Church Renewal & Gay Marriage
This article is a brief diversion from our series of guest articles, but it's relevant to our topic. We’ll get right back to our articles on decline in
West Coast Churches of Christ. Next up are articles from Aaron Metcalf and Tim
Spivey.
Mammon (the point of the
aforementioned article) in my opinion isn’t gay marriage. It’s blind acceptance
of society. And when you blindly accept society without realizing that Jesus
calls you to deny yourself, take up your cross and follow him, then you end up
watching TV shows you should never watch. You end up idolizing pop stars and
athletes you should never idolize. You end up living for entertainment and
partying rather than living for Jesus. You end up worshipping your country. The
result is that you end up being discipled by the world. And the kingdoms of
this world belong not to Jesus but to the Deceiver. And when the great Deceiver
disciples you, you end up loving the world—not because you have the heart of
God, but because you have the heart of Mammon and you’ve simply learned to love
the world.
How foolish! We should cry
foul at ourselves for decoupling our wagons from true discipleship to Jesus.
Because if we were true disciples of Jesus, we’d be following his command to GO
AND MAKE DISCIPLES. And if we were making disciples for Jesus, there’d be fewer
people who idolize the Lady Gagas and Lance Armstrongs of this world. We wouldn’t
be surprised or bothered by the weaknesses of “public” figures. Shoot, we
wouldn’t even pay attention to the headline-grabbing sins any more than we’d
notice that the married couple next door seems to fight a lot or that our
co-worker drinks too much or that our cousin might be abusing his kids. We
would notice all these problems with equal heartbreak and compassion, not
because we are stunned and dismayed, but because we have the heart of God who
wants to reconcile all things to himself. And we would see that the world
next door is out of whack and needs his reconciling power.
If we were focusing on being instruments of his reconciling power, then we wouldn’t even be having this conversation about gay marriage. We’d be too busy discipling people whose lives are hopeless without Jesus. But instead of focusing our time and energy on being Jesus’ disciples and on making disciples, we’re wasting valuable time and energy on complaints about how the world has fallen away from God. Since when is that supposed to be news for Christians?
This is an article from me. I just can’t help but speak when I see that
current events connect with the issue of church renewal—which is
the whole focus of this dialogue—and that practically everyone seems to miss the point.
Church Renewal and Gay Marriage
Admittedly, I’m a bit naïve when
it comes to some hot-button issues. I have discovered that people want to put
you in one camp or another. There is no room for nuance. I am incredibly bothered, however, that most people
seem to fixate on the moral issue du jour
and miss the bigger questions.
I just read an article
titled, “Christians Side with Mammon. Mammon Sided with Barabbas.” As you might
guess, the author is against gay marriage and he blasts Christian leaders who
appear to be soft on the issue. In his mind, they’re no different than the ones
who said, “Crucify him.” I assume the author has good intentions, but I think he
completely misses the point. And sadly, most people seem to be missing the
point right along with him. So here’s my feeble attempt at reframing the whole
discussion. Others have probably done it better. I apologize in advance, but
the message clearly hasn’t sunk in. So here I go, naively thinking that I can
say something helpful.
Mammon (the point of the
aforementioned article) in my opinion isn’t gay marriage. It’s blind acceptance
of society. And when you blindly accept society without realizing that Jesus
calls you to deny yourself, take up your cross and follow him, then you end up
watching TV shows you should never watch. You end up idolizing pop stars and
athletes you should never idolize. You end up living for entertainment and
partying rather than living for Jesus. You end up worshipping your country. The
result is that you end up being discipled by the world. And the kingdoms of
this world belong not to Jesus but to the Deceiver. And when the great Deceiver
disciples you, you end up loving the world—not because you have the heart of
God, but because you have the heart of Mammon and you’ve simply learned to love
the world.
But if by contrast we are
truly discipled by Jesus, then we end up living for Jesus. And Jesus lived to
redeem the world, not to enjoy it. Jesus loved the world. Why? Because he
wanted to reconcile all things to his Father. So if we live for Jesus, our goal
is to love the world for the sake of reconciling all things to God.
Viewed in this vein, gay
marriage isn’t a problem for Christians any more than drug use in baseball is a
problem. It’s not a problem for us that Hollywood is amoral or that politicians
are corrupt. The kingdoms of this world have always been full of such problems.
The problem for Christians is
that too many of us have “accepted” the world for the wrong reason—not because
we have the heart of God but because we have the heart of this world. And we
have then idolized people we should never idolize. Why are we shocked that
Justin Beiber is a "bad boy" or that Selena Gomez wants to be a
"girl gone wild"? Why are we disappointed that politicians don’t
uphold our morals or that athletes cheat? It’s only because we have wrongly
placed our hope and trust in them. We’ve idolized them, and we’ve allowed our
families/kids to be uncritically shaped by them. We’ve hitched our wagon to the
wrong engine. And now that gay marriage is about to become legal, we suddenly
cry foul?!
If we were focusing on being instruments of his reconciling power, then we wouldn’t even be having this conversation about gay marriage. We’d be too busy discipling people whose lives are hopeless without Jesus. But instead of focusing our time and energy on being Jesus’ disciples and on making disciples, we’re wasting valuable time and energy on complaints about how the world has fallen away from God. Since when is that supposed to be news for Christians?
As a first order of business,
we need renewal of the church, not of society. Wilbert Shenk, Mennonite
professor of missions, wrote these words, “Genuine renewal has never come from
the culture. On the contrary, true renewal calls the people of God to turn
their backs on the cultural idols that have enthralled them in order that they
might once again become instruments of God’s saving intention for the world” (Write the Vision: The Church Renewed,
1995, p. 101).
That’s the kind of renewal I’m
talking about. That’s my hope and dream for the church—not just among West
Coast Churches of Christ, but in all North American churches. I am on my knees,
begging God that we might seek true renewal. We have to be people equipped as
God’s instruments to carry out his mission for the world. Until we stop being
shocked and awed by the depravity of our society—there’s nothing new under the
sun!—we’ll never experience true renewal. And we’ll never rediscover the heart
of God nor hear his call to join him in his reconciling mission for a broken
world that’s a lot closer to home than we care to admit.
Comments
Are you suggesting that Paul's letters should not have been canonized and included in the Bible? I assume you would answer "of course not"..but do you see the fallacy in your logic? Paul's letters contained God's objective moral truth for all mankind...not just those in the church. We should teach in and outside the church the Gospel and all it's implications for mankind..no need for nuance or complexity here...love yes...acceptance of people yes, but not acceptance of bad behavior. Otherwise, we offer what Bonhoeffer called "cheap grace...which is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, communion without confession...Cheap grace is grace without discipleship..."
I've spent the better part of a decade in Europe. In the country where I worked as a church-planter, only 5% of the population attended church on a weekly basis. Only 0.5% attended any kind of conservative, Protestant church that would have much of anything in common with our heritage. My work almost entirely focused on reaching non-Christians and training new Christians. Mind you, these were people living in a pluralistic world that had a very different view of morality from the one I had grown up in.
I had a choice when interfacing with non-Christians -- which was a daily event. I could focus on their need to become moral people. Or I could focus on their need to follow Jesus. Sometimes, these conversations included conversations about the moral requirements of Christianity because they had questions about it. More often than not, however, I left those questions to the side to focus on the bigger question of belief in and commitment to the Creator God. Once people became Christians, they then had to make major choices about sexuality, drunkenness, etc.
This kind of work and experience has deeply shaped by thinking on this kind of issue. I don't think we win converts by shouting about the dangers of immorality from the mountaintops (or our Facebook pages). Instead, we win converts via the trenches of personally reaching out to people who need Jesus. And in that process, we certainly have to deal with many messy issues. We'd be wrong to avoid them. But we'd also be wise to realize that nothing trumps commitment to Jesus.
As long as this is a theoretical conversation, it is meaningless.