This blog has moved, from elsewhere!

Hey, readers!

At one time I moved my blog from this site to my own site, via Wordpress:  revsusangillespie.com.

That has become unsustainable, so I'm baaaack.

Should you desire, you can read past blog posts at that site - they will still be there!

Is God punishing our nation with the Coronavirus?

This is the kind of question people worry about whenever anything awful happens, particularly the kinds of things we have no control over.  And sadly, we are starting to see pronouncements to this effect in the media.

But for those of us who know Jesus, we ought to be able to frame it better.

Often people who ask this question are thinking of general ideas about deities (yes, for example, the Greek and Roman gods were frequently punishing people) or about God as he is described in the Old Testament, in which nations sometimes were shown God’s wrath for their unjust behavior (or refusal to see Israel’s God as in charge, for example the ten plagues on Egypt).

But the new covenant in Jesus makes things different.

When Jesus came, he was initiating a new covenant with humanity from God, and it was not like the ‘first covenant’ with the children of Israel (the Old Testament).

First of all, Jesus was himself God, the Son who came to take on flesh.  In Colossians, Paul writes of him as the “Image of the invisible God” – so what we want to know about God, we can see in Jesus.  “For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities….He is before all things, and in him all things hold together….God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.” (See Colossians 1:16-20)

Jesus came to show people what God was like, AND to show us more completely what it was God wanted from humans – that God wants relationship with us.  People were meant for relationship with God, but that companionship was broken due to human “sin” – which comes from human refusal to trust God. 

So, Jesus came to reconcile humans and God, by taking the consequences of human sin on himself: ”He forgave us all our sins, having canceled the charge of our legal indebtedness which stood against us and condemned us; he has taken it away, nailing it to the cross.”  (Colossians 2:13-15)

Jesus came to bear our sin because we could not.  He came to reconcile humanity to God, because we were far away from God.  He came to give us a new life, even a new identity, in him.  He came to create a new family out of those who trust him from every “tribe, tongue and nation” on earth, making a new nation, the people of the new covenant, where God is king.

This is a personal invitation:  we each are invited to meet God through Jesus, to put our trust in his love, to begin a new life in following Jesus.  We are, when we do that, included in the new people of God.  We are, the New Testament says, then made new, starting over again a new life in companionship with God.  We are no longer estranged from him.

So what about the nations of the world?

“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.  For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.”  (John 3:16-17)

God loves the world, and so he sent the world his Son, who took the punishment and consequences of the world’s rebellion against and resentment of God on himself, rescuing humanity from it all and setting us free to begin a new life in relationship with God, through Jesus, as part of his new nation (1 Peter 2:9), his new kingdom.

That’s the good news, and there is precious little in the New Testament about God punishing nations, in these days, for their sin – after all, if Jesus took our punishment on the cross, why would God be reserving a little bit for this group or that group?   “We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to our own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all” (Isaiah 53:6)

And because God is calling together a new nation, in which he is king, and this is the covenant he is making with the people of all nations, we do not see him in the New Testament punishing nations (until we get to Revelation). 

But, what then about the wrath of God? 

That’s a big subject but the New Testament does point to a day when God will work his wrath on a world that continues to refuse him - the “final day,” the judgment day of God, described in Revelation. 

Of course, that book is highly symbolic in its language and images, so we don’t have much to go on but for the description in chapter 20 of a judgment:  “The dead were judged according to what they had done as recorded in the books….then death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire.  The lake of fire is the second death.  All whose names were not found written in the book of life were thrown into the lake of fire.”

This time of judgment is referred to several times in the New Testament by Jesus and others, but obliquely.  All we know, is that there is a time when justice will be done for the injustices suffered in this world, when those who have been God’s enemies will be defeated (most of all, the devil!). 

Importantly, that doesn’t indicate that Coronavirus, or earthquakes or hurricanes or tornadoes, are God’s judgment now on anyone.  In fact, Jesus – talking about the coming of the end of the world – tells us not to be alarmed by such things (Matt 24).  There is an end, but those things are not it.  There is going to be judgment, but this isn’t it.  And when others tried to get Jesus to say that someone’s ailment was God’s judgment on their sin, he refused to do it (see John 9).

Instead, two things:

First of all, there IS A SIGN to the world about God’s attitude about our sin and injustices.  You know what it is?  People who are made new in Christ; the church! 

God has called us into new life in him, filled us with His Spirit, made us new and given us some commandments which have something in common: to love God, to love our neighbor, to love our enemies, and to love one another as Jesus loved us! 

This is the sign to the world that God really did send Jesus (John 13:34-35), and the sign to the world that God loves US ALL, and that God calls others into the same new life we ourselves have received.  To receive this new life is pictured in Revelation as having one’s name written in the Book of Life.  To trust God in Jesus, is to escape judgment, because Jesus took that judgment on himself.

Set free, made alive, inhabited by God the Spirit, our role is to bring this good news everywhere we go, and to demonstrate it by the way we love. 

We are to accept the blows of those who don’t understand, as Jesus did; we are to forgive those who sin against us, as Jesus did.  We are to live in the hope of eternity, and live generously, as Jesus did.  We are to bring healing and hope to the best of our Spirit-filled ability, as Jesus did.

This is the sign to the world that God is for real, and Jesus really showed us what God’s like.

It is NOT our job to go out to a frightened world and tell them they are under judgment for this sin or that sin, when they do not know God at all and have no real idea what we’re talking about.  The fruit of this is, they write us off.  Why wouldn’t they?  We’d sound proud and hateful, almost like we enjoy the idea.  It rarely brings anyone to find and trust Jesus.

(It’s interesting that those who do that, pick out the things that don’t involve them.   High on the list are abortion and homosexuality. Why would God be visiting judgment on us for abortion, but seem not to care when we fail to manage the earth wisely he gave us stewardship over, or for failing to welcome refugees (both of these are in the Bible)?  If God were going to visit a virus on us for sin, there is a very long list and it would capture all of us.)

Is God pained by our sin?  Yes he is.  Is God angry at the unjust ways humans treat each other?  Yes, he is!  But while he is “storing up his wrath for the day of judgment” (Romans 2:5), HE IS STILL pouring out grace on this world in Jesus, which is meant to be distributed by the followers of Jesus!

Is the Coronavirus God’s judgment on us?

No, death and separation from God are his judgment on us – the very things that Jesus conquered for us, and eliminated for us.  “Very truly, I tell you” Jesus says in John 5, “whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be judged but has crossed over from death to life."

Coronavirus is just another part of this broken creation (another theological treatise to be written….), another danger in a world that death is part of, another sign that a separation has taken place. 

And this time which is dominated by it?  It is another time for the church to be the sign of life, however we may, in Christ. 

Visit my new blog....

This blog has moved!
Find me at:
http://trinitylivingstonpastor.tumblr.com/

"Can We Stop Being Afraid Now?"

That was the question posed this morning in a newspaper column: now that Osama bin Laden is dead, can we go back to when we weren't concerned a terrorist attack loomed around the corner? Can we go back to a world where we trusted strangers? Not only can we keep our shoes on at the airport, but can we go back to carefree travel? Can we go back to when we were seriously discussing in this country how we could spend the "peace dividend" - the surplus funds we'd gathered because we weren't spending our money on war?
Can we stop being afraid now?
On the one hand, the answer to the question, sadly, is no: not only are bin Laden's compatriots still out there and now enraged, but the organization he founded has metastasized. Al Qaeda is now a franchise operation, and truth be told, there are probably plenty of would-be sole practitioners, too.
As Jesus said, "those who live by the sword, die by the sword" - and everyone's flashing swords these days. In reality, we probably were the beneficiaries of an unusual time in our history, back before 9/11/01 when we thought we were safe.
I knew things had changed irrevocably when an armed man with a teenaged accomplice terrorized the DC area by shooting people randomly at gas stations. What is it, after all, that keeps these things from happening all the time? When socialization has unraveled to the point where such a thing is possible, then fear becomes the order of the day, doesn't it?
After all, what defense can you have against someone who is willing to kill himself to kill you - particularly if you want to live?
So, no: on that level, we can't stop being afraid. There are all manner of deadly forces out there, from al Qaeda to a random crazy person, along with the usual death-dealers of accident, tragedy and illness. And shooting one death-dealer probably has little effect on all the rest.

But on another level, we just celebrated the event that means we CAN stop being afraid.
This is the essence of the Christian story.
The world is broken. Do you believe that? The world is so broken that people will kill other people just to prove they were right. The one thing we can't do is make life - but we have perfected so many ways to take it away, as though that were equivalent.
The world is so broken that some people take it upon themselves to terrorize other people: if that is the only way they can have power over others, they will do almost anything to create that condition.
The world is so broken that the highest creation of God - humans - spend their time in futile striving, but in time all of them will be dead.
It's into that kind of world that God sent Jesus. Jesus came to set things right. He taught us that we didn't know much about life, power, authority or what we were made for. He acted out the kind of compassion, humility and love we WERE made for, and then he shouldered all the brokenness himself and took it to the cross, while humanity mocked him for it.
That would be noble and all in itself, but his resurrection changed everything irrevocably. Now we know that he was right: it is all broken and the kingdom of God for which we were made is not like this at all. Now we know we can not only be forgiven for behaving that way but we can be made new so that we don't continue to behave that way. Now we know that God is making all things new and the future holds a day when the heavens and earth will be remade, when God will dwell in our midst and all the deadly, violent jockeying for power will end. Now we know God will keep all his promises.
To put our faith in Jesus is to transfer our citizenship from these earthly tribes where all is fighting, to the kingdom of God where Jesus has already won. To be a Christian is to be made new now, to have the very Spirit of God within us, shaping us. To be a Christian is to have our minds set on things above - and from that perspective to re-evaluate what's going on where we live.
So CAN we stop being afraid?
In our flesh, as the apostle Paul would put it, we're going to experience fear as we contemplate our vulnerability and even more, the vulnerability of those we love. Jesus was overwhelmed in the garden of Gethsemane, too: the will to survive is part of our original equipment.
But if we are cooperating with the Holy Spirit within, if we are getting the message from our reading of the Bible, we must not act from fear. How many times are we told in the pages of the New Testament not to be afraid?
Fear is the opposite of faith. Faith is a usually a decision, a commitment, a determination to do what we have been told by our Lord to do, no matter how we feel about it.
Imagine that brother Ananias, called to lay hands on the apostle Paul just after his Damascus Road experience (in Acts 9). Paul (called Saul then) was a true terrorist to Christians - he was out to arrest and imprison them as enemies of God! Ananias, in his flesh, had every reason to believe that obedience to the Lord in this call just might result in his own imprisonment or worse.
But he did what he was called to do. He put his faith in doing things God's way, not in what would have been understandable as self-defense. He chose faith, not fear.
As I read the fear-filled directives of many who call themselves Christians, but seem to ally themselves with building walls, getting bigger weapons, killing more enemies and most of all, sending away and keeping out those who just might look like someone who is a terrorist or is a member of the religion so many of the terrorists believe authorizes their behavior, I want to ask: since when are Christians supposed to act from fear?
Feel fear? Sure; can't avoid it. But enshrine fear? Make fear our operating value? No. Be not afraid.
It is in just such moments as these that our faith is tested and shows itself for what it is (or is not). Do we believe that God has his hand on us? That he knows what is best for us and that "all things work together for good for those who are called according to his purpose"? (Rom 8) Are we "seeking first the kingdom of God"? (Matt 6) Are we part of God's purpose, his ongoing work in the world - are we "in Christ"?
So no, we can't stop being afraid: "they" are still out there. Death still stalks humanity and now there are more ways to be killed, and more people who believe it is their duty to kill. How sad. How tragic. What a blight on the good creation of God. There is really little to celebrate; though bin Laden is dead, it doesn't change much - and even he was once somebody's baby, and it could have been different.
But yes, we CAN stop being afraid - we know that God is at work. We know that God's purposes are not all about violence and hatred and who is on top - we know, because of the way that Jesus behaved.
The Bible implies that we who belong to Jesus have already, in the spirit, begun the eternal life we've been saved to. We are already immortal, already have nothing of consequence to lose; we are already agents of God's very different kingdom in the midst of this broken world.
We can ignore all that. We can bury it under an avalanche of bitterness and anger and fear. We can prefer to fight this world's fights and grieve the spirit of God. We can miss out on what God is doing. We can choose to live in fear.
But if we do, what we are doing is not at all "Christian."

Addendum: just read this from _Luke for Everyone_ by NT Wright:
"The real slave-master, keeping the human race in bondage, is death itself. Earthly tyrants borrow power from death to boost their rule; that's why crucifixion was such a symbol of Roman authority. Victory over death robs the powers of their main threat...Jesus has led God's new people out of slavery, and now invites them to accompany him on the new journey to the promised land...Welcome to God's new world."

Why We Wear the Ashes

Said Musa was released from Afghani custody on Feb. 25.
That was something of a miracle, because he was about to be tried and sentenced to death for converting to Christianity, an accusation he doesn’t deny. According to Afghanistan law, conversion from Islam to another religion is unlawful and the sentence is death – and there is no exception, said an Afghani prosecutor.

It was only because of intense international pressure that the Afghanistan government found it convenient to let Mr. Musa go and leave the country. An amputee himself, he had worked for 15 years for the International Committee of the Red Cross fitting other amputees with prosthetics. He was a father and a husband.
And, he had come to put his faith in Jesus in eight or nine years ago. He was arrested in May after appearing on a television broadcast affirming his faith in Christ.

During his nine months of imprisonment, he said he was tortured in every way, and mocked and humiliated by both jailers and fellow inmates. He wrote an open letter to our president, and to every other Western leader, asking for the kind of pressure that ultimately did lead to his release.
His letter is a testament to a faith in Christ that knows the stakes: in broken English he wrote, “I agree with long imprisonment about my faith, even for long life. Because I’m the sinnest person in the world. ... I also agree with died on cross of my pride. I also agree with the sacrifice [of] my life in public. I will tell the faith in the Lord Jesus Christ son of God and other believers will take courage and be strong in their faith.”

Although Mr. Musa was freed, he was not alone, and other believers in Jesus in Afghanistan and other countries suffer imprisonment, torture and the threat of execution in the wake of having put their faith in Jesus.

Ash Wednesday was born in a world like that.
In Afghanistan today, to come to believe that Jesus is the Son of God, the savior of the world and my savior, who loves me, gave his life for me and bids me lose my life for his sake that I might find my real life in him, is not just words.
And in other places and times on earth, it has also been literally true that to follow Jesus was to risk losing everything – from job to family to life itself. It was that way for the earliest Christians when Rome rose against them. And the memory of that time was still fresh in the Gentile parts of the world where the church grew in its early centuries.

By the fourth century after Christ, those who had come to Christ in faith and wished to join themselves to his church were initiated into the church in baptism, which usually took place on Easter Sunday, after a three-year period of teaching.

As that auspicious baptism date drew near, these new ones were assigned a 40-day time of fasting, reflection and repentance: after all, to join the church publicly, was to risk a real physical death.

Of course, the Bible says that to join the church in baptism is to die to one’s old life and to be reborn to a new one, but this needed less explanation when it actually did entail huge social, financial and perhaps the ultimate loss.

So, it makes sense that one should examine oneself carefully before taking an action with such enormous consequences. One should examine one’s heart for leftover allegiances to a world which the scriptures tell us is passing away. One should reflect on the things that are still loved more than Jesus and his kingdom – because those things are the soft spots of our souls that invite Satan’s attack. And one should repent of these unworthy loves and less-worthy allegiances, and believe the good news of the kingdom of God…because we aren’t just pretending here: the stakes are high!
In the fourth century, when this practice began, the rest of the congregation, in solidarity with the new believers, joined them in their time of reflection and repentance – and the spiritual practice of Lent was born.
Thus came the ashes of Ash Wednesday. From dust we came and to dust we return. This world can threaten us with death, but whether we die at the age of 110 in our beds or at the hands of those who seek to turn us from our faith in Jesus, though a physical death is on the calendar for us all, there is a kind of death we will never experience, if we have been joined to Christ: Jesus entered that death – the separation from God because of our sin - for us, and rescued us from it. And then Jesus told us to take up our cross, die to our old lives, and come follow him into eternal and abundant life.

To wear the ashes is to embrace Christ’s death and the death of our old selves and to walk into the new life of baptism with our eyes wide open. It is to embrace our faith that Jesus knew what he was talking about when he said that the one who wants to save his life will lose it,
but that the one who loses his life for Jesus’ sake will find it…that life joined to Christ, welcomed by the Father and empowered by the Spirit lasts forever, and is a life worth living even if others kill me for it.

Said Musa knows the truth of this, and though he is free of Afghani prosecution, he is a man marked by the ashes of being willing to die for his knowledge of Jesus as his savior.

But we who live in a world where the cost doesn’t seem as high are prone to forgetting that this world is not just disinterested in God but hostile to him. Friendship with the world is enmity against God, James wrote. Not friendship with people – Jesus demonstrated how to be friends with anyone and everyone – but the scriptures say that there is a kingdom of this world that isn’t interested in giving up power or authority to God, that seeks to rule in God’s place and actively resists God’s ways.

We all live in that kingdom every day, and its messages soak into our hearts and minds. You could say that the kingdom of this world is killing us softly with its own song, and we are unaware of the bars of its stealthy persecution closing around us as our minds and hearts are wooed from what it means to love God with our whole selves.

So Ash Wednesday now speaks to us, and invites us into a holy Lent: to examine the state of our hearts and minds…to consider the crazy claims of Jesus and to say “yes” to him again in the midst of a world that lies to us about who we are and who God is. To examine what other loves we have put on his throne in our affections, to listen carefully to leading of the Holy Spirit about our sin, about our self-deceptions, about the grievances against others and refusal to forgive that we have nurtured in spite of God’s commandments, about the love we have withheld from the unlovely and about the flirtations with destruction we have permitted in our lives.

We wear the Ashes to say we have died by faith to the kingdoms of this world. We have died to the lies about what ‘real life’ is and to the temptation to be – or to invent – our own god.

God help us, we believe in Jesus who came to us, who showed us how loved we are by God, who healed us, lifted us up, fed us, gave us a new name and a place in his kingdom and told us he would never leave or forsake us, not even should a new worldly king arise who wants to kill us for our faith in him.

We wear the ashes to say with Peter, you are the One with the words of eternal life, where else would we go? We wear the ashes to agree with Paul, that we have died already since we are united to Christ in his death, and our real life is hidden with Christ in God, and will only be revealed in its fullness and glory when Christ comes again.

We wear the ashes to say we are in this world but not of it, and though he slay me, yet will I trust him.

For me, wearing the ashes feels like a determination of the will, to take my mind and heart where they naturally do not want to go – into my own soul with the Holy Spirit illuminating the dark corners to see what I have allowed to fester there in my own moments of doubt, fear and selfishness. It is a decision to repent, to turn, to rethink, to wake up and become aware.

It is only safe to do that because Jesus came to cleanse me from my sinfulness and my unworthiness by bearing it himself on the cross. He is not interested in my heroic attempts to be holy apart from him; instead, he comes to the one on her knees who says, if you are willing, you can make me clean…and he says, I am willing.


We wear the ashes to say we will take seriously this next 40 days, to ferret out the things that have claimed too much of our hearts, that we might give our hearts to Jesus.
We wear the ashes to say we will be transformed by the renewing of our minds, that the ongoing monologue of our consciousness might more resemble the words of Christ.
We wear the ashes to say, the kingdoms of this world can’t really kill me - Christ has already died for me – I am determined to live in his life-giving power and to turn from everything that gets in the way of that.

The Apostle Paul writes in his letter to the Romans that it is in our baptism that we identify with Christ’s death – almost as though in baptism we are inserted into Christ, joined to him, so that his death is our death, his life our life, his resurrection our resurrection, and his welcome home by the Father, our welcome home by the Father.

How ironic, then, that the authorities in Afghanistan became aware of Said Musa’s conversion, because an Afghani television station aired a video tape of aid workers conducting a public baptism. In other words, it was baptism’s proclamation of death and new life
that prompted a very real threat of physical death to Said Musa. Almost as though the kingdom of this world wanted to say, did God really say that in Christ was life? Do you believe it, Said Musa?

We, too, will be confronted some day in some way, by an evil demand to know whether God’s promises are true. We wear the ashes to say yes and mean it and proceed to live a real repentance.

May God grant us a holy Lent.

How Jones Got It So Wrong

Pastor Jones reads the Bible wrong.

There's no news in that statement, I know. But it's important for us who follow Jesus to understand what's wrong with his behavior, above and beyond the pragmatics of danger to troops overseas and Christians in majority-Muslim lands.

After all, he is right that he is not strictly responsible for murderous deeds that might be done by others because they are offended.

What's wrong about Jones' behavior is that it doesn't pass the "What Would Jesus Do?" test.

Faced with situations in life that seem to demand a response from us, that has to be our question, even over and above "what does the Bible say?" As we have seen in the media, parts of the Bible can be cherry-picked to support or undermine almost anything; not everything written in the Bible is there for us to emulate! Instead, we who call ourselves "Christ-ians" must read the Bible through a Jesus-lens. What would Jesus do?

Some will point out that Jesus overthrew the money-changers' tables, called the Pharisees white-washed sepulchres and intentionally provoked religious authorities by healing on the Sabbath - over and over again. Jesus was not too meek and mild to be confrontational with untruth and to stage events that got attention so he could make his point! So maybe Quran-burning is possibly something he would do?

But those who say that miss the context: Jesus was provoking his co-religionists, his brothers in heritage and faith, to point out how they had missed the call of God in their own scripture and tradition. What Jesus was doing came not from hatred but love, as his grief-stricken cry on the way into Jerusalem attests. "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing." (Matt 23:37)

We don't see Jesus attacking Romans or Samaritans; we don't see him pulling stunts to get attention for his contempt of their ways. Emphatically not; instead we see him encountering, dialoging with, inviting and even healing those outside his religious tradition, that they might discover the love of God...and his call to follow. What Jesus demonstrates for us is a profound respect for people who had no previous access to the way of God. He is to them the epitome of Grace.

In contrast, the Florida preacher demonstrates contempt and gracelessness to a people who can only react with fear. His stunts are calculated not only to inflame radical Muslims, but to whip up reactions that will bring out the worst of American-civic-religion-called-"Christianity" which does not stop to consider what Jesus would do at all. What his actions, statements and contempt display, is that the one he seems to be most concerned with promoting is himself, no matter what his behavior does to the name and glory of God, the message of Jesus, or the safety of others.

What should followers of Jesus do? It seems most appropriate that we call out our co-religionist, our brother, in Jesus' terms: "Woe to you... You shut the kingdom of heaven in men's faces. You yourselves do not enter, nor will you let those enter who are trying to." (Matt 23:13) We ought not be silent (and indeed, many wise Christian voices are being heard today - see this one: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eugene-cho/what-would-jesus-do-burn-_b_708994.html). What this man represents is not the gospel and there should be no mistake about it. In fact, he is doing what Jesus would NOT do.

But, neither should we indulge contempt toward the man himself:
"Brothers, if someone is caught in a sin, you who are spiritual should restore him gently. But watch yourself, or you also may be tempted." (Gal. 6:1)

This is hard, since our personal embarrassment may be deep! But, what did Jesus do? Jesus accepted dinner invitations from many whose public piety he publicly challenged - for their sake. May our hearts be like his.

You can't make Jesus an "individualist"

The alarming sight of evangelical celebrities making common cause with Glenn Beck at his rally on Saturday should have been enough to prompt this post.

But today's news of Jerry Falwell, Jr. and Peter Lillback, the president of Westminster Reformed Seminary, appearing on Beck's show make this post necessary.

The gospel is only about individual salvation?
Beck had his guests on to shore up his statement that what Jesus preached was an individual salvation...only. "It's individual salvation. The Lord doesn't call us up, review our salvation and go, 'Ok now hang on just a second. Now serving group number 10!' It's individual. Your church is either for socialist government or the living of the gospel. It's either about God or government," says Beck, according to Christianity Today magazine.

His guests appear, in news accounts, to agree with him - although a careful look at the quotes suggests that they may not have been talking about the same thing.

That's good, because while the Bible certainly teaches us that we each are responsible before God for receiving salvation by faith in Christ, our responsibility as Christians is not "individual" at all - not if that means we just have to keep our own noses clean and each of us is on our own - and that's the whole point of the gospel!

I understand why many evangelicals believe that: my discipleship as a believer began in the kind of churches that unfortunately (and perhaps inadvertently) teach that. It's "Jesus and me...perfect together" to borrow from an old NJ tourism commercial. I used to think that my relationship with Jesus was the beginning and the end of the whole enterprise called Christianity. I got together with other Christians to celebrate it, and to do evangelism and missionary-work (which is mostly evangelistic or there is no point to it), but that was just a) convenient and b) more fun. I learned to disparage churches that seemed to spend their time and assets doing "social work" - I thought they didn't understand that this ship was going down, and the only important work was getting people into the lifeboats: when Jesus came again and destroyed the earth, what point would there be in having made the world a better place, if its inhabitants went to hell?

The problem with seeing the gospel through that lens is that I just didn't know what to do with things Jesus said and did. Why did Jesus begin his ministry quoting Isaiah, "the Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners, and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor," saying "today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing"? (Luke 4). Why didn't he just SAY what he came for was to rescue individuals from sin and death (and that's all)?

Why is the Sermon on the Mount the way it is? Many evangelicals understand what Jesus is saying in Matthew 5-7 to be a charge to be a very special community, one in which married people stay married, never commit adultery, give to the needy, pray in secret and don't worry, so that other individuals will want to come to faith in Jesus, too, and have this special individual relationship. And they're not wrong: that is partly what it's about.

But why does Jesus start out talking about the poor being blessed, about the meek and mourning being rewarded? And why, in the whole thing, does Jesus continue to talk to "you" in the plural?

What are all those healings, exorcisms and nature miracles about - why so many? After all, couldn't Jesus have done a couple of healings and miracles as calling cards for his divinity, and then gone straight to the cross to accomplish our salvation? And why did Mary, in her exultant "song" about her call to be the mother of the Lord, declare that what God was doing in it was bringing down rulers, lifting up the humble, filling the hungry with good things and sending the rich away empty?

I confess that I always found some discomfort in reading the gospels, because these things didn't make sense to me - and as I recall, we didn't read the synoptic gospels much at all, and tended to stay in the gospel of John and even more in the epistles, where specific instructions for individuals were more prominent.

It was only later that I learned to see that what Jesus continually talked about was the kingdom of God, and that what he said, and even more, what he did, was about the advance of God's kingdom through him.

When he spoke about being "anointed" at the beginning of his ministry, it was about being anointed King: God's kingdom, his church, was not just a convenient way for all those individual saved people to enjoy one another's company, but it is the whole idea: the kingdom of God is God's people together, and together they are to continue his work - to continue the advance of God's kingdom, in which the poor are blessed, being "set free" is the order of the day for all kinds of bondage: physical, spiritual, financial, social.

Thus we read such stories as the healing of the woman with the issue of blood: her bondage was not just physical, it was also social, and so Jesus set her free from her ailment, but also in a public healing set her free from the ostracism it had brought.

The king is coming back - not just to destroy the earth and rescue the saved, but instead to establish his kingdom in "the new heavens and the new earth," in which the brokenness of the world will be set right.

But is that "social justice"?
OK, fine, but what does that have to do with the "social justice" gospel that Glenn Beck derides and is now getting evangelicals to stand up with him about?

The king is coming, true - but Jesus established the kingdom of God for now, in the church. We are here to do his work - and the kingdom of God, as it advances, sets free. The Bible's view is that the problems of the world are directly linked to the fallenness of the world.

The key word, something we've lost, is "shalom" - in both Hebrew and Greek, the word we translate "peace" means much more: it means wholeness, harmony, well-being. Within the kingdom of God, because of Jesus' coming, death and resurrection, there is supposed to be shalom, the quality of life in the "garden," in paradise - as it was before everything fell. That's what 1 Corinthians 13 is about; that's what all those exhortations in Colossians are about; that's what the Sermon on the Mount is about.

But how can such a "body of Christ" exist within our communities, without reaching out to touch the broken world in which it exists?

Thus Jesus reached out beyond the boundaries of the Jewish community in which he walked, outraging some, by healing and touching Samaritans, gentiles and Roman soldiers. In the same way, Jesus violated the boundaries everyone "knew" about "sinners" - the broken people in their midst who were assumed to have deserved whatever they struggled with; the out-and-out rebellious like the woman caught in adultery and the tax collectors who collaborated with Israel's occupiers. The kingdom of God sets things right - the world will know us by our love. The invasion of the kingdom of God heals and sets free.


OK, but even if that's true, Glenn Beck and I should have no argument with each other, really, right? After all, what he's really concerned about is "government reach" - he denounces social justice because he wants to deride churches who think government programs are good. He really doesn't care if I preach that the church is the point, that individual faith by itself is not enough, or that Christians acting in concert through the church ought to be impacting the brokenness of the world.

The argument is about policy, so let's keep it there
Instead, the real discussion ought to be about democracy. The real question is not about churches but about Americans. And the specific decisions have to do with government's role.

How do Americans want to live together? Do we want to help one another when trouble strikes? Do we want to work together so that when recession comes, there aren't stark winners and losers? When illness strikes, will we help one another? Or do we prefer to live in a community where our ability to survive or thrive when we are on the receiving end of trouble is relative to our connections: if we have family, or church, or enough money, we'll be okay, but if not, well....

What we have inherited from the generations before us are national policies that provide the much heralded and derided "safety net" - there are some fundamental protections in place for all of us, paid for by those of us who can, through the channel of a government of our own making.

Social security, Medicare, Medicaid, disability insurance, unemployment insurance, etc., were policy decisions made by the people Americans voted for to do our business, and because of those things many people who would live in abject poverty do not; many people who would have died prematurely, didn't.

These are not specifically Christian decisions; they were American ones.

And there are two kinds of American arguments going on now about them.

One discussion has to do with pragmatics - costs, structure, taxes, waste and fraud. These arguments have to do with implementing such things well.

But the other argument is about doing these things together at all. Into this argument come voices who proclaim "personal responsibility": those who are in need of these programs have failed to provide properly for themselves, and it is not the responsibility of other Americans to provide for them.

This argument is the radical individualist one, the libertarian one - each of us has radical freedom to make our own choices, and our own mistakes...but if they make us poor or sick, we get what we get. It's no one else's job to save us.

My rejoinder (as an American) is that the pure application of that position would leave us in a world most of us really don't want to live in. In fact, I'd argue that most of those who make that argument are banking on what they perceive to be their own assets - family, community, money, property (even, truth be told, race) - so that if the wolves were at the door, once they ran out of their own assets, they wouldn't be on their own at all.

I suspect that what they really mean is that they are tired to paying the bills for "them" - the people not of their own community or family, the "others" who seem to be sucking up all the resources. It (mostly) goes unsaid, and that way people can picture whatever "them" seems most threatening, whether illegal immigrants, city dwellers, those of other races or ethnicities, or old people.

In the argument in the public square, I'd like to say that the policies enacted in the past - the safety net - makes life much more liveable for all of us, and even provides us with enough security as a culture so that individuals can take the entrepreneurial risks that enrich all of us. I don't want to live in a society without protections that make for softer landings when trouble comes, nor do I want to live in a society where we refuse to care for one another outside of our own little community.

That's the way it looks to me; others, including other Christians, may validly argue another point of view that has to do with policy: better ways to do things as a society.

Those are policy decisions on which we argue, campaign and vote, and our democratic process provides ways for us resolve and implement these issues fairly. Of course, not everyone will get their way, and those who don't, get to campaign another day to capture pubic opinion and see their views implemented.

But you can't draft Jesus into the individualist argument.
But the introduction of an individualist brand of Christianity, which is unbiblical, into the debate which is then fused to individualist politics, must be countered.

There is no Jesus argument against taxes - Jesus paid them, even though there were others in his culture arguing against paying them. Paul specifically enjoins us in Romans to pay them, and honor the emperor, too! One's argument for or against tax increases must be made on policy (because in our form of government, 'we' are the emperor - "of, by and for the people"), not on Bible verses.

There is no Jesus argument against a nation's social decision together to care for all its elderly citizens through a tax - there just isn't, and to counter that if we didn't have social security, the church could do it through charity and thereby bring everyone to Christ, is just silly. That's not a biblical idea, either: it seems to me that what is really being proposed in that argument is that the church will take care of its own elderly (not likely, either) and triumphally declare that it is better than the world around it by doing so.

Do those who argue this way really believe that God is more pleased by their willing abandonment of elderly neighbors than he would be with their joining in a simple tax to care for all our elderly?

And there certainly is no Jesus argument for withdrawing from social programs to care for Americans, so as to keep our money and only care for "our own," however we define that. Jesus throughout the gospels deliberately crossed social lines to demonstrate that God's love didn't obey such boundaries. There is no way that God is pleased with "Christian" arguments that are based on a fear of others.

There is no "them" for the kingdom of God - our enemies are NOT flesh and blood , say the scriptures - when we begin to think they are, we have become useless to the kingdom.

We need to take to heart that old question, "what would Jesus do?" If we call ourselves Jesus-followers, that needs to be the standard. There were many fights going on in the culture of Jesus' day but he refused to be drawn into them, because he, the King of a new kingdom, was already there, and his purpose was being acted out as he healed and set free, and declared the good news of reconciliation with God. That is not to say that we shouldn't be involved politically - again, in our form of government, 'we' are the emperor, and Christians certainly should be represented in that 'we.'

But what we do, even as we participate, needs to look like Jesus. Much of what is being said in the name of Jesus these days in the public square, does not.