one of the reasons i haven't posted for a few days, apart from the weekend when its next to impossible to spend time on the computer, or the head/throat cold that i've been battling, is that i've been having an interesting dialog with ‘backyard missionary’ Andrew Hamilton on the role of ‘the church’, amongst other things.
my basic understanding is that believers in Jesus need to focus primarily on living as a loving, accepting, accountable community of the redeemed. if this is done well, i believe, others will be drawn in by the love and integrity of life that is being demonstrated.
a prime indicator of this understanding of the people of god is the old testament covenant with israel. one of the major purposes of the covenant was that the israelites would be a blessing to the whole world, but there is no explicit command (that i know of anyway) to go out proselytising among the gentiles. instead, the commandments they were given were all about how to live with each other and how to relate as a people to god. the purpose of these laws was that they would “live long and prosper in the land.” that is, if they lived in harmony with each other and the environment and cared about justice, they would do well and god would bless them abundantly.
there were also laws which appear arbitrary but i believe were all about being different, being unique among other peoples, so that they would stick out and the other peoples would notice that they were different, then notice that they were doing well (assuming the laws were being kept), and be attracted. in a way, the israelites were to be a huge advertisement or working model for how a community was to live and be successful, so that eventually the whole world would be blessed through them (one of god's original promises to abraham).
for us living under the new covenant, the law has been condensed (but not simplified) into ‘love god and love your neighbour’. the purpose is the same, to live in harmony with each other and to care about justice, so that things will go well with you and the world (however, the ‘go well’ is not a material outcome as it was under the old covenant, and so doesn’t mean that ‘bad’ things won’t happen to you). the warnings that jesus gave (remember he was talking to jews who were the ‘in’ people, the ones claiming to represent god) were to those who say they are following god's way but are not living according to the law of love, thereby misrepresenting him. so in the parable of the sheep and the goats, the goats are the ones that say, we did all these things, we followed you, blah blah blah, and jesus says depart from me, i never knew you, it doesn't matter what you say or who your dad was, what matters is that you live according to the way of justice and love. as for the uniqueness part, i think its pretty obvious that a group of people actively living by and pursuing love and justice are going to stand out like a sore thumb in this world.
of course this means different things in different contexts, and i'm not suggesting that believers never talk to non-believers and that we go off into our christian enclaves and just live for ourselves. on the contrary, the community of believers need to be “IN the world but not OF the world,” highly visible in the general community as a living example of what true community should look like in clear and radical contrast to the way the world lives.
what do you think?
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