Church and World

I John 5:9-13 refers to those who do not believe in God have made God a liar by not believing the testimony that God has given concerning the Son. Those who do not have the Son of God do not have life. John 17:14 says that while Jesus gives them the word from the Father, the world hates them because they do not belong to the world, just as Jesus does not belong to the world.

I have an admission to make. Something in me would like for the church and the world to get along. John is teaching me that what I might like to happen is not realistic.

Scientists are excited about GUT's and TOE's, that is, Grand Unification Theories and Theories of Everything.  In 1988, Stephen Hawking spilled the beans by talking about the search for GUTs and TOEs in his surprise best seller A Brief History of Time.  Instead of trying to dissect every cosmic movement down to its smallest unit, certain scientists admit they are looking for some theory, some concept, some intentional design that pulls everything in the universe together.  A scientific quest for cosmic unity is under way. 

Such a vision may well be appropriate for scientists to seek in terms of the physical unity of the physics of it all. Yet, members of the Body of Christ have already found the GUTs and TOEs for their lives.  Unity of faithfulness does not come at the cost of our connectedness to the world.  The church as the body of Christ is called to be in the world, not of it, but not out of it either. 

H. Richard Niebuhr, Christ and Culture, said the church has four ways it can respond to the culture today.  ANTI-CULTURAL, such as the Amish.  You have to live in the world somewhere.  The gospel must be incarnated in some culture.  EN-CULTURAL, the church is so anxious to fit into the world that it has lost any distinguishing particularity and becomes of the world.  The culture throws a stick and they go bounding after it.  Worship has a "flavor of the week" mentality.  COUNTER-CULTURAL, aggressively isolationist language, such as "let the church be the church," and the church as beachhead, outpost, colony, resident aliens, or anachronisms.  The problem with the counter-cultural model is that it creates an artificial wall between Christians and the world God loves so much God sent Jesus to die for it.  IN-CULTURAL, the aim of the in-cultural church is incarnation, not enculturation or acculturation.  The in-cultural Christian uses the knowledge, the ignorance, the strength and weaknesses of current culture to incarnate Christ for this age.  The challenge of an in-but-not-of faith is knowing when to stand timeless and transcendent as a rock and when to surrender and let go, releasing oneself to be swept along by the relevant currents. 

These are practical issues. The church wrestles with them through the ages.

            Hugo of St. Victor wrote long ago:

Those who find their homeland sweet are still tender beginners; those whom every soil is as their native one is already strong; but those who are perfect regard the entire world as a foreign place.

I find it increasingly hard to justify the easy relationship between church and culture that I would like to see. This text gives us the opportunity to reflect upon the ways in which the church is in the world, yet not at rest or peace in the world.  If you sit down and talk to people for over fifteen minutes about their lives, their families, their work, it is like talking to people who are under attack.  The world can be a rough place for those who love God more than the world. 

Here is a simple example of relatively recent experience.

A student at Duke called the pastor, William Willimon, and needed to talk.  He began by saying: I have had the worst night of my life.  Last night, after the fraternity meeting, as usual, we had a time when we just sit around and talk about what we did over the weekend.  This weekend, during a party we had on Saturday, I went upstairs to get something from a brother’s room and walked in on a couple who were, well, in the act.  I immediately closed the door and went back downstairs, saying nothing.  Well, when we came to the time for sharing at the end of the meeting, after a couple of brothers shared what they did over the weekend, one of the group said, “I understand that Mr. Christian got a real eye full last night.”  With that, they all began to laugh.  Not a good, friendly laugh; it was cold, cruel, mean laughter.  They were all laughing, all saying things like, “You won’t see nothing like that in church!  Better go confess it to the priest.”  Stuff like that.  I tried to recover, tried to say something light, but I could not.  They hate me!  They were serious.  I walked out of the meeting, stood outside, and wept.  I have never been treated like that in my life.  The pastor responded: that is amazing.  Moreover, you are not the greatest Christian in the world, are you?  And yet, just one person running around loose who can say “No” is a threat to everyone else, has to be put down, ridiculed, savaged into silence.”

            All of this reminds me of an often-quoted statement of Luther.

            If I profess with the loudest voice and clearest exposition every portion of the truth of God except precisely that little point at which the world and the devil are at that moment attacking.  I am not confessing Christ, however, boldly I may be professing him.  Where the battle rages, there the loyalty of the soldier is proved, and to the steady on all the battlefield besides is mere flight and disgrace if he flinches at that point.[1]

            Malcolm Muggeridge once put it this way:

The only ultimate disaster that can befall us is to feel ourselves to be at home here on earth.  As long as we are aliens we cannot forget our true homeland which is that other kingdom You proclaimed.

            I need this reminder today.

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[1] Luther, vol 3, p. 81ff.