How to Fix the American Christian – Unifying Faith and Praxis
December 1, 2009
Posted by Dan Edelen in : Benevolence, Christianity in North America, Church Issues, Discernment, Dying to Self, Faith, Godly Character, Grace, Hospitality, Maturity, Obedience, Oddities, Perseverance Feedback : 39 comments
A current theme erupting throughout the Godblogosphere concerns taking the Church back to the Gospel. I think that’s a noble effort.
As a flawed human among flawed humans, though, I worry that even such an essential “recovery” runs the risk of leading people into a form of sub-Christianity that in the end fails to reflect the entirety of the Kingdom of God and the reason Jesus came.
I was not planning to write on this issue in this “How to Fix the American Christian” series, but when a reader objected to the series due his belief that such a series merely supplants the Gospel with “behavior modification,” I felt compelled by God to write this. In fact, I believe God provided me an apt illustration that is already deepening how I think about this issue.
In the rush to strongly delineate the Law from the Gospel, I believe we have a tendency to fall into the error of lumping the Law with the natural outworking of the Gospel. In other words, because both involve doing, we fail to make a distinction between the Law and Gospel-based praxis.
One of the beauties of the Gospel is that being finds a central place among doing. Man cannot justify himself by the doing of the Law. Instead, he rests in the finished work of Jesus, abiding in Christ. What we Christians are by that abiding now defines our being.
But like so many aspects of the faith, mistaken notions lurk on the outskirts of that beauty. We are, after all, in the process of being made to be like Jesus; we are not complete yet.
The error of equating the Law with the natural outworkings of the Gospel are addressed by James in this well-known passage:
What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can that faith save him? If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food, and one of you says to them, “Go in peace, be warmed and filled,” without giving them the things needed for the body, what good is that? So also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead. But someone will say, “You have faith and I have works.” Show me your faith apart from your works, and I will show you my faith by my works. You believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe–and shudder!
—James 2:14-19
What separates the Christian from the demon is not belief in Christ. It is faith expressed through Gospel praxis. It is doing those actions that naturally extend from having been confronted with the truth of the Gospel. It is not just saying, “I believe the Gospel and no longer attempt to justify myself by the Law.” No, it means that the entire way you and I live can and must be altered by that statement. And since that involves how we live life, it must necessarily involve what we do.
Herein lies the problem with the contemporary American Church: Our praxis does not reflect what we claim to believe—and the world knows it.
The illustration that best reflects this issue mirrors the agricultural focus Jesus often took in His parables.
Imagine three trees.
The first “tree” is hardly recognizable as a tree at all because its entirety remains below ground. It is all roots. That tree believes itself to be the prefect reflection of a life in Christ. It is always talking about the Gospel, defending it and affirming the five solas of the Reformation with an undying allegiance. It cannot help but sink its roots deep in the nourishment that is God Himself, praying and reading the Scriptures with enviable devotion.
But in truth, such a tree is abnormal. Because it is all below the surface, it cannot provide shade, wood, or fruit to others. It exists solely for itself. It takes from the soil and water, yet gives nothing back to the world above ground. From time to time, it may send a meager shoot up through the soil, but rarely does this act provide anything meaningful to others. Such a tree may even proudly declare how it is impervious to the wind that would knock down other trees, but it fails to see how useless it actually is, a perversion of the kind of tree that God intends.
I have three such trees in my yard, all Bradford Pears. They started out looking beautiful, but their trunks and branches were not strong, despite being deeply rooted. They cracked and split, so I had to cut them down. The stumps remain and the roots still show some signs of life, occasionally sending up sprouts. But that won’t be the case forever. For all intents and purposes, those trees are dead, their roots slowly rotting in the life-giving soil.
I’ve met plenty of Christians like the all-root trees. They didn’t start off that way, but that is how they finished. They have an apologetic that would make Ravi Zacharias seem like Joel Osteen, but theirs is an insular world beneath the soil, one the outside world never sees. They tend to live in fortress-like churches and are always talking about defending the faith. Yet for all their talk of the Gospel, the world around them goes on as if they are not there at all.
Another tree has a trunk, branches, and green leaves. By all appearances, it seems like a normal tree. It does interact with the world, doing useful things for others like providing shelter from the sun and bearing fruit for eating. Such a tree prides itself on giving back to the world by what it does as a tree. It believes itself to be the perfect reflection of a life in Christ.
But below the surface of this tree one finds a curious lack: It has no roots. It didn’t start that way, but over time the tree became so concerned about appearing to be a tree by being doing what a tree is supposed to do that whatever focus it needed to give to its rootings withered away. Over time, such a tree tends to burn out and dry up. And all the things it once provided shrivel.
I’ve met plenty of Christians who spend all their time trying to maintain an appearance of being a Christian, but they have no Gospel roots. Such people are all about what they do and how they act. They have no means of simply being or dwelling, no rootedness to the source of nourishment and grounding.
A few years back, we hosted the big family Christmas and got a tree from our neighbor. We cut the tree fresh from their plantings, struck by its shape and beauty. The scent from that fresh evergreen filled our house. If it dropped any needles in our living room, I couldn’t find them. We enjoyed everything about that tree, but when it had served its purpose, I dumped it on our burn pile in mid-January.
The amazing thing about that rootless, cutoff tree is that it remained green until August. Finally, a typical August drought proved too much and it finally succumbed to brown.
I said that there are three trees, right?
The only tree that genuinely serves the purposes of God is the one with deep roots in the freedom and nourishment of the Gospel and a trunk and crown that provide a full expression to the world of that rootedness by providing beauty, shelter, comfort, and food to others. Such a tree fully expresses what it means to be a unified, living thing. The roots support the tree, anchor it, and provide nourishment to the trunk and crown. The trunk and crown not only make the tree useful to others, but they deliver life and growth back to the roots. In fact, without the trunk and crown, the tree dies a slow, lingering death.
For all us Christians to be healthy, we must not only have the Gospel, but we must also have Gospel praxis. That Gospel praxis reinforces our faith as much as anything. Doing the Gospel truly does lead to a reinforcement of the Gospel in our hearts. That natural outworking enlarges us as much as a tree’s leaves provide the photosynthesis to make it grow. I can only speak for myself, but I know the profound reality of how the outworkings of the Gospel through genuine practice serve to reinforce the Gospel in me. The doing strengthens the being.
When we Christians declare that we are no longer beholden to the Law, we must NEVER confuse the doing of the Law with the doing of the Gospel. Far too many Christians are making that mistake, though, because of their well-meaning intentions to distance the Church from works righteousness. However, in the course of such avoidance, Gospel praxis suffers. This all too often leads to insular churches that are smug in their preservation of the truth of the Gospel, while at the same time they give nothing of that Gospel truth back to a dying world. And so they inevitable harden and die along with the world they are so loathe to serve for fear of betraying sola fide and sola gratia.
Tags: Community, Discipleship, Faith, Gospel, Growth, Law, Praxis, Tree, Trees, Wholeness, WorksRelated posts
Law Church, Gospel Church
October 12, 2009
Posted by Dan Edelen in : Christianity Outside North America, Christianity in North America, Church Issues, Counterculture, Godly Character, Grace, Heresy, Maturity, Oddities, Relevance, Simplicity Feedback : 11 comments
Did we in our own strength confide
Our striving would be losing…
—Martin Luther, “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God”
One of the phenomena I continue to watch within some Evangelical and charismatic circles is an extreme dependence on the Old Testament, almost to the detriment of the New. I see people routinely going back to the OT to craft esoteric theologies made pointless by the death and resurrection of Christ. And I watch people fall into a weird, mystical legalism that seems superspiritual but in the end is nothing more than a negation of the work of Christ.
And this is everywhere around us.
It’s as if we don’t know what the Gospel is or what it says. Instead, like so many aspects of our obsession to redeem culture, we’re on a mission to take the OT Law and Christianize it.
While it’s a dangerous thing to try to sum up the entirety of the Gospel in a few verses, I will attempt it here (and may God’s Spirit lead me). My purpose is to show how simple the Gospel is and how much it covers:
And [Jesus] came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up. And as was his custom, he went to the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and he stood up to read. And the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” And he rolled up the scroll and gave it back to the attendant and sat down. And the eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. And he began to say to them, “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”
—Luke 4:16-21Now I [Paul] would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preached to you, which you received, in which you stand, and by which you are being saved, if you hold fast to the word I preached to you—unless you believed in vain. For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve.
—1 Corinthians 15:1-5But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it—the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction: for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus. Then what becomes of our boasting? It is excluded. By what kind of law? By a law of works? No, but by the law of faith. For we hold that one is justified by faith apart from works of the law.
—Romans 3:21-28But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!” So you are no longer a slave, but a son, and if a son, then an heir through God.
—Galatians 4:4-7There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death.
—Romans 8:1-2Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.
—2 Corinthians 3:17-18For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.
—Colossians 3:3-4
Jesus came to meet the needs of the oppressed, sick, broken, and hopeless. We tried to obey God’s Law, but could not; no matter how hard we worked righteous works of the Law, our sin and guilt remained. But Jesus died as a perfect, sinless sacrifice in our place on the cross to pay for our sins with the blood demanded. Jesus rose again and conquered death. He puts His own Spirit into any who put their faith in Him. The Spirit in us is a sign and seal of our adoption into the household/Kingdom of God. Jesus’ Spirit in us frees us from bondage and condemnation and transforms us into who we were always meant to be, as our old self has died and is being replaced by the image of Jesus. And when Jesus returns, we will join Him in glory.
That’s the Gospel in a nutshell. A handful of Scriptures and one summary paragraph lay it all out.
You’ll have to agree, that’s pretty simple. Which is why I grow so disquieted when people start adding to that simple Gospel.
Anyone familiar with the Old Testament knows that God had a lot of rules handed down to the Hebrews through Moses. The books of Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy are packed with rules. And those same Hebrews found ways to add even more of their own takes on those laws, getting into minutia that would drive an ordinary man crazy if he attempted to keep them all perfectly.
Now the rules God gave were intended to keep the Hebrews in line. But that line was so strict and level that it only proved how far out of whack the Hebrews were in their practice of those laws. And that’s because mankind was bent out of shape by sin. In a way, it was a losing proposition, as no one was righteous enough—until Jesus came along to keep all the Law perfectly.
And this is why I’m troubled when I see Christians and churches going back to the very Law no one could keep perfectly, then trying to keep those laws perfectly by being their own substitute Jesus. Seems like a big waste of time if Jesus already kept them all perfectly and now we’re in Him.
One of the most stunning passages in all of Acts is so because of what is missing from it. Originally, the Church Jesus founded started within the Jewish community, the ones who had labored under the Law for centuries. But God never intended His Spirit to dwell inside converted Jews only. He wanted to pour out His Spirit on those who had no idea what the Jewish Law was. After God baptized with His Spirit those believers who were not Jews, the apostles understood the truth about their faith: It was for everyone, both Jew and non-Jew (Gentile). This is what they wrote to the Gentile believers concerning how they should live as Christians:
Then it seemed good to the apostles and the elders, with the whole church, to choose men from among them and send them to Antioch with Paul and Barnabas. They sent Judas called Barsabbas, and Silas, leading men among the brothers, with the following letter: “The brothers, both the apostles and the elders, to the brothers who are of the Gentiles in Antioch and Syria and Cilicia, greetings. Since we have heard that some persons have gone out from us and troubled you with words, unsettling your minds, although we gave them no instructions, it has seemed good to us, having come to one accord, to choose men and send them to you with our beloved Barnabas and Paul, men who have risked their lives for the sake of our Lord Jesus Christ. We have therefore sent Judas and Silas, who themselves will tell you the same things by word of mouth. For it has seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us to lay on you no greater burden than these requirements: that you abstain from what has been sacrificed to idols, and from blood, and from what has been strangled, and from sexual immorality. If you keep yourselves from these, you will do well. Farewell.” So when they were sent off, they went down to Antioch, and having gathered the congregation together, they delivered the letter. And when they had read it, they rejoiced because of its encouragement.
—Acts 15:22-31
The major question here: Where is the Law? Well, it seems like a large chunk of the Old Testament never got transmitted to the Gentiles, including the Law. They didn’t get rules on circumcision, ceremonial cleansing after menstruation, who should marry widows, the proper disposition of agricultural increase (the tithe), the correct dimensions of artifacts used in the worship of God, or anything else found in the Law. Instead, what they got was the Spirit of Jesus living inside them and an encouragement that Jesus’ yoke was easy, His burden light, and that they had taken one very large step back toward the Garden of Eden.
You see, when mankind started off, God gave Adam and Eve a very limited set of laws to live by:
- Be fruitful and multiply.
- Take dominion over the earth and steward it.
- Don’t eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
That ideal that God set forth back then applies still. Adam had God’s Spirit in him before the fall, and we now have that blessed gift restored. God is taking us back to the Garden in a way. He’s taking us back to a time when life was not a set of laws but was evidenced by Himself dwelling in and with man in perfect communion.
Today, we still live in world that reeks of Adam’s fall. We know physical death, too, something Adam never should have tasted. But God will take care of even physical death when Christ appears. The new heaven and new earth to come will be governed by two simple commands, the same commands that we Christians must always live by:
And one of the scribes came up and heard them disputing with one another, and seeing that [Jesus] answered them well, asked him, “Which commandment is the most important of all?” Jesus answered, “The most important is, ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.”
—Mark 12:28-31
That’s what God is taking us back to. That’s the extent of the “Law” that we Christians must abide by. All the other minutia Christ fulfilled. In fact, He even loved God and our neighbor perfectly for us, so there’s grace even when we fail in those simple commands.
So why is it that so many Christians and churches fail to know the freedom that comes from the Gospel of Grace, choosing instead to pile up laws upon laws of things we should and should not do? Why are so many Christians buried under the guilt of failing to keep those improperly imposed laws when Jesus freed us from that burden?
We may say that “where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom,” but too many Christians don’t live that way. Instead they live broken lives, always striving, always attempting to do better, trying harder the next time, slaving to get it right—until it kills them.
But that’s not the Gospel.
Too many church leaders egg people on to do better. Often they impose man-made rules on people or attempt to resurrect the Law that Jesus fulfilled as if it were not completed by the Lord. How sad! People so burdened have no idea what freedom in Christ is. They never hear that Jesus came to proclaim freedom to those held captive by works of righteousness that were not righteous enough and never could be.
Last year, as part of the Bible reading plan I champion here at Cerulean Sanctum, I read through the entire book of Galatians each day for a month and truly meditated on what the Holy Spirit says in those pages. That month of reading so profoundly deepened my understanding of grace and the burden of the Law that I would have to say it was the best study I ever did in my life.
I recommend the same to you. If you’re in a church that spends too much time rehashing the Old Testament Law, I encourage you to read the entirety of Galatians every day for a month.
Christian, you are free. Don’t live under the Law. Live under the Gospel of Grace.
For all who rely on works of the law are under a curse; for it is written, “Cursed be everyone who does not abide by all things written in the Book of the Law, and do them.” Now it is evident that no one is justified before God by the law, for “The righteous shall live by faith.” But the law is not of faith, rather “The one who does them shall live by them.” Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us—for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree”—so that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles, so that we might receive the promised Spirit through faith.
—Galatians 3:10-14
Amen and amen!
Tags: Bondage, Church Issues, Freedom, Gospel, Grace, Law, Laws, Religion, Rules, SpiritRelated posts
How God Is
June 27, 2009
Posted by Dan Edelen in : Benevolence, Church Issues, Community, Discernment, Godly Character, Grace, Hospitality, Love, Relevance, Simplicity Feedback : 1 comment so far
On Thursday, my family and I drove up to Columbus, Ohio, to meet up with a friend of mine from my Carnegie Mellon University days back in the early ’80s. That’s a long time to know someone, but old friends are often the best friends of all. The last time Bob and I got together in person was at my wedding 13 years ago, so it has been awhile. Still, we have kept up by phone, email, and now Facebook.
The crux of our getting together this time was another wedding, his. Though we were not able to make the ceremony, as we do not travel well at this time, I was relieved that he and bride Christin would be only two hours away as part of their honeymoon. That WAS doable.
What I didn’t realize until the morning of the meeting was that Bob and Christian were attending the Origins Gaming Fair, the big convention for fans of role-playing games, boardgames, military strategy games, and…well, most any kind of game out there. I’ve never seen so many gaming fans together in one place. Our son was with us, and I knew he would eat up all the fun stuff going in within the many rooms of the convention center, and indeed, we had a blast.
But it wasn’t on the convention floor that I was most blessed.
As it was a meeting to celebrate a wedding, we brought a gift. I thought about that gift a long time and was able to find exactly what I was looking for to give to Bob and Christin. When we met, they were waiting there with a gift in their hands, too, something I did not expect.
Bob asked me to open the bag—inside was something very special.
When I was still in my youth, my brothers and I had a copy of an aerial combat game called Ace of Aces. By using an innovative game mechanic, two people with the small, paired, illustrated books of maneuvers could participate in a real-time dogfight. The game was brilliantly simple, and I loved playing it. And if I loved it, I knew my son would, too.
Sadly, though it was highly regarded, the many Ace of Aces variants are all out of print. Copies sold online command very high prices. I know; I checked. It seemed to me that my son and I would have to pass up playing this game together.
When I opened up the gift bag from Bob and Christin, I found a copy of Ace of Aces. It had been the copy that Bob and his son (now an adult) had played. I couldn’t believe it.
Walking back to my car to safely stow this wonderful gift, I got a tear in my eye. I kept thinking that this is how God is with us. We seek to bless Him, but what He blesses us with in response is much more than we can imagine. Just as my friend had been paying attention to a comment I made on Facebook about searching for this game, God hears us and plans great things for our pleasure, because He loves us so very much.
God cares about our needs, but He also cares about our joy. A little game I can play with my son may not seem like an earthshattering thing, but its an example of God’s goodness in even the smallest things.
After we left Bob and Christin, we met up with a Cerulean Sanctum supporter, Travis, one of the longest-running readers of this blog, and someone I had not had the pleasure of meeting face to face. We ate together in a nearly deserted Bob Evans, and we talked about his new daughter. Just some regular folks hanging out and talking about life. Driving home, my family and I saw a rainbow. Last night, we watched two baby finches, whose nest was in our hanging fern outside, take their first flights and disappear into our woods. On a sweltering evening, we felt the first cool breezes of an oncoming nightfall before the stars came out thick and bright, the Milky Way lighting up the sky.
God cares about us and shows it in a million little ways each day. My prayer is that you can find the time to exult in those blessings and realize how much you are loved.
Be blessed and cultivate joy. It’s all around you.
Tags: Benevolence, Community, Friends, Friendship, Gift, Gifts, God's Love, Love, Sharing, ThankfulnessRelated posts
Laying Down “Us” to Reach “Them”
April 9, 2009
Posted by Dan Edelen in : Benevolence, Christianity in North America, Church Issues, Community, Counterculture, Dying to Self, Evangelism, Godly Character, Grace, Hospitality, Humility, Judgmentalism, Love, Maturity, Obedience, Oddities, Simplicity Feedback : 25 comments
If you were to ask me right in this moment what one thing I would really like to see change in the American Church, it would have to be our devotion to the cause of Us vs. Them.
More and more, it sticks in my craw when I am with fellow Christians and the Us. vs. Them talk starts up. Who are Them ?
Political liberals
Homosexuals
Abortion supporters
Jews
Muslims
Immigrants
Other races
Mainline Protestants
The promiscuous
The homeless
The poor
The lost
And so on
That list will look different for different people, but in short, Them are those people who are not Us.
You get into strange conversations with people who always think in terms of Us vs. Them. Try talking with an Evangelical who claims to love Israel yet complains about all the Jews running Hollywood, with its family-unfriendly movies filled with bad language and smutty imagery. Or the folks who go on and on about reaching the lost or ministering to the poor, yet who wish the Mexicans would go back where they came from. The disconnect is head-scratching.
I once had lunch with someone who made no pretenses to being a Christian. When I asked her why she liked living where she did, she said it was because the residents were so tolerant of others, not like those rednecks in the Midwest.
Too many American Christians have that same mentality. Its not only irrational, it’s ugly too. And its a large reason why so many people have tuned out the Church here. They know us by the culture war. They know us by whom we oppose. They have no idea of whom we are for. And if they’ve heard that old ’60s-era song “They’ll Know We Are Christians by Our Love,” they wonder inside when it was ever true. (Maybe back in the ’60s. But then, didn’t we all love each other back in the ’60s?)
Look, there’s not a Christian alive who hasn’t heard the parable of the Good Samaritan. Three-year-old kids who still wet their pants from time to time know that story. How come so little of it ever sinks in? The Us passed by. The Them loved. Jesus smashed the stereotype of Us vs. Them to smithereens in that parable.
Many of the greatest novels ever written contain the archetypal story of the hero who does good because he remembers his roots. He never lets himself forget his humble origins, and that remembering helps him change the world for the better.
I think that one thing Jesus Christ would like to impress upon many American Christians is that each of Us was once Them. And that the people who are most effective for the Kingdom of God are those people who never let themselves forget that truth.
The time of forgetting we were once lost is past, folks. It’s time to start laying down Us to reach Them.
Tags: Anger, Compassion, Fear, Hate, Identity, Love, Prejudice, Them, Us, Us vs. Them, Xenophobia
Posts
Comments
