A Challenge to the Idol of Relevance
I have started reading Os Guiness' book, Prophetic Untimeliness: A Challenge to the Idol of Relevance (Baker 2003). Guiness says that the western view of what he calls "clock time" in many ways divides the western world from the eastern world and also opens the western church up to the influences of modernism.
In chapter 3 ("Impossible Stances"), he discusses the church's calling to be against the world and for the world (a two-edged character of the Christian faith based on the twin truths of creation and fall resulting in a bifocal vision of what the world was created to be and what it has come to be) and then follows by describing the three traditional stances that the church has made in relation to the world.
Here are a few excerpts (without my interaction) from the first part of this chapter:
"When the church is weak or careless in maintaining this dual stance, it leads directly to cowardice and corruption, decadence and decline. But when the church is faithful, it lies at the core of her power to transform and renew culture. As the long and distinguished story of Christian reformers shows, followers of Jesus support the best in human aspirations and achievements while resisting the worst."
"Unlike Eastern religions, such as Hinduism and Buddhism, the Christian faith is unashamedly world-affirming ... The church therefore has a glorious record of creativity in art, music, and literature; in founding schools and colleges; in running hospitals and orphanages; in caring ... At the same time, the Christian faith, unlike the secular varieties of humanism, is also world-denying. Whatever law or practice contradicts God's law of principles must be confronted. The church therefore emphasizes reforms as well as maintenance, calls for fasts as well as feasts, stresses self-denial as well as fulfillment, and has at its heart the scandal of the cross as well as the hope of glory. Along with Judaism, the Christian faith is neither one thing nor the other but emphatically both at once. This is the vital secret of its strength."
"... of all the cultures the church has lived in, the modern world is the most powerful, the most pervasive, and the most pressurizing. And it has done more damage to Christian integrity and effectiveness than all the persecutors of the church in history."
"My tutor at Oxford, an eminent European scholar, raised a question at a crowded social sciences seminar in the mid-seventies. 'By the end of the 1970s,' he asked, 'who will be the worldliest Christians in America?' ... 'I guarantee it will be the evangelicals and fundamentalists.'"
"The years since the prediction at that Oxford seminar have shown beyond question that evangelicals and fundamentalists have embraced the modern world with a passion unrivaled in history."
"... we evangelicals ... are becoming the strongest rival to mainline Protestantism as the worldliest Christian tradition in America. From a general materialism and secularity in priorities and preoccupations, to particular captivities to such modern idols as psychology, management, and marketing, the pattern is starkly plain."
"'Thank God,' our new evangelicals say, 'that we have escaped from the 'do's and don'ts' and 'no-nos' of the narrow worldliness of the previous generation. Our forefathers were hide-bound and legalists. They majored in the minors and reduced worldliness to drinking, dancing, and smoking. Let's escape from such restrictive worldliness and celebrate grace and our Christian freedom.'"
"The fear of course is legitmate. The dead hand of legalism is the antithesis of the gospel of grace. But the fallacy comes in when true worldliness is thrown out with trivialized worldliness. Any determined effort to resist the world will certainly entail pitfalls and dangers, and they need to be understood and resisted. But they are not the urgent danger of today, which for the moment is predominantly on the other side."
In chapter 3 ("Impossible Stances"), he discusses the church's calling to be against the world and for the world (a two-edged character of the Christian faith based on the twin truths of creation and fall resulting in a bifocal vision of what the world was created to be and what it has come to be) and then follows by describing the three traditional stances that the church has made in relation to the world.
Here are a few excerpts (without my interaction) from the first part of this chapter:
"When the church is weak or careless in maintaining this dual stance, it leads directly to cowardice and corruption, decadence and decline. But when the church is faithful, it lies at the core of her power to transform and renew culture. As the long and distinguished story of Christian reformers shows, followers of Jesus support the best in human aspirations and achievements while resisting the worst."
"Unlike Eastern religions, such as Hinduism and Buddhism, the Christian faith is unashamedly world-affirming ... The church therefore has a glorious record of creativity in art, music, and literature; in founding schools and colleges; in running hospitals and orphanages; in caring ... At the same time, the Christian faith, unlike the secular varieties of humanism, is also world-denying. Whatever law or practice contradicts God's law of principles must be confronted. The church therefore emphasizes reforms as well as maintenance, calls for fasts as well as feasts, stresses self-denial as well as fulfillment, and has at its heart the scandal of the cross as well as the hope of glory. Along with Judaism, the Christian faith is neither one thing nor the other but emphatically both at once. This is the vital secret of its strength."
"... of all the cultures the church has lived in, the modern world is the most powerful, the most pervasive, and the most pressurizing. And it has done more damage to Christian integrity and effectiveness than all the persecutors of the church in history."
"My tutor at Oxford, an eminent European scholar, raised a question at a crowded social sciences seminar in the mid-seventies. 'By the end of the 1970s,' he asked, 'who will be the worldliest Christians in America?' ... 'I guarantee it will be the evangelicals and fundamentalists.'"
"The years since the prediction at that Oxford seminar have shown beyond question that evangelicals and fundamentalists have embraced the modern world with a passion unrivaled in history."
"... we evangelicals ... are becoming the strongest rival to mainline Protestantism as the worldliest Christian tradition in America. From a general materialism and secularity in priorities and preoccupations, to particular captivities to such modern idols as psychology, management, and marketing, the pattern is starkly plain."
"'Thank God,' our new evangelicals say, 'that we have escaped from the 'do's and don'ts' and 'no-nos' of the narrow worldliness of the previous generation. Our forefathers were hide-bound and legalists. They majored in the minors and reduced worldliness to drinking, dancing, and smoking. Let's escape from such restrictive worldliness and celebrate grace and our Christian freedom.'"
"The fear of course is legitmate. The dead hand of legalism is the antithesis of the gospel of grace. But the fallacy comes in when true worldliness is thrown out with trivialized worldliness. Any determined effort to resist the world will certainly entail pitfalls and dangers, and they need to be understood and resisted. But they are not the urgent danger of today, which for the moment is predominantly on the other side."
2 Comments:
I find this chapter of Os Guiness to be very revealing. I recall the history of the Christian Church during the second and third century as parrelleling some of Guiness' comments. There were four "major" reasons why the church was persecuted: Political, Religious, Social, and Economic reasons.
Politically, the church was not persecuted as long as it was considered a part of Judaism. When the church made a stance that a new believer did not have to go through Judaism to become a chrisitan, then the it became an autonomous religion. Christianity was not inclusive of other religions which also went against the statements of pluralism in the Roman culture. This made Christianity a "secret society" and politically a "secret society" was considered a threat to the Roman Empire; while the pluralism of the day showed allegiance.
Religiously, there were misunderstandings of Christianity early on. The Eucharist was viewed as cannibalism, the "kiss of peace" (fellowship & unity) was thought to be incest, and the general Church worship was viewed by the state as a secret society. Most of these twisted views were flowing out of the Roman's cultural world view.
Socially, the Roman-Greco culture believed in a class system. For instance, slaves and women were considered lower than men, especially men who owned buisnesses or were in politics. The rich were viewed higher than the poor, etc. These new Christians viewed people as "equal". For the first time in history women were given worth, masters were instructed how to properly treat slaves (with worth), children, who were sexually abused in the Greco-Roman culture, also shown worth. Socially, the Christians seperated themselves from the Roman culture by no longer attending pagan temples, theatres, coliseums, gymnasiums, etc. Christianity seemed to run counter-culture. This brought about persecution, because life was viewed as a pluralistic culture.
Finally, Economically, converting to Chrisitanity meant leaving paganism, therefore people stopped buying idols, animal sacrifices, tithes to pagan temples, and they stopped egaging in the temple prostitution. The Greco-Roman culture accused the Christians of being "haters of mankind" because they stopped participating in the pagan culture. Christianity developed its own culture based on the Gospel (not what the Gospel is, but who the Gospel is).
I look at the church in history and find the culture, the state and the church to be very strange bed-fellows. It hasn't worked for 2000 years, but we seem to keep trying.
Steve,
Guinness is great. I recently finished his book "The Call" and would highly recommend it.
In the quotes that you have listed, he seems to be pretty hard on worldly evangelicals in their reaction against legalism. I like the idea of the "twin truths of creation and fall." It seems that the worldly evangelicals have some valid criticisms of legalism's failure to creatively engage and redeem the culture, but they over-react and end up adopting the world and its standards. Worldliness and legalism both fail. I'm wondering if Guinness offers any positive alternatives for evangelicals who wish to avoid both failings?
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