A Gospel Culture

In The King Jesus Gospel: The Original Good News Revisited (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2011), Scot McKnight argues that the church has been dominated by the salvation culture in which the gospel is understood only in relation to Jesus’ saving purpose for humanity and its consumer-oriented outcome—going to heaven after death. The church should be very aware of this salvation culture because such a culture tends to reduce God’s salvation in Christ to personal forgiveness. It is what Dallas Willard calls the gospel of sin management [see Dallas Willard, The Divine Conspiracy: Rediscovering our Hidden Life in God (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1998), chapter 2].

The gospel of Jesus Christ is more than the gospel of sin management. The gospel is not just about Jesus as our personal Savior.  But most importantly, Jesus is the Lord of all and the promised Messiah for Israel. When we are called to follow Jesus, not only are we called to believe Him as the Savior, but also to center our lives on the lordship of Jesus. When we know that the gospel of Jesus is the completion of the story of Israel, we don’t privatize our faith as if there were nothing else between me and Jesus.

Scot McKnight writes:

But we would be mistaken to reduce these themes to nothing more than individualism. Peter’s summary in Acts 5:29-32 sees forgiveness for “Israel.” God is at work in his people and therefore in individuals, and we need to see that one of the problems is the people of God who need to become the true people of God. The New Testament expresses this new people of God in the word church (p. 136).

We enter into the story of Jesus by gracious invitation. We are also part of Israel’s story. We are part of something that is bigger than our personal stories. We are part of God’s saving story in which we represent God as kingly priests just as Israel functions as a kingdom of priests in the Old Testament. To know that we belong to this marco-Story helps us place our micro-stories into perspective. In other words, it helps us place the plan of salvation in the story of Jesus, which is the telos of Israel’s story.

Scot McKnight suggests that in order to fight against the salvation culture in the church, we must guard against it by creating a gospel culture. Two of his suggestions are that we need to become people of the story and immerse ourselves even more into the story of Jesus. “To become a gospel culture we’ve got to begin with becoming people of the Book, but not just as a Book but as the story that shapes us…We need to soak ourselves in the Story of Jesus by reading, pondering, digesting, and mulling over in our heads and hearts…” (p. 153).

Evangelism, what is it? To “evangelize” or to “gospel” is to tell the Story of Jesus as a saving story that completes Israel’s Story. What is the best way to evangelize today? (p. 112)

This kind of evangelism does not just lead to decision, but discipleship. But the prerequisite is that we must constantly immerse ourselves into the Story.  

Scrutinize the Obvious

In The Divine Conspiracy: Rediscovering our Hidden Life in God (New York: HarperSanFrancisco, 1998), Dallas Willard writes that it is God’s desire to invite all of us to participate in Himself. But such invitation is turned down by human overfamiliarity. He notes:

The major problem with the invitation now is precisely overfamiliarity. Familiarity breeds unfamiliarity—unsuspected unfamiliarity, and then contempt. People think they have heard the invitation. They think they have accepted it—or rejected it. But they have not. The difficulty today is to hear it at all. Genius, it is said, is the ability to scrutinize the obvious. Written everywhere, we may think, how could the invitation be subtle, or deep? It looks like the other graffiti and even shows up in the same places. But that is part of the divine conspiracy. (p. 11)

“Genius…is the ability to scrutinize the obvious.” I think this is an insightful statement. It is Willard’s observation over the years in the Christian industry. After being Christians for a few years, we know that we’ve learned just enough to say that Christian faith is very familiar. We may not be able to articulate our faith systematically. We may even admit that we don’t know much. But we rarely say, “I never heard of this sermon before. It’s entirely new to me.” We may say that some sermons are profound and deepen our faith. However, to a certain extent, they are familiar.

Christian growth is extremely difficult because it requires us to look beyond what is familiar. I believe that in the early years of Christian journey, our learning tends to be passive. In early stage of Christian faith, everything is new: the gospel is fresh; the Bible is interesting; most pastors and teachers are great; and we have a sense of expectancy in hearing and learning. Basic Christian faith can be grasped through regular services (e.g. Sunday worship, Sunday school, etc…) As long as we attend those services, we get something out of it. In terms of physical presence, we are active. In terms of intellectual learning, we are passive most of the time.

As time goes by, once we are familiar with the basic content of the Christian Faith, it is getting harder and harder to learn more new things about the Faith through this mode of learning. The more we attend, the more the Christian faith becomes familiar. However, just familiar! That is the problem. We are not going anywhere with our familiarity. In other words, we get stuck. We are stagnant.

The ability to “scrutinize the obvious” is not natural to us. We must put some efforts to develop this ability. To scrutinize requires a lot more attention and energy than seeing. To study, to analyze, to ask questions are parts of our scrutiny. We are familiar with Jesus. (Don’t be humble and say that we don’t know much about Him. We don’t know everything about Him. Maybe we don’t know Him. But we do know about him.) Why don’t we “scrutinize the obvious”? Why don’t we devote three to six months to study one Gospel (e.g. the Gospel of Mark) or one aspect of Jesus’ teachings (e.g. the miracles of Jesus)? We are familiar with Jesus in general, but most of us are not familiar with the Jesus in Mark’s gospel or in Matthew’s gospel. Both gospels are similar, but each offers a unique portrait of Jesus. What about incarnation? We are familiar with incarnation: God became flesh and dwelled among us. But what else do we know about incarnation? What are some implications of the doctrine of incarnation? Can we read two Christian books on this topic and “scrutinize the obvious”? 

We can’t just show up on Sunday worship or Sunday school and hope that we can deepen our faith by attending them. Yes, they do have their rightful place in Christian education, for a community of faith is a teaching and learning community. We need a community to sharpen one another. However, besides these corporate means, if we fail to “scrutinize the obvious” on our own, we just end up being familiar with our Faith for the rest of our lives. John Stott said that a Christian’s greatest responsibility is growth. Growth is an organic term. It is lively and ongoing. It never stops. A plant never stops growing. It stops; it withers. Breakthrough familiarity is our task on earth. “Fight the good fight of the faith” (1 Tim. 6:12a, ESV).

From my viewpoint, I think it is not so fair to blame our familiar stage of the Christian Faith on the church even though the church does have an educational role for our growth. It is our own problems more than the problems of the church (and others). I’ve noticed that people who tend to blame everything on the church do not usually fulfill their own greatest responsibility. It sounds like our stagnation has everything to do with the church. But the church is not in our control. Thus, there is nothing we can do about our growth. We feel better about our familiar faith with this kind of mentality. The view of the church as the scapegoat prevents us from seeing our conditions as they are and taking full ownership of our familiar stage of faith.

For sure, the church as a whole will be held accountable on the Day of Judgment in regard with her role and function on earth. But first and foremost, each redeemed individual will be rebuked or rewarded with no exception.

Let's not have any godtalk

“Dear brothers and sisters, not many of you should become teachers in the church, for we who teach will be judged by God with greater strictness” (James 3:1). One of the responsibilities of being a teacher is to pass on knowledge; a Christian teacher, Christian knowledge. Heresy emerges from time to time because of distorted knowledge. We pastors are teachers even though we are more than teachers. But teaching is our primary task, for the church needs to be educated with and edified by the Scripture. The Scripture needs to be taught systematically, theologically, and regularly.  If we pastors fail to fulfill this pastoral task, we fail our pastorate. (This is how I see it.)

“All Scripture is inspired by God and is useful to teach us what is true and to make us realize what is wrong in our lives. It straightens us out and teaches us to do what is right. It is God’s way of preparing us in every way, fully equipped for every good thing God wants us to do” (2 Tim. 3:16-17). We know that we are morally, spiritually, and theologically wrong because the Scripture is being taught and expounded. The exposition of the Scripture confronts our self-righteousness and cleanses us by the Holy Spirit (Titus 3:5). This is God’s ordained way to prepare and equip us. If we pastors fail to help brothers and sisters encounter the Word of God through teaching, we basically fail our pastorate.

In Knowing Christ Today: Why We Can Trust Spiritual Knowledge (New York: HarperOne, 2009), Dallas Willard wrote,

“Who is to bring the knowledge that will answer the great life questions that perplex humanity? Who is to teach the world—the ‘nations,’ people of all kinds—the knowledge that belongs to Christ and his people? In any subject matter the responsibility to teach falls upon those who have the corresponding knowledge. With respect to Christian knowledge, the primary responsibility to teach falls upon those who self-identify as spokespeople for Christ and who perhaps have some leadership position or role in Christian organizations. I shall use the word ‘pastors’ for such people, but the word is here to be taken very broadly; it refers not just to those who hold a position with that title—though it is especially for them” (p. 193).

"The task of followers of Christ is to know Christ and, in knowing him, to make knowledge of God and of life in God available to those around them. That is what responsible people do with knowledge of any important subject. If you have knowledge on any matter of great importance to human beings, it is your duty to make that knowledge available to others. If you know the house is on fire, you must share your knowledge with others. If you know where the bargains are, you tell your friends. If you know how to stop global warming or cure cancer, you have a duty to share that knowledge. Not so of your mere opinions, feelings, or decisions about such matters” (p. 195).

We pastors are entrusted with the knowledge of the Gospel. We pass it on with care and conviction. Teaching the Scripture in a systematic and theological way is our sacred task.

In The Pastor: A Memoir (New York: HarperOne, 2011), Eugene Peterson told a story:

“Charity, at the time I met her, was a plump, bold, cute, and highly verbal five-year-old. She lived in a city halfway across the country. I knew her through her grandparents. When I visited in their home, I sometimes would get to talk with Charity. It was her grandmother, Brenda, who told me this story.  Brenda had taken the train to visit her daughter and son-in-law, Charity’s parents. Charity’s other grandmother had left the day before, after an extended visit, returning to her home in New England. I had never met this other grandmother but knew she took her grandmothering duties very seriously."

"The morning after my friend Brenda’s arrival, Charity came into her bedroom at five o’clock, crawled into bed with her, cuddled up, and said, ‘Grandmother, let’s not have any godtalk while you are here, okay? I believe that God is everywhere. Let’s just get on with life.’"

"When Brenda told me that story, I knew that Charity was onto something. It coincided with the awareness that was developing in the refining fire that was tempering my pastoral vocation in the badlands. It was the word ‘godtalk.’ What Charity was onto was that life is the country that Christians live in, frequently named in the Psalms as ‘land of the living.’ And what she was also onto was that when the life leaks out of what we say and write, teach and pray—especially when we are using sterile, lifeless language that objectifies words like God, Jesus, prayer, believe—we are left with nothing but godtalk” (p. 240).

How many times does our pastoral sacred task become “godtalk”?