Weak Tea Christianity

My Grandmother Margaret, "Meg" as she preferred all the grandchildren call her, visited me after I first moved to Chicago. Loving cities, she wanted to have lunch downtown (her treat) and see Michigan Avenue. Mind you, there was no Magnificent Mile back then. The John Hancock Building was up, and they were digging the foundation of Water Tower Place. Most of the mile above the Chicago River was flanked by lower-rise buildings and storefronts, including one typical Chicago-style (that is, Greek-owned) diner/restaurant named Charmet's on the corner of Chicago and Michigan avenues. It was a sandwich or burger sort of lunch, and Meg, Scot that she was, ordered hot tea.

When the waitress brought the standard-issue tiny metal pitcher of hot water with tea cup, and a tea bag on the side, Meg tossed the tea bag to the side and opened her purse to fetch her own tea bag (it was most likely Red Rose Tea). When I pointed out that they had already given her a tea bag, she brushed it off with a brogue-enriched, "Aacch, that's Prrresbyterrrian tea, Jimmy, Prrrresbyterrrrian tea." By which she, obviously meant the restaurant's generic tea bag was likely the kind of weak or cheap tea she had experienced served up at the innumerable functions she had attended over her many years at the Presbyterian Church.

This isn't really about the Presbyterian Church. But this incident comes back to me when I think about phrases describing the sort of religion now practiced in churches where Meg would have felt at home some 40 years ago. Weak tea Christianity, or as others have put it, the wine of Christianity turned into the water of liberal moralism.

The full dose of Christianity cannot even be captured in our own phrasing that we put on our coffee mugs: Caffeinated Christianity. It's much more robust than anything cooked up by the pot-luck dinner cooks that prepare the Sunday sermons and homilies in many places of diminishing graces. Christianity is a call to devotion to the Gospel, attentive listening and obedience to the words of Christ. It requires an openness of the ears and heart to understand how much God's ways are not our ways, but that they can be our ways through repentance, humility, love, and mercy, all met and enlivened and made fruitful by His grace. We're here, please God, to help remind each other of such things that are so needful today.

Your support of the Fellowship of St. James is more important today than ever. We appreciate every gift, great and small, and ask that you consider making a contribution here today to support the cause of full-bodied Christianity when it is in increasingly in short supply.

 

Comments

[Robb]

I would have liked your gram. I have a few cups of Red Rose daily. Very good post Jim, thanks.

[Billy Atwell]

Great post! There's a lot weak theology and philosophy out there.

There is, in my opinion, a difference between weak and wrong, though. Presbyterians aren't as much weak (as in watered down), since their theology is often too hardline on certain areas (salvation, sovereignty). It's wrong in the sense that it doesn't account for the fullness of truth and often ignores huge realities made evident in Scripture and philosophy.