Emerging Africa

Richard - I think Jesus is asking us to do a lot more than simply try to bless the environment we are in.

Firstly - a simple reading of a passage like the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew's gospel will show you that Jesus himself was counter-cultural and that Christians themselves are supposed to be counter-cultural (and there are numerous other passages in the Bible).

Secondly - If Jesus has come to ransom people, which he says he has in Mark 10:45 then its probably a pretty good guess to suggest that he is in the business of SAVING people. The imagery he uses in the verses preceeding that statement have him taking upon himself the 'cup' and 'baptism' two Old Testament pictures of God's wrath - That wrath in the OT is ALWAYS directed against sin and rebellion - so by implication, if you combine 10:45 with the preceeding verses, Jesus must be saying that he is going to face God's wrath against sin. The only logical reason he could be doing this is so that others don't have to face that wrath - in other words he is SAVING people. God is in the business of saving people through his Son - we NEED to proclaim this - we need to proclaim the gospel.

I'm becoming increasingly disturbed that some voices in this emerging conversation are painting the act of gospel proclamation (calling people to repent and trust in Christ in order to be reconciled to God) as unnecessary or at best a minor add on to simply loving all people and blessing them.

Jesus is not calling us to that - he's calling on us to proclaim him and what he has done to all people. Does that stop us from loving all people and blessing them - It shouldn't.

Hi Stephen...
Surly loving god with all my heart, soul and mind (which in my opinion would suggest the emergent struggle) and then loving my neighbor as myself would be the primary role of the christian. Here he says nothing of having to proclaim a gospel that would produce exclusion and elitism (which traditional gospel message has done.) I think the two 'greatest' commandments become an affirmation for us to simply bless the environment we are in- a task which is not simple at all.

I believe jesus is counter to the religious culture and not culture at large, which yes, is affirmed greatly in his story but he loves the world and so should we. I don't think that any conversation is greater than simply loving and blessing people. The church, which speaks alot of the gospel message, has had few converts because it is unable to love and bless. Surly that which drives people away from jesus should first be dealt with?
This is just my thinking and I hear your critique. Thanks for the comment.
Richard Garton
a lost seeker

Richard let's paint a holistic picture of Jesus. Whilst I don't deny he said that the entire law is summed up in Loving God and Loving People (which incidently is my church's philosophy of ministry), we need to see everything Jesus said and did to get our picture of what exactly Jesus wants of those who follow him today. So for example you said:

"Here he says nothing of having to proclaim a gospel that would produce exclusion and elitism (which traditional gospel message has done.)"

True at the time of giving those commandments he says nothing about proclaiming the gospel - but he does say something about in Matthew 28. Not only that but on more than one occasion his message actually excludes people (and not only the religious leaders of the time - remember the rich young ruler?). Note what he says in Matthew 10:34 he's come to turn families against themselves and to bring the sword not peace. You either have to interpret this passage to say that he's going to bring armed rebellion (which doesn't seem to be the case historically) or those that accept the message he brings will be rejected by those who reject the message. The message is going to exclude (check out Mark 4:9-12 too)

He does love the world - more than we can ever imagine - the problem is that people don't love him and so he has to die on our behalf and atone for all the rebellion we cook up every single day - so that we can stop accept that sacrifice and then turn from our rebellion and begin Loving God and Loving People. Let's present more than one side of the coin here.

What also drives people away from Jesus (in the church) is hypocrisy, unrepentant sin, apathy, inconsistancy, racism, elitism, egotism, individualism and people refusing to die to self and take up their cross daily - that's the reason why the evangelical church is in the mess it is - because they proclaim a gospel (often they only proclaim bad renditions of it) and then live lives that are completely inconsistent with the message of truth. Because people are offering bad renditions of the message or living incosistent lives doesn't make the message crocked - it makes the people crocked - which means they need to turn back in humility to that message of rescue and reflect on it all over again, seeing just how big the significance of it is. We don't need to re-invent the message we actually just need to remember it properly.

Sorry Richard - didn't mean to make you feel like I felt that you were attacking my church - my bad. I too am enjoying this discussion.

Theological view or textual view? As I see it up to now I've simply presented textual evidence to the contrary of some of your points in your previous comments. Doing theology is the systematizing of the textual points into a whole (unified or not). I haven't really done that - I've simply drawn some rather obvious issue that the text raises which suggest something different to what you have been suggesting. You might be right in that its not completely holistic in that I haven't covered every single facet of the life of Christ, but it is more holistic than the picture you gave us of Jesus in your 2nd comment.

With regards to the sending out of the 72. Jesus sends them out in order to demonstrate publicly the signs of the kingdom. Healing people, driving out demons and preaching justice and righteousness are the signs that OT books like Isaiah tell Israel over and over again will take place when God returns to judge and rescue. Isaiah presents numerous pictures which seem to all be pointing largely to one event, Christ's first coming (maybe beyond this as well to the 2nd coming at times). These pictures include pictures of God coming in judgement and redemption, of a reigning king in the line of David coming and of a suffering servant coming (BTW most of these pictures have partial fulfillments in and around the time of Isaiah's prophecies but they all find their completetion in Christ). A casual reading of the gospel of Mark, with Isaiah clearly in mind as background and as basis material, will show that Jesus himself is deliberately going around displaying these signs to send clear signals to all around. Chapters 1-8 are full of these signs - hence Jesus' frustration with the disciples in 8-11 as they just seem to fail to put together the signs which signify Jesus as Messiah (as Peter testifies at the end of ch 8) and the fact that Jesus repeatedly tells them that he has to go to Jerusalem and die.

It seems best to me to suggest that Jesus is sending out the 72 to display these signs and announce the 'nearness' of the kingdom (they don't actually use the word 'gospel' in the Luke account - the 12 were sent on a similar commission in the beginning of ch 9) So the 'good news' they proclaimed was in seed form - its the same 'good news' that Jesus proclaimed at the beginning of Mark's gospel. Notice that even in this seed form the 'good news' had an element of judgment for the towns who rejected it. The 72 could proclaim the 'good news' that the Messiah had come and the kingdom was near without yet fully understanding Jesus' death and resurrection.

But Christ has come and he has died and risen to life again - and that has been for a specific purpose - to proclaim the seed form of the 'good news' would be to ignore the significance of the cross - to pretend that it didn't happen. And in my view the majority of evidence points to the cross as the place where sin and rebellion towards God was dealt with (not to the exclusion of other things the cross achieves - I do believe in a rich view of atonement). That is the gospel message - and the later apostles, like Paul confirm this on numerous occasions. Is there really good news outside of the death of Jesus? I'm not sure if there is - all other 'good news' that does exist outside of Jesus' death exists because of that death and resurrection - take that away and the rest crumbles.

As you pointed out:
"We are all hypocrites, racist, 'sinners' etc simply because we don't love god with all our heart, soul and minds and love our neighbor as ourselves."
Because of the truth of this statement its not good enough for us just to try harder - we need a merciful God who will save us from the fact that we don't love him as our creator or the rest of his creation. Our God is merciful and Jesus is the evidence of that - we need to proclaim that AND live in light of it - to leave out either part is to leave us massively short changed spiritually - even to the point of condemnation.

Where do the the theological systems come from? Text work. I got converted into a specific Reformed evangelical theological system. Since then (about 7 years ago) I've been placing that system to the test of the the text. So contrary to your statement I actually have tried to distance myself from terms like 'kingdom of God' or 'sinners' and then determine as objectively as possible what those terms would have meant for the original readers. My entire hermeneutic is built on first and foremost discovering what the author intends for the original hearers to understand by what he is writing. You don't seem to think this is possible - that would then be difference in epistemology perhaps a difference between soft postmodernism and hard postmodernism - I'm not sure.

To further explain my hermeneutic - I then run my conclusions through a number of contextual grids - the historical context, the context in redemptive history and the literary context of the book. Out of this I think, epistemologically speaking, I can start to draw at least some certain convictions about what the text means. With these conclusions I then filter my theological system through them (not the other way around) - if the system needs to change, then it changes and I have made numerous changes to my system over the last 7 years. I think that this process will yield absolute truths - not about everything - but definitely about certain things. I then work off what I know to be certain to try and wade my way through the many confusing issues the Bible presents.

To tackle some of your specific points: You might notice that my hermeneutic of the Isaiah prophecies is built upon the hermeneutic of JEWISH apostles writing after Christ's death and ressurection and therefore writing with hindsight. You might also note that Judaism in the 1st century was highly divided over their views of the Messiah and they still are today because they refuse to look to Jesus for answers. As to the disciples and their wanting a political leader - there is a reason for that. The OT presents two major pictures of the Messiah (there are others) and that is the ruling king of Psalm 2 (and many other places - this seems the dominant picture of the Messiah in the OT) in the Davidic line and the Suffering Servant of Isaiah (not nearly as dominant as the King picture but more dominant than the other pictures). The Jews failed to see the Suffering Servant as a picture of the Messiah - they only saw the king picture - hence their desire for a political leader. Its easy to see why this happened - because in the immediate context the suffering servant of Isaiah looks like it is referring to Israel as a nation - and it is, initially (remember I mentioned that the pictures have partial fulfillment in the immeadiate historical context). The problem though is that if you try and explain all of the imagery and prophecy concerning the suffering servant and attribute it ONLY to Israel, you're going to run into a whole lot of textual problems where the prophecy simply could not fit Israel - so it suggests a further fulfillment. Then Jesus comes along and in Mark 8-12 he uses suffering servant langauge of himself on a number of occasions (langauge that is drawn almost verbatim from the servant songs of Isaiah). In effect Jesus, who in chs. 1-8 has gone to great lengths to prove he is the OT promised King now suggests that he is also the suffering servant. He clearly wants us to marry the two ideas in the person of Christ. The disciples clearly have a hard time marrying the two concepts and really actually only put it all together until after Jesus' death and resurrection.

With regards to the issue of emphasis on the cross - first off the apostlic writings after the cross seem to be fixated with this event - that should be evidence enough that this event is absolutely central. From an Emerging point of view - the EC is determined to present the faith as a story (and I wholeheartedly endorse this) - hence the bible is story - any story needs a problem a climax and a resolution (simple rules of narrative). If you take the cross and put it on a par with a ton of other events in the bible then it completely destroys the narrative components of climax and solution - in a literary sense - the story becomes dull and then the end of the story (the new creation etc) becomes pointless, even the problem in the story ends up not being that much of a problem. But that's just one way of looking at it - and I'd need to think through it as an apologetic more - so don't crucify me on holes in this point - it was just a thought, in seed form that came to mind.

Looking at the gospels I'd suggest that all four authors place a huge premium on the cross - so you'd have to, on literary grounds, take that away before your statements would be valid. People make arguments like 'the cross only forms one chapter of each of the gospels' - but that is to forget that the gospels are narrative - not discourse - that comment is not genre sensitive it doesn't see the building climax of the gospels leading up to the cross - cleary making the cross the central act of the story.

There are some other big implications in reducing the place of the cross - it has implications upon Christ's deity - if he's just dying any old death than why is God allowing his only Son to be killed by a bunch of rebellious Jews and bloodthirsty gentiles? It also begs a massive why question - why die then? What purpose does it serve - these questions need answers.

Richard - are you not choosing which type of Jesus you want to serve? Is there not a massive danger that you're not actually listening to God and his Spirit at all but rather taking what you want and what fits into your paradigm of Jesus and God. I enjoy all these discussions but at the end of the day I worship a God who demands a right response to him since he created me and he sustains me - on that basis I cannot simply turn a blind eye when seekers make comments about his Son that just don't add up to the picture of his Son that he has given us. God will judge in the end - its not my place to judge - my place is to plead God's case on his behalf by presenting what he has already said in the Scriptures. To the best of my ability and with the greatest humility I want to suggest that the views you have put forward in this thread are not consistent with the written testimony of Scripture and I pray you would consider that testimony.

Hi Stephen, thanks for the input...i think we are on two different journeys. I do locate myself in jesus (and would affirm that he has special significance to the now with afterlife implications)I also have a high value for both him and his complete story, that is still unfolding and not confined to but also in the bible. I have no real response to a reformed approach to bible and theology but respect those for whom it works. (i am not one of them) While i understand why you are fighting hard for what you would see the faith to be (and I respect you for that (conviction is a rare commodity these days) i think that the approach you are proposing excludes people and unintentionally drives them away from jesus. (please think carefully about this statment:...but at the end of the day I worship a God who demands a right response to him since he created me and he sustains me - on that basis I cannot simply turn a blind eye when seekers make comments about his Son that just don't add up to the picture of his Son that he has given us. God will judge in the end...) While you are fighting for; 'the faith' I am fighting for people to still want to journey the faith. I understand your struggles as I myself have also struggled with those issues. This has been a great thread but i think we will keep going around in circles.

Hi stray- thanks for the comment.

Closing remarks: this site has the slogan attached to it that this should be a safe place to do theology, safety should allow for controversy. Unless we push our thinking beyond tradition how can anything new ever be found? We need to be open and generous inside of our differences.

Richard
a lost seeker

Hi Schalk,

In answer to you original post, I think that the only way to evangelise in any context is through relationship. Jesus seemed to employ this tactic - although the masses might have come to see his miracles etc, it was only through relationship that disciples were made. True, he had something like 500 disciples (I really wonder how he kept up with all of them) but a glance at my facebook shows I have 150 friends - those are just the guys who are on facebook! These are 150 people where I have an affect on their lives.

So, that's just an encouragement. Don't think that relationship doesn't get 'enough' saved, and that we have to employ mass media 'let's give them what they want and then ambush them with the gospel' sort of evangelism. Friends first is the way to go. I think many people need to understand that your desire to see them saved is out of genuine concern for them (it's not wanting to get them saved that's the issue, it's why you want to get them saved - are you genuinely concerned for them? Or wanting another notch in your belt?) Obviously, your attitude is the former.

Be encouraged man, you will see the fruit of your labour - and gain some awesome friends in the process.