It wasn't until yesterday around 9:30 AM that I realized how different my views on the preemininece of guilt are in the Reformed evangelism realm. What to do? Blog, of course. Here you go:
The Church has a fascination with guilt. Yes, its true. Tell me how you would go about telling someone about Christ? Think about it for a minute. Okay, minute's up. We've been addressing this issue this past week in my evangelism class. Most people would identify the "bridge" method as one of the best ways for presenting the gospel. If you're not familiar with this message, it points out the chasm that exists between human beings and God: a chasm that exists because of sin. In a triumphant soveriegn engineering feat, the cross gets lodged in the chasm and creates a bridge to walk across to where God is. Ha! If that's Reformed, Calvin just rolled over in his grave. My vision of Reformed theology is a lasso being sent across and Christ pulling us across kicking and screaming.
Okay, so maybe you don't subscribe to the bridge. Let's try something more familiar: the Heidelberg Catechism. If you paid attention in Catechism class, you know that the presentation of doctrine goes along these lines: Sin -->Salvation-->Service. Or, Q&A #2:What do we need to know to live and die in the comfort of God? "Three things:first, how great my sin and misery are; second, how I am set free from all my sins and misery; third, how I am to thank God for such deliverance." The commonality of these two presentations I've made is the fact that the gospel takes root in guilt, period.
On that front, I made the argument on Wednesday that we don't necessarily need to present the gospel by starting with guilt. [The crowd goes aghast.] What's more, its necessary to find other ways to seed in the gospel because our culture does not feel guilt! What did he just say? I'm not saying no one feels guilt, certainly I feel guilt and you do too, but the cultural emphasis on moral subjectivity has all but chased guilt into a shadowy corner. Like it or not, the generation we are currently raising does not identify with guilt the way the previous ones did. If we keep harping on guilt, we will find ourselves preaching to teddy bears.
Ron Martoria presents a helpful concept for this discussion. He argues that there are multiple themes in the Old Testament such as covenant, exodus, exile and priestly atonement. His point is that the Church has triumphed the idea of priestly atonement for years to the detriment of the other themes. And its worked! Think about how the prophets worked: Go to a city, tell them they are sinners, offer them a reward for repentence. Fastforward. Jonathan Edwards and his fire-and-brimstone sermons capitalized on the exact same principle: Go to the pulpit, tell people they're on the fasttrack to hell, tell them God will save them, but only barely so that people aren't tempted to step outside the lines for fear of burning off an extremity.
Go into any city in America, urban or rural, stand on a milk crate, and preach this at the top of your lungs. Go ahead, I dare you. Its foolish. Why is it so heretical for me to present the idea that there might be other ways to motivate people to God other than threatening them with hell! Hell might just be the greatest weapon the Church has had in its arsenal. Dan has some good thoughts on this here. Are you seriously telling me that we've been around for more than 2,000 years and the most convincing argument we can make for worshipping God is fear of hell? Bush administration anyone? Fear built basilicas in the 1500's, it brought people out in droves into Puritanism and Methodism during the Great Awakenings, and we've used it in the Reformed tradition to "scare the elect out of bushes". Sweet! Regardless of the focus on numbers, it spoke their language and was thus a useful evangelism tool. In Europe and North America today, its not. Perhaps if Jesus saved us from terrorism, Christianity would sell.
I don't like to present problems without some ideas about a solution....that simply makes me a rock-thrower. I'm working on it, but I think acknowledging the issue is half the problem. One idea I have is to repackage sin. Moral relativity has virtually eliminated a preoccupation with sin and guilt. Okay. Let's try that again. Brokenness is undeniable. What's happening in Iraq isn't okay, regardless of what your moral stance is. What's happening in Sudan isn't okay regardless of where you find yourself in the spectrum of moral relativity. Systematic poverty is a problem, unless you're a social Darwinian. Its a small start, but addressing brokenness is not only a better way to present sin to a sin-ignorant culture, but its also probably a better way to present Christ as a solution because it increases the scope of Christ's redemption. Focusing on individual sin as the only problem makes a person-focused Jesus the only Savior.
If we keep on our current path, the only thing we'll feel guilty for is losing a generation and boarding up our church windows.
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2 comments:
Hibs –
I think you hit on a big part of the problem when you talked about theories of atonement. The Penal Substitution model (which is really a combination of the Satisfaction model and the Expiation/Propitiation model) is often seen as the only Reformed view of the atonement. And this teaches what? A God and Judge who is wrathful and needs to punish somebody. We are supposed to see ourselves as the objects of his wrath and punishment. Of course, these models are in the Bible, but they are not the only models.
I think one way to avoid guilt-vangelism is to do a better job of emphasizing other models of atonement. For example, there is the model of the Christus Victor who is seen as the liberator (like Moses was of the Israelites). In this model, we are made to reflect Christ’s liberation in the world around us… which is both a more positive image and a more communal image. Another atonement model would be to see Christ as a revelation of God’s truth, wisdom and love. In this model, Christ is our moral example and urges us to live into God’s kingdom. We can also see Christ as atoning in the sense of healing and restoration (The recapitulation model).
I think this would be a start towards a more holistic evangelism that would engage various people.
Mark, I very much like what you say about Sin-Salvation-Service. I might have to borrow that for when we do our gospel presentations for class.
But implied in that framework is the idea of "If you have been forgiven much, you will love much."
I do not think we can lay aside guilt. I think we can frame guilt in regards to the things that our culture values, most of all: relationships.
We can explain guilt by how each of us is an agent in the breakdown of our own relationships, and especially our relationship with God.
This is tragic, since our relationship with God is the very means of life and meaning and ultimate fulfillment ("the way things are supposed to be").
The so called "penal substitution model" may not be the only way to explain the things that Christ did here on earth, but when it comes to the question "how are we saved?" our answer is "Our sins died with Christ on the cross, and we are made alive with him in his resurrection."
We can frame the atonement of Christ more positively and relationally, but I do not think this requires a whole lot of work, actually.
Still, the discussion is incredibly necessary and fruitful.
I would very much like to study how Paul "created" guilt among the pagans of his day, or if concepts of guilt were already there, and he merely adapted them.
Interesting...
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