Tag Archives: doctrine of the church

In Search of the Social-Justice Jesus

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I heard a fine sermon Sunday (9/22/24) about the subtle dangers of hypocrisy and the temptation to judge others by standards we cannot meet (Matthew 7:1-5). With our x-ray moral vision, we can detect microscopic faults in others but are blind to the huge train of sins we drag behind us! Ouch! It was a time for self-examination! I was struck with how comprehensive Jesus’s demand for individual conversion is; each of us must change from head to toe, inside and out, body and soul, act, being, and affections!

My Search for the Progressive Jesus

Now, don’t tell the preacher, but after reading Matthew 7:1-5, I turned back to Matthew 5 & 6 and forward all the way to the end of the Gospel of Matthew, looking for the social-justice Jesus progressive and liberal Christians keep talking about. I kept thinking: could it be that looking for systemic injustices perpetrated by “society” instead of examining our own lives is another way of evading Jesus’s demand for personal repentance? Is our obsession with systemic sins a modern form of the hypocrisy against which Jesus warned?

When I got home after church, I looked through the Gospels of Mark and Luke also. Still, no sign of a first-century Che Guevara, Angela Davis, or Ibram Kendi. Nor did I find a Democrat or Republican or Libertarian Jesus. He’s not American or Brazilian or Chinese or Indian. He’s not even Jewish in the political sense.

The Politics of Heaven

In the Gospels of Matthew and Mark, Jesus’s first public words were, “Repent, for the Kingdom of heaven has come near” (Matt 4:17; cf. Mark 1:15). There is not a single place where Jesus addresses impersonal “systems of privilege and oppression.” Not even one! Impersonal systems cannot repent or believe. In every case in which Jesus addresses the “poor,” “rich,” “self-righteous, “powerful,” “outcasts,” or the “oppressed” he speaks directly to individuals. Jesus proclaimed something much more radical, much more comprehensive than political reform or revolution. He proclaimed that the Kingdom of God is just around the corner. His requirements for entry to the Kingdom and his demands for life within the Kingdom are completely unrealistic for any worldly political order. His is a heavenly politics, and in that sense stands in judgment on every earthly kingdom. Read the Sermon on the Mount! Very few people in any nation would even try to live up to it. And even fewer would come close to success.

The Mustard Seed Kingdom

What, then, was Jesus up to? In reading the Gospel of Matthew it becomes clear that Jesus never expected the entire nation to respond favorably to the gospel of the Kingdom:

 Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it (7:13-14).

Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the Kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven (7:21).

Think about the parables of the Kingdom in Matthew 13: The Sower, The Weeds, The Hidden Treasure, and The Net. Each of these parables assumes that the Kingdom will be much smaller than the whole people. The Kingdom message will sort (13:1-58) and divide people, even families (10:34-39).

The Church and the Kingdom

Again, what is Jesus up to? In response to Peter’s confession of Jesus as the Messiah, Jesus said,

Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by flesh and blood, but by my Father in heaven. And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven (Matt 16:17-18).

Jesus plans to set up his own community within the world, and this community will be made up of serious disciples of Jesus. In their way of life as individuals and together in community they will be “salt” and “light” in the world (Matt 5:13-16). They will shine into the world a ray of light that anticipates the bright dawn of God’s comprehensive reign over his creation. They will honor God in humility, faith and obedience and love each other from the heart. They will do justice to all people and even love their enemies. As need arises, just as Jesus did, they will do good to everyone. They will feed the hungry, visit the sick and those in prison, befriend the abandoned, and they will speak up for those suffering injustice. They will establish hospitals and educational institutions. The Spirit of Jesus will drive them to do all sorts of good works…in his name!

But will they do all these things without abandoning the message Jesus preached, “Repent for the Kingdom of heaven is near.” For they know that reforming systems apart from reforming hearts will simply substitute one system of injustice, greed and envy for another! They know that “man shall not live by bread alone,” that loaves and fishes will not by themselves satisfy but merely anesthetize the soul.

My search failed!

There is no social-justice Jesus in the New Testament. He is a figment of progressive and liberal Christians’ imaginations, a composite character constructed of elements drawn from Amos, Spartacus, and Che Guevara. Back to Matthew 7:1-5. It is much easier for the modern social justice Christian to curse the injustices of the world than to do justice in their own families and to their neighbors and enemies. As long as we focus on the sins of others or systems of privilege, we do not have to repent and prepare ourselves for the Kingdom of heaven.

Next Time: We will examine this progressive assertion. “In the Bible, God is always on the side of the oppressed.”

The “Friendly” Elephant in the Room (Rethinking Church #14)

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A church with any visibility at all will have a relationship to the state—as persecuted, free, free and privileged, or established. Every state claims the right to decide what behaviors and beliefs of individuals and groups within its jurisdiction support or threaten its interests. It reserves the exclusive power to dispossess, incarcerate, or kill anyone it deems a threat. Hence the church must always maintain awareness of this “elephant in the room” even if the elephant seems very friendly at the moment. How, then, should the church relate to states—like the United States and other Western democracies—that acknowledge its freedom and grant it certain privileges?

The Quest for Visibility

Many contemporary believers have never questioned the assumption that the church should seek maximum visibility in society and take full advantage of whatever freedom it has to get its message out. After all, Jesus told his disciples to proclaim the good news to the whole world (Matt 28:18-20; Luke 24:47; Acts 1:8). We’re supposed to “let our light shine”:

“You are the light of the world. A town built on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven (Matt 5:14-16).

“If anyone is ashamed of me and my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, the Son of Man will be ashamed of them when he comes in his Father’s glory with the holy angels” (Mark 8:38).

I understand the desire for visibility, and I can see why people take Jesus’s statements as grounds for seeking it. But we need to ask what Jesus meant by “let your light shine.” I am pretty certain that Jesus did not intend to mandate building cathedrals and huge church buildings, wearing crosses and clerical dress, or getting a Christian tattoo and putting a fish bumper sticker on your car. Of course, Jesus did not forbid them either, and they can witness to the faith. But they also symbolize social power and wealth. Building an expensive church building is similar in some ways to planting a flag. It says, “We are here and are a force to be reckoned with.” Such visibility can be more intimidating than inviting to outsiders. Or, it can obscure the gospel by associating it with material advantages. I can understand wanting to be part of something big, powerful, and wealthy. It is a natural human desire. But I think Jesus had something else in mind.

It seems more likely, given its context in the Sermon on the Mount (Matt 5–7), that “let your light shine,” means taking seriously your responsibility to live every day and in every relationship in vivid awareness of the love of God flowing through you to others—even if some people hate you for it. Let constant awareness of your Father in heaven impart to you heightened sensitivity to the needs of others. The good you do will bring glory to the Father because it will be evident that your good works are inspired by the Father. The “light” Jesus speaks of is not that of the spotlight illuminating a 100 foot tall Cross on a hill above Interstate 405. It is not the light reflected off cathedrals, church buildings, and gold cross pendants. It is the lives of people that live, speak, and act in witness to the love of God revealed in face of Jesus. Nothing else is required.

Coming to see that the church can exercise fully its responsibility of witness without great social visibility can free us from the inordinate urge to seek social visibility and from incautious use of religious freedom granted by the “friendly elephant.” For what the state gives, it can take away.

To be continued…

Rethinking Church #13: Privilege Always Comes with a Price

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For the first 275 years of its existence the church endured persecution, spontaneous at the local level, official at the imperial level. Its offense? Non-conformity “to the pattern of this world” (Rom 12:2). Christians would not participate in the pagan ceremonies and sacrifices that accompanied almost every aspect of social life in the Roman Empire. Nor would they pledge loyalty to Rome by offering sacrifices to the “divine” Caesar. Many Christian writers in the Second and Third Centuries wrote works addressed to the emperor arguing that Christianity is neither politically subversive nor morally corrupting.

Only with the Edict of Milan in 313, which proclaimed religious freedom within the Eastern part of the Roman Empire, did official persecutions end. The emperor Constantine I (d. 337) favored Christianity and even participated in the Council of Nicaea (325). Theodosius I (d. 395) took the final step toward establishing Christianity as the state religion of the Roman Empire by outlawing many heresies and ending pagan sacrifices. The tables had turned. Christian emperors supported the church and persecuted pagans with equal or even greater energy than the pagan ones had persecuted Christians.

Not surprisingly, Christians rejoiced and thanked God for their new freedom and privileges, and Constantine was hailed as a saint and a thirteenth apostle. Can we blame them? Who wants to live as a social outcast, have your property confiscated, be thrown in jail, or suffer torture and death for being a Christian? What was the persecuted church to do when offered freedom to worship as it pleases and organize its internal affairs as it thinks best? When given official status, financial support, and social visibility, should the church have turned them down? Seeing crowds of people enter the churches for worship and instruction, should the church have turned them away? Most of us would have done the same had we been in their shoes.

But privilege always comes with a price. For when the empire becomes Christian, the church becomes imperial. And an imperial church must support the empire. Perhaps most of my readers are clear that this exchange turned out to be a Faustian bargain. I agree. But I want to argue that getting out of that deal with the devil is not as easy as renouncing established churches and ratifying the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” As I pointed out in the previous essay, every state reserves to itself the power of life and death over all individuals and associations within its jurisdiction. If it leaves the church alone, if it recognizes its freedom to worship as it pleases, to organize as it sees fit, to choose its own leaders; and if it grants such privileges as tax exempt status, it does so only because—and only as long as—it judges that the church does not work against the interests of the state and in fact contributes to the common good as the state understands it.

It may happen that a state views its interests in ways that largely harmonize with the church’s mission of witness. It may be that this state sees the work of the church as advantageous to the common good. If so, it is not always wrong for the church to use these freedoms and privileges to advance its mission. However in every society, no matter how friendly to the church, there will always be areas where the state’s aims cut across the church’s mission. There are no exceptions to this rule, for “no one can serve two masters” (Matt 6:24). And in some cases, formerly “friendly” states’ views of their interests—of what is good and evil and of what serves the common good—can change so dramatically as to come into fundamental conflict with the church. Hence the church always faces—no exceptions—the temptation to seek or hold on to freedoms and privileges granted by the state by subordinating, compromising, or giving up its mission to witness to the lordship of Jesus Christ.

At every point in its relationship to the world—from bare toleration, to approval, to establishment—the church should ask what price it has to pay for these freedoms and privileges. How deeply in debt we have already become may not come clear until the mortgage comes due. And come due it will. Perhaps it already has.