Different Gospels Today

Paul begins his letter to the Galatians by asserting his astonishment that they have turned to a different gospel. Yet, If Paul would have had the perspective of us who live two millennia later, he might not have been quite so astonished.

In the Fall of 2012, Harvard Divinity School professor Karen King held a press conference in which she said she found a piece of papyri, written in Coptic and likely from around the 300’s AD, that contains a saying of Jesus that refers to “my wife,” and says that she can be “my disciple.” Scholars already have documentation of a sect of Christianity that refers to the wife of Jesus that date back to the 100’s AD. People call this little fragment the Gospel of Jesus’ Wife. Scholars have discovered the Gospel of Judas, Thomas, and Mary Magdalene.

A “different gospel” was already gaining steam.

I wonder, however, if we are willing to face the reality of “another gospel” in our time.

If you were to develop a list of gospels for our time, what would be on the list?

Would the Gospel of Hate spewed out by Westboro Baptist Church make the list?

Would the Gospel of Prosperity or Health and Wealth make the list? Jesus cautioned us about the dangers of wealth.

Dallas Willard coined the phrase “The Gospel of Sin Management” to describe a gospel whose concern is to get people into heaven and has little concern for life here and now, making salvation irrelevant to life now.

The Social Gospel might make the list. It arose out of an evangelical spirit that wanted to align this world closer to the will of God, but it also relied on a notion of human progress that was unrealistic and focused on what human beings can do.

The Gospel of Positive or Possibility Thinking might make the list. While full of helpful advice, it seems to have little room for the cross.

The Apocalyptic Gospel might make the list in that it encourages people to watch in the sky for the returning Christ while again leading people to disregard this world.

The Fundamentalist Gospel would seek to freeze some moment of Christianity in the past as somehow the standard for all ages. The problem here is that churches always need openness to the fresh winds of the Spirit.

The Progressive Gospel would seek to move the churches past Christ and into some new age of nirvana of “progressive” ethics and politics, making it clear that the Bible and Jesus have become irrelevant to perceived political needs and ideologies of our time.    

            It seems our time is full of gospels that reflect the culture rather than reflect Jesus.

You can probably think of other "gospels" that get preached all the time. Of course, there may be elements of truth in some of these "gospels." That means we need some prayerful and open reflection on the truth that may seem to us, because of our own perspective, quite deeply buried in it. In fact, that is the challenge for each of us. People within the church tend to understand the gospel through the lens of their time. Such a lens leads to incomplete or distorted versions of the message of the church. This means churches need to regularly recalibrate their understanding of the gospel. Paul had himself done this when he clarified his mission, in contrast to that of Peter and the Jerusalem church, to bring the gospel to gentiles. Properly read, church history is full such recalibrations, whether with Augustine, Aquinas, Luther, John Wesley, Karl Barth, or Mother Teresa.

Paul suggests the genuine gospel is not of human construction. It comes from God in 1:1, 3-4, and 6.

Paul suggests the focus of this gospel is grace shown in the death of Jesus that brings liberation from the sin of this age in 1:3-4.

The true gospel enables us to become children of God in 1:3.

The true focuses on transforming the world, which Paul identifies as being a new creation in 6:15.

Come to think of it, the true gospel is not so much about our leaving as God coming, in Christ, to redeem us, to save (liberate, heal, make whole, and guide) us.     

Maybe we keep coming up with new gospels because the one Jesus gave us actually requires something of us. We lay aside what we want, and focus our thoughts and behavior on Christ. We have lay aside pleasing the groups with which we tend to identify. We stand with Christ, which means that our devotion to a particular ideology, which in our time is likely devotion to a political ideology, is something we need to have the courage to set aside. Such a turn from the thoughts, ideologies, and agendas that appeal to us and toward identifying ourselves with Christ sounds like genuine discipleship. It sounds like being a disciple of Christ in a way that transforms this world.