Gospel Nomad

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Tag: god

  • Activism in Light of the Gospel

    “Jesus was the greatest social justice warrior ever.”

    An acquaintance said that to me, as we were conversing about a lot of the societal ills that seem to plague the United States: homelessness, racism, sexism, the failings of our legal system, substance abuse, etc. Our conversation eventually turned to discussing what the role of the Church should be in shaping culture and the world around us. Does the Church have an obligation to fight for widespread societal change, to be the public defenders for what we believe? Did Jesus really come to stand up for the marginalized and maligned people of society?

    The answer, of course, is a bit more complicated than a simple yes or no. Jesus spent a lot of His earthly ministry with the people the society of His day considered “less-than” – tax collectors, adulterers, Samaritans, widows, children. He purposely took His disciples into Capernaum, an area that would’ve been considered the ancient Sin City by orthopractic Israelites. Jesus was intentional with His earthly ministry, showing His disciples then and now that everybody needed Him and nobody was too poor or worthless to receive it. Jesus, through His words and actions, overturns the value-system of His society.

    And throughout this, Jesus is very clear in the goal and purpose of His ministry. In His conversation with Zacchaeus, a tax collector, Jesus told Him, “Today salvation has come to this house, since he also is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost” (Luke 19:9-10 ESV). Jesus was not sent to heal the world of its social issues, but its spiritual ones. The apostle Paul wrote in his letter to the Corinthians, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation” (2 Corinthians 5:17-19). The whole point of Jesus’ earthly ministry was to reconcile us to the Father through His lived-out righteousness, His substitutionary death, and His resurrection (which is applied to our spiritual state).

    This ministry of reconciliation, which Christ has now entrusted to us (His Church), is why Christ came to Earth at all. We see in the New Testament just how focused Jesus is on this Gospel mission. At a dinner in Bethany, Jesus’ feet are anointed by Mary with a jar of expensive oil. Judas questions her actions – “Why was this ointment not sold for three hundred denarii and given to the poor?” Judas isn’t asking with an altruistic attitude – he’s thinking of himself. But the question does raise an important question – why doesn’t Jesus rebuke her? The jar of oil in question was worth approximately one years’ salary. That kind of money could make a huge impact on the lives of many people. But Jesus’ answer might shock modern readers. “Leave her alone, so that she may keep it for the day of my burial. For the poor you always have with you, but you do not always have me” (John 12:5-8). Jesus isn’t telling His audience to ignore the poor – the Torah commanded the Israelites to care for the poor among them (Leviticus 19:9-10), the Proverbs considered it foolish to mistreat the needy (Proverbs 14:20-21, 31), and Jesus elsewhere commands His followers to treat the least-valuable people among them as they would treat Him (Matthew 25:31-46).

    In this interaction, though, Jesus reveals to the dinner party that He is the ultimate priority. Nothing else takes center stage. Nobody else wears the crown. Everything else is second to Him. Jesus’ Gospel mission, His commandment to us to “make disciples of all nations”, follows from that priority. When we take our eyes off Jesus, we lose the heart of Gospel. And our hearts ARE prone to wander away from the Lord, because even in our redeemed state we are not yet free from sin. That’s why it becomes so easy to substitute Jesus’ Gospel for something else, or to muddy it with non-essential things.

    Whenever we work to share the Gospel with others, we naturally present the Gospel in a way our audience can understand it. Using terms like “sanctification” or “hypostatic union” when explaining the Gospel to a first grader is probably going to confuse them. Talking about Jesus being the Logos to someone unfamiliar with Greek philosophy wouldn’t relate the Gospel to them personally. In a similar way, we sometimes pair the Gospel with a means of sharing it. For example, we invite people in our community to a free pancake breakfast and a vintage car show in the church parking lot. We could package food boxes for low-income families on Thanksgiving. We might even explore ministry opportunities as an extension of Jesus’ command to make disciples. Think of George Muller and his Bristol orphanage, William Wilberforce and his fight for abolition, or Mother Theresa and her ministry in Calcutta. There are many men and women who were passionate about issues plaguing their society. But for them, the social issue was a means of spreading the Gospel. The Gospel expressed itself in their work. But whatever their passion, whatever God had lain on their heart, it ultimately didn’t replace Jesus. Without Jesus, it just doesn’t work.

    Let me explain. Jesus, in a rather morose metaphor, referred to the Pharisees as “white-washed tombs.” The idea here is that the Pharisees had taken great efforts to ensure the exterior, public-facing part of their lives looked clean, while at the same time neglecting the interior. There is absolutely nothing wrong with focusing on social issues and working to improve our society. But fixing societal ills will not heal the world. It’s like treating the symptoms of an illness instead of fighting the source. There are many terrible issues facing our world today. Poverty, homelessness, drug addiction, slavery, corruption, climate damage, racism, sexism – the list goes on and on. None of these are the ultimate, root cause of what is wrong with our world. They’re all symptoms of sin. They are a result of living in a fallen world that exists in a spiritual state of death. New life cannot grow from dead things. A bad tree cannot produce good fruit. A building built on sand will not last. Without treating the cause of societal issues – sin and separation from God – all our work is ultimately vapor in the wind.

    Some people describe Jesus as a rebel against culture, leading a counter-cultural revolution. In some ways, this is true – Jesus is clearly not afraid to speak out against the customs and traditions of the Pharisees. Other people describe Jesus as the pinnacle of culture, creating the new perfect society. In some ways, this is true – Jesus instructs His followers on how to live, commands them to treat others with love. Both descriptions miss the point of Jesus’ life. Jesus wasn’t leading a cultural revolution or reformation. Neither does He call His followers to be champions of social change. Jesus was focused on spiritual resurrection. Any social change He brought was a by-product of the spiritual change He brought. Any social change we bring as the Church is secondary to the spiritual change we bring. Fixing society in this temporary life means nothing if people spend eternity in hell.

    Without Jesus, all our works are worthless. It is Jesus’ blood that has the power to cover our sin. It is Jesus’ love that has the power to restore people to the Father. It is Jesus’ resurrection that has the power to offer new life. It is Jesus alone who has the power to heal, save, and deliver. We dare not exchange the life-transforming power of the Gospel for anything less.

  • The Posture of Worship

    Lately I’ve been pondering the reality of worship. The fact that we worship at all is one of the dinguishing features of homo sapiens, since no other species on the planet has the capacity of spiritual engagement. There is no concept of the sacred amongst all the members of creation, save us. This is not a simple product of higher evolution, else other creatures would have developed religion or a sense of the spiritual in the millions of years that biological life has existed. Other simian life-forms can, for instance, learn to use money, communicate in sign language, and create hand tools. Many species form psuedo-societies with complex behavioral codes. Many species seem capable of exerting the same cruelty that humans can towards members of their own species, albeit on a reduced scale. Why then do humans, and humans alone, have this spiritual existence?

    Some people argue that spirituality is the subconcious mind trying to “bridge” the gap in understanding of the rational or concious mind. The grasping for a higher power is nothing more than humanity trying to fit the unexplained part of the universe into a mental framework that the mind can cope with. Religion is nothing more than the desparate scrambling for a handhold in the cliff of human experience.

    One of the essential doctrines of Christianity is the tri-unity of God. God eternally exists as three Persons, each Person distinct yet equal in divinity. This defines and sets apart our God from others, because we can rightly claim God is eternally just and kind and merciful. God existing in eternal community is what allows us to say and believe that God is Love, because the three Persons of the Trinity have eternally loved each other. God expresses the fullness of His character at all times, even before space-time-matter existed, and outpours all of Himself. The Father’s character does not differ from the Son, and the Son’s does not differ from the Spirit’s – all three possess all of God’s attributes entirely, and all act in perfect unity while hiding none of Themselves from the Others. There exists no shadow between them. In His dealings with humanity and the spiritual beings, God’s character is constant. His actions reveal His character always, and He never hides His face from us.

    Existing as we humans do in the image of our Creator, we also continuously outpour ourselves. Language allows us to express our internal lives and selves, and clearly elevates above all other creatures. We reveal ourselves in our words and actions, everything we do expressing a part of our identity. We were made to, like God, create as He does. We were made to, like God, love like He does. We were made to, like God, relate like He does. Sure, we don’t exist in three Persons as He does, but we were designed to exist in community without hiding any of ourselves. We were designed to exist perpetually in relationship, to need it and thrive on it.

    And what relationship could be more central to our existence than our relationship with the One who upholds our existence? To quote the apostle Paul, who himself was quoting philosophers who came before him, “in him we live and move and have our being.” If we have being, it is through Him, and relationship between us and Him is essential for that being. The heart of our very selves, the depths and foundations of our soul, are anchored in Him. This relationship is what gives us identity, establishing our function in creation, and elevates us above the rest of creation. Even the wind and the waves recognize and obey their Creator, but we can engage reciprocally with Him. We can talk with Him, laugh with Him, know Him and be known by Him, love Him and be loved by Him.

    One of the effects of sin is that it severs our anchor point in Him. At it’s heart, sin is our attempt to displace God from His throne and sit atop it ourselves. By disobeying God’s command to not eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, Adam and Eve rejected God’s authority over them. Their’s was a moral rebellion, attempting to decide for their own what was good and what was evil. The person who gets to define good and evil is who has the power. (Note that in our world, people who have power – wether economic power, or social power, or military power – have the ability to influence cultural or civic morality. The government creates laws, the infulential create cultural norms.) Not that Adam or Eve or anyone else can displace God from His cosmic throne; He sits enthroned above all powers and authorities, human or spiritual. But through sin we refuse to act as if God has moral authority, and acknowledge only our own instead. Though sin, we damage our relationship with God.

    But we still need some anchor of being. God still upholds your existential being, but what is upholding your real being (your raison d’etre, or purpose for existence). That essential, central part of your soul disappears without a mutual relationship with God. With the mooring line snapped and a God-shaped soul, we must seek out other things to anchor onto. This is why we worship other things. Worship is a natural aspect of our relationship with God. It is the pouring out of ourselves from creation to Creator, and without Him we must pour out to something else. The problem is, an infinitely deep hole cannot be filled with finite things. When we worship – and we DO worship – things other than our Creator it is never enough. It’s one of the reasons we develop addictions, which are formed by the soul seeking fulfillment and the body creating chemical dependency. But without the infinite God to satisfy, it is not enough.

    For the Christian, worship is not merely the time in our communal gathering on Sundays where we listen or sing along to music. Certainly, music is a powerful way of engaging the heart and the mind and focusing them on our Creator and Savior, but we do not walk around singing praises all the time. If we define worship in this way, worship stops and starts seemingly by random. This is not how the ancient philosphers and theologians defined worship. “Day after day they pour forth speech, night after night they declare knowledge,” proclaims the psalmist. Creation does not stop reflecting the glory of God. “Day and night they never stop saying, ‘Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty, who was and is and is to come,” reports the author of Revelation. The spiritual beings are engaged in ceasless worship around the throne. The twenty-four elders around the throne do not worship through song either, but by casting their crowns before the throne and bowing down and speaking rightly of Him.

    In the same vein, worship before the advent of music in our corporate cultus (for which we have David to thank for introducing music into regular temple worship) was not limited to sacrifices and offerings. The prophet Samuel said to the disobedient King Saul, “Does the Lord delight in burnt offerings and sacrifice as much as in obeying the Lord? To obey is better than sacrifice, and to heed is better than the fat of rams.” Burnt offerings were an aspect or outlet of worship in the Mosaic covenant, but are not themselves the truest, most base form of worship. Jesus Himself, warning the Pharisees, said that though they tithed even their spices, they had “neglected the more important matters of the law—justice, mercy and faithfulness.” For our God, worship is not merely a matter of external action. It begins in the heart, in the soul, and radiates outward. How can we worship by raising our hands when we withhold from God our inward obedience? How can we lift our voices in song when we breathe out heavily in secret sin?

    Jesus, when speaking to the crowds about the kingdom of Heaven, told them, “If you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother or sister has something against you, leave your gift there in front of the altar. First go and be reconciled to them; then come and offer your gift.” The Sermon on the Mount is full of teachings similar to these. Rather than adding to the Law with additional ellaborations and clarifications, Jesus struck to the heart of the Law. The Mosaic Law was concerned with adjusting and regulating the people’s outward actions, as all laws seek to do. Jesus sought to adjust the heart, as only the Spirit can do. Worship is expressed externally, but begins internally. This is why Jesus was not impressed by the gift of the Pharisees, who tithed out of their abundance because it was required of them and it benefitted them. It is why Jesus was not impressed by loud public prayers, which glorified the praying person more than God. It is why He loved the widow, who gave everything she had. It is why He loved the sinner, who would not even lift his head to pray. It is why He loved the Samaritan, who alone helped the dying man in the desert.

    As Christians, as the Church, we ought to be engaged in perpetual worship. Not simply through music, as some consider worship only to be, but through the pouring out of all we are towards God. Through continual obedience to Him which flows outward from the heart, rather than though ritualistic acts. Are we not, as Paul calls us, the living temple of the Spirit? Worship is not limited to a time and place. We do not have a temple to worship at; we are the temple itself, from which worship must always flow. And when we do sin, when our worship falters and shifts to other things, we must not hide as Adam and Eve once did. We must offer it up to our High Priest, whose blood covers our sin and who mediates between us and God. The Spirit in us commands us to cry aloud, through speech and action and thought and everyting we are, to God. The rocks are not silent. They do not withhold worship. Why should we?