Tuesday, May 6, 2008
Is Our Gospel Too Small?
Yes, according to Bradley Nassif in a recent article published in
Christianity Today. An Eastern Orthodox theologian, Nassif is
Professor of Biblical and Theological Studies at North Park
University. He says that, by and large, our churches don't embrace and
act on a "maximal gospel ... with cosmic implications that embraces
the whole of creation." Opting for easier, softer ways, we fail to
take up our crosses "to fa****on the old creation into the new=97to seek
the redemption and renewal of our fallen human nature by the power of
the risen Lord." Drawing on the wisdom of the Desert Fathers and
Mothers, he diagnoses our problem as "the poverty of love."
Here are some excerpts from his article:
The desert fathers and mothers heard Christ's call to deny themselves,
take up the cross daily, and follow him (Luke 9:23) in a time similar
to our own. Under Emperor Constantine, large numbers joined the church
for the social privileges it bestowed. Many sought status and
prosperity more than the cross. This influx of nominal Christians made
the church a spiritually sick institution, and a radical illness
called for a radical remedy. Ordinary men and women, most of them
illiterate, heard the death-call of the gospel and responded by
fleeing to the desert to live out their calling=97either alone or in
community. Peasants, shepherds, camel traders, former slaves, and
prostitutes were the first to go.
The desert was not a place of escape as much as a place of
countercultural engagement. The desert was the front line of spiritual
warfare=97as in the Bible, a place of testing and death. It was where
the heart was purified, the passions conquered, sin destroyed, and
humanity renewed.
Like the prophets of old, the desert dwellers reminded the church that
the kingdom of God is not of this world. They insisted that if we
confuse the gospel's values with our culture's values, it will have
lethal results. They exposed the underside of a form of religion that
fuels our hunger for self-centered living. Still today, their lives
stand against the easy assurance of a too-inculturated gospel. They
offer an alternative spiritual order, one based on Trinitarian divine
love and human freedom. They offer an alternative ****trait of what
being human really means. And perhaps most radically, they call us to
engage our external challenges by first conquering our own inner
passions through the lord****p of Christ.
The monastic movement was a response to the church's spiritual poverty=97
the poverty of love. The monks protested that knowledge wasn't the
problem; the problem was love. Their perspective is all the more
surprising when we compare the low literacy rate then (perhaps 4
percent) with the high literacy rate now (75 percent). There is more
Bible knowledge available now than at any other time in human history.
Yet we are still asking, "Is our gospel too small?"
If these desert dwellers were alive today, I believe they would tell
us that our gospel is too small because our wills are too big. The
core battleground, they argued, is the human heart. They would counsel
us to declare war on the inner adversaries that hide secretly in our
hearts, and to be watchful of their stealth attacks. We're wisest,
they taught, when we concentrate our energies on the source of all our
problems, the inner person=97its selfish orientation, dark impulses,
***ual preoccupations, greed, lust, anger, unforgiveness, hatred, and
other "works of the flesh" (Gal. 5:19=9621). Every believer still has a
powerful attraction to sin. So the monks took decisive action in their
reliance on God, engaging in the hard work of holiness, something they
called ascesis, or spiritual training. Some monks were such great
trainers, they acquired the name "athletes of God" or "soldiers of
Christ."
At the heart of their training was repentance. They were convinced
that their inner natures were so out of sync with the will of God that
nothing but a strong dose of God's grace could fix them. Only
repentance could clear away the stony rubble in the soil of their
hearts so God's grace could take root and grow. The gospel was so
alive in the monks because repentance was a lifestyle for them, not a
single event. Even after spending a lifetime in repentance, we hear
them on their deathbeds encouraging the younger ones not to give up:
"I'm only a beginner," they would say. "I've just begun to repent!"
All this talk of repentance may sound neurotic, but the fathers and
mothers specifically avoided the "deadly thoughts" of depression and
gloom. Nor was it their habit to keep dwelling on past sins, as later
medieval piety would encourage. They simply knew the depths of their
own disobedience, and they took steps to deal with their hearts. The
lives of the great desert fathers and mothers of the 3rd through 6th
centuries show us how big our gospel can become in each of us when we
obey Scripture. The more we keep company with these delightful people,
the more they lead us away from relying on external remedies. They
tell us that our gospel is too small not because we need to hear more
sermons, or do more Bible study, or attend more church services, or
create new programs. Nor is it too small because we have not followed
modern theological scholars into a nearly idolatrous reliance on the
intellect. The monks interpreted the Scriptures not just through
study, but also by putting them into practice.
Serapion lamented, "The prophets wrote books. Then came our ancestors
who lived by them. Those who came later understood them from the
heart. Then came the present generation who copied them but put them
on their shelves unused." I imagine that those reading this article
have more Bible knowledge than they will ever put into practice in
their lifetime. Yet it's not more knowledge we need; it's more love
and obedience.
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