The Church
Conversion not Acceptance
Relationships are important to the emerging/emergent movement types. And that is not a bad thing. We need to open our churches to all folks in the postmodern world. But, we must take care that fulfillment is not found in our human relationships instead of in Christ. Too often our relationships are for affirmation and value; for feeling good about ourselves. Belonging to the softball team, YMCA, Rotary Club or any other group can be good for self esteem. Lots of groups give us affirmation. The Church, however, is not about affirmation and value. It is about change. It is called conversion.
Accepting and including others is a step to conversion but not an end. We need to introduce others to the “good news” that they do not have to be as they are. They can be a new creation in Christ. The old passes away; the new has come. 2 Cor. 5:17. Acceptance and inclusion is not the Gospel. The Gospel is about radical change. Dead people are now alive. The unvarnished Gospel is not about keeping people as they are but about changing them forever.
The emerging/emergent folks want to embrace the postmodern idea that we need to understand the times, and who can argue with that? But we are not to embrace the times. Jesus was counter cultural. He was accepting of people but not their behavior whether it be the woman caught in adultery [go and sin no more]; the Pharisees [you brood of vipers] or the rich young ruler [give up all that you have]. Christ wanted folks to be different from the way they were. The sinners obvious to the world, the religious types and the prominent people all needed to be changed, not affirmation and acceptance.
Jesus knew the culture would change when those who affect it change. He did not say…”well, this is how people are, so how can we make the message relevant to them in that situation?” No, He wanted them to see that they must be nailed to a tree, but the good news is that they do not have to be. He did it for them. John Murray’s wonderful book Redemption Accomplished and Applied is the Scriptural punch line. Jesus paid it all and through faith you can apprehend His work. That is a radical message that is not in tune with a self-centered culture where people want to be comfortable in their sin. They do not want to change…they want to be accepted just as they are.
When people come to Jesus and encounter His grace and mercy, they are never the same. He is an Agent of change. He died for those the Father gave Him. He did not die for folks to remain as they are. The Church is about the Church not the culture the Church finds itself located, wherever or whatever that is. The Church is not about acceptance. The Church is about conversion.
2 comments:
We are returning to a similar situation as existed in the 1st century Roman world:
"Had you converted to Christianity during the period that soon followed the apostles, you most likely would have come out of a Greco-Roman pagan worldview. This would have meant several things. In the first place, you were probably already very religious. (p. 27)
Accommodation and assimilation of various divinities were the rule of the pagan life. (p. 28)
In fact, salvation had little to do with the exact content of what you believed as long as you did the prescribed acts. Form and action, not content, were most important. . . . In sum, this was a religious worldview that the classical historian A. D. Nock identified as salvation through ‘adherence.’ You accrued religious benefit not be rejecting previous gods and former allegiances in order to embrace new ones but rather by accumulating multiple deities and participating in the various worship serviced offered to them. . . . There was no need to discard the former divinities in order to accept the benefits of new divinities. Again, accommodation and assimilation were the rule. All of this began to change when you became a Christian, for becoming a Christian meant conversion, not adherence. You could not simply add the God of Abraham and Moses to your menu of religious options. As with Judaism and some philosophical schools, converting to the Christian faith meant rejecting all previous religious attachments and allegiances to embrace the new. As Nock put it, ‘By conversion we mean the reorientation of the soul . . . a deliberate turning from indifference or from an earlier piety to another, a turning which implies a consciousness of great change is involved, that the old was wrong and the new was right.’ Religious syncretism as an option was no longer acceptable. The radical nature of conversion was underscored by two elements inherent to it: monotheism and the content of belief. Monotheism is defined by an unapologetic exclusivism that entails worship of one God as well as the rejection of all others. Converting to Christianity was like crossing the frontier into a completely different country: ‘ an old spiritual home was left for a new once and for all.’ Conversion also meant that your religious activities were qualified by the assent of the mind and heart. In other words, the content of one’s faith mattered; simply performing the right services was not enough.” (pp. 29-30)
D. H. Williams, Evangelicals and Tradition: The Formative Influence of the Early Church, Evangelical Resourcement: Ancient Sources for the Church’s Future (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2005)
Matt---------Lucas bought me William's book for Christmas. He used it in his Late Antiquity history course he taught last semester at Geneva. A very sobering and revealing look at how much we have lost in the contemporary church.
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