Jesus Creed
This post is by Jonathan Storment, and you can pray for him and his family as they welcome a new baby! Congratulations!
Outside Christian Love
“In those days there was no king and everyone did what was right in their own eyes.” –the book of Judges
“It is grace, nothing but grace, that we are allowed to live together.”-Dietrich Bonhoeffer
The most important lens for understanding Paul’s vision of being inside a community of “Christian love” isn’t the word love. It is the word Christian. The word that each of Paul’s letters turn on is Christos. This is written to people who are defined by submission to a King Jesus.
In the book of Judges the most damning refrain after each tyrannical, misogynistic, genocidal story is just this: “In those days, there was no King…each one did what was right in their own eyes.” And I would argue that if you were an outsider to most Western Christian communities today it would seem that this was actually the goal.
We talk more with other people about the Kingdom of God than ever before, but rarely about the King, and the implications of being inside the Kingdom and under the actual reign of God.
And we are paying the price.
The Barna Group is a famous research company that surveys American Christians, and they basically ask us “What has following Jesus changed in your life?” And every time the Barna group comes out with another survey, the answer is always the same, “Not much.”
Jesus people tend to buy into the same cultural idols and values, we divorce at the same rates, we are more segregated than almost any other sector of society, we use money the same way, we think of power, prestige, and status just like and just as much as other people.
In other words, the biggest problem is that Jesus followers don’t follow Jesus.
Nietzsche once said that the world has only seen One Christian and they killed Him. I get that. It is easy to look around and see the inconstancy between Jesus and the people who follow Him. And the question seems to raise itself more and more often. “Is the Church really good for the world?”
I still think the answer is yes, but not in the direction that much of the evangelical world is headed.
Last week I talked about the place in 1st Corinthians where Paul writes a church where a guy is sleeping with his step-mom, and Paul tells them that he has already judged this man, and they should kick him out. Remember Paul wants them to do this because he wants the man to repent and be restored. Paul is fighting, not just for the church, but for the guy. He wants this guy to be everything God made for him to be. But look at what Paul says next
I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people -not at all meaning the people of this world who are immoral, or the greedy and swindlers, or idolaters. In that case you would have to leave this world. But now I am writing to you that you must not associate with anyone who claims to be a brother or sister but is sexually immoral or greedy, an idolater or slanderer, a drunkard or swindler. Do not even eat with such people. What business is it of mine to judge those outside the church? Are you not to judge those inside? God will judge those outside. Expel the wicked person from among you.
Did you catch that? What business is it of mine to judge those on the outside?
If Paul were here today, I bet plenty of people would have an answer for that question.
I grew up in the era of culture wars and battles for values; I have seen people who believe in God scream some of the most vile, hate-filled things at people who don’t.
I have also grown up in a time where less people are in any church, and more disturbingly where it seems like less Jesus is in His people. We aren’t creating disciples as much as we create attenders. Because we don’t judge each other inside the community, we don’t look like Jesus, but I have noticed that for some reason we sure want other people to.
Later on in this same letter Paul says, “If the Resurrection didn’t happen, then let us eat and drink, because tomorrow we die.” In other words, if this Jesus story is not true then Paul seems to think you should do whatever you want.
The reason Christians hold other Christians to a certain standard is because we believe in the Gospel, and if you don’t believe that story, then Paul seems to think there isn’t a really good reason to do or not do much of anything. Judgment was always meant for those of us on the inside, not primarily for those on the outside. And I would argue that the Western church has reversed this.
We have churches filled with people who are Christians but don’t look much like Jesus, yelling and screaming judgment at people who don’t even claim to want to be like Jesus. On what basis? They don’t believe like we believe; they don’t have the same story; they have no reason to try to live like Jesus.
I know that the world needs to adhere to a kind of common grace toward each other; we need to care about creating at least a minimally decent society and cooperating with people outside of the church. I get all that. But what I think is that we don’t get this basic truth: Christians are to only judge each other, not the world.
And the great irony of this is that the very thing Christians want, we are destroying. We want to create a better world; we should take a hint from the story of God. He creates a people who are distinct and loving, who submit to the Kingdom of God and the God of the Kingdom, to serve the world and challenge each other.
That’s a community the world needs to see. Yes, Jesus has something to say about our sexuality, yes Jesus has something to say about life and the environment and our finances, but He is saying those things to the people who are following him, so that the world would see a community living into the dream God has for everyone.
In the Gospels, people who were nothing like Jesus, liked Jesus. He was distinct, but he was with them, and they loved him. They also had this funny idea that he just might love them too, but when people talked about following Him, that is where Jesus turned up the heat; sell everything you have, become like a child, pick up your cross.
I am tired hearing church members condemn the latest public sin of just about everybody in the world except the people they are sharing life with. I am tired of belonging to a group of people who seem to be more known for what they are against, and then statistically participating in it at the exact same rate. I am tired of us judging the wrong things, and ignoring the right ones. I am tired of Christians judging the world, and not each other, because the world doesn’t need to be judged by the Church anymore. They didn’t sign up for following Jesus…we did.
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