October 19, 2007
I Don't Know Much
A few weeks ago, Melissa directed me to the blog of a pastor in St. Paul, Minn., because she thought that I would like his passion, his academic style and his theology. She knows me to say the least, because I have found myself engrossed in Greg Boyd’s blog and incredibly eager for my next trip to Minnesota so I can visit Woodland Hills Church.
There are many things I’ve learned about myself as I’ve gotten older, but one of the biggest is that I am not even remotely as smart as I once thought I might be. In reading Greg’s blog, I sometimes have to reread a passage several times or check Wikipedia to make sure I understand the context. He is a brilliant man and a brilliant theologian with a background in science that often leaves me befuddled. But what I enjoy most about him is his passionate pleas for the church to get out of the statehouse. He often writes that as Christians (Kingdom people he calls us), our defense is the cross. And when we instead pick up the sword, we must, by necessity, put down the cross! Reading that was a huge gut check; I’ve always enjoyed politics – I got my bachelor’s degree in it after all – and I follow the process with interest and passion. But there has long been a niggling feeling in me that we’re getting it all wrong. And then I wondered, Is something wrong with me because it doesn’t matter to me what my president believes? That I don’t have any interest in legislating people’s lives? After all, I’m a Christian. Shouldn’t I view Hot Political Topic B in exactly the same way as other Christians? (When I so often don’t.)
Greg is constantly rallying against the notion of labeling ANY political viewpoint as the “Christian position.” In an entry dated June 28, 2007, titled “A Great Time Talking Faith and Politics,” Greg makes many excellent points, but one jumped out at me in light of Andy Stanley’s current series at Buckhead Church, Judgment Call.
On top of this, what business does the Church have trying to get Caesar to act more Christian than we ourselves act? How can we possibly tell Caesar what he should do about the poor when we ourselves are not bleeding as much as we can bleed for the poor? The Church can have a role in leading government, I believe, but only if it does so BY EXAMPLE, not cheap opinions. Until we ARE this example, I honestly think it’s counter-productive to the Kingdom to offer public opinions "in Jesus name." It's like those Christians who publically rally Christians to be against gay marriage because they're for family values, when Christians themselves have a higher divorce rate than the rest of America. This sort of thing invites the charge of hypocrisy. Of course, individuals can have whatever opinions they want about gay marriage or any other political issue. The trouble arises when groups publically represent this as "the Christian position." If Christians spent a decade doing nothing but healing their own marriages while sacrificially serving non-Christian gay people, maybe, just maybe, we'd earn the right to lovingly speak into their lives -- and they into ours (since, after all, our sin is like a tree trunk compared to their sin, which is a mere dust particle [Mt 7:1-3]).”
The scripture he references is the passage in Matthew 7 where Jesus opens by saying, “Judge not, lest ye be judged.” (The phrase almost everyone is familiar with.) What a lot of people aren’t as familiar with is the rest of his command:
1“Do not judge others, and you will not be judged. 2 For you will be treated as you treat others. The standard you use in judging is the standard by which you will be judged. 3 “And why worry about a speck in your friend’s eye when you have a log in your own? 4 How can you think of saying to your friend, ‘Let me help you get rid of that speck in your eye,’ when you can’t see past the log in your own eye? 5 Hypocrite! First get rid of the log in your own eye; then you will see well enough to deal with the speck in your friend’s eye. (Matthew 7:1-5, NLT)
Last Sunday – in response to the second verse – Andy asked, “And what’s the standard by which you want to be judged?” And I scrawled out in my journal, “With MERCY.” So that begs the question, “Have I been merciful?” Maybe every once in awhile when I forget myself, yes, I am, but most often, no.
There are many, many things about this life, the world, the Kingdom and my place in it that I do not understand. The only thing I see with any real clarity is the cross on Calvary and the God who poured his blood out for all of us so that we can go before the merciful Justifier as Christ-covered sinners. I have so many questions and so few answers, but why wouldn’t I trust the Justifier to be Just? The Merciful One to show mercy? There are few who have sinned as egregiously as I have, I assure you, and if I can be healed, forgiven, loved, there is hope for every one of us.
Posted by hannah at 11:30 AM
