If CT is going to push this sort of garbage, maybe I need to include them in my 30-day no reading negative uselessness experiment in habit formation.
It’s the next step that gets us into trouble. We recall verses like this: “Go and make disciples of all nations … ” and “You are to be my witnesses in all the world … .” So we make the leap of faith and start preaching, “We’ve got to change the world!“
We are certainly responsible for going to the ends of the earth and making disciples from people of every nation. There is plenty in Scripture about doing justice and loving mercy and feeding the hungry and caring for the widow and orphan. But I find little or nothing about us having the task of transforming the culture.
Uh, no, there is absolutely no leap whatsoever. The words mean what the words mean:
All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Going, therefore, disciple all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.
Yes and no. The thing is, there’s something that worries me too about all the “transformation” stuff. It’s like the focus is misplaced or something.
Consider Jesus’ response to the seventy when they came back rejoicing about the “authority” that Jesus had manifested through them:
“And the seventy returned with joy, saying ‘Lord, even the demons are subject to us in your name. And he said to them, ‘I was watching Satan fall from heaven like lightning. Behold, I have given you authority to tread upon serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing shall injure you.
‘Nevertheless [oh oh — jim] do not rejoice in this, that the spirits are subject to you, but rejoice that your names are recorded in heaven.'”
What more spectacular example of worldly transformation can be had than the casting out of demons? That’s transformation, brother. Yet Jesus pours cold water on their rejoicing over the exercise of his authority. Instead, he redirects them in an oh-so-pietistic direction: “Do not rejoice in this, that the spirits are subject to you, but rejoice that your names are recorded in heaven.”
So, o.k., Christ will transform the world through the church, but it’s nothing that the church is supposed to exult or rejoice in. Rather, we’re to rejoice in the fact that Jesus forgives us our sins.
That is a great response Jim. I agree one hundred percent.
It also reminds me that being part of an multigenerational process can never be cause for pride or personal glory. Saying the Christ will transform the world through the Church means he is not going to transform it through me.
I think a lot of the rhetoric that many others react against is offensive because it smudges the Church’s victory in history to my victory over whatever pet political issue happens to be important to me.
Yet another perspective:
It’s seems like a lot of “culture transformation” rhetoric has to do with Christians in the arts or academia or politics or the like. I don’t see how any of that directly relates to “teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.”
Certainly such broader culture-making may be a side-effect of the church’s service and preaching of forgiveness, but the more immediate result – keeping with Jesus’ teaching – would seem to healing the sick, caring for the widow, helping the poor, visiting the prisoner, feeding the hungry, and so forth.
It seems to me that the Bible has a whole lot more to say about those sorts of things than Christians influencing film or music or universities or who gets elected.
garver,
But don’t you find that “many” Christians who engage in Mt 25-type ministries typically link their personal work in these arears with a broader “transformationist” political perspective? I.e., it’s not enough for me to visit the sick personally, I need to advocate for National Health Insurance. It’s not enough for me personally to feed the poor using my own resources, I need to advocate politically so that other people will be forced to share their resources with the poor and hungry.
So they take these commands of Jesus to imply a transformationist social and political agenda.
I often find myself fitting uneasily with these folk, because I’m uncomfortable with the ostensible transformationist implication of these commands, or at least I fear a temptation in taking my eyes off the poor, sick and imprisoned as persons and advocating for politically-generated outcomes.
That being said, I do not really have a response to the criticism that, sure, I might be visiting a few prisoners, but someone who affects the prison system is having a muchy bigger impact on the lives of many more prisoners.
Dunno. Those are the tricky questions of policy, which is why I put “who gets elected” further away from our primary “cultural” concerns as Christians.
The early church wasn’t in a position to abolish slavery and it would have been foolish and pointless to try to do so. But the church was in a position to transform the values and practices of the baptized so that, eventually, Christian values worked themselves out in the abolition of ancient forms of slavery within the Christianizing cultures of the Mediterranean.
I think our first priorities should still be local, personal, parish-based, liturgical, and so forth, allowing those practices, eventually, to shape wider cultural developments, including law and policy.
In our modern western world, of course, Christian citizens have unprecedented access to the political process so that we can take more direct actions in trying to advocate for policy and election of officials that may benefit the most vulnerable.
Certainly then part of our duty to the poor, sick, imprisoned, etc., might also take the form of social and political engagement that helps alleviate their difficulties – and there are all sorts of good reasons for doing so. But there are bound to be disagreements and differing discernments about what shape these values take in terms of policy.
Still, I’m more sympathetic in many respects with the person who is expending some energy for political change in these areas than the person who is trying to transform other culture-wide engagements. Such priorities, it seems to me, strike a closer match with overall biblical emphases.