CHRISTIANITY WITHOUT DISCIPLESHIP IS
ALWAYS CHRISTIANITY WITHOUT CHRIST
- Dietrich Bonhoeffer
How is it that we live in "the most Christian country" in the world and see how things have gotten so corrupt morally and spiritually? Christianity in the West is in decline while Christianity in the global south is exploding. Yet the West holds all the cards, possesses all the resources, and still calls all the shots. What's wrong with this picture? In many ways, Christianity in today's environment seems to more inoculate people from the real thing, the gospel, and few seem to be getting real vacinnations that take us into the deeper life with Christ.
I remember in the early 1980's, one leading writer for Christianity Today wrote that the kind of Christianity we are winning people to will be to its own undoing in the end. And then there was Os Guiness who wrote a little later in his Gravedigger Files that the church was to change the culture but the culture was rather changing the church which made the church into its own gravedigger in the end.
An excellent book on dealing with discipleship issues in today's world is Lee Camp Mere Discipleship: Radical Christianity in a rebellious world (Brazos Press, 2003). Lee is doing some creative discipleship over the radio in Nashiville Tennessee and he hits some key issues in his book. One of these issues is "Pledging Allegiance to the Kingdom of God." The question is are we going to follow the empire of power building or the way of the cross which is the suffering Servant way of Jesus?
When Jesus cleaned out the temple, we can easily interpet this hard text of Scripture as a moment for righteous anger or not selling things in a church building or cleaning out your spiritual temple, your own body. But all these miss the deeper implications of the prophetic acting out that Jesus is doing. The temple represented the national allegiance of the people. Israel thought that as long as they had the temple, they would not come under judgment. But they put more stock in their national identity than their spiritual indentity with the Messiah. So the Messiah's temple is destroyed and resurrected whereas the temple in Jerusalem is destroyed later in 70 AD.
Do we get out allegiances confused today? Don't many American Christians think that the kingdom of God and the kingdom of America are almost the same thing? Haven't most Christians bought into the lie of the myth of redemptive violence and that evil resides in those outside of America whereas this country, rather than the church, has become the city on a hill?
Does not even the church in America think that it's job is to be in charge, to make the world right, to convert everyone to our way of thinking and living as Americans? In the end, when Jesus comes back, He is looking for faith in the world.
Where is your faith and what are you trusting in?
ALWAYS CHRISTIANITY WITHOUT CHRIST
- Dietrich Bonhoeffer
How is it that we live in "the most Christian country" in the world and see how things have gotten so corrupt morally and spiritually? Christianity in the West is in decline while Christianity in the global south is exploding. Yet the West holds all the cards, possesses all the resources, and still calls all the shots. What's wrong with this picture? In many ways, Christianity in today's environment seems to more inoculate people from the real thing, the gospel, and few seem to be getting real vacinnations that take us into the deeper life with Christ.
I remember in the early 1980's, one leading writer for Christianity Today wrote that the kind of Christianity we are winning people to will be to its own undoing in the end. And then there was Os Guiness who wrote a little later in his Gravedigger Files that the church was to change the culture but the culture was rather changing the church which made the church into its own gravedigger in the end.
An excellent book on dealing with discipleship issues in today's world is Lee Camp Mere Discipleship: Radical Christianity in a rebellious world (Brazos Press, 2003). Lee is doing some creative discipleship over the radio in Nashiville Tennessee and he hits some key issues in his book. One of these issues is "Pledging Allegiance to the Kingdom of God." The question is are we going to follow the empire of power building or the way of the cross which is the suffering Servant way of Jesus?
When Jesus cleaned out the temple, we can easily interpet this hard text of Scripture as a moment for righteous anger or not selling things in a church building or cleaning out your spiritual temple, your own body. But all these miss the deeper implications of the prophetic acting out that Jesus is doing. The temple represented the national allegiance of the people. Israel thought that as long as they had the temple, they would not come under judgment. But they put more stock in their national identity than their spiritual indentity with the Messiah. So the Messiah's temple is destroyed and resurrected whereas the temple in Jerusalem is destroyed later in 70 AD.
Do we get out allegiances confused today? Don't many American Christians think that the kingdom of God and the kingdom of America are almost the same thing? Haven't most Christians bought into the lie of the myth of redemptive violence and that evil resides in those outside of America whereas this country, rather than the church, has become the city on a hill?
Does not even the church in America think that it's job is to be in charge, to make the world right, to convert everyone to our way of thinking and living as Americans? In the end, when Jesus comes back, He is looking for faith in the world.
Where is your faith and what are you trusting in?
No comments:
Post a Comment