Grafting Branches
By Spencer Clark
The self-help industry is a multi-billion-dollar industry that relies on the desire of people to improve themselves and become something new. We now have access to an overwhelming amount of information in what many call the “marketplace of ideas.” Reading every book is practically impossible. There just isn’t enough time, nor is every book worth reading. But we can take pieces of the best ideas and implement them to hopefully become a better person.
However, if we were to take this piecemeal approach to Christianity, we would face a much greater problem. Is Christianity for you just a bit of good wisdom, morals, and advice you can graft onto your personal tree alongside other useful bits of information you have accumulated throughout your life? Or is Christianity something else entirely? C. S. Lewis had this to say on the matter,
Give me All. I don’t want so much of your time and so much of your money and so much of your work: I want You. I have not come to torment your natural self, but to kill it. No half-measures are any good. I don’t want to cut off a branch here and a branch there, I want to have the whole tree down. I don’t want to drill the tooth, or crown it, or stop it, but to have it out. Hand over the whole natural self, all the desires which you think innocent as well as the ones you think wicked–the whole outfit. I will give you a new self instead (Lewis, Mere Christianity, 196-97).
Many non-believers have taken the ideas of Jesus and applied them to their lives, but they aren’t Christians. Why? The old tree is still standing and Jesus just another branch on our decaying tree of self-identity. Yet, this approach is entirely antithetical to what it means to become a Christian. Paul wrote, “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me” (Gal. 2:20 ESV). Jesus wants us to give Him our all. Christ is not an accessory we can graft onto our lives. In Christ, our old tree is hacked down with a chainsaw, shredded into mulch, its stump ground into dirt, and replaced with an entirely new sapling made in the image of Christ. We have to be willing to part with our old self and becoming something new in Christ. Is your old tree still standing, or has Christ made you into something new?