Do the Word

Regular readers of this blog will have to think back long and hard to the last time I heaped big praise on an article in Christianity Today. This is not because I don’t like Christianity Today–I actually like it quite a bit–but because as I await Christian perfection it is easier for me to riff on articles I don’t like than to call your attention to articles that I think you and I should print out and tape to each other’s foreheads because they are so good.

Gordon T. Smith’s The New Conversion: Why We ‘Become Christians’ Differently Today is a first class forehead taper. I have nothing to add to what Smith writes in the piece. I think it’s phenomenal and desire only that you go on to read it after I spoil the surprise by quoting from it at length.

Smith masterfully summarizes the revivalistic mindset which, thankfully, is on the wane among evangelicals today. I say “thankfully” because the darn thing just isn’t nearly as Scriptural as we’ve purported it to be over the last century and a half:

Evangelicals took for granted that the language and categories of revivalism were the language and categories of the New Testament. Conversion was viewed to be a punctiliar experience: persons could specify with confidence and assurance the time and place of their conversion, by reference, as often as not, to the moment when they prayed what was typically called “the sinner’s prayer.”

The focus of conversion was the afterlife: one sought salvation so that one could “go to heaven” after death, and the assumption was that “salvation” would lead to disengagement from the world. Once converted, the central focus of one’s life would be church or religious activities, particularly those that helped others come to this understanding of salvation that assured them of “eternal life” after death. Life in the world was thought to hold minimal significance. What counted was the afterlife. And if one had “received Christ,” one could be confident of one’s eternity with God. Conversion was isolated from the experience of the church. Indeed, it was generally assumed that a person would come to faith outside of the church and then be encouraged, after conversion, to join a church community.

Typically evangelicals approached evangelism through the use of techniques or formulas by which a person would be introduced to spiritual principles or “laws” on the assumption that if these principles were accepted as “true,” a person would offer an appropriate prayer and thus “become” a Christian.

Baptism, it was insisted, was subsequent to conversion and essentially optional. For although baptism was thought to be perhaps important, true spiritual experience was considered a personal, interior, subjective experience and thus not sacramental.

So where are we headed? Someplace very, very good: Backward, to the treasures we received from our Christian forebears as of primary importance–treasures that we kind of forgot to steward but are now by the grace of God recovering from the attic:

Increasingly, there is appreciation that conversion is a complex experience by which a person is initiated into a common life with the people of God who together seek the in-breaking of the kingdom, both in this life and in the world to come. This experience is mediated by the church and thus necessarily includes baptism as a rite of initiation. The power or energy of this experience is one of immediate encounter with the risen Christ—rather than principles or laws—and this experience is choreographed by the Spirit rather than evangelistic techniques. Evangelicals are reappropriating the heritage of the Reformation with its emphasis on the means of grace, and thereby affirming the priority of the Spirit’s work in religious experience.

Smith sends an appreciative shout out to Leslie Newbigin, who is a seminal figure on my list of people I probably should have read but for some reason never got into. Nevertheless, if what Smith writes about him is fair summary, then I will at least feel worse as I continue not to read Newbigin for some reason in the future:

Newbigin argued that conversion is a matter of understanding, ethics, and community—that there is no conversion without conversion of the mind, identification with the reign of Christ, and incorporation into a faith community that is marked by and sustained by its sacramental actions—baptism and the Lord’s Supper. Newbigin’s fundamental observation and conviction is that the church is not a provider of religious products and services but rather that the church is a people in mission. The church, collectively, is through an active discipleship a living embodiment of the kingdom to which the church witnesses. Thus the church is not obsessed with its own growth but with the kingdom, as it seeks to live the gospel within particular social and cultural contexts. This perspective is reinforced by Newbigin’s recognition and reminder to his readers that all reasoning arises from a particular rational tradition which is embodied within a living community.

Anyway, that’s enough excerpting. There’s a lot more to the essay, which also tips the cap to Charles Taylor, whom I think doesn’t get enough cap tipping from our, uh, cloakroom.  Taylor is well worth adding to your list of people you probably should have read but for some reason never got into.

As for Smith, total man crush here. Great essay. Fire up the printer. As a means of underscoring the difference between proclaiming the revival message and proclaiming the gospel, this essay is worth a post, a reprint, a like, and whatever pin thing you do over there on Pinterest.

No–no cartoon charts, no explanations of esoteric passages from the book of Revelation, no  billboards announcing prophetic speculations. Just this, from Luke 10:1:

After this the Lord appointed seventy-two others and sent them two by two ahead of him to every town and place where he was about to go.

Makes sense, really, that a proclaimer of the gospel would proclaim something like, “And the reason I am here is because he is on his way to see you.” After all, “gospel” is:

an imperial pronouncement, an imperial decree, a proclamation of good news from the empire. News of the expansion of the empire, the vanquishing of her enemies, the ascension of a new emperor to the throne, a birth in the household of Caesar – all of these were ‘gospels.’

As we talked about earlier this month, the full proclamation of the gospel is tripartite: Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again. So anywhere the gospel is authentically preached, the result will be urgent preparation, expectation, and longing for Christ’s return.

Not seeing that a lot in gospel proclamations these days… Since the “gospel” preached by many evangelists is not the gospel but rather a plan of salvation, the presenting issue is the creation and satisfaction of existential angst in the mind (rather, emotions) of the hearer. But for the true proclamation of the gospel, the issue is not the generation of sufficient existential angst to trigger the decisional tipping point to say yes to Jesus but simply faithfulness to the imperial announcement entrusted to the messenger.

I was reminded powerfully and simply of what the authentic proclamation of the “Christ will come again” plank of the gospel looks like when I was doing discipleship training recently for underground Eritrean church members. (Eritrea is consistently regarded as one of the most persecuting nations in the world.) As part of the “do the Word” training, I sent them out into the community in teams of two to do good in Jesus’ name.

One of the women encountered a number of people to whom, some Christian, some nonbelievers, she would ask, “Don’t you know that Christ is coming again?” She said it like it was the most natural and obvious thing to ask in the world. She didn’t say, “If you died tonight, do you know where you’d go?” That’s contrived. She said, essentially, “I am a messenger. I was sent to you because he is coming to visit here soon.”

It reminded me of Paul’s announcement to the Athenians at the Aeropagus:

“In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent. For he has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed. He has given proof of this to everyone by raising him from the dead.”

The most natural gospel presentation in the world. No angst-inducing personal introspection required (or, for that matter, desired).

Perhaps the most obvious reason why Christians double-clutch on this third plank of the gospel proclamation is that we are two thousands years into this ambassadorial function of ours and we don’t want to look like Harold Camping, announcing the end of the world and constantly revising the timeline.

But who said anything about a timeline?

Well, the Apostle Peter did say just this:

Above all, you must understand that in the last days scoffers will come, scoffing and following their own evil desires. They will say, “Where is this ‘coming’ he promised? Ever since our ancestors died, everything goes on as it has since the beginning of creation.” But they deliberately forget that long ago by God’s word the heavens came into being and the earth was formed out of water and by water. By these waters also the world of that time was deluged and destroyed. By the same word the present heavens and earth are reserved for fire, being kept for the day of judgment and destruction of the ungodly.

But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day. The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.

But the day of the Lord will come like a thief. The heavens will disappear with a roar; the elements will be destroyed by fire, and the earth and everything done in it will be laid bare.

Sadly, when the day of the Lord does come, I suspect it will be as much an intrusion for most Christians as it will be for nonbelievers.

But not for my sister from Eritrea. With the Apostle Peter she announces exactly what she should:

Since everything will be destroyed in this way, what kind of people ought you to be? You ought to live holy and godly lives as you look forward to the day of God and speed its coming. That day will bring about the destruction of the heavens by fire, and the elements will melt in the heat. But in keeping with his promise we are looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth, where righteousness dwells.

So then, dear friends, since you are looking forward to this, make every effort to be found spotless, blameless and at peace with him.

She is an awesome proclaimer of the gospel, that Eritrean sister. Everywhere she goes, people are looking up.

Pastors are only too willing to rail against performance-based Christianity as a serious ailment afflicting large numbers of Christians these days. But that railing is actually quite woefully off the rails.

By performance-based Christianity I mean a Christian life that apparently, according to these preacherly protestations, causes a person to be ground down into nothingness by excessive attempts to serve the Lord in a mistaken effort to earn his favor.

The problem is that when you frame the problem this way, the solution comes out sounding something like this: “I had to learn to stop doing and just start being. I had to learn how to just accept God’s love and know that there was nothing God was requiring of me in return other than to believe and trust in his grace. There is nothing I can do to earn his favor, and when I try to earn his favor it is an insult to the sacrifice of his son for me.”

This sounds good, but on closer examination such a solution is actually no solution at all. The being/doing dichotomy is a Buddhist concept, not a Christian one. So while “I switched from doing to being” sounds holy enough, unless your doing-to-being enlightenment entails you heading off to a mountain monastery for round the clock meditation under a vow of silence, you actually do still have about the same amount of doing in your life, even after your doing-to-being aha moment. You’re just choosing to do different things.

And therein is the rub.

The more honest, accurate way to express the “doing to being” transformation touted by many pastors is: “I stopped doing (or reduced the amount of time I devoted to doing, or decreased the seriousness which I associated with doing) discipleship activities that I did not enjoy or wasn’t very successful at.” Suddenly, daily Scripture reading becomes slavery to the law. Refraining from eating a second muffin becomes rank legalism. Confessing your sin to God and your spouse when you masturbate becomes aspiring to the righteousness of the Pharisees.

In this doing-to-being paradigm, when you sin you can actually feel quite good about it. It proves the pastor right: You are no Jesus. You’re the mess-up, not the Messiah. Jesus loves that role, pastor says, and you should, too.

But that overlooks one very central truth of Scripture that can be found on virtually every page of the Old and New Testament:

Enduring Happiness is Only Possible If You Live According to the Gospel.

Enduring happiness, in other words, comes from hearing and doing the Word.

So am I advocating that you “jump back on the performance treadmill”? By no means. But I am advocating that you discard this nonsense, non-Christian talk that opposes being and doing and instead trust—really trust—that everyone who hears the words of Jesus and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock.

Notice that there’s no caution or caveat here from Jesus about performance fatigue. The reason why is that the dichotomy we must attend to is not doing-versus-being but rather leading-versus-following.

Do you know what a performance-based Christian life really is? It’s a life where we attempt to lead, rather than follow, Christ. It’s a life where we regularly attempt to do the Word without first having heard it. If we let Christ lead, and if we hear his Word, we will recognize that he, not us, has already prepared good works in advance for us to do. Some of those works are just plain fun. Others are arduous or boring or tedious. But all have the effect of growing us into his fullness.

And that’s why his yoke is easy and his burden light: It’s not because a sloppy, sinful path leads to eternal life. (Sin, after all, means not trusting him to provide a way to overcome temptation.) Instead, it’s because his spirit is the one doing the heavy lifting. Like the disciples distributing loaves of bread that Jesus multiplied, our task is not to bake the bread but simply to share with others the loaves-and-fishes whole body grace and goodness and lovingkindness we receive daily from our master’s hand.

When we do that (when, in other words, we live according to the gospel), we discover that doing the Word is a means of grace—one more way we come to know, experience, and be blessed by God’s character—not be fatigued by it.