The Western church has abandoned its call to be salt and light in the world.
Somewhere along the way - in the last twenty years or so - the church surrendered the idea of speaking life into society - based on the concept that society is made of individuals, and individuals are in need of God's forgiveness and repentance - to the idea of blending into society and creating change from within.
This mirrors somewhat the idea of amillennialism (for those of you that dabble in Christian eschatology), the idea that there is not a millennial reign of Christ but rather that the redeemed usher in the Kingdom of God through their recreation of society in God's image. The Kingdom, in this case, is a sort of good infection (to use C.S. Lewis' terms) that ultimately creates the sort of society that God can return to - a sort of spiritual "yeast" transferred throughout the whole dough.
This is a lovely, heartfelt concept. It is also utterly wrong.
Christ rejects it. Nowhere in the New Testament does He ever give the impression that society - as a whole - will be redeemed or grow as His Kingdom grows. Yes, he does use the image of the mustard tree which "grows to fill the whole earth", but He never suggests that the spiritual Kingdom will become the equivalent of the societal Kingdom (pending His return, of course - See Matthew 24, Mark 13, Luke 21, Revelation).
History rejects it. Any society built on the idea of solely creating a better society without spiritual renewal has crashed. Server examples include The French Revolution, The Russian Revolution and resulting Soviet Union, The Chinese Revolution and resulting People's Republic of China, The Killing Fields of Cambodia. The wisdom of man always involves man's interpretation of what is good and right, which is subject to man's interpretation of what "good" really is without an objective standard.
Why? My theory is simply that we have embraced the world. We have decided that, like the world, there is no objective source of truth - The Bible in the case of Christian Church - and as such, in lieu of having a message of truth which is preceded by an accurate assessment and knowledge of our condition (e.g., sinners), all we have to offer is a message of fitting in and trying to remodel things from the inside. "If we fix it" the church seems to think, "they will accept our message".
This seems to me a great deal like the thought of the adolescent boy (oh, how I remember those days) thinking "If I just do this and this and this, she will like me." That almost never worked in practice, of course - she never ended up "liking me" - but somehow I continued to think this was a model for success.
Can an individual or a group change a society via working within the system? Of course they can . One fine example would be William Wilberforce, who spent his live working to end slavery in the British Empire (of course, keep in mind that the British Empire was at least nominally Christian and as such, there was some kind of consensus to work with). And the examples I listed above of revolutions gone bad demonstrate that a small dedicated band of people can really accomplish anything.
But here is the difference: those small bands of people or individuals who are not Christian have nothing which holds them back from acting in any way possible to reach their end, and when the end justifies the means almost anything is permissible. For the Christian (in theory), they are either bound to act within the limits of God's Word (thus objective truth) or to bend that truth in order to be "relevant" and fit into the world around them, which at best dulls their impact and at worst makes them the proverbial "useful idiots" that enable the destruction of everything they claim to stand for.
I do not have a right answer here, or at least not yet: the matter is a weighty one on which the whole of human history devolves (as measured in the lives of individuals) and it deserves a better answer than an introductory essay by a man who is neither a trained theologian or a trained philosopher. But it does seem critical to me in that, in this time of the weakening of societal bonds, economic instability, and a great sense throughout the land of "That which is not forbidden is permitted (and very little is forbidden)", the church has effectively disappeared as an independent force for proclaiming salvation and has turned into little more than another social movement which is less concerned with salvation and more concerned with being part of society.
There is no better way to minimize the impact of Christianity than to have the form of Godliness without the power thereof. I give you the modern church.
ReplyDeleteI was thinking about your post and my response. The answer came to me as "get involved". The teacher is needed to bring along the young, the encourager is needed to help out the dejected. Multiple gifts for multiple uses. But they only worked when used, like salt, it doesn't make much difference in the shaker.
It dawned on me while I was sweating my shirt through that I wasn't involved in actively working in the fields, and with that, comes a loss of focus. Or maybe navel gazing.
Iron sharpens iron, so one man can really make a difference if he is actively involved in the work. That's what I learned, YMMV.
STxAR - A very true observation about the status of the church.
DeleteWe are told to be actively engaged - but to be actively engaged in the work of Christ can be different than being actively involved in the work of the modern church. The question is how do find myself involved in Christ's work, not man's interpretation of Christ's work.
I would love to be able to say that you're wrong.
ReplyDeleteI would love to as well Reverend. Problem is, I cannot.
DeleteThe simple truth is that "the church" has reduced itself to pandering to whatever group it feels will fill the pews... and the collection plates. Here in the Wild, Wild, West, "the church" has officially proclaimed its support for illegal aliens, even going so far as to tell parishioners outright that money collected from the congregation WILL BE SPENT to house, medicate, and ultimately transport illegal aliens to the loving arms of their families in the U.S. Masses have gone "biligual." The bishop allows pagan Aztec dancing on church grounds as a form of "cultural inclusion." The Mexicans are free to do what they've always done, treating the Virgin Mary like Jesus, and Jesus like the Virgin Mary. The missals are in Spanish and English, with top billing going to Spanish, with the missal name being "Unidos En Cristo," with the subtitle "United In Christ." The West Coast Church has literally thrown the people who paid for the building of the churches under the bus, favoring instead people who come here with their hands out.
ReplyDelete...Long story short, "the church" has lost me...
Pete, my friend Uisdeah Ruadh is of the same denomination. I cannot fathom how far and away the Roman Rite has fallen away (interestingly, they discourage the Tridentine Mass, also in another language). It is not my place to say - not my denomination - but it is very disheartening to see a general recognized bastion of Christian orthodoxy collapse so quickly - as if there was little holding it together, a balloon waiting only to be pricked to collapse.
DeleteBehold the Harlot!
ReplyDeleteTewshooz, I am aghast. I have never seen the church - as a complete whole - so disorganized and lacking God's Call. It may not be The Harlot, but it sure feels like a dress rehearsal.
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