BLOG 7/1/17. THERE IS NO SAFE CHRISTIAN WORLD!
Yes, there is no safe Christian world—only this broken, enigmatic world populated with all kinds of puzzling personalities, … from the artificially pious to the truly ef-ed up who defy description. Yet there is that set of folks who look for more church activities to attend, who are always looking for the perfect church as some sort of escape from this brokenness. The late John Stott designated such folk as ‘rabbit-hole Christians’ who only jump out of their churchy hole to do necessary chores and hasten back to their hole so that they do not have to deal with real sinners.
No, this very real, often distressing, world full of good people and awful people, respectable neighbors and pathologically wicked people, is the world that God so loved. It is into such a world that Jesus came as the incarnation of the love of God, came to seek and to save such often confused, lost, bewildered, often nasty and arrogant and obscene persons. He also came to those others whose behavior is quite positive, but who are themselves lost in the cosmos (to plagiarize Walker Percy’s description). Yes, there are those “decent godless men” who are also part of this very real world, but whose lives have no framework, who are self-satisfied humanists, and make our daily world to be an exercise in our aliens and exiles calling as God’s people.
Yet it was into this very real world of very real sinners that Jesus calls us to be his disciples. The mission that the Father gave to him is the same mission that he gives to us. Not to seek escape, but, quite the contrary, to move toward the darkness and its victims, and to do it as joyous children of the light. It is possible that the most sinful thing that one could do is to seek for more church activities, or to join one more Bible study. Does that sound heretical? It’s not!
An incestuous church, absorbed only with its own inner-life, ceases to be the church which is the body of Christ, or the glory of God, or the dwelling-place of God by the Holy Spirit. It ceases to be the community of faith in the One who came to seek and to save the lost. The gospel hymn states it well: “Jesus, what a friend for sinners!”
Jesus calls us to be his followers fully engaged in a world that is not safe, i.e., some imaginative world that is safe, explainable, devoid of all the moral and ethical lepers and boring and vacuous personalities. No, rather Jesus calls to be his presence in a very real world with these who are themselves part of that darkness—and when those who designate themselves as: ‘Christian’, seek to escape that calling, that unsafe world, … then it is they themselves who are also part of that darkness.
And too many ostensible church institutions totally miss that message.
Paul’s commission from the Ascended Lord is ours: “I am sending you to open their eyes, to turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan to God so that they may receive forgiveness of sins and place of those who are made whole by faith that is me” (Acts 26:18). He had to engage the unsafe world of destructive political powers, arrogant religionist, pitiful and helpless persons, screwed-up and artificial individuals, and all the rest—and to take the consequences. He had to move into the real world with all of its unknowns, … not hide-out in church meetings.
And I give high praise for those everywhere in all the world who are doing just that. They are the true salt of the earth and the effective light of the world. I also want to be one of them, and I commend this word to my readers.
http://wipfandstock.com/what-on-earth-is-the-church-14083.html
