Book Review — Chameleon Christianity

June 18, 2008

Joe,

Yesterday I finished a book called Chameleon Christianity, by Dick Keyes. While the price of this book was disappointing ($16 for a paperback that is only 100 pages), I enjoyed what I read. The book’s aims to expose and correct a two-edged sword that often cuts off a healthy Christian witness to the world. Jesus addressed the danger of this two-edged sword in the Sermon on the Mount:

13 You are the salt of the earth, but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled under people’s feet. 14 You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden. 15 Nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house. 16 In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.

The one side of the sword is the image of saltless salt. In the region of the Dead Sea, the salt was often so diluted by other chemicals that though it looked like salt, it no longer functioned or tasted like salt. This is the professing Christian who blends in to society just as a chameleon changes its color to blend in with its surroundings (hence the name Chameleon Christianity). So as to avoid conflict with the world, the chameleon disregards and rejects theological and ethical principles when those principles jar against the accepted norms of society. They do not bring transformation to society, because they conform to all of the world’s wicked ways. This is saltless salt.

On the other hand, there is hidden light. These are people who resist the evil ways of the world, but to do so they establish what is in essence a Christian tribe that does not venture out from the safe confines of its ghetto where everyone thinks like they do. They have their own education, music, television programming, even yellow pages, all so that they never have to interact with the sinful world around them. In the name of protecting themselves from the world (which is in itself a good thing commanded in Scripture), they totally isolate themselves from the world, thus abandoning Jesus’ call to shine light into the world. They take the light that they have and hide it under a basket, where it is worthless. Bright light covered by an opaque box is still darkness.

Christians who are true to their calling do not conform to the world nor isolate themselves from it. Keyes spends the first few chapters unpacking the danger of these two extremes. And if we are honest with ourselves, we all tend toward one of these extremes. Perhaps there are even different areas of our lives which are on each end of the spectrum. But to be salt and light means that we will recognize our calling to be in the world, but not of it. We will strive to have a positive, transforming influence on society while at the same time maintaining our unique Christian identity.

This is no easy task. Keyes suggest that two vital ways to recover this calling are a renewed focus on apologetics, and the development of authentic Christian community. As we engage the common objections to Christianity, and as we form communities that show others what life in the Kingdom is to look like, Christians can again become the salt and light that Jesus has called us to be.

Few things are more important than the Church’s thinking and praying hard about how to obey Jesus’ commands to be salt and light. In reality, they are not commands, but statements of fact about what Christians are. This is quite humbling to those who either look just like the world, or who are so aloof and detached from the world that they have no interaction with it. In my estimation Keyes’ book is a helpful one (though not earth-shattering, by any means) in striving to find that healthy balance between being in the world, but not of it.

Larry

Posted by Larry | Filed Under Book Reviews, Seeking Him 

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