Challenging Times

In the first two posts in this series, I argued that a lot of contemporary Christian writing ‘moves the goalposts,’ from the question of an individual’s destiny after death to the issue of righting what’s wrong with the world here and now.

One of the clearest examples of this is Brian McLaren’s recent book ‘Everything must change.’ In it he says again and again that the Good News is not about people being rescued from this evil world, but about bringing in the Kingdom of God ‘on earth, as it is in heaven.’

This kind of thinking plays down the importance of individual salvation, and plays up the idea of making the world a better place in this life. And it is, quite simply, wrong:

Possibly the earliest Christian document that we have is Paul’s letter to the Galatians. (1 Thessalonians may be earlier - no-one can say for sure.)

Within four verses of the beginning of this earliest of letters, Paul says that Jesus

… died for our sins, just as God our Father planned, in order to rescue us from this evil world in which we live.’ (Galatians 1:4)

There’s nothing here about making the world a better place, or bringing in God’s kingdom. Rather, there’s a recognition that the world is (and always will be, as long as the present order of things lasts) an evil place, from which individuals need to be rescued. (Literally, it’s ‘evil age,’ not ‘evil world.’ I don’t think this changes the argument.)

The point is that individual salvation does matter. People’s destinies in eternity do matter. Our primary business isn’t to try to change society. It is to seek to save individuals. We don’t bring in the Kingdom of God - only God does that. Our job is to announce the arrival of his kingdom, and to invite people to submit to his rule.

Has ‘missional’ just become another trendy buzz-word that people can cut-and-paste onto existing church programmes and activities to make them look more interesting and contemporary?

This post on Alan Hirsch’s blog is worth reading on this subject, as are the comments (nearly a hundred of them, last time I looked).

According to Alan, it was Tim Keller who first raised this question, in conversation with Ed Stetzer. Alan’s blog entry about it is part of a synchroblog by more than fifty bloggers around the world.

The desire for spurious trendiness is one problem. Another is that there are still a lot of people out there who don’t know what ‘missional’ means (and who are probably vaguely suspicious about it as a result.) So I’d like to offer a prize for whoever can come up with the best word or phrase that means ‘missional,’ but doesn’t include the word ‘missional.’ (No fortune - just fame.)

Incidentally, Alan Hirsch is in the UK in about a week from now, leading a ‘Missional Masterclass’ for ‘Together in Mission,’ and speaking at another event for the West of England Baptist Association. Both these events should be really worth going to - I’m planning to go to the Missional Masterclass. I’m also hoping to interview Al for the Slipstream podcast.

I’ve just read (on a Facebook group) this extract of Bono being interviewed by Michka Assayas:

Bono: “You see, at the center of all religions is the idea of Karma. You know, what you put out comes back to you: an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, or in physics—in physical laws—every action is met by an equal or an opposite one. It’s clear to me that Karma is at the very heart of the universe. I’m absolutely sure of it. And yet, along comes this idea called Grace to upend all that “as you reap, so you will sow” stuff. Grace defies reason and logic. Love interrupts, if you like, the consequences of your actions, which in my case is very good news indeed, because I’ve done a lot of stupid stuff.”

Assayas: “I’d be interested to hear that”

Bono: “That’s between me and God. But I’d be in big trouble if Karma was going to finally be my judge. I’d be in deep s—. It doesn’t excuse my mistakes, but I’m holding out for Grace. I’m holding out that Jesus took my sins onto the Cross, because I know who I am, and I hope I don’t have to depend on my own religiosity.”

Assayas: “The Son of God who takes away the sins of the world. I wish I could believe in that.”

Bono: Look, the secular response to the Christ story always goes like this: he was a great prophet, obviously a very interesting guy, had a lot to say along the lines of other great prophets, be they Elijah, Muhammad, Buddha, or Confucius. But actually Christ doesn’t allow you that. Christ says: No. I’m not saying I’m a teacher, don’t call me teacher. I’m not saying I’m a prophet. I’m saying: “I’m the Messiah.” I’m saying: “I am God incarnate… I know you’re expecting me to come back with an army, and set you free from these creeps, but actually I am the Messiah. So what you’re left with is: either Christ was who He said He was—the Messiah—or a complete nutcase… The idea that the entire course of civilization for over half of the globe could have its fate changed and turned upside-down by a nutcase, for me, that’s farfetched …

…I love the idea of the Sacrificial Lamb. I love the idea that God says: Look, you cretins, there are certain results to the way we are, to selfishness, and there’s a mortality as part of your very sinful nature, and, let’s face it, you’re not living a very good life, are you? There are consequences to actions. The point of the death of Christ is that Christ took on the sins of the world, so that what we put out did not come back to us, and that our sinful nature does not reap the obvious death. That’s the point. It should keep us humbled… It’s not our own good works that get us through the gates of heaven.

If only we could be a bit more like Him, the world would be transformed. …When I look at the Cross of Christ, what I see up there is all my s— and everybody else’s. So I ask myself a question a lot of people have asked: Who is this man? And was He who He said He was, or was He just a religious nut? And there it is, and that’s the question. And no one can talk you into it or out of it.”

It’s been a while. I’m sorry. My excuse is that life recently has been beyond manic.

This Saturday at 7 pm, BBC 4 is showing ‘Inherit the Wind.’ It’s described in Radio Times as:

A young teacher is put on trial for teaching Darwin’s theory of evolution in a Tennessee school, in this drama based on a true story.

It’s based on the famous (infamous?) ‘Scopes monkey trial,’ which has gone down in legend, along with incidents like the trial of Galileo, as part of the mythology of how powerful obscurantist religious forces work to prevent free scientific enquiry and education.

The film-makers weren’t ones for letting the facts get in the way of a good story. So by all means watch the film, but don’t take it as gospel truth. If you want to get at a more balanced account of what happened, read Pulitzer prize-winning ‘Summer for the Gods: the Scopes Trial and America’s continuing debate over science and religion,’ by Edward J Larson.

‘Edward Larson tells the true story of the Scopes trial brilliantly, and the truth is a lot more interesting than the myth that was presented to the public in ‘Inherit the Wind.’ (Philip Johnson)

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John’s Gospel talks about eternal life. Matthew, Mark and Luke talk more often about the Kingdom of God (or Kingdom of heaven - the meaning is the same).

It’s important to think clearly about what ‘Kingdom of God’ means.

Quite a few writers talk about us bringing in the Kingdom of God here and now, by working to alleviate poverty, injustice, and oppression. But they don’t have much to say about eternity. It is all about this world and this life.

It’s right for us to strive against poverty and injustice, because this reflects God’s own character.

But we aren’t going to bring in the Kingdom of God by doing so.

Talking like this about bringing in the Kingdom of God may come from either ignorance or confusion, or from forgetting that there is both an ‘already’ and a ‘not yet’ aspect to God’s rule.

Jesus is pretty clear on the ‘not yet’ aspect in the Sermon on the Mount, when he says things like

‘Unless your righteousness surpasses that of the pharisees and teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven.’ (Matthew 5:20)

Or:

‘Not everyone who says to me ‘Lord, lord’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my father in heaven. Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and in your name cast out demons, and perform many miracles?’ Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers.’ (Matthew 7:21-23)

How can anyone spin Jesus’ words here to be about anything other than the end of time?

The ‘Kingdom of God’ is not primarily something that happens in an individual’s life now, nor is it something that we can bring in as we work for justice and peace and freedom from poverty. It is primarily something God is going to bring in at the end of time - it is an eschatological reality, to use the technical phrase.

When we lose sight of this and focus exclusively on social issues here and now, the danger is that we stop bothering about the eternal question: will people get into the Kingdom of God? And this really does mean we’re losing the plot.

‘Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to live, and only a few find it.’ (Matthew 7:13-14)

The Slipstream podcast for June is now online, featuring Shane Claiborne, the best-selling author of ‘The Irresistible Revolution.’

About thirty homeless families had moved into an abandonned cathedral, and they were being evicted… We read about it in the newspaper and were deeply troubled, and we went down and found them, and we got involved in that struggle, and on the front of the cathedral they had hung a banner that said, ‘How can we worship a homeless man on Sunday and ignore one on Monday?’

Listen here:

This is the first of what I hope will be a short series of related posts.

I’m concerned that, out of a genuine desire to be contemporary and relevant, we may be losing the plot of the Bible’s big story.

I’ve read several books recently by respected leaders and theologians, where what they don’t say has been more important than what they do say.

For example, there’s often a deafening silence about the question of the individual’s eternal destiny. OK, I know it’s an unfashionable question, but it still strikes me as being of some personal interest and concern.

I can illustrate my point by talking about the phrase ‘eternal life.’ This is used about sixteen times in John’s Gospel, eight times in Matthew/Mark/Luke (but some of these are parallel accounts of the same event), and eighteen more times in the rest of the New Testament, including half a dozen in John’s letters. In other words, it’s a favourite phrase of John, and is used somewhat, but nothing like as much, by the other New Testament writers.

The rhetoric about ‘eternal life’ often goes like this: It’s talking about a different kind of life here and now. It isn’t talking about what happens after we die. This rhetoric is often backed up by an appeal to the underlying Greek phrase which literally means something like ‘life of the ages.’

What this doesn’t say is more important than what it does say: ‘Eternal life’ clearly includes the idea of a different kind of life which begins here and now. But this isn’t all it means. You can’t just ignore or throw out the main meaning of the adjective. First and foremost, it is about eternal life - life that lasts for ever. It is about what happens after we die.

This is not an either/or choice. We are distorting the Bible when we dismiss or ignore the central nature of eternal life - that it is life that lasts for ever, extending beyond the grave.

The trouble is that as soon as you say this, it raises nagging and disquieting questions about what will happen to us after we die. And I think it’s largely out of a reluctance to take on these questions that some writers dodge the bullet about eternal life.

But quite simply, the most important question you will ever face is: what is going to happen to you when you die? When we lose the plot about this, and start making other issues central, we are in danger of proclaiming ‘a different gospel,’ as Paul says in Galatians 1:6-7.

‘Listening to the Beliefs of Emerging Churches: five perspectives,’ edited by Robert Webber, does exactly what it says on the tin. Five emerging church leaders each in turn have the opportunity to describe their take on theology and the emerging church. Then the others have the opportunity to respond to what they have written. The book ends with a brief attempt by Webber to assess emerging theology.

The five main sections are:

• The emerging church and Biblicist theology, by Mark Driscoll
• The emerging church and incarnational theology, by John Burke
• The emerging church and missional theology, by Dan Kimball
• The emerging church and embodied theology, by Doug Pagitt
• The emerging church and communal theology, by Karen Ward

I’ve written earlier about the sheer theological diversity which makes it almost meaningless to talk about the emerging church, or about a single emerging church theology. This book does an excellent job of capturing that diversity, and this makes it well worth reading.

Precisely because of this, Webber’s attempt at a conclusion is the weakest part of the whole book. He tries to synthesize some very different things - or at least, to find some common threads between them. You’ll have to decide for yourself whether or not you think he succeeeds.

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I’ve written a few times recently about preaching (here and here). I don’t think there’s much justification in the New Testament for preaching as we see it, as making sermons. The NT seems to put much more emphasis on teaching.

Tim Chester has just started a series of blog posts called Dialogue on Sermons (part 1, part 2). These are really worth reading. He makes the case I’ve been trying to make - but does a much better job:

‘To be honest, Adams’ six points look very like special pleading to me and only reinforce my view that the status of the preacher is what is being defended. The irony is that those who trumpet their adherence to the word do not teach that word in the way it describes itself being taught!

The case for the sermon seems to be that it reflects the authority of God’s word, because the word is proclaimed without interruption or question. Think about it for a moment. What a bizarre definition of authority. Authority = lack of interruption! Surely the authority of the word is best expressed when we live in obedience to that word. So let’s work the truth down into people’s hearts and lives.

Preach it, Tim!
Or teach it.

Last year, Jason Clark made a presentation to the Council of the UK’s Evangelical Alliance. In it, he identified two dimensions of the emerging church movement:

• Theologically conservative - radical
• Sociologically conservative - radical

So there are some people called emerging church leaders who are both theologically and sociologically radical. There are others who are sociologically radical - they are experimenting with new forms - but theologically they are conservative. And still others are theologically radical but sociologically quite conservative. (I’m trying to make up my mind whether the new monastic movement fits this description…)

This seems to me to be one of the most helpful accounts of the emerging church that I’ve come across. It recognises the huge diversity of the movement (in a way that Carson does not, while Gibbs and Bolger do, and Sine does to some extent, although he muddies the waters by limiting the description ‘emerging’ one of the streams he describes.)

It’s precisely because of this massive diversity that I don’t really think ‘emerging’ is a very useful tag. Some people will want to be called ‘emerging’ or ‘missional,’ just because it sounds trendy and hip. Others, especially following Carson, will use ‘emerging’ as a kind of theological cuss-word to condemn any contemporary expression of church life that they don’t like.

‘Emerging’ has become a bit like ‘evangelical.’ It’s one of those words that has become all things to all people - and because of that, it doesn’t mean very much to anyone. ‘When I use a word, it means exactly what I want it to mean. Nothing more. Nothing less.’ (From Alice in Wonderland - Humpty Dumpty, I think.)