Living at the Crossroads: A Faithful, Relevant Witness

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Living at the Crossroads A Faithful, Relevant
Witness

• Living at the Crossroads
• Chapter 8

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Comprehensive Vision for Cultural Engagement

• Jesus Christ is Creator and Redeemer of all
  things
• Salvation is restorative and comprehensive
• Church is called to witness to this comprehensive
  salvation

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Evangelicalism and Comprehensive Salvation

• Early 20th century Salvation otherworldly,
  individualistic, dualistic
• Retreat from cultural engagement
• Did not see gospel as transforming power of all
  of human life

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Retreat into Private Religion

• As our concern over rampant secularization
  increases, we may in fashioning a missiology of
  Western culture easily be seduced into
  concentrating on the religious aspect only,
  leaving the rest to the secular powers, not least
  because these powers exert massive pressures on
  the church to limit itself to the soul of the
  individual. This is, after all, in keeping with
  the Enlightenment worldview religion is a
  private affair, its truth claims are relative and
  have no place in the public sphere of facts.
  But Christian theology itself also contributed to
  this notion, as it increasingly individualized,
  interiorized, ecclesiasticized, and privatized
  salvation (David Bosch).

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Evangelicalism and Comprehensive Salvation
Turnaround in late 20th c.

• Carl F. H. Henry challenged narrow mission of the
  church

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Challenge to Evangelicals

• Whereas once the redemptive gospel was a
  world-changing message, now it was narrowed to a
  world-resisting message. . . . Fundamentalism in
  revolting against the Social Gospel seemed also
  to revolt against the Christian social
  imperative. . . . It does not challenge the
  injustices of the totalitarianisms, the
  secularisms of modern education, the evils of
  racial hatred, the wrongs of current
  labor-management relations, and inadequate bases
  of international dealings.

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Evangelicalism and Comprehensive Salvation
Turnaround in late 20th c.

• Carl F. H. Henry challenged narrow mission of the
  church
• Lausanne Covenant (1974) and World Evangelical
  Fellowship (1983)

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Evangelical Mission Statements

• The salvation we claim should be transforming
  us (2 Cor. 318) in the totality of our personal
  and social responsibilities. Faith without works
  is dead (James 11426). (Lausanne Covenant)
• Evil is not only in the human heart but also in
  social structures. . . . The mission of the
  church includes both the proclamation of the
  Gospel and its demonstration. We must therefore
  evangelize, respond to immediate human needs, and
  press for social transformation. (WEF)

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Examples of Missionary Encounter

• Christian businesswoman and profit motive
• Christian graduate student and power of secular
  university
• Christian social worker and humanist psych
  hospital
• Christian history teacher and public school
• Christian athlete and greed in professional sport
• Christian politician and liberal government

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Critical Participation

• Participants in our culture who love and cherish
  all its created goodness
• Yet critical participants who reject and
  challenge the idolatry that twists it
• Involvement and separation, solidarity and
  opposition

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In the world but not of it
Jesus Prayer for His Disciples

• I have given them your word and the world has
  hated them, for they are not of the world any
  more than I am of the world. My prayer is not
  that you take them out of the world but that you
  protect them from the evil one. They are not of
  the world, even as I am not of it. As you sent
  me into the world, I have sent them into the
  world.
• -
  John 1714-18

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Dilemma of the Believing Community

• Solidarity Part of western culture
• Creational mandate responsible for cultural
  development
• Christs redemption is comprehensive
• Have good news for healing of culture
• Rejection Whole of western culture distorted by
  sinful idolatry
• Fundamental incompatibility between Scriptural
  and western story
• Danger Relevance may lead to unfaithfulness
  attempts to be faithful may lead to irrelevance

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Western Culture
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Unbearable Tension

• Unbearable tension that comes from being a
  member of two communities anchored in two
  different and incompatible stories. (Newbigin)

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Unbearable Tension
Christians are

• Members of western community
• Shaped by cultural story
• Members of covenant community
• Shaped by Biblical story

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Unbearable Tension ofLiving at the Crossroads
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Tension BetweenGospel and Culture

• The deeper the consciousness of the tension and
  the urge to take this yoke upon itself are felt,
  the healthier the Church is. The more oblivious
  of this tension the Church is, the more well
  established and at home in this world it feels,
  the more it is in deadly danger of being the salt
  that has lost its savour.
• - Hendrik Kraemer

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Unaware of unbearable tension

• The problem of leading a Christian life in a
  non-Christian society is now very present to us.
  It is not merely the problem of a minority in a
  society of individuals holding an alien belief.
  It is the problem constituted by our implication
  in a network of institutions from which we
  cannot dissociate ourselves institutions the
  operation of which appears no longer neutral,
  but non-Christian and as for the Christian who
  is not conscious of his dilemmaand he is in the
  majorityhe is becoming more and more
  de-Christianized by all sorts of unconscious
  pressures paganism now holding all the most
  valuable advertising space (T.S. Eliot).

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How Do We Live Faithfully at the Crossroads
Between Two Stories?
Two stories

• Withdrawal Cultural separation/irrelevance
  (reject cultural story)
• Affirmation Cultural captivity
  (affirm cultural story)
• Dualism (affirm part, reject part)

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Solving the unbearable tension

• Withdrawal

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Withdrawal Strategy

• Rejection of culture because it is disfigured by
  sin
• Rightly understand
• Not of this world
• Gospel judges culture
• Christ against culture
• Isolation, ghettoization
• Fossil, irrelevant

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Withdrawal...

• Rightly understands antithetical religious
  commitments of different communities
• Wrongly believes cultural flight is right or
  possible

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Solving the unbearable tension

• Withdrawal
• Accommodation

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Accommodation Strategy

• Affirm culture because it is creational
• Rightly understand
• In the world
• Gospel affirms culture
• Christ of culture
• Absorption, compromise
• Chameleon, syncretism

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Solving the unbearable tension

• Withdrawal
• Accommodation
• Dualism

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Dualism

• Rightly understands
• Creational life is shared
• Much truth, justice, etc. in the world
• Christ above, in paradox with culture
• Wrongly sets aside all-encompassing religious
  beliefs

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Solving the unbearable tension

• Withdrawal

• Accommodation

• Dualism

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The Gospel speaks

• Word of grace culture is good creation
  structure
• Word of judgement culture is idolatrously
  twisted and sinfully distorted misdirection

Test everything. Hold on to the good. Avoid
every kind of evil (I Thess. 521f).
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Biblical PositionAffirmative/AntitheticalApproa
ch to Culture

• Affirm
• Gospel/Yes
• At home
• Good creation
• May not withdraw

• Reject
• Gospel/No
• At odds
• Sinful distortion
• May not accept status quo

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Missionarys Inner Dialogue

• Way of being in the culture state of mind
• Desire to live in both worlds fully
• Faithfulness to Biblical story
• Views all of culture through lens of Scripture
• Seeks to discern idolatrous twisting of words,
  institutions, cultural practices, etc.
• Seeks to discern creational structure

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A Biblical Example

• Johns use of classical categories

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In the synoptic gospels the Kingdom of God is

• Central image for the Jews
• Central image for Jesus
• Central image for Matthew, Mark, Luke

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In Johns gospel...

• He employs images popular in classical culture
  and philosophy
• Heaven/earth, life/death, light/darkness,
  flesh/spirit

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Do we have a different gospel?
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Do we have a different gospel?
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John 11,14

• In the beginning was the logos...
• ...and the logos became sarx.

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New translation or articulation of the gospel
is both

• Relevant He uses language of classical dualism
  familiar to hearers
• Faithful Challenges the idolatry of the
  classical dualism

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Subversive Fulfillment

• Fulfills religious longing for order and origin
  (creational)
• Subverts idolatrous understanding

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Another Biblical Example Household
OIKOS extended family in Roman empire structured
hierarchically and oppressively

• Fundamental social building block of Roman empire
• Undifferentiated institution made up of marital,
  family, economic, political relationships
• Oppressive and hierarchical distortion

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Response of the early church

• Reject?
• Affirm?
• Transformed! (Eph. 521-64)

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Subversive Fulfillment

• Discerned creational relationships
• Transformed relationships creating new
  institution recognizable as good news to culture

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Cultural Discernment

• What is the creational insight or structure?
• What is the idolatrous distortion or direction?
• What kind of healing action is possible?

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Faithful Cultural Strategy

• Faithfulness and relevance
• Avoid withdrawal, accommodation, common ground
• Affirms both responsibility for cultural
  development and antithetical challenge to
  idolatrous development
• Affirmation, rejection, healing

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A Communal Witness

• Importance of callings of individuals in culture
• A missionary encounter with the West will have
  to be primarily a ministry of the laity. (Bosch)
• The primary witness to the sovereignty of
  Christ must be given, and can only be given, in
  the ordinary secular work of lay men and women in
  business, in politics, in professional work, as
  farmers, factory workers and so on. (Newbigin)

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A Communal Witness

• Importance of callings of individuals in culture
• Danger of individual witness
• Communal witness
• Alternative community

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Alternative Community

• The most important contribution which the Church
  can make to a new social order is to be itself a
  new social order. (Newbigin)
• The church is called to embody a different form
  of life, to be an alternative community, a
  countercultural body, a visible, beckoning,
  hope-giving, guiding sign of the shalom of the
  kingdom.

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Alternative Community in West

• A community of justice in a world of economic and
  ecological injustice
• A community of generosity and simplicity (of
  enough) in a consumer world
• A community of selfless giving in a world of
  selfishness
• A community of truth (humility and boldness) in a
  world of relativism
• A community of hope in a world of disillusionment
  and consumer satiation
• A community of joy and thanksgiving in a world of
  entitlement
• A community who experiences Gods presence in a
  secular world

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A Communal Witness

• Importance of callings of individuals in culture
• Danger of individual witness
• Communal witness
• Alternative community
• Organizations in various sectors of public life

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Organizing for Public Witness

• Corporate witness in politics, trade unions,
  media, education, etc.
• Without a proper organizational association we
  cannot meet our common responsibility in various
  respects. It will be difficult to meet our
  Christian responsibility especially in
  scholarship and politics without associating
  ourselves organizationally with one another.
  (Herman Ridderbos)

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A Communal Witness

• Importance of callings of individuals in culture
• Danger of individual witness
• Communal witness
• Alternative community
• Organizations in various sectors of public life
• Equipping members for active and informed
  participation in public life

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A Merciful Witness

• Mercy and justice
• We must do both we must care for the victim of
  disaster or injustice, and we must also undertake
  those measures of social engineering or
  revolution which are needed to prevent disaster
  and injustice from happening. (Newbigin)

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A Merciful Witness

• Mercy and justice
• Siding with the poor and oppressed

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A Tolerant and Suffering Witness

• Tolerance and pluralism
• Principled or committed pluralism
• Each community maintains faith commitment as true
• Respectful dialogue between competing truth
  claims
• Differs from agnostic pluralism of humanism

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A Tolerant and Suffering Witness

• Tolerance and pluralism
• Principled or committed pluralism
• No coercion or power for kingdom
• Witness to not building of kingdom
• Witness in public life will bring suffering

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Suffering and witness

• Missionary encounter with idolatrous power brings
  conflict and suffering
• Mission under the cross
• If we take seriously our duty as servants of God
  within the institutions of human society, we
  shall find plenty of opportunity to learn what it
  means to suffer for righteousness sake, and we
  shall learn that to suffer for righteousness sake
  is really a blessed thing. (Newbigin)

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A Faithful Witness

• Pressure to conform to idolatry
• Need for spirituality and community
• If there is a committed people as the sign and
  agent and foretaste of what God intends, it can
  only be insofar as their life is continually
  renewed through contact with God himself.
  (Newbigin)

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• If the church is indeed to be Jesus agent in
  bringing his whole agenda to his whole world, it
  needs his own Spirit. Indeed, if the church
  attempts to do what has to be done without
  constantly seeking to be fi lled and equipped by
  Jesus own Spirit, it is committing blasphemy
  each time it opens its mouth. This is not a plea
  that all Christians should enlist in the
  charismatic movement. Rather, it is a plea that
  all Christians, particularly those involved at
  the leading edge of the churchs mission to bring
  healing and renewal to the world, should be
  people of prayer, invoking the Spirit of Jesus
  daily and hourly as they go about their tasks,
  lest they be betrayed into the arrogance of their
  own agendas or into the cowardice of relativism
  (N.T. Wright).

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Supportive community Urgent plea to pastors

• Are we taking seriously our duty to support our
  lay people in their warfare? Do we seriously
  regard them as front-line troops? . . . What
  about the scores of Christians working in offices
  and shops in that part of the city? Have we ever
  done anything seriously to strengthen their
  Christian witness, to help them in facing the
  very difficult ethical problems which they have
  to meet every day, to give them the assurance
  that the whole fellowship is behind them in their
  daily spiritual warfare? (Newbigin addressing
  pastors)

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Need for community

• Nourished by Scripture, prayer, fellowship,
  worship
• Supported by encouragement, prayer, counsel,
  financial help
• Equipped to fulfill task in community

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Following Jesus

• Essenes withdrew
• Saduccees accommodated
• Pharisees retreated into organized religion
• Zealots employed coercive strategy
• Jesus call to uncompromising and suffering
  witness to kingdom

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Church Salt, Light, and a City on a Hill

• You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt
  loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty
  again? It is no longer good for anything, except
  to be thrown out and trampled underfoot. You are
  the light of the world. A city on a hill cannot
  be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put
  it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its
  stand, and it gives light to everyone in the
  house. In the same way, let your light shine
  before others, that they may see your good deeds
  and glorify your Father in heaven. (Matt.
  51316)