Ambushed!

[This blog begins a journal of a personal quest for a more effective evangelism: an evangelism with credibility and biblical integrity.]

We were vacationing at a lakeside resort in east Texas. Early Saturday morning we were sitting on the deck enjoying the beautiful setting, when a family strolled by. The woman trailing the group asked, “Do you know Jesus as your personal savior?”

We both said, “Yes,” partly because it’s true; but mainly to get rid of her!

On a busy sidewalk a man stepped directly in front of me like an NFL linebacker and asked, “If you were to die today, where would your soul be tomorrow?” 

I said, “In heaven, with Christ,” partly because it’s true; but mainly to get rid of him.

One advantage evangelical Christians have over us mainliners is their evangelistic passion based on their conviction that people are going to hell. I honor that passion.

While I admire their passion and devotion, and although I don’t have an effective alternative, I cannot with integrity participate in their strategy. I truly believe the rude, confrontational approach drives more people away from God’s kingdom than it attracts. It’s just common sense!

On the other hand, we mainliners, in our effort to make sure everybody knows we’re “not that kind of Christian,” have unwittingly communicated that we don’t have a sense of urgency about living like and for Jesus.[1] We abandoned evangelism during the 1960s, rationalizing that “everything we do is evangelism.” And, while results are not a valid motivation for evangelism, they certainly are an indicator of effectiveness, and our journey is a classic example of throwing the baby out with the bath water!

Still, the in-your-face approach of the two people mentioned above is counterproductive on at least two levels. First, it’s an ambush. NOBODY wants to be ambushed! Second, it’s dehumanizing. I felt like a “mark” in both situations.

Their rationalization is that it’s not a confrontation; it’s an invitation. I get that; however, if it walks like a duck… 

I find it incredulous that anybody believes it’s an effective invitation that would attract anybody at all! In the first place, there’s no context. It’s just… an ambush! Of course, neither was there a context when Jesus encountered some fishermen and said, simply, “Follow me.” Still, I think I'd be more likely to respond positively to "Follow me" than to "If you were to die today, where would your soul be tomorrow?"

It’s a real conundrum. I sense the call to share faith; but, aside from the pulpit and the classroom (where I’m very comfortable), I need a context within which to do so. Unfortunately, the counterproductive approach described above has established a negative social context for virtually any initiation of faith talk. Consequently, a prior step in Christian witness is to build a receptive context—to overcome the negative stereotypes associated with any manifestation of organized religion. The truth is, I''ve not seen any mainline effort to do even that.

Aside from context, there’s also the issue of content. Evangelical Christianity seems to reject any call to “justice and righteousness” as an earthly call, substituting a call to prepare to a future heavenly existence. 

I have issues with either/or propositions. The New Testament presents a both/and call to faith and action[2]: the call to faith is a call to trust that God’s grace is sufficient to settle the issue of our eternal destinies. In that faith one is free to concentrate on God’s call in Christ to bring in the reign of God “on earth as it is in heaven.” 

One Christian doctrine says this world is the kingdom of Satan and will remain so until Christ returns. God has issued a special “dispensation” that puts everything on hold until that return; therefore, there is no purpose accomplished in ministries of social justice. I do not share that doctrine, because my reading of the book of Revelation does not arrive at those conclusions.

The Gospel’s call to faith (salvation) is a beginning. Once a person is saved, what’s next? The Great Commission (Matthew 28:19-20) is a call, not get people saved, but to “make disciples” (which begins with being saved.) Disciple means follower. It implies action. It implies imitating Jesus’ own ministry. 

Faith leads to partnership; called in Christ to actualize the qualities described in his Beatitudes (Matthew 5:1-10) and in his opening statement of purpose in Nazareth (Luke 4:18-19). He frequently fleshed out those virtues with undeniable calls to serve the disadvantaged and to work for justice. The Parable of the Sheep and Goats is one compelling example (Matthew 25:31-46).

Yes, Jesus was confrontational, but not to those he came “to seek and to save”. His confrontations and his harshest criticisms were reserved for those who used their influence to establish and benefit from policies that increased their wealth and power while keeping the disadvantaged in their place, and then rationalized their approach by blaming the victim: “Poverty is a self-inflicted result of laziness.” Sound familiar? His confrontations got him killed.

It’s interesting to note that at Nazareth his confrontational witness was counterproductive; in fact, he was run out of town! But his Beatitudes drew many followers. Perhaps—do you think?—this comparison could serve as a foundation for an effective approach to evangelism. By lifting up the visionary ideals that describe the reign of God, perhaps the spiritually yearning, institutionally disillusioned public[3] would be drawn to Christ[4], instead of repulsed by a dehumanizing strategy. Maybe it’s a starting place.

That’s the way it looks through the Flawed Glass that is my world view.

Together in the Walk,
Jim

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[1] This is a paraphrase from Derek Penwell, Outlandish: an Unlikely Messiah; a Messy Ministry; and the Call to Mobilize (St. Louis, Missouri: Chalice Press, 2018) page 16.

[2] In many ways faith and action cannot be separated. In the New Testament, faith is not faith until it is tested and demonstrated. Until then, it’s simply a system of beliefs.

[3] A description coined by Thomas G. Bandy in Christian Chaos, et al.

[4] Which doesn’t automatically mean “join the church”. As a mainline Protestant, I continue to insist that evangelism does not have as its purpose the increase in membership of specific congregations. The Body of Christ is infinitely more than the established church.

Indivisible

I don’t recall how it began, but yesterday I was thinking about that phrase in our Pledge of Allegiance: “…under God…” Apparently there are some people who oppose it, if social media posts can be trusted. Frankly, I don’t remember any comments to that effect. What I do remember is a lot of social media posts defending it in ways that make it seem there is a concerted, organized attack on it.

Anyway, it occurred to me that the implication is strong, if not intended, that being “one nation under God” is what makes us “indivisible.” The two concepts at least are related; therefore, what can be concluded from the obvious: that the United States a is not, in fact, one nation indivisible—under God or otherwise? We are a divided nation, a “nation coming apart at the seams, a nation in which each tribe has its own narrative and the narratives are generally resentment narratives."[1]

I expect the knee-jerk response is, “I and my tribe are under God. If everyone would just be like us, we’d be indivisible!” It may describe “undivided;” however, it does not describe “united”, as in States of America. It describes uniformity. There’s a difference. Uniformity is related much more closely to satisfaction and complacency than to growth and progress.

If we truly desire to be indivisible as a nation, why aren’t we engaging in efforts toward reconciliation and unity, instead of raging at each other over the slightest differences of opinion.

Some things are clear: first, we’ll never agree about what “under God” means. One source identifies 35 Protestant Denominations in the USA, most of them sub-divided into numerous branches and schisms. The founders of the denomination I serve envisioned a Christian coop through which could be realized their proposition “That the Church of Christ upon earth is essentially, intentionally, and constitutionally one…”[2] Today their “Restoration Movement” to unite all Christendom is splintered into three distinct (and often antagonistic) denominations.

Christian history is a chronicle of uninterrupted human division. Furthermore, in this land of religious freedom, the number of Protestant Denominations doesn’t begin to account for the variety of ways in which deity is perceived and worshiped. 

So, how do all those denominations and schisms emerge? Some charismatic person becomes convinced that he or she has a unique and unerring insight into God’s will and intention and convinces a group of followers to break away with him or her. The power behind most schisms is the magnetic persuasiveness of the founder who has a splinter of truth, rather than the presence and leading of the Spirit of God in whom alone dwells absolute truth. [The Protestant Reformation, perceived by Protestants (sic) as a valid response to corrupt leadership in the Mother Church, notwithstanding. In most cases I expect every schism represents itself as “restoring true faith;” but that’s another blog.]

We can’t agree on who God is or how we are to relate to God; nor can we agree on what it means to be God’s people. Therefore, we render the term, “under God,” essentially meaningless.

A second clear reality is that our current strategy of insulting and vilifying and demonizing everyone who disagrees with us cannot possibly be considered a faithful embodiment of the presence of God under whom we claim to be “indivisible”. Such interpersonal animosity has not produced—nor will it ever produce—indivisibility; nor has it created—or will it ever create—a climate in which an indivisible nation can thrive or even emerge.

Finally, the familiar tactic of demanding conformity to our own ideology has been equally unproductive in affecting any kind of indivisibility. I’ve said before: my favorite definition of insanity is doing the same thing again and expecting a different result.

The greatest irony of all is that out of the vast variety of Christian doctrinal communities, the consensus message perceived by a “spiritually yearning, institutionally pissed off public”[3] is that we really don’t believe what we claim to believe. We are perceived as hypocrites. 

We wave the “Grace” flag, as if we really believe it: “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God—not the result of works, so that no one may boast” (Ephesians 2:8-9 NRSV). Most of us who grew up in the church can sing “Amazing Grace” from memory. 

But an overwhelming number of professing Christians don’t believe it, if their witness by word and deed is accurate. What too many professing Christians’ lives testify—and the consensus stereotype by which that spiritually disillusioned public judges us all—is that we are saved by affirming correct doctrine—being “right”--and excluding everyone who doesn't affirm our correct doctrine.

I’m just not willing to bet my eternal destiny on the correctness of doctrine, knowing full well that my perception is limited by the clay of which I am made. Instead, I’ll place my trust in the One who alone is my doctrine, and I’ll confess in the words of St. Paul:

For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part; ¹⁰but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end. ¹¹When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways. ¹²For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. ¹³And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love. (I Corinthians 13:9-13 NRSV)

And therein lies what I believe is the only credible doorway through which we may finally live out our pledge to become an “indivisible” nation: “The greatest of these is love.” 

We’ll never agree. On much of anything. But, in love, we can seek to understand each other and to embrace our differences, not necessarily as error, but as partial truth. And in that effort to transcend our antagonistic obsession with uniformity, I suspect we’ll discover a more nearly complete indivisibility.

That’s the way I see it through the Flawed Glass that is my world view.

Together in the Walk,

Jim

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[1] David Brooks, https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/opinion/the-case-for-reparations/ar-BBUvAS7?ocid=spartandhp&fbclid=IwAR3MQXOlmusWGxquJ3ZCXXYo1_LmLkeHISpNNVrkfC1OmNJdTShsVbRSwpM

[2] Thomas Campbell, Declaration and Address. https://stevekinnard.wordpress.com/2017/01/09/church-history-14-thomas-campbells-declaration-and-address/

[3] My crude adaptation of a phrase coined by Thomas G. Bandy in Christian Chaos, et. al.