’s silence to their desperate prayers.

A Sense of Loneliness
In my own spiritual journey, unanswered prayer was only one of many issues with which I struggled. At first I assumed I was alone in my struggle; I never realized how many other Christians despaired over their own experience that seemed so contrary to the words of the Lord Jesus. Slowly I comprehended that many, like Lewis, suffer under their inability to make sense of Christ’s words. Many Christians feel a disturbing powerlessness brought on by the teachings of the Lord.

      A friend of mine, who had grown up as a member of an evangelical church, admitted to me that he used to hate church. Communion Sundays were always the worst for him because he felt unworthy to participate. He had such an awful sense of guilt; he would look at the people around him and wonder, How can all these people be so good, when I’m so bad? His experience is far from unique. Many have a strong desire to be in church, but they fear God can’t accept them with their futile attempts at being good. It seems the harder they try, the more unrighteousness they uncover in themselves. When they think about their moral failure they conclude that they’re too corrupt for the church. Because of this, many have tremendous struggles with guilt. A woman in my congregation recently sent me a letter detailing a similar past:

      “Years ago in other churches,” she wrote, “Sunday morning service and Wednesday Bible study felt like atonement days—‘face your failure’ days. We would get all pumped up with enthusiasm by listening to other Christians tell how long they had gone without committing this or that sin. We’d write down their methods, then the next day was the start of a new program of being good. My attempts to change were always like going on a diet. How long can I keep this appearance of always being loving (let alone actually be loving)? How many hours in the day can I go without a bad thought? Forgive totally, work diligently, be a perfect wife and mother? It was impossible—so defeating. I was inch-by-inch extricating myself from involvement in church. I could not believe I was a Christian when faced with such monumental failure on a daily basis.” This is the norm for many Christians. They often end up doubting their salvation. After all, they reason: I haven’t obeyed what Jesus demands of me, so why should he let me into heaven? These confused Christians are often uncertain about what constitutes salvation. They’re confused because what they find in the Gospels seems so different from what they read in the rest of the Bible, or even what they hear from the pulpit. Philip Yancey, an editor with Christianity Today, shares his own experience of the difficulty of living up to the words of the Lord in his book The Jesus I Never Knew:

The Sermon on the Mount haunted my adolescence. I would read a book like Charles Sheldon’s In His Steps, solemnly vow to act “as Jesus would act,” and turn to Matthew 5-7 for guidance. What to make of such advice! Should I mutilate myself after a wet dream? Offer my body to be pummeled by the motorcycle-riding “hoods” in school? Tear out my tongue after speaking a harsh word to my brother?       Once, I became so convicted about my addiction to material things that I gave away to a friend my prized collection of 1,100 baseball cards, including an original 1947 Jackie Robinson and a Mickey Mantle rookie card. Anticipating a divine reward for this renunciation, instead I had to endure the monumental injustice of watching my friend auction off the entire collection at a huge profit. “Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness,” I consoled myself. Now that I am an adult, the crisis of the Sermon on the Mount still has not gone away. Though I have tried at times to dismiss it as rhetorical excess, the more I study Jesus, the more I realize that the statements contained here lie at the heart of his message. If I fail to understand this teaching, I fail to understand him.3

      My own experience was so similar to Yancey’s. Jesus required so much more than I could do; his demands left me feeling hopeless. I don’t know anyone who measures up to the Lord’s standards. Just the other day I came across a book put out by a respected evangelical publisher that stated that the Sermon on the Mount is “the righteous lifestyle of those who belong to the kingdom of heaven.” On the back cover the author promised: “You can be godly all the way to the core. You can become the person you long to be and live a life that pleases God.” And the author claimed that this would all take place in only nine weeks! Forgive my impiety—but I don’t think so.

Why Can’t I Do This?
      I remember a woman who came for counseling who had begun to question her salvation. When I asked the reason for her doubts, she replied: “I was reading in Matthew and became convicted. The Lord says if I don’t forgive others, he won’t forgive me.” An expression of guilt flooded the woman’s face. “You see, I want to forgive. I’ve prayed the Lord would help me forgive. Sometimes I even think that I have forgiven, but then something happens that triggers the memories of what certain people did to me, and . . . when the pain and anger flow over me, I know that I still haven’t forgiven.”

      This woman felt particularly burdened every time she recited or sang the Lord’s Prayer. Whenever she prayed, those words cut like a knife into her soul: “Forgive us our trespasses as we have forgiven.” She knew she just couldn’t do it, no matter how hard she tried. The wounds were too painful and deep. What does a pastor say to a woman who feels unforgiven because she cannot forgive—especially when, if the truth is fully known, I still have similar bitterness lurking deep (maybe not so deep) within my own heart?

      Over the years, I’ve run into so many Christians who feel haunted because they know that they simply have not measured up to something they feel that the Lord wants them to do. A man once related how he came upon his mother as she read her Bible. He overheard her anguished voice: “I just can’t, Lord! I just can’t be a missionary!” You’ve probably read the words of the Lord when he calls people to follow him—and you’ve read their excuses. “I just bought a piece of property,” or “I have to bury my father,” or that wimpy excuse: “I have this wife.” We read the Lord’s words and we hear those sermons on discipleship, and we feel so guilty because there are just too many things in our lives that distract us from following him. We don’t really have the resolve to follow the Lord to the extent he demands, and we know it. So we end up wallowing in guilt.

Are You Upset with God?
      But there’s another side to this coin. The chances are good that instead of just feeling inadequate, we may even be angry with the Lord. This is often one of the hardest things for Christians to admit—that we have a problem with God. How can we admit we’re angry with him? (After all, it might make him mad at us.) Such feelings—whether we repress them or not—are very common among Christians.

      I went to see a man who had visited our church. As we began to speak about the possibility of his attending Crosby Chapel, his story began to pour out. It seems that he had been in a particular church for many years—until he divorced his wife. As he explained what had happened in their relationship, I had sympathy for what he had experienced with her. Christians had told him that according to the Lord’s teaching, he didn’t have “scriptural grounds” for his divorce and then they sided with his ex-wife and eventually disciplined him in front of the whole church and ostracized him.

      While I was in his house, the man kept shaking his head. “I just can’t understand it. Why did the Lord let this happen to me? I can’t tell you how much pain I experienced at the hands of that church.”

      Here was a man who felt that he was the victim, yet both the Lord’s statements on divorce and the church’s discipline had been used against him—and he was deeply wounded. He told me that he wouldn’t be able to start back to church yet because of all the anger and pain he still felt. He didn’t know if he could handle it. I wish I could tell you this man’s experience is unique. But I can’t. There are many walking wounded like him.

Do the Gospels “Offend” You?
      Perhaps I’m more sensitive to those who are struggling because I too labored under these same difficulties. These conflicts made me feel like a second-class Christian. I was taught to believe in salvation by grace through faith in the work of Jesus on the cross, but as I read the first three Gospels, I discovered they often did not say what I believed. The words of the Lord in Matthew, Mark, and Luke actually offended my theology. Now isn’t that an awful thing to say, “the words of Jesus offend my theology”?

      I picture you thinking: Well then, you ought to change your theology. But I was unable to do that and make it work. My problem was, if I changed my views based upon the words of the Lord in the first three Gospels, I would then be at odds with the teachings of the apostle Paul and the Gospel of John. I just couldn’t get them all to agree. New Christians are often encouraged to read the Gospel of John because of his grace teachings; his book meshes with Paul’s writings, while the first three Gospels seem at odds with the New Testament letters. This conflict stems directly from the teaching of Jesus himself. For years I wondered if there could be an answer to this dilemma, but no one I talked to and none of the books I read offered anything approaching a satisfactory answer. I began to wonder if I could believe the Bible as a whole and maintain my intellectual integrity.

      Even as a young Christian the words of the Lord confused me. But when I became a pastor and started to teach from the Bible, I found that the problem did not get any better; in fact, it seemed worse, because I felt a greater obligation to be honest. The more I read, the more problems I discovered, and the less hope I felt. None of the scholars I consulted suggested an adequate explanation of this New Testament difficulty. Many scarcely acknowledged there was a problem. Everyone seemed so conditioned to mixing grace with the Lord’s teaching that few acknowledged the disparity between the two.

      C. S. Lewis was one who grasped the nature of this problem. He wrote: “A most astonishing misconception has long dominated the modern mind on the subject of St. Paul. It is to this effect: that Jesus preached a kindly and simple religion (found in the Gospels) and that St. Paul afterwards corrupted it into a really cruel and complicated religion (found in the Epistles). This is really quite untenable. All the most terrifying texts come from the mouth of Our Lord: all the texts on which we can base such warrant as we have for hoping that all men will be saved come from St. Paul” (emphasis mine).⁴

      Lewis saw what many scholars apparently are unwilling to admit: The words of Jesus are often terrifying in the light of their eternal implications. When it came to my assurance for obtaining eternal life, the Lord’s words caused me to question my own final destiny; so I hung onto the hope that somehow grace would win the day.

How Does One Become a Christian?
      The most basic problem troubling me was my concern over how someone becomes a Christian. I heard different “answers” on salvation, depending on whom I listened to. For example, many teach that a Christian is someone who receives the Lord Jesus in faith, has his sins washed away in the blood of Christ, and then keeps the Ten Commandments as the principle of his Christian life. This can be summarized in the formula: Grace is God’s response to us, and Law is our response to God. That view sounds reasonable, but I was unable to keep the Ten Commandments before I knew the Lord, and I was still unable after becoming a believer. I wanted to obey, but I just couldn’t do it. I might give lip-service to following those laws in order to convince myself that I was obeying, but whenever I became serious in my attempts, I would immediately become frustrated with how far I fell short. When I was young, I had a strong hunger for God, but I remember reading the words of Jesus and thinking the Lord’s teachings in the Gospels seemed so difficult. I felt awed by such high standards and his words greatly discouraged me. As a ten-year-old, I still vividly remember closing my Bible and saying to myself: “If this is what it takes to be a Christian, then I guess I can never be one.” Those who struggle to be Christians by keeping God’s standards only end up frustrated, seeing Christianity as an impossible dream.

      Another approach to salvation that I encountered emphasized repentance and confession. Jesus said in Luke 13:3, “I tell you, no, but, unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.” Now I believe that repentance has a part in salvation, but this view claims a true Christian turns away from his sin when he feels convicted and then he stops sinning. Unfortunately, experience quickly showed me that I couldn’t achieve this goal of sinless living. This view calls for a “self-atonement,” as we are forced to retreat to the Lord for regular confessions due to the sin in our lives.

      I confessed and repented, and I believed God forgave each new sin, but then I would begin to wonder: What if I die before I confess a sin? Will I enter eternity lost and condemned? Either I was saved before confessing that specific sin, or I would always be in danger of falling into hell if I failed to confess even one offense. Try as I might to “turn over a new leaf,” I always slipped back into that same swampland of sin. I was left frustrated, wondering if I had fully confessed all of my sins. Would God ever find me good enough?

The Problem
      My frustrations came directly from the pages of the synoptic⁵ Gospels: Matthew, Mark, and Luke. But whenever I turned to John’s Gospel, everything seemed different. With John’s slant on the life and teachings of Jesus, my theology was at rest. John 3:16 is a classic example: “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, so that whosoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have everlasting life.” That is what I was taught; that is what I believe. Yet that’s not what I found in Matthew, Mark, and Luke.

      I was taught in church that you are saved by faith in the work of the Lord Jesus Christ on the cross. This certainly fits well with John’s Gospel and the letters written by the apostle Paul. But whenever I read the words of the Lord in the other three Gospels, I wondered if that were really enough. Jesus seemed to contradict Paul and even his own words as they are recorded in the Gospel of John. The Lord told one man if he wanted to inherit eternal life that he must keep the commandments.⁶ John doesn’t teach that. The apostle Paul doesn’t teach that. Whenever the Lord was asked about eternal life in the synoptic Gospels, I found myself troubled by his answers. Those three Gospels seemed to set up standards alien to salvation by grace.

      Once I discussed this dilemma with another pastor who (by my standards) is fairly liberal in his theology. I discovered his problem was the opposite of mine. He had no particular struggle with the Synoptics, but he felt conflict with John’s Gospel. It was his opinion that a person had to reach a certain level of goodness to demonstrate the reality of his Christian faith, and he thought the apostle John made Christianity too easy. The words he used were, “John is too Pauline.” He and I really had the same problem, only from opposite sides. The more I studied the Bible, the more striking this contrast became between Jesus’ teachings in the Synoptics and the gospel of grace taught by the apostles John and Paul. Jesus placed such high demands on those who heard him, which is so different from the emphasis on grace taught in the rest of the New Testament. The contrast mystified me. I couldn’t reconcile the Lord’s teaching with the message of grace for the forgiveness of sins.

      A particular area of struggle for me was Matthew 5:17-20, where the Lord said: “Don’t think that I came to do away with the Law or the Prophets. I didn’t come to abolish, but to fulfill. For truly I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or stroke shall pass away from the Law until all is accomplished. Whoever then annuls the least of these commandments, and so teaches others, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven.” Those verses were a problem for me, because as a pastor I teach we are not obligated to keep the Sabbath (based on the teachings of the apostle Paul). Keeping the Sabbath is one of the Big Ten. I don’t keep it, and I don’t encourage others to keep it, nor do I keep Sunday as the Sabbath.⁷

      Now this might not seem like much of a problem until you read what happened when someone broke it back in the Old Testament. When the children of Israel were camped in the wilderness, a man was caught picking up firewood on the Sabbath. They brought him to Moses and asked what should be done with him. Moses detained the man so he could ask for God’s verdict. The Lord commanded Moses to have the man stoned to death for this crime.⁸ Woe!

      If you study God’s law in an attempt to keep it, you quickly discover that there are no optional commandments; they aren’t the “Ten Suggestions.” And Jesus says, “Whoever annuls one of these commandments will be least in the kingdom of heaven.” I’ve annulled the Sabbath and taught others to do the same. Is the Lord condemning me? When I read these verses in my earlier years of ministry, I had to pause and give this serious thought.

      But when I leafed back to Paul’s writings and read: “You are not under Law but under grace,”⁹ I would be reassured. Paul definitely presents a different view of the law than what I read in the synoptic Gospels. The apostle said: “Before faith came, we were kept in custody under the law, being shut up to the faith which was later to be revealed. Therefore the Law has become our tutor to lead us to Christ, that we may be justified by faith. But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a tutor.”¹⁰ Paul says we are no longer under the law, but Jesus says we must not annul even the least of the commandments. So who’s right? Do we just pick the teaching we like best and forget the other?

Other Difficult Teachings
      Let me ask you, how does it make you feel when you read where the Lord instructed his hearers to give up all of their possessions to the poor in order to follow him? Do you feel that teaching applies to you? Was that message included when you first accepted the gospel? (I imagine if it was, there would be a lot fewer conversions.) Not only can I not find that teaching in the epistles, I find it personally frustrating. How am I supposed to live if I give all my possessions away? Or is the gospel so individualized that each person has different demands placed upon him? If so, how are you to know your own individual requirements? Some spiritualize away this demand to give up one’s wealth, but if you do this, don’t the words then essentially become meaningless? On one occasion Jesus was asked about the greatest commandment. He said we should love the Lord with all our hearts and in a second summary commandment he said we must love our neighbor as much as we love ourselves. Now that sounds fine as long as you don’t give it serious thought, but I find this to be impossible. How can I love everyone as much as I love myself? If my salvation is dependent on doing that, I’m lost. Only if I trivialize the Lord’s teachings can I ever hope to make a semblance of obedience. I can give lip service to these commandments and express admiration for Jesus’ high morality, but I don’t dare look critically at myself, because there’s no chance I’ll ever obey it. Some attempt to resolve this conflict by taking a relativistic approach. They say: “God knows you can’t do this, so just do the best you can.” Unfortunately, my best isn’t very good.

      Jesus wanted the weak and heavy-laden to come to him, yet he also made the rather troubling statement that if a man divorces his wife and remarries another, he would be committing adultery. That certainly isn’t a message that would be designed to bring weak and divorce-laden people to Christ. There are millions of Christians in the church who have been divorced. Was Jesus saying they are all living in adultery? If they are, can they even be Christians? This is certainly not the gospel to which I was originally introduced. It seemed the “interpretation” of these Gospels as I understood them just didn’t fit the stated purpose for which Jesus had come: “to seek and save the lost.” I knew there had to be an explanation or solution to this dilemma. A New Operating System?

      A friend of mine recently bought a computer on which the operating system was improperly installed. He found that although most of his programs worked, almost all of the software had subtle little “glitches” in performance. The programs just didn’t run like they should, and he had to fight to make his software perform. If you have suffered under any of the spiritual struggles that I’ve mentioned in this chapter, it just might be that your interpretation of the Lord’s ministry has been “improperly installed.” You are a Christian, but the program doesn’t seem to be working well for you. Perhaps this is why you’ve struggled to make your beliefs work as you know they should.

      I have come to some conclusions that I believe can open up the Gospels for you in a fresh, new way. When you hear the solution, you may be tempted to say, “That’s just too simple!” Yet I think you’ll find once you’ve embraced this view of the Lord’s ministry in the Gospels, his words will start to make sense like never before. For the first time, you’ll see the incredible power behind what the Son of God was saying, and you’ll develop a whole new appreciation for the gospel of grace.

1. A Richard Attenborough film, Shadowlands, Spelling Films International, A Savoy Pictures Release, 1993 2. C. S. Lewis, Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer, A Harvest/HBJ Book, 1963, 1964, p. 58. 3. Philip Yancey, The Jesus I Never Knew, Harper Collins, Zondervan, 1995, p. 105. 4. Lewis originally wrote this as part of his introduction to J.B. Phillip’s Letters to Young Christians: A Translation of the New Testament Epistles, (London, 1947). The quote appears in God in The Dock , Eerdmans, 1970, p. 232. 5. They are called the Synoptics, meaning “seen with the same eye,” because they are so similar in content. 6. As in the example of the rich young ruler (see Matthew 19:17). 7. Sunday isn’t the Sabbath; the Sabbath begins at sundown on Friday night and runs to sundown on Saturday. 8. Numbers 15:32-36 9. Romans 6:14 10. Galatians 3:23-25