MAY 6 2017
WHAT CONSTITUTES THE GOSPEL’S CORE MESSAGE?
What sort of MESSAGE do we bring to a world that is choking on fumes, drowning in water, and suffering from drought?
Let me start way back, all the way back to Noah who was building an enormous container ship in the middle of a massive forest. It must have taken decades to complete. But then in those days people lived real long lives.
Just a note to the RAPTURE crowd: Noah and his wife, three sons and their wives – no children? Of course they had lots of children – were the only ones who were LEFT BEHIND on the then known world. Their act of defiance, their ostentatious display of putting their faith to the test – totally banking that God’s weather forecast would be accurate – is an eerie reminder that history is about to repeat itself, be it in a different form. This time too there will be few takers, just as in Noah’s days, because the Noah phenomenon reminds me of Jesus’ saying (Matthew 22:14) “Many are called, few are chosen”.
In that same Bible book, a few chapters later, Matthew 24, Jesus directly refers to Noah and his family, and I quote (verse 37) “As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man.”
So, history will repeat itself. The LEFT BEHIND will be those who have loved the earth (John 3: 16). Now too almost all people will ignore all the indications of total disaster, thinking that science will rescue them or technology will fix the problems or, as in Noah’s days, simply ridicule the issue.
Today we are in the same situation as the world’s people before the FLOOD. Now it will not be water, but fire, with GLOBAL HEATING already in overdrive.
For decades I wondered how the earth in its entirety would catch fire in a total conflagration, but today I can clearly visualize this. Picture the trillions of tons of methane hydrates, buried in the shallow Arctic Seas, suddenly exploding and, as ARCTIC NEWS reports, causing a totally devastating and rapid TEN DEGREE Celsius rise in the world’s temperature.
Take a look at the April 24 issue of ARCTIC NEWS. Already now, with a bit more than ONE DEGREE Celsius increase on record, the weather is totally wacky. Just imagine TEN DEGREES!!
My question: “How do we bring the MESSAGE in extreme times like ours?” That is our Christian calling because there are a lot of concerned people out there, people who fear the future.
What do we tell them?
I have this tattered book, written 60 years ago by ARNOLD TOYNBEE, famous British historian.
In 1955 – he died in 1975 at the age of 86 – he presented a series of lectures to the faculties of three East Coast Protestant seminaries, entitled CHRISTIANITY AMONG THE RELIGIONS OF THE WORLD.
I love reading historians. They often have the right perspective because they basically deal with the follies of humanity. Here is one of Toynbee’s saying, “Civilizations die from suicide, not by murder”, quite evident from the way both China and the USA are acting.
ARNOLD TOYNBEE
Rereading his book last week filled my mind with many new ideas, both his, but also inspired by him. Toynbee looks at Christianity world-wide. He sees how countries, such as Sweden and Denmark, have all but abandoned formal Christianity, but, in their actions, by being among the largest donors to help poor nations and by turning to renewables, show their Christianity in deed, while formally Christian states, such as the USA allot a pittance for these purposes.
He writes, “So it looks as if the provinces of Christendom which are the most Christian in conduct are those that have gone away the farthest in repudiating the profession of Christianity.” Hmmm.
In his book he looks at different religious movements and laments how all of them have emptied NATURE of her divinity: “by winning a new vision of divinity as God or some other form of absolute reality beyond Nature, instead of seeing his presence in the Universe that is higher than Man as being immanent in Nature herself………….Technology has given nature worship a death-blow by making Nature manifestly Man’s slave, for one cannot worship something which one feels that he has mastered.”
Toynbee is a sincere and open-minded Christian. He looks at Christianity from a distance and he sees PRIDE, not the pride that today is associated with same-sex and its various expressions. No, in Christianity he sees the old-fashioned kind of PRIDE, the one that becomes before the fall, true to Proverbs 16: 18, “Pride goes before destruction and a haughty spirit before a fall.”
Toynbee writes, “In the 17th Century Christianity was rejected first by the Japanese, then by the Chinese, and today by the intellectual leaders of the Western world in Western Christianity itself, and in every case for the same reason: the same Christian arrogance. If Christians fail to purge it out of Christianity now, it will lead to the rejection of Christianity in the future”.
Toynbee asserts – and I agree with him –that Western Christianity is not the last word. We all know that “We see through a glass darkly” as the ancient St James version put it.
Today we see ever more clearly what the “Christian” West has done to God’s world, and still is doing, that’s why we must acknowledge that we have been wrong and many of the native cultures have been right.
He states that the Hindu Mahatma Gandhi’s non-violent approach resembled Christianity more accurately than today’s armed to the teeth Western world. In God’s grace his inspiration has not been confined to the white race exclusively.
That brings me to the difficult question the church faces, because Jesus gave us a special mandate: “Make disciples of all nations” (Matthew 28:19).
What is that mandate? What constitutes THE GOOD NEWS TODAY? How can Christianity become more attractive to a wider range of people?
Let’s be honest: the current course of (in)action is no longer an option. Right now, in a time which, perhaps, is the most bewildering period in history, apart from the Black Plague that hit Europe in the 14th Century, we are experiencing a definite drift toward NIHILISM, evident in most governments world-wide but especially in the White House.
We need a NEW form of EVANGELISM. The word “Evangelism” is derived from two Greek words: Good- eu in Greek – and Message –angelos in Greek.
AMOR MUNDI
These two Latin words stand for LOVE OF THE WORLD, and by THE WORLD I mean our planet, this earth on which live, from which we derive our living, which feeds us and clothes us, from which we were formed, which provides our ultimate resting place, and for which Jesus Christ sacrificed his life to ensure eternity for his followers.
We have two sources that point to THE GOOD NEWS: the Bible and ‘the earth’.
J. H. Bavinck in his book BETWEEN THE BEGINNING AND THE END – A Radical Kingdom Vision – makes abundantly clear that we can only understand the Bible when we have a clear concept of Creation, and we can only understand Creation when we rightfully see the Bible as God’s Word.
He makes the radical statement that our own salvation and that of creation are two sides of the same coin: we cannot be saved if we regard creation as disposable.
In Reformed parlor the Belgic Confession categorically states that, when asking in Article 2: “The means by which we know God”, the answer is:
“First, by the creation, preservation and government of the Universe, since that Universe is before our eyes like a beautiful book in which all creatures, great and small, are as letters to make us ponder the invisible things of God: his eternal power and his divinity, as the apostle Paul says in Romans 1: 20. All these things are enough to convict us, humanity, and to leave us without excuse.
Second, he makes himself known to us more openly by his holy and divine word, as much as we need in this life, for his glory and for the salvation of his own.”
Dietrich Bonhoeffer says exactly the same. He sees John 3: 16 as the most important text in the Bible. “God so loved the world”. Amor Mundi. Bonhoeffer sees it as the basis for Christian existence in the here and now of the world, embracing the totality of the person. It is the very foundation of the Christian Life and determines the way we must live.
It is for this exact reason why, when we approach the non-church person – and sad to say also the average churchgoer still sold on heaven – LOVE FOR THE EARTH should be the opening point, because it is precisely there where we can communicate with a lot of people who otherwise would never even entertain a discussion with a Christian.
I know this is hard going. The New York Times on April 28, in an editorial piece quoted Billy Graham, still the reigning authority for American Christians: “We are pilgrims here on the way to heaven.”
As long as that ‘heaven’ fallacy remains the uppermost “Christian” doctrine, there is no way we can approach the ‘world’. The real reason why Christ lived and died was to ensure that his beloved earth would be restored to its pristine state.
Nietzsche, steeped in the gospel, whose father and both grandfathers were ministers in the German Lutheran church, left the church, condemning it for its heaven stance.
In his THUS SPOKE ZARATHUSTRA he is blunt:”I conjure you, my brethren, REMAIN TRUE TO THE EARTH, and believe not those who speak unto you of super-earthly hopes! Poisoners are they, whether they know it or not. Despisers of life are they, decaying ones and poisoned ones themselves, of whom the earth is weary: so away with them!”
He continues: “Once blasphemy against God was the greatest blasphemy; but God died, and therewith also those blasphemers. To blaspheme the earth is now the most dreadful sin, and to rate the heart of the unknowable higher than the meaning of the earth!”
Nietzsche’s radical words are echoed in Romans 1: 20, on which the Belgic Confession bases its belief that THE EARTH IS GOD’S PRIMARY WORD. If people are condemned by not seeing the earth as created by God, then my heartfelt belief is that a gracious God makes the opposite to be true as well: those who see the earth as being of divine origin, and love it for its beauty, coherence, and harmony, will find a place in the Kingdom to Come. I believe that these people – and there are many – are open to an ‘earth-centered’ gospel.
That’s why the church MUST reach out to these people because they deserve to have eternity. The church, the Kingdom, needs these people, because among church people there is a gross shortage of ‘earth-minded’ and ‘earth-expertise’ people. I wholeheartedly believe that to have eternity to pursue a certain aspect of creation, of whatever kind, must be attractive to many, especially since it will take place in a perfect world.
That’s the core message of the New Earth promise.
That’s why Dietrich Bonhoeffer, when he was led from prison to be hanged in April 1945, a few weeks before the Fall of Germany, said to his fellow prisoners: “this is to me the beginning of life”.
For Bonhoeffer love for the world sprang from the midst of his faith. It was the basis for his Christian existence, it presented to him the possibilities to the question, How are we to live?
The answers today, in a world totally different from the 1930-40’s in which Bonhoeffer lived, are much more evident. The seeds of destruction now have sprouted and are plainly visible to the eyes and minds of the discerning observers, that’s why concrete steps can be taken, steps not to avoid the looming dangers, but steps to prepare for THE LIFE HEREAFTER.
There’s where the church has to focus its attention. Not a life in heaven, the ultimate falsehood, but a life on a renewed, totally new earth, forever remaining pristine, with the extra exciting advantage that then, under perpetually perfect conditions, it will come to its full deployment, under the infallible guidance of the Holy Spirit.
That ‘evolution’ will take eternity to complete.
Hallelujah.