Chreasters

Ever heard this term? It refers to people who only go to church on Christmas and Easter. Between the ages of about 8-15, I was one of them. (I do refuse some of the blame mainly because I couldn't drive, but I also don't think I ever begged my parents to go to church either.) Chreasters have some moral sense that going to church on these major Jesus holidays is the right thing to do. They mentally ascent to Christianity as true but are uncomfortable with the sacrifice and the radical life that you have to live when you follow Christ.

People give 1000 excuses why they do not/should not/do not have to go to church on a weekly basis. What's so ironic is that if Chreasters truly understood the power the two sermons they hear every year--of the birth of Jesus and then His death, burial, and resurrection--those two messages would compel them to actually stop being Chreasters. They would have to choose. You must either be for Christ or against Him, believe or renounce belief. You cannot mentally ascent that God came to earth and was born through a virgin, that He lived a sinless life, and that He died as a sacrifice for our sins, overcame death and was resurrected through the power of His Spirit so we can live with Him forever. I'll leave you with one of my favorite quotes from C.S. Lewis.

"I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: 'I'm ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don't accept His claim to be God.' That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic -- on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg -- or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to." – Mere Christianity, pages 40-41

God didn't give us the choice to be Chreasters.