This is the second in a series of six posts that center on some thoughts I had while reading Rob Bell’s Jesus Wants to Save Christians. These entries were originally blogged at Conversant Life sometime during 2008.
Read: Part 1
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Jesus Wants to Save Christians Part 2: Blessing and the People of God
In the first chapter of the book, Bell begins by discussing the Exodus story, God’s intervening on behalf of the Israelites to bring them out from under the oppressive hand of the Egyptians. He goes on to discuss how, over time, the Israelites mistook God’s power and blessing as favoritism, becoming themselves the oppressors. Beginning on page 44 Bell writes:
“God gives power and blessing so that justice and righteousness will be upheld for those who are denied them…
“To forget this, to fail to hear the cry, to preserve prosperity at the expense of the powerless, is to miss what God has in mind…
“There’s a word for this. A word for what happens when you still have the power and the wealth and the influence, and yet in some profound way you’ve blown it because you’ve forgotten why you were given it in the first place…
“The word is exile…
“Exile is when you fail to convert your blessings into blessing for others…
“Exile is when you find yourself a stranger to the purposes of God.”
I wonder if perhaps exile is where the American Church is headed. It seems that throughout history God’s people ride a roller coaster of blessing and exile, exile and blessing and yet, we still never learn. The great temptation, the great sin of the Church has always been to hoard this blessing for ourselves. To use whatever power and influence we might have to preserve our own prosperity instead of using it to bless others, regardless of how that may affect us.
Think about it, of the various causes the American Church backs, which ones gain the most momentum, which ones get the most involvement from Christians as a whole? World hunger? Maybe a little, but not much. Ending genocide? Again, some momentum, but typically it is short-lived. Relieving poverty? Same. Ministering to porn stars in order to bring them to Jesus? Ask the guys at XXXchurch.com about that one.
Ah, but when it comes to making a constitutional amendment to defining marriage as being between one man and one woman, or putting prayer back in schools, or making sure that “In God We Trust” remains on our currency, or “Under God” is not removed from our pledge of allegiance, or on any other “right” that is limited to Christians – the American Church is all over it. We pour more money, time, and energy into these causes than any others. Further, we often times use fear tactics to convince others to align with us be it by promising the downfall of society or the sure-to-come catastrophic events as the judgment of God against us should we fail to live up to some pseudo-standard that God has called America to.
This is, most assuredly, self-preservation. And, as history has shown, it typically doesn’t take long before the fear tactics no longer work and the Church resorts to violence and coercion in order to protect the world from the outside evils, all the while becoming the source of evil herself.
Did we not learn anything from our Bibles, or from Church History for that matter?
Our attempts at self-preservation, of Christian rights and the prosperity gospel, will only go on for a short time before we experience the deep pain of exile. But it doesn’t have to be this way. We do not have to ride the roller coaster. We do not need to give in to our misguided brothers and sisters who mistake this blessing from God as being the result of our own holiness – despite all evidence that points to the contrary – and who, out of fear of losing this blessing, begin to place the blame on anyone and everyone who doesn’t measure up to our holiness standard thereby resulting in active measures of force, whether physical or not, to prevent those sinners from advancing their “agenda.” We need not buy into their logic, no matter how sincere they might be. We can choose instead, to use our blessings to bless others, to stand up for others without rights, instead of insisting on our own. And if the Bible teaches us anything it is this: when we choose to take that route, we find that we do not need to fight for our rights at all because God himself is fighting for our rights – if not in this life, then in the next.
Surely being the light of the world was not a promise to the Church of her ability to admire her own brightness, but rather a challenge to bring the light and hope that we have to whoever finds themselves without it. And, you know, there’s a funny thing about light: its only direction is outward. It never turns in on itself to ensure it maintains brightness and it has no sense of discrimination, it will light up whatever is around it.
Perhaps Jesus really did think through that analogy before using it to describe us.
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