|
 How are Christian believers to live
appropriately in the world of daily life, the world we call "secular,"
and how
do we think that God is related to
that world?
What
follows is a proposal for a
way of thinking that is true to the Bible and to the heritage of the
sixteenth-century Protestant Reformation—a "framework" to help
Christians make sense of and live in the exciting and daunting world
of the early twenty-first century.
First, to speak of life in the natural and social world
a Christian must speak of the doctrine of
creation.
The
Christian doctrine of creation says that nothing exists with which God
is not involved. The biblical understanding of creation tells us that
in our daily life we have to do with God because God gives daily life
and this earth and our neighbors and even our social structures. God
gives these in part through human activity, but it still
God
who gives
all these things, according to the Bible.
We
often forget this and are misled in our thinking and speaking. For
example, we may say about someone that "she doesn't have a
relationship with God." What we probably mean is that this person
doesn’t believe in God, but it is dead wrong to say that someone isn’t
related to God; people wouldn’t be alive if God weren’t relating to
them in every moment. A famous preacher once said that you can tell
if God is working in your life if your nose works! (He got that also
from Psalm 104.)
"you can tell if
God is working in your life if your nose works!"
Another thing we often say is that "God works through
the church." Of course. That is a good thing to say,
but
we sometimes
seem to imply that God isn't working anyplace else. And that is dead
wrong again. God is constantly at work in the whole world, not only in
the church or among believers. One of our tasks as Christ's followers
is to proclaim the truth about God so that all those in and through
whom God is working but who don't know it yet may hear and believe.
"God is constantly at work in the whole world"
Second, why is it important to put so much emphasis on God's creative
work? Because it doesn't make much sense to speak of our callings in
the world if the world has nothing to do with God. If the world were
godless or totally secular, then why would we have any divine callings
there at all? Yet in our time that is how many people, including many
believers, think about the world. We call it "a godforsaken place."
Or, our experience of life's trials and pain is so great that we think
God must be somewhere else. Or, sin is so prominent in the world—just
watch the evening news—that we can't see how the world can belong to
God.
And there is truth in those feelings. We can't deal
with the world
only
as God's good
creation, even though the most important thing the Bible says about
all of God's creative work is that it is "very good"—and that even
includes God's verdict on each of us (Gen. 1:31). Yet we all know that
this is not the whole story. The Bible also speaks of
sin.
And
again, when it speaks of sin, it doesn't just speak of "once upon a
time." The apostle Paul wrote that "all [of us] have sinned and fall
short of the glory of God" (Rom. 3:23). It's not as simple as saying
that Adam and Eve sinned long ago and the rest of us have simply
inherited it; that would make sin into a kind of birth defect that is
not our responsibility. Rather, Paul treats Adam as
a
type,
a pattern of us all, and he says that "in Adam" we all
sinned (see Rom. 5:12-14). Not only by an action or two but by falling
into bondage, into a faithless propensity to sin in every aspect of
our lives. We humans, the crown of God's creation, beings who are only
a little less than God (Ps. 8), have by our sin put the whole natural
world into bondage to sin so that it "groans" until we are finally set
free (Rom. 8:21-23).
|
"for the Bible the existence of sin is never a
reason to abandon the world" |
Therefore is very important qualifier of the
world's goodness. Yet we shouldn't let our belief in the
seriousness of sin make us forget that God still creates anew each
day and that everything that comes from God is good—even though we
constantly pervert it. This is true for human beings as well: that
which we are essentially—human—is
good,
even though we constantly misuse and demean our own
humanness. The point here is this: for the Bible the existence of
sin is never a reason to abandon the world, as some Christians
mistakenly have thought. God's still gives us roles, duties,
tasks, relationships, responsibilities, opportunities, and
challenges precisely in the world; and God gives us the
commandments and other words, our own reason and abilities, and
our societal institutions and communities to aid us in living in
the world. Our faith helps us see this and sets us free and
motivates us to serve in the world.
|
|
Third, we need to ask how this emphasis on God's
creative work relates to our salvation in Jesus Christ.
Sometimes Christians have thought (wrongly) that salvation is an
escape from the world—a flight to heaven, a preoccupation with the
"spiritual" over the material, a retreat to religion away from
daily life. But this does not fit with the way the Bible portrays
God's saving act in sending Jesus Christ. Jesus came because God
so loved the world;
he took on
flesh
and became truly
human;
he came that we
might have abundant
life;
and our eternal
hope is for the resurrection of our
bodies
and for a new
heaven and a new earth.
Jesus
enacted what was always true: that God is a "down-to-earth" God.
Our sin is when we flee the earthly and our humanness, our
neighbors and our callings in daily life. Our sin is when we don't
believe God's word that it is good to be a human creature and
instead seek to rise above our creatureliness and "lord it over"
others or (conversely) to sink beneath our human status and flee
from freedom and responsibility into mere sensate existence
(giving in to despair, drugs, cynicism, conformity, or whatever). |
"God is a 'down-to-earth' God. Our sin is when we
flee the earthly and our humanness, our neighbors and our callings
in daily life" |
Redemption through Christ is to reclaim and restore,
and complete and fulfill, the creative work of God—not to abandon it.
Christianity first of all is about life, not religion. Jesus said that
he came that people might have abundant
life
(John 10:10). He
declared that the sabbath was made for people, not people for the
sabbath (Mark 2:27). Believing in Christ and receiving the forgiveness
of our sins sets us free to be faithful
creatures,
people who can
believe once again that this life is good because it comes from God,
who can see other people not merely as competitors or "pains in the
neck" or interruptions or enemies but as
neighbors.
In faith we see
other people as those through whom God comes to us and to whom God
comes through us.
"Believing in Christ and receiving the forgiveness of
our sins sets us free to be faithful
creatures"
When we are in Christ we are new creations (2 Cor.
5:17). We are restored to play a role in God's world, even in the
midst of our own and the world's sin. One of the temptations of Jesus
in the Bible (Matt. 4:1-11) was to worship the devil as the "ruler of
this world;" but to give into this temptation would have been for
Jesus to "let the world go to the devil," even though the world
actually belongs to God. This very well may be our temptation also,
especially in difficult times, but here we are well advised to stick
with
Jesus, in whom
God
was, reconciling the
world to himself, not letting it go to the devil. |
