We run our website the way we wished the whole internet worked: we provide high quality original content with no ads. We are funded solely by your direct support. Please consider supporting this project.

Image by Government of Alberta via Flickr

Have You Taken a Gospel Immunization Shot?

Why does being “Christian” in America make so little difference in so many people’s lives, when the kingdom movement revealed in the New Testament revolutionized people’s lives? This drastic difference is hardly surprising when you consider that the gospel that people are often given today is little more than a contract of acquittal that is signed by praying the sinner’s prayer or some such thing. Nor is it surprising that this powerless version of the gospel absorbs rather than confronts the culture of the people who sign this contract. Within this gospel, people give their mental assent to certain beliefs and are thereby ushered into a “kingdom” that looks almost identical to the earthly kingdom they were supposed to be called out of. They can keep all their cultural assumptions, and, apart from avoiding certain behaviors that are singled out as the deal-breaker sins, their lives can continue on just as before.

All who are invested in the kingdom Jesus inaugurated in this world must find all of this deeply disturbing. What is even more disturbing, however, is that this contract Christianity seems to function for many like an immunization shot. When a person is immunized against the flu, they receive just enough of the flu virus to trick their body into acting as if they had the real thing so that they build up a resistance to the real thing. So too, there is just enough truth in this certainty-seeking, contractual, belief-oriented, individualistic version of Christianity to trick people into thinking they have the real thing. They thus aren’t open to, or hungry for, true faith because they assume they already have it when they believe.

It’s as if they are a husband or wife who has security in their marital pledge rather than in the quality of the relationship he or she pledged to have. Many people today resist the need to cultivate an actual marriage-like relationship with Christ because they find their security in their past pledge. They prayed “the sinners prayer,” got baptized, affirmed the “doctrines essential to salvation,” or did whatever their church requires. So long as they retain a sufficiently strong faith—that is, a faith that is sufficiently free of doubt—they believe these things permanently guarantee they’re okay with God. When they did these things, they were told, the Judge accepted the sacrifice of his Son as the payment for their crimes, they were acquitted, and that is the end of the matter.

This perspective of the gospel preserves just enough of the kingdom exterior to pass for the real thing. But what is easily missed when matters are construed this way is that the kingdom is all about cultivating an actual life-giving relationship with God, and this can only be done moment by moment, for life can only be lived, and relationships can only be cultivated, in the present. Surface resemblances notwithstanding, the legal paradigm easily misses the life flowing out of the relationship with the King that defines the kingdom of God.

—Adapted from Benefit of the Doubt, pages 141-142.

Category:
Tags: , ,
Topics:

Related Reading

The One True Source

In the weeks to come, I’d like to share some thoughts on each of the nine convictions (expressed in A ReKnew Manifesto) that ReKnew seeks to promote. The ReKnew team is convinced that this “Manifesto” articulates aspects of the Kingdom that were largely neglected or misconstrued in traditional Christianity, but that will characterize the new Kingdom…

How to Overcome the Flesh Mindset

Unless you have taken intentional steps to change, the way you presently experience yourself and the world around you was mostly chosen for you, not by you. Think about that. You inherited a way of interpreting the world. Your brain has been in the process of becoming programmed by factors outside your control from the…

Christianity and American Politics

Greg was recently featured in Missio Alliance’s Seminary Dropout podcast to share his thoughts about the role of Christians in American politics. Today we’re sharing part 1 of that conversation. What is the role of the Christian in American politics? Should Christians vote? In this election filled with scandal and unprecedented vitriol, how can we display…

Are You Really Saved?

When God came to rescue us through the Incarnation, the cross and the resurrection, he did a great deal more than merely provide a way for us to avoid the consequences of our sin. In other words, it is more than getting a ticket to heaven. He defeated the enemy that held us in bondage,…

If you really want to defend the poor from Caesar, shouldn’t we use the political means that exist? It’s easy to make your argument when you are in a position of privilege.

Question: I’ve been reading your blogs for a while. I’ve read multiple texts written by you and it’s difficult to listen much longer as someone in poverty. It’s easy to make your argument when you are in a position of privilege. The Church doesn’t have the power and resources to help the poor everywhere. Christians…

The Kingdom of God (Part 2)

The Church is called to be nothing less than “the body of Christ,” a sort of corporate extension of Jesus’ incarnate body. We are called to replicate who Jesus was by manifesting who Jesus is. And this is how we expand the dome in which God is king—the Kingdom of God. By definition, therefore, the…