January 23, 2005

Giving Your All

by Pierre Gilbert

Mark 8:27-38

Read: Mark 8:27-29:

Jesus and his disciples went on to the villages around Caesarea Philippi. On the way he asked them, "Who do people say I am?" [28] They replied, "Some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah; and still others, one of the prophets." [29] "But what about you?" he asked. "Who do you say I am?" Peter answered, "You are the Christ."

Who is Jesus Christ? That's the one million dollar question.

What we believe about Jesus Christ always determines the vitality of the Church. The reason is simple. The Church of Christ is composed of those men and women who have recognized their desperate condition as human beings, they have chosen to believe in the living Christ as the answer for their need and they have been transformed by his power. Without a clear recognition of these truths, churches inexorably dwindle into mere human institutions or to put it mildly, religious social clubs, and we might as well face it, the age of religious clubs is over.

Losing the Vertical

The tragic decline of the main-line churches in Canada and the United States is a sad example of what happens when a religious intellectual elite actively promotes a version of the Christian faith that strips it of its vertical dimension and its absolute claims on ultimate reality.

The old fundamentalist/liberal controversy was not really a conflict between those who claimed to care for the whole person (the so-called social Gospel), and those who were described as caring only for the soul. The debate essentially centered on the nature of Christ. Bultmann focused the matter when he gave us a New Testament devoid of supernatural and a Christ drained of his deity. The real issue was Christological, the rest was diversion.

No one is immunized against this threat. In an increasingly secular, anti-Christian and pluralistic society, North American Christians will have to face all over again the challenge of maintaining and proclaiming a sound view of Jesus Christ.

Sin and Mission

I am willing to wager that the debate will reveal itself in our definition of sin and mission. If, for example, our understanding of sin is reduced to violence and social conflict and nothing more, then redemption will be exclusively defined in terms of conflict resolution and social peace. Christ will ultimately be presented not as the person who demands a change of allegiance, but only as a gentle teacher, a model of peace. Christ logically becomes no more than a glorified Gandhi.

A while ago, I had a conversation with professor Gordon Nickel, who teaches missions at the ACTS seminary consortium in Langley, BC. In October 2003, he participated in a mission consultation on Islam.

He observed that the participants were divided into two groups in terms of what it means to do mission. On the one hand, some felt that the missionary enterprise is essentially an exercise in dialogue designed to help those with whom we interact discover the Gospel of peace in their own culture. They reason that peaceful co-existence and “reconciliation” are the most important needs of humanity. They suggest that this can be achieved by somehow showing that all religions have a peace teaching and by trying to coax it out. But as Gordon pointed out, this approach is often condescending and paternalistic, since not all religions encompass peace as a basic value.

On the other hand, others maintained that, while dialogue and bridge-building are certainly intrinsic to the missionary enterprise, all of that must lead to present the person of Christ as the answer to human sin. The central focus of the proclamation of the gospel is the call to help men and women recognize their desperate condition without Christ and an invitation to turn to him for personal redemption.

Anything else is nothing short of offering sugar pills to a dying man. (643 words).