Mick Turner
When we take an honest, unbiased look at the life of Jesus as presented in the four Gospels of the New Testament, we are left with the undeniable impression that his primary concern in inaugurating his kingdom on earth centered on caring for the poor and the marginalized. Despite the concerted efforts of those self-proclaimed “believers” who have made brazened attempts to alter the message of Jesus to fit their political agenda, anyone with even a grain of objectivity and personal integrity will admit that the Master called us in no uncertain terms to care for the less fortunate among us.
“I have come to preach good news to the poor,” Christ tells us in Luke 4:18. With these words, and a proclamation taken from Isaiah 61 Jesus launched his mission. If anyone doubts his concern for the marginalized, let them study carefully his closing words in Matthew 25: 31-46 where the Master states clearly that our eternal destiny is intimately connected with how we treat the poor, the sick, and the infirm. As disquieting as Christ’s words are in this section of Holy Writ, the implications are clear and cannot be dismissed out of hand, just because they happen to fly in the face of our political ideology. It is for this reason that when the LifeBrook Faith Alliance began back in 1997, it was with these words as our motivating credo:
As followers of Jesus Christ, our prime calling is to give flesh to grace.
I am convinced that this was the directive Jesus operated under and I feel I should do no less. In concrete terms, instead of giving people advice, trying to convert them or get them to come to church (these are not bad things by the way), our mission is to help those who are hurting find a better way of navigating through their problems and living in the solution. Instead of asking, “Are you saved?” we instead ask, “What do you need?” or “How can I help?”
Unfortunately, the vast majority of practicing Christians in America have drifted far off course. Instead of looking for positive and effective ways to be of service to others, many of us have opted for a more comfortable and less challenging version of the faith. Seeking at all cost to maintain the status quo and keep the application of Christianity within the respectable bounds of American culture, we have settled for something far more tame and far less radical than what the Master called for. In the process of living beneath the standard set by Christ, we have also managed to more often than not, major in the minors. And in doing so, the once-honorable title “Christian,” has become a term of derision.
Francis Chan makes the following cogent observation regarding the contemporary church in America:
I quickly found that the American church is a difficult place to fit in if you want to live out New Testament Christianity. The goals of American Christianity are often a nice marriage, children who don’t swear, and good church attendance. Taking the words of Christ literally and seriously is rarely considered. That’s for “radicals” who are “unbalanced” and who go “overboard.” Most of us want a balanced life that we can control, that is safe, and that does not involve suffering.
I have found that at least in a general sense, most American Christians shy away from churches that are serious about putting on the mind of Christ. Like Chan says, the typical American believer prefers a church that is safe and predictable. This desire for safety and predictability goes even farther. These same Christians also prefer a Jesus that is equally safe and predictable – one that sits quietly on quilt-board displays holding lambs in his lap and patting kids on the head (or maybe that’s the other way around, with kids in his lap and patting lambs on the head).
The point is this: the radical, firebrand Jesus that showed up in the flesh and went on to challenge the religious leaders of his day, calling them everything from a brood of vipers to white-washed sepulchers, was and is far too dangerous. That’s why one of the primary tasks of the church throughout the centuries has been to domesticate the rough-edged revolutionary who set this new faith in motion.
In the somewhat detailed notes below, taken from Richard Stearns The Hole in Our Gospel, the author describes how anemic and superficial Christianity has become. From his perspective as President of World Vision U.S., Stearns also looks at some of the causes of this situation and how a return to a more complete gospel, based more solidly on the actual teachings and life of Jesus provides a way for the church to heal.
More and more our gospel has been narrowed to a simple transaction, marked by checking a box on a bingo card at some prayer breakfast, registering a decision for Christ, or coming forward during an altar call………..It was about saving as many people from hell as possible – for the next life. It minimized any concern for those same people in this life. It wasn’t as important that they were poor or hungry or persecuted, or perhaps rich, greedy, and arrogant; we just had to get them to pray the “sinner’s prayer” and then move on to the next potential convert. In our evangelistic efforts to make the good news accessible and simple to understand, we seem to have boiled it down to a kind of “fire insurance” that one can buy. Then, once the policy is in effect, the sinner can go back to whatever life he was living – of wealth and success or poverty and suffering. As long as the policy was in the drawer, the other things don’t matter as much. We’ve got our “ticket” to the next life.
There is a real problem with this limited view of the kingdom of God; it is not the whole gospel. Instead, it is a gospel with a gaping hole. First, focusing almost exclusively on the afterlife reduces the importance of what God expects of us in this life. The kingdom of God, which Christ said is “within you” (Luke 17:21 NKJV), was intended to change and challenge everything in our fallen world in the here and now. It was not meant to be a way to leave the world but rather the means to actually redeem it.
Jesus’ view of the gospel went beyond a bingo card transaction; it embraced a revolutionary new view of the world, an earth transformed by transformed people, His “disciples of all the nations” (Matt. 28:19 NKJV), who would usher in the revolutionary kingdom of God. Those words from the Lord’s Prayer, “your kingdom come, you will be done on earth, as it is in heaven” were and are a clarion call to Jesus’ followers not just to proclaim the good news but to be the good news, here and now (Matt. 6:10). This gospel – the whole gospel – means much more than the personal salvation of individuals. It means a social revolution.
For those of us raised in the embrace of American Christianity these words may be difficult to digest, but digest them we must. The Master we have chosen to follow calls us out of our comfort zones and into the roiling cauldron of poverty, disease, and injustice. As followers of Jesus Christ, we are not afforded the luxury of sitting quietly on the sidelines, shaking our heads in dismay, spouting scripture, and uttering a chorus of sympathetic platitudes while children are starving and dying of preventable diseases. As those bold enough to take on the mantle “Christian,” we have not only blessings but responsibilities. Christ charged us with taking care of the last, the lost, and the least. When we do this, our hands are likely to get dirty and our hearts are likely to be broken. Jesus warns of this and encourages us to count the costs before we set our hand to the plow.
to be continued….
(c) L.D. Turner 2011/All Rights Reserved
Related articles
- Christ’s Prime Directive: Give Flesh to Grace (lifebrook.wordpress.com)
- Fresh Wind and Raised Sails: New Paradigms of Faith (Part One) (lifebrook.wordpress.com)
- Christianity: Rugged Individuals Need Not Apply (Part One) (lifebrook.wordpress.com)
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