Just Kamping

Update, 13 Oct 20*** I wrote this blog in the midst of unrest within America (it’s still going on). In the aftermath of the death of George Floyd and the subsequent riots, I chose to speak against what I believed was the acceptance of Critical Race Theory within mainstream evangelicalism. Looking back, I believe I was uninformed as to the complexity and nuances of the cultural moment. This post (and the others) was reflexive in nature and I do not believe it added value to the conversation taking place in our neighborhoods (with the exception of the gospel as portrayed in this specific post). Going forward, I will seek to carefully choose the topics I write about and ensure I’m well informed before posting. I still believe Critical Race Theory is harmful, though :)***

In Part I of Confronting Social Gospels, I set out to take aim at Critical Theory and tie it to the expression of the false social gospel known as Liberation Theology. In Part II, I clarified the term Social Gospel Movement, rendering it as an effort to reduce Christianity and “gospel ministry” to a horizontal plane where man’s relationship to man and the world around him is emphasized/prioritized over the vertical plane of man in relationship to God.

In this post, I’d like to engage with the idea that preaching the gospel alone does nothing to affect societal change. I’d like to push back on that and show why the gospel is exactly what we need and how Christians are still called to action. To do this, I’m going to talk about sin, the gospel, and society. I do not plan to be exhaustive and there are plenty of others better equipped to engage in this discussion. However, I hope to throw a few words out there and keep the conversation going. Feel free to comment!

I. Let’s talk sin- what it is and how it affects us

Humans of all shapes, sizes, and skin-tones are created in the image of God. We are the image God chose to display himself into the world. Now for a holy, just, and perfect Creator…having an estimated 107 billion humans exist throughout history should be a really good thing, for throughout all generations they should be displaying that image of holiness, justice, goodness, and perfection. Unfortunately, all but one of those image-bearers chose to willfully rebel against God. That includes you and I. Our sin is an act of rebellion against God; it’s lawlessness. Sin is choosing to do what’s right in our eyes and not primarily in God’s eyes. And sin is not something we do when we reach a certain age, we are conceived in it (Ps 51:5). All of us inherited a sinful nature from the representative of our race “Adam”, and all of us from birth have acted on our sinful desires. When we became willfully able, we willfully chose to do what we knew to be wrong. Our sin has horizontal implications, we do sin against each other in a myriad of ways. But our sin is primarily a vertical problem, for all sin is first and foremost against God. Now, what does sin do to our “image-bearing”? Sin causes us to display a false image of God into the world. And how does God feel about false images? He hates them (Ps 5:5, 11:5). God feels so strongly in his hatred for the sin committed by his image-bearers that he has made the penalty for sin as grave as it can be; the punishment is death and severe judgment…in other words, “decreation”. 

II. The Gospel

Enter the good news. Despite his hatred of sin, God still loved his world and all of his creation. He loved it so much, that he chose Israel, the smallest of nations, and bore with them through their sin and rebellion. Through Israel, God was working to establish himself as King over all the earth in Jesus and initiate new creation, ultimately making right what is wrong and reconciling his image-bearers to himself. You read that right. God has been working throughout history to correct the breakdown of creation and establish his kingdom on earth. This kingdom was consummated in the coming of his Son, Jesus Christ. You see, in Jesus, God punished sin and executed justice. Jesus, sinless as the God-Son, willfully took upon himself an unjust death for the sins of his people, those who call upon Him as Lord and King. In Jesus’ sacrificial death for his people, God’s justice was shown. No sin will ever go unpunished, it was either bore on the body of Christ or will be punished in hell. And God raised Jesus from the dead as the firstborn of new creation and Ruler of heaven and earth. And now, when someone comes to faith in the finished work of Jesus, he or she is filled with the Spirit of God and experiences the new creation process, seeing his or herself formed into the image they were created for, namely the image of God which is perfectly expressed in Jesus. How does one call upon Jesus as Lord and King? We call upon Jesus by repenting of our sin, confessing him as Lord and believing that God has raised Him from the dead. Only in this way can we ever be liberated from our bondage to decay and only in this way can we or our society be “saved” from the effects of our sin. Are we without sin once we come to faith? No. But we are daily renewed and growing in our new creation identity as we confess our sins, cling to Jesus’ work on our behalf, and await the hope of the promised perfection to come when Jesus returns.

III. Society

Now, what happens when people, sinners from the womb, join together to make a society? Naturally, such a society can expect to have ideas, expectations, policies, and structures that are not in line with the truth of who God is or what he expects of his creation. We should hope to have better odds if a society is made up of Christians, but as I stated, Christians are not without sin and therefore sin in a Christian society should not be a surprise. How has this played out in American society? Well for starters, we’ve seen it exemplified in slavery, prostitution, abortion, etc. We’ve also seen it in history with segregation and Jim Crow laws, we’ve seen it with the authorized use of torture for intelligence gathering, and we’ve seen it in unnecessary government taxation (just to name a few). What do all of these have in common? They are corporate expressions of sin, not expressions of justice or goodness. What else do they have in common? In some way, each is an example of structural or systemic sinfulness. Sinful individuals work within structures or systems and enact sinful policies that affect real people. Are any of these systems or structures in place today? Some are. Some are not. And honestly, the conversation today around anything systemic or structural can become a stalemate because of the inherent biases of the parties involved, so long as there isn’t objective policies to which we can point to. Policies make the conversation easy. Without them, we get into the realm of “personal experience” or “statistics”, both of which seem to lead to nowhere- personal experience because it tends to be subjective (corporately or personally), statistics because they are often incomplete (or accused of being so). Does that mean we dismiss experience or statistics? No. It just makes conversations and the search for truth more difficult.

Who is responsible for systemic or structural sinfulness? Who is society primarily sinning against? Well first and foremost, sin is active rebellion against God. Therefore, if there are policies or systems or structures in place that are unjust, they are at odds with God who demands justice. But who is to blame, who is at fault? Know that God has stated that each sinner will be responsible for his or her sin (Ez 18:20). God would not even allow Israel to pronounce a person guilty for the sins of their father or son (Dt 24:16). Therefore, we need to acknowledge that individual sinners will receive their due. However, we know that the work of sinners within a society can lead to societal punishment- as seen in God’s punishment of Sodom & Gomorrah, Israel, Assyria, Babylon, Persia, etc. And also remember that the effects of sin travel down familial lines (Ex 34:7). If this is true of families, could it not also be true of systems or structures within societies? While policies, systems, or structures may not still be enforced, the effects of their former infamy may still be seen. 

But who is to blame? The world has a few answers: capitalism, classism, racism, ableism, egotism, chauvinism…white people, black people, Jewish people, Hispanic people, the Russians, the Iranians…the Republicans, Democrats, millennials, conservatives, liberals, libertarians, anarchists. A more honest answer would be specifically “my neighbor”.

I believe the Christ-centered answer for who is to blame for the problems we face today is to blame sinners in rebellion against a Holy God. That includes you and I. And when we come to that understanding, we no longer see our neighbors as morally reprehensible or “unwoke”, but rather we see them as spiritually broken. And we recognize that the brokenness is mutual. The only thing keeping us from self-destruction and destroying the little space God has given us on this earth is his grace toward us. And the only thing that is going to heal us or our neighbors is the hope extended to all in the gospel of Jesus, that we can be new creation. This is the inheritance of God’s children in Jesus and the principles of the kingdom of God are then extended to societal realms when believers are empowered to make changes in the societies around them. What I mean is that Christians can speak up and say something is wrong with society, they can exercise the rights afforded them by the governing authorities to fix what is wrong (a fairly new right in the history of the world). However, Christians must recognize that no societal change “extends the kingdom of God”, no societal change can fix what is ultimately wrong, and even if we can create a world free of what we desire to abolish, sinful people will corrupt the very structures and systems we seek to employ. Does that mean we shouldn’t seek to fix what is wrong in the world around us? Absolutely not. Our Christian witness is at stake and it’s what we’re called to. After all, we are not to love in word or talk but in action and truth (1 John 3:18).

IV. The gospel solution

The gospel is what will change the hearts of men and lead to true, long-lasting change. For further proof, I’d like to point you to a Jewish peasant carpenter who invested deeply in the lives of a few men and dedicated himself to “gospel ministry” while ignoring the calls for social justice against the Romans and ignoring the hope placed upon him to restore his nation through protest and might. After his death and resurrection, Jesus sent his followers into the world where some would write letters to the church encouraging obedience to unjust authorities and honorable cooperation in unfortunate circumstances. What was central to their teaching? The gospel. And what changed Western civilization? The message of the gospel. It wasn’t primarily protest (sorry protestants) that led to societal change, it wasn’t promises of wealth or coerced “conversions”, it was the gospel message and its implications for personal and societal behavior. Christian history has shades of sinfulness on every page, but it’s the gospel that keeps reforming individuals and societies for the better. Therefore, we preach. Will action follow the preaching of the gospel? Absolutely. My concern today is for the ideas informing Christian action. Is our action shaped by the word of God or worldly ideologies? Are we able to know the difference? Time will reveal it.

See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world, and not according to Christ.

                                                                                                                        Col 3:8

-Kyle