Ch. 4 – A Disturbing Kingdom Community (part one)
We have seen, I think, how traditionally one group of Christians, in paying attention to private sins have neglected to notice social sins, and the other groups has done just the opposite, paying a lot of attention to social sins while not caring much about the private variety.
Jesus was different.
Jesus and his new community of disciples challenged evil wherever they found it… Precisely because Jesus knew how good the Creator intends culture and civilization to be, he challenged surrounding society wherever sin had introduced brokenness.
How do we view our own sin? Do we focus a lot of attention on the really nasty kinds in our lives while neglecting pride or gluttony or others that more easily go unchecked? And what about ways we contribute to societal evils? What might those evils be? How might we repent of those sins (change our way of thinking and acting)?
As followers of Jesus Christ who are part of a local congregation in a relatively wealthy suburb, I believe we need to give some deep thought and prayer to matters of wealth and poverty and what God might have possibly been thinking when he blessed us so extravagantly in material ways.
A proper concern for and relationship to the poor is not the (i.e., the only decisive) measure of faithful discipleship and faithful communication of the gospel of the kingdom.
However,
The heretical neglect of the poor by many affluent Christians is a flat rejection of the Lord of the church.
What do you think about that statement? Does it hold up to scripture?
Sider mentions that Jesus’s band of followers was as heterogenous as you can imagine:
Jesus led an incredibly diverse community of prostitutes who had repented, tax collectors who had renounced oppression, disabled who had been healed, women who were no longer ostracized, poor who were no longer hungry, and revolutionaries who had forsaken violence.
How diverse are we as a local community of faith? Do we regularly see prostitutes, tax collectors, and other “notorious sinners” become a part of our church? What about people who are disabled marginalized, poor, or violent? Do we see real life change taking place in the lives of those in our ministry? Do we see walls coming down between types of people we’d never imagine getting along with each other? If not, why? If we are a community of Christ-followers, why are we not surrounded by the types of people he was?
Provacative and Challenging! One answer for our current neglect of the poor, violent, disabled, and stereotypically “wicked” is that is flat out easier. It takes a lot less effort to spend your time with people more or less like you and headed in the same direction then it does to engage those that are signigicantly different.
I also think that part of the problem is entitlements/rights (this is a bit of soap box for me so please take that into account). I think we must seriously rethink whether it is a reasonable expectation to have 2 kids, a home we own in suburban America, cable TV, and two cars at least one a late model foreign car. None of those realities is wrong in and of itself. What I think is very dangerous is that we have come to see them as reasonable expecations. We have come to think that if we do not have these things either we have some how failed or God has failed. Maybe we just have really screwed up conceptions of what the “normal” life is. This can be expanded to national issues such as the US as the hegemony. This may sound shocking but God may not be nearly as pro-US as we like to think he is
I have been captured recently by Hosea. Both by our whoring and God’s willing vulnerability to be hurt by the rejection of those He loves.
Having said all this the question becomes am I willing to live these things out? Or are we all just going to silently agree to only talk about them and never actually committing to change, never actually REPENT?
The answer to that question scares me. I fear that I will simply find ways to justify what I want and keep living the way my parents and grandparents and great grandparents have.
Lord please soften my heart that I might genuinely repent.