I speak of the evangelical Christian community as my spiritual home. That is where my roots are and most of my current relationships. That is also where I feel most at home doctrinally. However, in the impotent arena of Christian action, I feel as a stranger to my own heritage.
I believe that right action proceeds from right doctrine. This concept compels us to have an initial concern with right doctrine, because it is the source for ethics. But I have little sympathy for a person whose right doctrine does not produce right action. I do not believe right doctrine is a virtue in its own right. Most of Paul's letters in the New Testament begin with doctrinal clarification and end with ethical implementation. This is as it should be in our lives. "To believe" in the New Testament refers to a vital life force belief, not an intellectual elitism. Right doctrine for its own sake has always been an abomination to God. The Old Testament prophets did not primarily emphasize doctrinal reformation. They attacked the ethical outworkings of doctrine to show that the beliefs themselves were hollow. Faith without works has always been dead. What does it profit a man if he has faith to move mountains...? What reward is there for those who call "Lord, Lord..."? Better that the doors to the temple be shut than that the people of God profane [God's] house with superficial sacrifice and hollow worship. Satan himself believes.... and trembles.
Taking Christ Seriously
My basic challenge to the evangelical Christian community is the challenge to live according to its beliefs. I do not desire to change its beliefs, but to illumine them and activate them. I am convinced that if the church were to take the Lordship of Christ seriously, we would find a new power to our proclamation. But I frankly have mixed emotions about our present proclamation to the world. The words are right; the context is wrong. And so the words are pacifiers. When Jesus says from the cross, "Father, forgive them," his words change [hu]mankind. He has won the right to be heard. Take the same message, engrave it in gold, preach it from prestige positions around the world, and the revolution dies as the ears of millions of listeners turn deaf.
I have trouble handling the anger within me as I consider the monstrosity of the church. Even as I write this I have to pause between sentences. I have to choose the third or fourth phrase that comes to mind because the first ones are too abusive and arrogant. If the end result of whatever I say is constructive I will be grateful for the measureless grace of God.
Jesus came "to bring the good news to the poor, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and to the blind new sight, to set the downtrodden free, to proclaim the Lord's year of favor" (Luke 4:18-19). My first major ethical difference with the evangelical Christian community is that it has abandoned the ones Jesus came to help. It has fled to the suburbs and then tacked on to its mission budget a few inner-city projects to relieve its guilt. Of course there are oppressed people everywhere. But by every criterion the lower class is the greatest victim of oppression in our culture today. When Jesus was asked why he ate with tax collectors and sinners he replied, "It is not the healthy who need the doctor, but the sick" (Matthew 9:12). Of course no one is "well" and there are those who are "sick." The "sick" may be well off financially, as the tax collectors were, but they have some stigma attached to their lives. If not poverty, it may be mental or physical handicap, criminal tendencies, alcoholism, drug addiction, acute loneliness, sickness. These people for the most part are lower class and urban. Why is the nature of the 20th century church and its related non-denominational ministries largely middle class and suburban? I do not see a biblical mandate for exclusiveness in favor of either the rich or the poor. Jesus had relations with all. But where were his priorities? The people who populate our ministries and sit in our pews are in great contrast to the people of early Christendom. "Those whom the world thinks common and contemptible are the ones that God has chosen." (1 Corinthians 1:28). But we, being wiser than God and more shrewd in our strategy of changing the world, have chosen the rich to be on our boards, the respectable to lead our grassroots work. And our mission field? Also the respectable, the influential, the college-bound, the businessman. When God comes to raise up the valleys and level the mountains, when many who are now first become last and the last first, how much prestige and acceptance will our work have in the eyes of God? I believe we must be much more concerned than we are with the so-called lower class of society.
Christians and the Status Quo
A second disagreement I have with our posture in the world is that we are aligned with the status quo of government, business, and educational institutions. Evangelicals have always felt that the way to deal with corporate sin is by dealing with individual sin. First change the human heart, then the culture will be changed. Because the evangelical community has failed to recognize the implications of corporate institutional sin, its doctrine of individual salvation has become emasculated. There is a concept.in scripture of the growth of wickedness. In the pages of Genesis we see that evil spread both before and after the days of Noah, despite the salvation which was visited upon Noah's family. Evil is clearly more than the sum total of human sin. There are principalities and powers that are in control, says Paul. And salvation is clearly more than the concept of individual salvation. Individual salvation is basic, but there are ramifications to salvation that encompass the entire groaning universe.
There are new men and women now, but salvation is not complete for anyone until there are also a new heavens and a new earth. To begin with individual salvation is wise and biblical. It is unwise and unbiblical to take a new-born babe in Christ and to feed him to the ravenous world and think that somehow we are leavening the loaf. If a member of the Mafia came to our churches and accepted Christ as Lord and Savior, we could not expect him to survive as a Christian in the world of the Mafia. We could not very well say to him, "Go back to the Mafia, and as you rob, kill, threaten, and exploit your brothers, try to have a Christian influence on the men you work with." We would have to create an alternative culture for him, and that in itself would be a powerful witness to his business partners. What are the neutral occupations and the neutral institutions in our society? Can we send the bankers back to the bank, the soldiers back to the front, the teachers and the students back to the classrooms, the doctors back, the judges, the lawyers, the legislators, the salesman, the advertisers, the preachers? Has not wickedness converted even the time-honored professions into a jungle of compromise, violence, exploitation, and the survival of the fittest? This is perhaps an extreme statement of the case. But this is clearly an accurate statement of the trend in our society and thus sufficient mandate for us to generate alternative structures, institutions that are once again humane, systems where Christians are free to be compassionate servants. When the church in the first century was declared illegal, when it dispersed and went underground, it was the light of the world. When Constantine declared Christianity to be the religion of the state in the early fourth century, when the state embraced it and made it a partner in the status quo, the very light became darkness. Separation of church and state means much more today than no prayer in public schools. The ecclesia, the "called-out ones", must resist the old and build the new. The old way of life that is left behind is dirty thoughts and foul language. It is also fishing nets, zealotism, and tax collecting. The church must once again become a resistance movement.
The Call to Servanthood
The evangelical church has lost credibility with the world and, more importantly, with God because of its relative power and affluence. This situation points up my third and most basic point of disagreement. The church has adopted the role of master in its abortive attempt to follow in the footsteps of a Messiah who resisted that role (cf. Matthew 4:8-10). It has stooped to help the unfortunate from a position of financial security that parallels the glory of God the Son before he became a man. In his pre-humiliation state, Christ had the privileges of God and deservedly so (cf. Philippians 2:6). It was not guilt, but compassion which led him to final vulnerability, emptiness, and poverty. The church today has a certain glory in society, prestige and privileges encompassing far more than the monetary. All of these are to be offered up in the manner of Jesus Christ, out of compassion and without reservation. Does anyone doubt that the world for whom Christ died needs the infilling of the material and the spiritual that the 20th century crucifixion of the church would generate? If the evangelical church were biblical in action as well as doctrine, it would make the implementation of the cross an ethical priority. There is a difference between understanding the work of reconciliation and doing that work. The pagan world and, even more shameful, some of the Christian world, waits for the church to be the body of Christ broken and the blood poured out. The heart of the problem is a lack of faith — a lack of faith that humiliation gives way to exaltation. But the greatest symptom of the problem is that the church is well-fed in a world that is hungry, well-housed among the refugees, and well-clothed among the naked. What possible explanation can there be for a church that claims it has taken up its cross yet remains preserved and unscathed? I believe the explanation lies in an analysis of the contentious and stubborn reaction of the disciples when Jesus attempted to explain his passion to them. They simply could not understand how the crucifixion of Messiah could be the wisdom of God, How can the death of Christ serve the Kingdom? Does it not defeat the kingdom? Do we not need a strong church, endowed with human wisdom and resources, defended against every onslaught of the needy and ignorant of every silent thundering plea of humanity that it come down from its heaven. I am not saying that the Christian community is to seek persecution, poverty, or humiliation. But we ought not to resist the passion for our own individual and corporate lives. The passion of Christ comes to each one of us. As the guards approach us in the garden, let no one of us draw the sword in self defense. As the pagan courts convict us, let no one of us speak in protestation. As the crowds crucify us, let us know what we are about even if they do not. We do not have a Messianic complex. We simply seek to share the cup of servanthood which he drank. What we accomplish as a church is only of secondary concern, but we can trust that men will be reconciled to God through the sacrifice of Christ as it becomes historically continuous with our lives. Our primary concern is to be true to our nature as sons of God, to flesh out in our own bodies the sufferings of Christ. (Colossians 1:24). Therein we become the people of God and the Church is renewed.
I long for the evangelical church to take up its cross. Why has the doctrine of loving neighbor as one's self become so impotent in the bosom of the church? When will we come to an end of the defensiveness and the excuses of a church that preaches repentance to the pagan world while practicing self-righteousness? We are so creative when it comes to being a power broker in society and so zealous in the pursuit of self-preservation. How is it that our creativity and our zeal dissipate when it comes to dying? How is it that an institution that once was persecuted by the state has now been embraced and adopted by the powers that be? Have twenty centuries enlightened and mellowed the world so much that it no longer tries to put out the light? Or has the light itself been overcome by darkness? The damning questions can be put a thousand ways. They all point to the same disease. The sick have been quarantined by a church that wants to avoid jeopardizing its own health. The status quo has been embraced by those who are concerned that the gospel be preached in a benign atmosphere. The strategy of reconciliation through powerlessness has been sacrificed on the altar of respectability. But the strategy has backfired and produced opposite results.
Remember the story of Jesus rebuking his disciples when they tried to protect Him from the little children, the bothersome, the sick? Remember when the apostles said, "We must obey God rather than men"? Remember when Jesus said, "Follow me," and "He who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple"? Buried underneath the rubble of modern day evangelical ethics, I believe there is that same capacity for commitment and compassion. May the God who was gracious enough to redeem us be patient enough to remind us.
Bill Lane was a contributing editor of the Post-American, Sojourners' predecessor, when this article appeared.
Got something to say about what you're reading? We value your feedback!