A Humbled Resistance

A Response to The Irresistible Revolution and Jesus for President

 

Theology (cont.)

 

What is Evangelism?

 

Claiborne sees and rightly critiques a disturbing trend in pop evangelicalism, the marketing of Jesus. 

 

I even heard a pastor explain that he used to work in the corporate world and how he was in a “different kind of business” with the “best product in the world.”  (TIR 45)

 

I knew what Cornell West meant when he said “We’ve taken the blood at the foot of the cross and turned it into Kool-Aid” and marketed it all over the world”  (TIR 112)

 

He shares some of his experiences as a “Jesus Freak” doing evangelism at the mall as a teenager.  Here we get some insight into his current understanding of evangelism:

 

I went to the malls to do goofy skits and hand out religious tracts to try to save innocent shoppers from the fires of hell.”  (TIR 45)

 

I don’t doubt the skits were goofy, and I can empathize with looking back and feeling foolish for participating in them.  These skits (and probably the tracts24 ) almost certainly ended with “just ask Jesus into your heart…” (with the implication being that you too can be as weird as we are).  But what he says next is disturbing.  It appears he saw the problem was not just that the evangelism methods were goofy, but that the evangelism had the wrong (and unnecessary) goal.   He believes the shoppers were innocent and in no danger of God’s judgment.  Scripture disagrees:

 

^ESV Romans 3:10 as it is written: "None is righteous, no, not one; ¹¹ no one understands; no one seeks for God. ¹² All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one."

 

^ESV Hebrews 9:27 And just as it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment,

 

^ESV John 14:6 Jesus said to him, "I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.

 

What About Sin?

 

Claiborne has little to say about sin.  Who wants to talk about sin anyway, right?   In his autobiography, Charles Spurgeon speaks to the importance of taking sin seriously in evangelism:

 

Too many think lightly of sin, and therefore think lightly of the Saviour. He who has stood before his God, convicted and condemned, with the rope about his neck, is the man to weep for joy when he is pardoned, to hate the evil which has been forgiven him, and to live to the honour of the Redeemer by whose blood he has been cleansed.25

 

I found it interesting how Claiborne could take a Scriptural reference to a sinful person and turn it to make it look like their sin was somehow the fault of others:

 

As we study the Scriptures, we see how many texts we have misread, contextualized, and exegeted to hear what we want to.  Like this one about the poor being among us, which Jesus says in the home of a leper and after a poor marginalized woman anoints his feet with perfume. (TIR  160)

 

Let’s see what it means to “hear what we want to” in this story.

 

^ESV Mark 14:3 And while he was at Bethany in the house of Simon the leper, as he was reclining at table, a woman came with an alabaster flask of ointment of pure nard, very costly, and she broke the flask and poured it over his head. ⁴ There were some who said to themselves indignantly, "Why was the ointment wasted like that? ⁵ For this ointment could have been sold for more than three hundred denarii and given to the poor." And they scolded her. ⁶ But Jesus said, "Leave her alone. Why do you trouble her? She has done a beautiful thing to me. ⁷ For you always have the poor with you, and whenever you want, you can do good for them. But you will not always have me.

 

^ESV Luke 7:36 One of the Pharisees asked him to eat with him, and he went into the Pharisee's house and took his place at the table. ³⁷ And behold, a woman of the city, who was a sinner, when she learned that he was reclining at table in the Pharisee's house, brought an alabaster flask of ointment, ³⁸ and standing behind him at his feet, weeping, she began to wet his feet with her tears and wiped them with the hair of her head and kissed his feet and anointed them with the ointment.

 

Why characterize a “woman … who was a sinner” and had “very costly” perfume at her disposal as “marginalized” and poor?  The saddest thing here is that we have taken a text than demonstrates true brokenness, passionate Godly contrition, the pricelessness of Jesus Christ, and the priority of honoring Him over everything (even “redistribution” to the poor), and turned it into a socio-political talking point26 . 

 

 

What About Hell?

 

After an ironically prophetic start to their Gates of Hell section: “There’s a lot of bad theology out there (JFP  290),” Claiborne and Haw proceed to prove themselves right.

 

But have you ever noticed that Jesus didn’t spend much time on hell? Really there are only a couple of times when he spoke of weeping and gnashing of teeth, of hell and God’s judgment, and both had to do with the walls we create between ourselves and our suffering neighbors. (JFP  291)

 

Hell is not the kind of topic that one needs to spend a lot of time discussing in order to get the point across.  Though Jesus did not have lengthy teachings on it, he did speak authoritatively and ominously about it.  Claiborne and Haw are simply wrong here.  Jesus speaks of “weeping and gnashing of teeth” six times in the book of Matthew alone (Matt. 8:12; 13:42; 13:50; 22:13; 24:51; 25:30), and none of these have anything to do with “walls we create between ourselves and our suffering neighbors.” 

 

Theologian R.C. Sproul has seen it before:

There is no biblical concept more grim or terror-invoking than the idea of hell. It is so unpopular with us that few would give credence to it at all except that it comes to us from the teaching of Christ Himself.  Almost all the biblical teaching about hell comes from the lips of Jesus. It is this doctrine, perhaps more than any other, that strains even the Christian’s loyalty to the teaching of Christ. Modern Christians have pushed the limits of minimizing hell in an effort to sidestep or soften Jesus’ own teaching.27

Can we afford to sidestep teachings emphasized by Christ this strongly?

 

^ESV Luke 12:4 "I tell you, my friends, do not fear those who kill the body, and after that have nothing more that they can do. ⁵ But I will warn you whom to fear: fear him who, after he has killed, has authority to cast into hell. Yes, I tell you, fear him!

 

Claiborne and Haw reference C. S. Lewis on hell28 and then drop a theological bomb.

 

C.S. Lewis understood hell not as a place where God locks people out of heaven but as a dungeon that we lock ourselves into.  So we hold the keys of liberation from our own captivity. (JFP  292 emphasis added)

 

Unless I read them wrong, Claiborne and Haw believe that we can save ourselves from hell.  This is a false gospel and a false hope.

 

 

Calcutta and the Great Omission29

 

When we view things from an eternal perspective, our life on this earth is but a vapor (James 4:14): here today—gone tomorrow.  We cannot discount the terrible suffering in the world today as insignificant, but we also cannot lose eternal perspective.  While feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, and comforting the dying are important areas of ministry; they are not our primary calling.  The Great Commission (primary calling) is to go and proclaim the gospel.  It is to go and make disciples, teaching them to observe God’s commandments.  To comfort the dying without proclaiming Christ crucified (the law and the gospel) is a tragedy. It is to lend fleeting comfort to a sinner passing into a Christless eternity.  From a worldly perspective it would seem cruel to tell a suffering and dying person that he has sinned and offended a holy God, but we are not called to be popular or comfortable, we are called to be faithful.  If a person does not know he needs a savior, if he is not called to repent and believe the gospel, he has no hope of justification and peace with God.

 

Claiborne’s view of evangelism and definition of the gospel becomes clear in the section “Shouting The Gospel With Our Lives.”

 

As an evangelical, the only way I know to invite people into the Christian faith is to come and see.  After all, I’m not just trying to get someone to sign a doctrinal statement, but to come to know love, grace, and peace in the incarnation of Jesus, and now in the incarnation of his body, Christ’s church.  So if someone asked me to introduce them to Jesus, I would say, “Come and see. Let me show you Jesus with skin on.”  Sometimes we have evangelicals (usually from the suburbs) who pretentiously ask how we “evangelize people.”  I usually tell them that we bring folks like them here to learn the kingdom of God from the poor, and then send them out to tell the rich and powerful there is another way of life being born in the margins. (TIR 127)

 

The gospel of The Irresistible Revolution is a lifestyle, and evangelism is to invite people to come check it out.  It is clearly offensive to Claiborne to ask him if he has bothered to tell people the truth about sin, judgment, repentance, and faith.

 

With a section title like “Shouting The Gospel With Our Lives,” I knew it was coming.  The most over-used excuse for cowardice in evangelism, and there it was:

 

As the old Franciscan slogan goes, “Preach the gospel always. And when necessary, use words.”  Many spiritual seekers have not been able to hear the words of Christians because the lives of Christians have been making so much horrible noise.  (TIR 127)

 

This saying is a favorite of advocates of “lifestyle evangelism.”  Unfortunately, it has become synonymous with “non-evangelism.”  While it is true that Christian testimony can be seriously harmed by a person’s lifestyle (a wife-beater makes for a poor ambassador), it is just as true that there is no amount of loving kindness, redistribution, or peace-talk that will bring a sinner to the foot of the cross in broken contrition and repentance. When it comes to the gospel, words are always necessary.  The proclamation of the gospel is God’s divinely decreed means through which souls are saved and the kingdom of God is spread.

 

^ESV 1 Corinthians 1:21 For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe.

 

Claiborne expresses his hope for the future of missions in this very revealing quote:

 

I am going to Iraq as a missionary.  In an age of omni-present war, it is my hope that Christian peacemaking becomes the new face of global missions.  May we stand by those who face the impending wrath of empire and whisper, “God loves you, I love you, and if my country bombs your country, I will be right here with you.”  (TIR 367)

 

If we contrast Claiborne’s vision for missions with that of the early church we will see a marked difference.  When Christ commissioned us to go into all the world and preach the gospel, was it a message of “God loves you,” “I love you”, and (basically) “can’t we all just get along?”  Or was that message something else? 

 

Let’s see if we can pick up on a common theme in the message of some key players in the early church.

 

Jesus’ first words preached

^ESV Matthew 4:17 From that time Jesus began to preach, saying, "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand."

 

Jesus to the Church in Laodicia

^ESV Revelation 3:19 Those whom I love, I reprove and discipline, so be zealous and repent.

 

John the Baptist—pre-church, but sounds familiar

^ESV Matthew 3:1 In those days John the Baptist came preaching in the wilderness of Judea, ² "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand."

 

Jesus sends out the twelve two-by-two …

^ESV Mark 6:12 So they went out and proclaimed that people should repent.

 

Peter (former coward now empowered by the Holy Spirit) brings knowledge of sin then…

^ESV Acts 2:38 And Peter said to them, "Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.

 

Peter has a personal message for Simon the magician …

^ESV Acts 8:22 Repent, therefore, of this wickedness of yours, and pray to the Lord that, if possible, the intent of your heart may be forgiven you.

 

Paul addresses the Areopagus

^ESV Acts 17:30 The times of ignorance God overlooked, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent,

 

Paul describes his message to King Agrippa

^ESV Acts 26:19 "Therefore, O King Agrippa, I was not disobedient to the heavenly vision, ²⁰ but declared first to those in Damascus, then in Jerusalem and throughout all the region of Judea, and also to the Gentiles, that they should repent and turn to God, performing deeds in keeping with their repentance.

 

If the message of the early church was to tell everyone of God’s love, one would think that the word “love” would appear at least once in the book of Acts.  It doesn’t.  The message of the early church and the message of the faithful church today is for people to repent and believe (put trust in, have faith in) the gospel. 

 

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