Chapter 8

The Training of the Layman

The trouble with a book of this sort, which attempts in so short a scope to apply Christianity to the lay life, is that it provokes the reaction, "Yes, but how do you apply the application?" Any person trying to use this as a kind of textbook or lab manual for Christianity will soon discover that what might be taken to be applications are still generalities--though of a lower order than that Christianity is having the attitude of Jesus--and will need considerable adjustment to fit into any real person's actual condition. But the problem here is that the adjustment, to be successful, must not adjust away the general truth being applied, and it is not always perfectly clear how you manage this juggling act.

This is why I think that the Christian layman who wants to live a deeply dedicated life that is consistent with his Christianity--the one who wants to be a real lay saint--needs much more than a book, a cursillo, or a summer course in Christian living. In fact, on the premise that a little learning is a dangerous thing, such superficial treatments of the subject--what you have almost got through reading--can do more harm than good, because you, the victim, leave them with the idea that you now know what you are doing. You would be like a student I was once encouraging to major in psychology. "Oh, I had that in high school," he said.

I realize that this means that I shouldn't have written this book. But I look on it as a rather extended plea for specialized training in Christianity for laymen, analogous to seminaries for the clergy and novitiates and training periods for Religious. If the lay state is qualitatively different from these two states (and that is what the book is about, really), then it is no less complex, and those who embark on it should have some way they can learn how to steer the vessel.