Here I complete discussion of N. T. Wright’s excellent little book (Harvard Lectures) entitled Creation, Power, and Truth. The final chapter is about our (Western) postmodern condition and the status of truth. If you have read the chapter, feel free to comment. If not, feel free to ask a question.
Whenever I read a chapter I look for what is for me the most critically important, pithy sentence (or two or three). Here is the passage I found most important, perhaps the central thesis of the whole book! “The ‘truth’ is not a claim to power; nor is it a hidden reality either about ‘the way the world is’ or about ‘the deep interiority’ of Jesus’ listeners. It is the truth about what God is doing to rescue creation from the evil which has infected it and to bring about new creation as the true fulfillment of the creative purpose itself.”
Of course I agree with Wright about that. But I want to add a few comments, ones with which I think Tom would agree.
The one and only way Christianity can regain credibility in the world, especially in the West, is to shed all vestiges of privilege and power and become a movement of servants, serving the poor, the lost, the outcasts, the hungry, the hurting, the sick, the dying, the rejected, the dejected, the helpless.
I am not saying that rational apologetics is useless, but I regard it as mainly for believers beset by doubts and questions. I am not saying that miracles are useless, but I regard them as mainly for believers and others who are in desperate need of God’s healing and helping interventions.
To the extent that Christianity, the churches, adopt that missional posture, Christianity will once again gain a voice in culture, and it will be Jesus’s voice, not the voice of a political party or even of America.
Truth in religion can only be tied to what heals, delivers, lifts up, makes whole, restores, and equalizes. And that requires love. Not romantic, emotional love, but love for humanity as well as for God. The church is only credible to the extent that it works for a more humane world. Working, that is, not primarily by speech, although prophetic speech to power is necessary when things are going badly especially for the weak, the poor, the helpless, the outcasts, but by faith active in loving acts of kindness and (nonviolent) liberation.
Unfortunately, to too great a degree, Reinhold Niebuhr was right that “The greatest pathos…is the cruelty of ‘righteous’ people.” If I were a pastor and had the freedom to do it, I would put that quote on the church marquee facing the street or highway. Far and away, the greatest pathos of our time is the mass of people who call themselves “Christian” but show mostly only hatred toward those not like themselves (e.g., migrant people who came to America out of desperation and hope).
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