“15 Now I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preached to you, which you received, in which you stand, 2 and by which you are being saved, if you hold fast to the word I preached to you—unless you believed in vain. 3 For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, 4 that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, 5 and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. 6 Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep. 7 Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. 8 Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me. 9 For I am the least of the apostles, unworthy to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. 10 But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me was not in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me. 11 Whether then it was I or they, so we preach and so you believed.” (1 Cor 15:1-11 ESV)

Measuring the effectiveness of the Christian gospel, this means to see problems that our tool the Christian gospel applies to. Man shapes his tools and his tools then forever shape him. The punchline to that great tool called Christianity, is that it was never a sure thing, never an “obvious deduction”, never an evolutionary next step. Always, it was for all time and heard in the ear of madam or sir prophet, such as ours: Christ. It was a strange jaunt, a peculiar hack job of a sort, only it became soothing and smoothe to some minds whilst to others—we include ourselves likely in this latter grouping—it is more in the vein of “essential” than “perfected”. To be perfected, sure, that is what all things come to do in worshipping the True King and the True Judge and the True Friend. But more than Perfect, it is Essential. Essentially about what motivates man’s daily deeds. Essential about what soothing comfort he and she needs around trauma and loss. Essential about a tool that we shaped, and that then forever shapes us.

Christianity plays no favorites: it is for the everyman and for the elite soldier. It is for the principled philosophical warrior and for the handyman or woman. It astonishes with its truth claims, but again, not because they have provably Solved problems in life but rather because they light up their adherents with the sunshine of Consolation, of Friendship, of Suitable Discourse and Scriptures. We have these toolkits and we allow them to form us, just as Christ formed them.

We allow therefore that the nature of our war be in always competition: is it Christianity we fight for, or some other nationalistic or societal or global village sense of fairness? Is it our own borders or those of the theologian’s discerned spiritual borders? What is our “Essence”? What is our “Fighting cause”? The philosopher is almost cynical asking for demonstrations of God’s power, of His power to forgive, but this too is a form of worship. We worship what we Choose and Adhere to, not what is provably King, provably Elevated, provably Solution. It is our choice and our hope, to be found in that hastily-arranged Camp that is nonetheless being Perfected in Christ.