February 14 2016

IS THERE STILL A CHRISTIAN CHURCH?

That question reminds me of a little ditty:
“Whenever God erects a house of prayer
The Devil builds a chapel there;
And ‘twill be found upon examination,
The latter has the largest congregation.”
Daniel Defoe in The True-born Englishman
Isn’t my title terrible? Questioning whether there still is a Christian Church? Yet, it reminds me of Jesus’ words in Luke 18: 8: “When the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?” So, perhaps, my question has some validity. The word ‘faith’ is well defined in Hebrew 11: 1: “Faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.” Of course this statement pertains to The New Earth to come, because the entire Bible and Jesus’ entire mission had an eschatological emphasis, always pointing to “The Kingdom to come,” the new creation that humanity rejected in Paradise. However, ask the average church-goer what they unconditionally hope for and most certainly believe and I expect they will quote Billy Graham. In an interview on CNN I heard him say that when he dies, Jesus will take him by the hand and bring him to God. Sheer nonsense, of course: pure Gnostic gibberish. 1 Timothy 6:16 says that “God lives in inapproachable light, whom nobody can see or has seen.” Not even Billy G.
Yes, that’s that heaven-heresy again, the falsehood that killed the “New Earth” expectation and totally misdirected the church. To rectify that error the church itself must now become a mission field, because Jesus’ real message is: “God so loved the world”. The Greek word there is cosmos, which includes everything created and implies perfection, the opposite of chaos now everywhere, thanks to the Ruler of this world, the Satan now in charge.
A new approach is needed. THE J. H. BAVINCK READER points the way. You may know that I hold this man very high. I have translated three of his books, one already published by Eerdmans, Grand Rapids, one to be published in May – THE RIDDLE OF LIFE – and another, on Revelation, this Fall, with the possible title of AT THE THRESHOLD OF ETERNITY.
J. H. Bavinck was primarily a missionary. As such all his writings emphasize the aim to bring the Good News to those who have never heard it. That now includes the church, by and large. He studied the world’s religions and discovered that many of them have something that points to Christian influence from thousands of years ago. Take Hinduism which describes a primeval age where poison appears over the ocean world. In order to save the world from destruction the great god Shiva gathered the poison into his hand and drank it. This indicates that only a God can save the world. Japanese Buddhism contains a theology of redemption comparable to reformed teachings. So missionaries, familiar with indigenous teachings, could build on this knowledge to bring the Gospel of Christ.
However, today the challenge is immensely more difficult. What is so different today is that, as T. S. Eliot has reflected: “Men have left God not for other gods, they say, but for no God: and this has never happened before.”
Another thing has happened, and that too has never happened before. In general the church has ceased to be Christian. This is especially true in the USA situation, where the expert on these matters, Prof. Dr. Harold Bloom, has outlined this in his book THE AMERICAN RELIGION. The Falwell crowd personified in the LIBERTY University is a bulwark of this nationalistic-gun-toting-anti-Muslim-Climate-Change denying mentality: also pure pagan Gnosticism, still falsely carrying the label of Evangelical Christianity.
It’s true, many churches struggle, including the one we attend, and that is good. So, perhaps, I overstate the case. Still the emphasis in the church has to shift, from what theologians call “Special Revelation” to include “General Revelation”. The ‘special’ refers to the Bible and the ‘general’ to creation. To call creation ‘general’ is, in my opinion, a terrible misnomer, because it lacks any specificity. It’s so, yes, ‘general’, so neutral, so devoid of any hint of the divine. A much better designation is GOD’S MAJESTIC REVELATION, pursuing Psalm 8: “O Lord how majestic is your name in all the earth!” That, at least, says something that is true. Could it be that theologians gave creation that silly label to downplay creation at the expense of their expertise: the Scriptures?
Let me quote J. H. Bavinck, where he refers to his fellow missionary Paul, as recorded in Acts 17:
The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth. In his missionary preaching, Paul very definitely does not take his point of departure from human religion, but from the objective work of God and from God’s self-manifestation. (Bavinck continues) My own inner conviction is that this is the only truly relevant and effective point of contact. Acts 17: 30 says: “In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent.” We are the hearers of the ‘now’ in this text. We stand in that momentous ‘now’ of the new chapter of God’s involvement with his world.
When bringing the gospel Bavinck, the missionary, starts with pointing to creation. That is today more relevant than ever, witnessing the ‘groaning of creation’. Today in ‘the now’, the words of Proverbs and many other Scripture passages are coming true. Take Proverbs 1: 31: “They will eat the fruit of their ways.” Or Proverbs 5: 22: “The evil deeds of the wicked ensnare them; the cords of their sins hold them fast.” Or take Jeremiah 2: 19: “Your wickedness will punish you; your backsliding will rebuke you.” That’s what we experience today: our sins against creation are starting to hurt us.
Therefore a new approach is needed, used by the apostle Paul when he met with the sophisticated Greeks on the Areopagus, where he right away focused on creation, rather than hitting them over the head with the Bible.
For too long the church has denied that the world we live in is ‘holy’. I once was in a discussion group of some 8 people, among which the executive director of a denomination which shall go unnamed. My wife and I were the only non- Americans. In that exclusive circle I wondered aloud why we call the Bible holy but not creation. This was met with stony silence. It reminds me of a passage by Paul in Romans 1: 18: “The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness”, and verse 25, “they exchanged the truth of God for a lie.” J. H. Bavinck comments on these texts with these words: “What is that “suppressing”? We have described it as a repressing and we have registered the suspicion that this can also happen unconsciously.”
Bavinck goes on to say that at the precise moment that people see, they already no longer see. We all fully affirm that God made creation and called it good 7 times. Bavinck who also studied and taught psychology writes that “our awareness is tied to all kinds of inner emotional and volitional dimensions of our lives…..We see what we want to see……God definitely reveals himself, but people immediately push it away, repress it, suppress it. They are knowers who do not know, seers who do not see.”
That’s exactly what happening with ‘general revelation’. It is pushed back out of people’s consciousness. We all sing “This is our Father’s world”, and then pollute it without any qualms. We all do that. We see the Bible as Holy. We don’t see God’s world as holy.
THERE’S WHERE THE CHURCH HAS TO CHANGE.
So when I ask IS THERE STILL A CHRISTIAN CHURCH? then I am inclined to answer that with a definite “perhaps not.” And that is not all that strange. One of the Psalms (14) tells us that there is no one who does good, not even one. That also applies to churches. Yet we are still Christian when we follow Christ’s teaching. The church is still Christian when it follows Christ’s teaching, even though we and our churches are imperfect and see all things ‘through a glass darkly’.
So what does Christ teach?
Here is one thought: when Paul brought the gospel, all people had a ‘god’ concept, a symbol or image they adored. Now this is only present in the church. Now majority of people are god-less, are un-godly, can’t be bothered. They are not especially bad perhaps, often good citizens, law-obeying creatures, but they have not a bone of piety, not an ounce of religion. Those people cannot be reached anymore with the gospel: they are totally turned off on religion of any sort. That means that only the church people are likely candidates for the GOSPEL OF THE KINGDOM.
So what did Christ tell us?
Jesus tells us, not once but repeatedly, that the ultimate meaning of human life is the kingdom of God. Many of his parables deal with that theme. To acquire the kingdom we often have to offer everything we have; it is the pearl of great value, for which we have to sacrifice all that we have.
In the Bible four items stand out:
(1) Thy Kingdom Come. Give us this day our daily bread. Both lines appear in the Lord’s Prayer.
(2) Seek first his kingdom and his righteousness and all things will be given to you as well. (Matthew 6: 33).
(3) For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have everlasting life. John 3: 16.
(4) Be you perfect as I am perfect. Matthew 5:48

(1) Let me start with the lines so familiar because we pray them when we recite the Lord’s Prayer. In “Thy Kingdom Come” we ask the Lord to return soon and bring The New Creation. The word ‘daily’ in “Give is this day our daily bread”, the Greek word epiousios does not actually mean daily, but something like ‘of extra substance’. (I am quoting here Diarmaid MacCullogh an Oxford professor in his book CHRISTIANITY THE FIRST 3000 YEARS). He writes: “(The word epiousios) may point to the new time of the coming Kingdom.” That fits because Jesus made the Kingdom the central point of his teaching.
(2) In “Seek first the Kingdom”, Jesus’ words in the Sermon of the Mount, Jesus lays out his mission. Our aim in life is the New Creation to come. That means that here and now we must promote the welfare of creation. Just imagine! Seeking the best for creation is the primary aim of Christians! “General revelation” is at least as important as “Special revelation!”
(3) In my book John 3: 16 is the most significant text in the Bible. If God loved the cosmos so much that he sacrificed his one and only son to wrench the cosmos out of the clutches of Satan, should we too not make loving creation our top priority? Doing that comes with a promise attached: eternal life in God’s new earth!
(4) “Be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect. (Matthew 5: 48). The word for ‘perfect’ in Greek is ‘teleios’, which really means ‘all inclusive’. I think ‘holistic’ is the better word, always keeping the ‘telos’ in mind, the ‘end’ of all things, avoiding the law of unintended consequences so evident in our use of carbon fuel. Bonhoeffer called himself ‘anthropos teleios’, which means a person who always considers the consequences of his actions. Again the emphasis is on ‘general’ revelation, seen as at least as important as the church’s stock in trade, ‘special’ revelation, the Holy Scriptures.
Conclusion.
IS THERE STILL A CHRISTIAN CHURCH?
I leave it up to you to draw the conclusion. Of course the church is important. Of course the Bible is indispensable. How else could I come to document this ‘exposure’. The two, the Scriptures and the Cosmos, both are Holy. We can’t have one without the other, but the New Creation, coming soon to your doorsteps, will last forever, while ‘the law of God’ will be vested in our hearts, which means that God’s indirect word, the Scriptures, will vanish. Eternal life, as promised in John 3: 16, will be lived in God’s direct revelation, that MAJESTIC ONE, remember. Eternity will not be long enough to explore and detect God’s greatness that has no end. Also a prerequisite: a great deal of curiosity.