(considering) 8:28

As one of my commenters pointed out, evangelism can be seen as kinda sketchy. Many people go so far as to say that evangelism itself is unethical, as it comments negatively on other religions. So, is it unethical to call our religion unethical for evangelizing? A point to ponder.

The impetus to evangelism is the Gospel (or “Good News”). Many Christians mess up on this point when we talk about it, cause we really don’t understand the Gospel that well. We say things like “Jesus loves you” or “you are accepted by God through Jesus”. Both are VERY important parts of the Gospel, but I submit that they are not in themselves the Gospel.

I think the Gospel is based on something far more foundational to the universe. That we are accepted and loved are not the main show, but supporting threads to the main show. What is that main show? God. A missionary in Mongolia once told me that the upshot of the Gospel is that “Our God Reigns”, even over the sin in our lives, even over hard hearts, and even over the many problems in life, God reigns. He reigns over our sin in that he paid for it with the blood of Jesus. He reigns over our disobedience through Jesus’ obedience on our behalf, and he reigns over death in the resurrection of Jesus, the firstfruits of a new creation which we are part of through faith.

In all this the main actor, the central hero, and the reason for it all is God.

This brings me to the first of the two constraints of ethical evangelism. The love of God.

“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your
mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment.” (Matt 22:37-38, NIV)

Given the above definition of the Gospel, it’s clear why this is the first and the greatest commandment. God is the point. The commandment is first because to a Christian, God IS the Gospel (and Jesus is God, BTW). God is what we were created for, and so the second commandment won’t make much sense for a Christian without the love of God.

This has a few implications for us in evangelism.

1) We must focus the message on God. If Evangelism is ethical, it is based in engendering a different woldview from the one we have, and the basis of the Christian worldview is a knowledge and treasuring of the centrality, authority, and sovereignty of God. When evangelists focus solely on good works or changing the world (as some modern preachers call us to), without appealing to the centrality of God, they are not showing the Gospel. Similarly, when someone calls people to pray a prayer to avoid solely the fires of Hell with no appeal to the greatness of God, they are not bringing the Gospel, they are majoring in minors.
The Gospel is a thing that changes people, it makes all your ideals and goals shift, or it is not the Gospel. It is not about being noble, or about self preservation, or even about acceptance of sinners (though all of it is derivative from the Gospel), it is a change in values. You begin to value God, to love Him with all your heart, and people cannot value a God you don’t tell them about.

2) Evangelists, to be ethical must be Christian. The simple fact is that a person must actually love God to be able to truthfully tell others to love him. We must see God as valuable before we call others to see his value. The problem here is that none of us can love God on our own power. The love of God comes from a change of heart. After all “none seek after God” (Romans 3:11)

3) We can choose the method of evangelism, but we do not have the right to choose the message. Indeed, if you’re a believer, and your heart is moved to actually love God, you wouldn’t want to. In your best times then, you are rather like those annoying hockey fans who can’t shut up about their team. You can’t HELP but talk about how great God is. That said, some think that we can simply avoid the difficult parts of the Gospel (such as the relation of sin and the need for repentance to the glory and holiness of God). That’s ineffective, and it simply avoids the central point, that we must love God.

4) Theology is important. Now this doesn’t mean all Christians have to come to my school and take a class in systematics (though it would benefit many). I mean that people should look at the scriptures and ask “what does this teach me about God?”, remembering that everything said in scripture about God is true (as long as you read it correctly). As I’ve said before, you can’t love what you don’t know, and you definitely can’t help others love what you don’t know. It’s also pointed out by Jesus, as we are called to love God with all our minds.

5) Finally, most importantly and most obviously, God’s action in this is important. Evangelism is working to get others converted to the worldview we as Christians hold, which is centrally related to a God-view. Sinful people don’t see God, as if we did without repentance, we’d die. God is holy, we’re not. God must thus open hearts and minds to actually see him and love him, as God opens the Christian’s mind to do the same. It is God who makes others see Him as valuable, and it is God that they have to see. Not the evangelist.
To that end, prayer is probably the most important part of evangelism, as it is the part most focussed on God. Pray that others may see God’s glory through your words and actions, pray that God would stir your heart and theirs to a passionate love and joy of Him.

It is that joy that we turn to as we deal with loving our neighbour, the next entry.

Excursis:
Hi All, Sorry it’s taken so long to write again, I’ve been a little busy with papers and with the U.S. midterm elections (I’m a bit of a political junkie). Anyway, thanks for your continued reading. I would also like to ask for your prayers, since my busyness has also done some damage to my Bible Reading, as well as to my blogging. I need diligence.

Now to the topic at hand:

I have been dealing with the question of Evangelism for a while. As we said earlier, I believe that it is necessary to evangelize, even from a secular perspective, as it is a Christian worldview that best develops a love for freedom and a basis for democracy.

The problem is that there are good ways to do evangelism, and I think very bad ways. I am grading “good” by how well they exemplify and proclaim the glory of God to those around us (and by extension how well they avoid causng others to devalue God).

The Bible says that all the law and the prophets hang upon the two great commandments, and I think that as such, our understanding of how to do evangelism should hang from them too.

As an aside, I don’t think that these commandments can be understood outside of the whole counsel of scripture. As Article XX of the C of E articles of faith says, no part of scripture should be read in such a way as to make it repugnant to another part. The English reformers had a point, so I will read the commandments within the context of all scripture. (as it is all God breathed).

This is getting long, so I’ll end by mapping the next 2 entries. The first will be how we love God with all our hearts and minds and strength by doing evangelism, and the second will be how we love others as ourselves in evangelism. I will be doing them in this order for a very simple reason: they’re the order we’re given in scripture, and I think that there’s a reason. If we get the order reversed, or if we make the cmmandments fully equivalent, we miss things. If we forget the first one, and pretend that we can love God by simply loving our neighbour, we become functional atheists, and if we focus on the former without the latter, we end up causing our neighbours to see our God as less beautiful and less glorious (which is really, really bad).

Sorry to anybody who reads me and is hoping for the promised strictures for modern Evangelism (which are proposed by a Christian worldview, and reinforced by Holy Scripture). I read something today, on which I felt a profound need to comment. First, though, some context.

I am a former Canadian Anglican. My decision to leave the Anglican Church of Canada was many years in the making, and has meant some painful consequences (and future difficulties) for a man originally training for ordained ministry. The issues were simple, I think the question of the ordination of women may have been wrongly decided a generation ago, I do not see a fidelity to Scripture as central to modern conversations within the Anglican Church in my own diocease, and finally, I could not in good conscience trust my Bishop to keep me accountable to the fellowship of believers. So now I’m a Baptist, with a very strong interest in the Anglican Church. I am one who sees a gross lack of evangelism (which, considering I believe in the need for faith in Jesus to be saved, amounts to negligence causing death on behalf of Western Christians), and prays fervently for a people who will again take Jesus seriously, and that God would make me one of them.

Now on to my rant…

So today I read an address by Bishop Duncan of the United States (a dissident Episcopal Bishop… or more correctly a Bishop loyal to Jesus). There I read a paragraph I found very interesting:

The reform will also not come from the top – as much as we might yearn for such a solution (for Reformations do not come from the top or begin at the center) – but from a thousand altars, like the one at the heart of this House, and from leaders brave enough to embrace unpopular and counter-cultural truths. The future of Anglicanism is most assuredly tied up in this.

That got me to thinking. I talked yesterday about the need for a reformation. A reformation in the sense of a mass turning back to Jesus culturally. I should add that such a mass metanoia (what we call “repentance”) can only be led by those who have already been justified (made to stand before God, now covered by the blood of Jesus, so that His righteousness counts to us, and our sin was paid by Him) by Christ and are being sanctified (perfected in the heart so that we are coming to obey God with joy). By definition, that means members of the Church (meaning those actually “called out”, the ekklesia).

Meanwhile, I see in some Churches an apparent movement from the truth of Jesus, even as they call themselves evangelical or emergent. In all cases it seems divisions are becoming apparent based on the one question that really matters to Christians: “but what think ye of Christ?”. The result is also a strange unity among those who confess him, even as they worship differently, and have community differently.

Might I submit that the reformation has already begun? In the death knells of a denomination that has gone astray (the ECUSA, and to a lesser extent, probably the Anglican Church of Canada), we can see the operations of God calling out His Church. We can see it in the growing networks of local churches, working to bring Glory to the saving King Jesus (inside and outside Anglicanism). We can see it in the ways that believers in the west are being forced to stand for Jesus, or stand with a rebellious culture. I pray, and I hope I am seeing the beginnings of, people who will say first and foremost that they are Christ’s (affirming the Scriptural Christ), that unity of institution, and unity of mutual affirmation are FAR less important than unity in Christ.

I believe that this will happen. Not because I believe in the morality of we Christians, but because I know that we are the bride of Christ, which He loved and gave Himself for (Eph 5:25). Because I know that at the end, from every tongue and tribe and nation will come white hot worshippers for him (Rev 7:9), because the gates of hell will not prevail against His Church (Matt. 16:18), but most importantly, because this is for the most sure, powerful and sweet thing in the universe: the Glory of the Living God.

His Church is not named “Anglican” (though it has expression in faithful Anglicans) or “Baptist”, or “United”, but is quite simply Christ’s. Unified by the preaching from thousands of pulpits of preachers who love the Lord, affirmed by millions of Berean style believers with ears , minds, and Bibles open to what God says, and discerning the truth of a preachers words. In sacraments duly administered to congregations who eat and drink with contrite hearts.

Oh That the Lord would make my vision true! That He would bring a reformation in hearts and minds, not based on our idle (idol) philosophies or methodologies, but by hearts moved to faith, trust, and treasuring Him above all else! That the death penalty would be meted out against the usurper Bride that places itself above her sweet King Jesus, and the true Bride would be reformed, perfected and made Holy to serve, worship and love God! That I would be one so perfected for the Glory of God!

I pray that God would grant me such a heart, that He would grant me a voice to proclaim His truth! Oh that this prayer would be sure, from my poor feeble heart, with sighs too deep for understanding, brought by the Holy Spirit!

And this prayer will be sure insofar as it is for the Glory of God, and in the righteous name of Jesus Christ, in whose name I pray!

Amen!

As I write today in the University Center, I am surrounded by the masses of undergraduates all celebrating Halloween. The myriad of dark angels, ghosts, and movie icons is astounding. In the midst of all this, I read recently that today is also Reformation day (something often missed in the focus on ghouls and goblins on October 31st). So in memory of Martin Luther, and those theses on Wittenberg Cathedral, I figure I should use this opportunity to post my single thesis against the culture in which I live, and the Church into which I have been grafted here in the west.
The fact that we need a common understanding of the universe in order to be able to have a moral compass that all of us can follow was dealt with in the last posting. But to review, the words of David Wells (in “Losing Our Virtue”, Eerdmans 1998) are germane:
“Lying between law on the one side, and freedom on the other, would be a middle territory for the cultivation of character and the affirmation of truth… … unless it can be recovered our society will stand in greater and greater jeopardy” p.63
Thus we need character, and without a common worldview, the there is no ability to develop a character which would be beneficial communally. Now I hasten to say here, I do not mean that the worldview must be imposed. Indeed, that’s largely impossible. As the communists found in their race to found a society of commonality, to silence a person is not to convince them. No, for the development of a common world view, something else is needed.
On the other end of the scale, some (like Margaret Somerville) would say that we can negotiate a common worldview. This seems largely unlikely in a society so based on freedom and the affirmation of plural worldviews that the worldviews in question are never allowed to conflict and thus alter (and one would hope, better) the individual worldviews involved. What is needed is conversion to a common worldview, and given that I believe democracy, freedom, scientific endeavour, and a respect for people all stem best from a Christian worldview, that means I think we need to start actually convincing people of the truth of Jesus Christ.
Now, the more astute of you have noticed that this is not the standard Christian argument for the need for all to believe in Jesus; that belief in Jesus is necessary for eternal life, that it is the means by which we are reconciled to God, and that is the way that society will be perfected and blessed by God. I believe all of that to be true, but even from the secular concept of earthly benefit (and contrary to the ruminations of activist antitheists like Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett) it seems to me our society would benefit greatly from a renaissance, a reformation, a wholesale turning to a Christian worldview that can ethically base and structure our development as a society.
I note that the Christian worldview also places stricures on how such evangelism is to be done ethically. Tomorrow, I’ll deal with that. :-)

Happy Reformation Day!

I have to say sorry to people who were expecting me to explain why I think Christian evangelism is ethically necessary from a secular point of view, but first I’m faced with explaining why its necessary to tell people about Jesus from a Christian point of view.

So why do I think that that’s necessary? I was up at Chapters again today… I ike bookstores, okay? leave me alone. Anyway, I’m up at Chapters and I go to the Christianity section (which at Chapters is a depressing thing in and of itself), and there’s this woman there on the floor reading a Joel Osteen book. Now, I’m not a big Osteen fan, and if you have a few hours and wanna buy me a coffee, you can find out why not. But the guy at least talks about Jesus from time to time, and in a lot of cases, he says stuff that’s actually true. So I’m interested in knowing what she thinks of Jesus. So I strike up a conversation.

Seems this lady is into whatever spiritual experience is edifying to her, and while she’s there she explains to me how buddhist transcendental meditation is a great way to know God. She also seems to know really little about Jesus. The sad part is that she reads both Rick Warren and Joel Osteen , while maintaining that ignorance. We have ostensibly Christian writers who cannot seem to give us the worldview on which their ideas are based, and as a result their ideas are brought into whatever thinking people find beneficial for the moment.

It’s just this hodge-podge theology that, to me, leads to a world in which we have no absolutes in worldview. We simply add to our understanding of reality whatever is pleasing to us without much reference to being consistent, or even determining if what we believe is “true” in a sense that would make it needful for all people to accept a morality based on that worldview.

Now I think I’ve said enough to begin the next phase, why it is ethically necessary for there to be Christian evangelism.

I hope to get to that in the next few hours