Yesterday I took my twins to my parents’ place for the afternoon and as they were playing Connect Four, I went downstairs and browsed through my father’s library.  Whenever I do this I always find something of interest.  This time it was a small paperback that I had not noticed before.  Jesus Discovered (1969) by Malcolm  Muggeridge caught my attention immediately as I leafed through its pages.

Admittedly, I don’t know much about Muggeridge (well, I do now) but here are some snippets I came across while still standing in front of the bookcase that compelled me to bring the book home with me.
If I didn’t know better, I would have thought the following words were written only yesterday:

[note]Institutional Christianity, it seems to me, is now in total disarray, and visibly decomposing, to the point that, short of a miracle, it can never be put together again with any semblance of order or credibility. In their present state of decomposition the various Christian denominations are not even an impediment to Christian belief but just a joke.[/note]

And here, it sound like he’s saying that organized religion is one of the most effective ways to hide from God!

[note]One of the most effective defensive systems against God’s incursions has hitherto been organised religion. The various churches have provided a refuge for fugitives from God—his voice drowned in the chanting, his smell lost in the incense, his purpose obscured and confused in creeds, dogmas, dissertations and other priestly pronunciamentos. In vast cathedrals, as in little conventicles, or just wrapped in Quaker silence, one could get away from God. Plainsong held him at bay, as did revivalist eloquence, hearty hymns and intoned prayers. Confronted with that chanting, moaning, gurgling voice—’Dearly beloved brethren, I pray and beseech you . . .’ or with that earnest, open, Oxfam face, shining like the morning sun with all the glories flesh is heir to, God could be relied on to make off.[/note]

In answer to the question, “Am I a Christian?”, he writes:

[note]If I put it to myself after, say, reading one of the Archbishop of Canterbury’s pronouncements in the House of Lords on contemporary mores or listening to some radio or television evangelist of Beveridgeanity, I feel profoundly thankful not to be, even in name, associated with such as they. If they are Christian, I reflect, then I emphatically am not. On the other hand books like Resurrection or The Brothers Karamazov give me an almost overpowering sense of how uniquely marvellous a Christian way of looking at life is, and a passionate desire to share it. Likewise, listening to Bach, reading Pascal, looking at Chartres Cathedral or any of the other masterpieces of Christian art and thought. As for the Gospels and Epistles, I find them (especially St John) irresistibly wonderful as they reduce the jostling egos of nowmy own among themto the feeble crackling flicker of burning sticks against a majestic noonday sun. Is it not extraordinary to the point of being a miracle, that so loose and ill-constructed a narrative in an antique translation of a dubious text should after so many centuries still have power to quell and dominate a restless, opinionated, over-exercised and under-nourished twentieth century mind?[/note]

Sometimes books written over 50 years ago can still speak to the present generation. I think this book is one of those books. The snippets you have just read above do not really represent the book as there are many chapters in the book that do not deal with organised religion per se, nonetheless it is a book that would serve today’s church leaders.

If you are interested, I found the entire book online here.