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Quote from Thomas à Kempis on my office wall: “Keep yourself a stranger and a pilgrim upon this earth, to whom the affairs of this world are of no concern. Keep your heart free and lifted up to God, for here you have no abiding city.”
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Brilliant example of creative media for & within the Church.
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(On the doctrine of Inspiration and interpreting Paul’s writings) My whole energy of interpreting has been expended in an endeavor to see through and beyond history into the spirit of the Bible, which is the Eternal Spirit. What was once of grave importance, is so still. What is to-day of grave importance - and not merely crotchety and incidental - stands in direct connection with that ancient gravity. If we rightly understand ourselves, our problems are the problems of Paul; and if we be enlightened by the brightness of his answers, those answers must be ours.
—Karl Barth - The Epistle to the Romans
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I have always been fascinated with the Social Gospel. It seems so simple, so obvious, and yet so often overlooked.
Call it what you want; social gospel, social justice, missional, Christian, socialist… either way, the ideas expressed in the Social Gospel are not only accommodating with our Christian doctrine, but encouraging and challenging to our call as followers of Christ.
As a member of the Church of the Nazarene, we have a long history with the Social Gospel, even before there was such a determined thing. Think back to the Los Angeles Church of the Nazarene and their clear ideas of serving the poor incarnationaly and providing the destitute with food, shelter, clothes and the hope of the gospel.
Furthermore, there is a strong relationship between the Social Gospel and the Church of the Nazarene’s quest for Holiness.
I often think that in our desire for perfection, we easily become too consumed. Think back to the Church of the Nazarene from 1915-1945. Part of American Protestantism was focused on the modernism and the social gospel, while the other portion was fundamentalist and in strong rejection of it. While there is certainly a case to be made against socializing with “evil” people, this got an upper hand on the early COTN. What once was a denomination bent on helping the poor, was now a church that needed to distance themselves from the lower lives of society. It was necessary to abstain from vices so that we would not be associated with the corrupt people outside of the Church.
Even in 2010, we deal with this. What then is the connection between Holiness and the Social Gospel?
“The spiritual perfection of Jesus consists in the fact that he was so simply and completely filled with the love of God and man that he gave himself to the task of the Kingdom of God without any reservation or backsliding. This is the true standard of holiness. The fact that a man is too respectable to get drunk or to swear is no proof of his righteousness. His moral and religious quality must be measured by the intelligence and single-heartedness with which he merges his will and life in the divine purpose of the Kingdom of God. By contrast, a man’s sinfulness stands out in its true proportion, not when he is tripped up by ill-temper or side-steps into shame, but when he seeks to establish a private kingdom of self-service and is ready to thwart and defeat the progress of mankind toward peace, toward justice, or toward a fraternal organization of economic life, because that would diminish his political privileges, his unearned income, and his power over the working classes.”
-Walter Rauschenbush, “A Theology for the Social Gospel”, pg. 51 -
I love theology.
To me, it’s like an art. Maybe even a dance.
There are certain moves you should make. Certain ways to speak. It’s a dialogue that exists between two or more people, but simultaneously exists in a timeless way. When I speak, I am entering into a conversation that is thousands of years old. When I take part in theology, all of history is my dialogue partner.
When I am in a moment of dialogue, discussing topics of theology, I do my best to speak as Christ himself would speak. I listen. I question. I bob & weave.
For the most part, I even maintain a calm tone. I am focused more on saying a few things simply rather than saying a many things ambiguously. Yet there are times when I debate. I banter over a certain idea. Yet even in these moments, I stay focused on the purpose of theology - to lead us in worship of God. You may think “theology” has other motives, but this is it - worship. Any theological conversation that isn’t rooted in a desire to be drawn closer to the living God, that doesn’t bring you to a position of humility and amazement, that doesn’t lead you to worship, is simply a waste of time. There is not point to “winning” theology.
So the purpose of theology is worship.
Why then do so many people play “theology battleship”?
Each person taking turns, launching their best “attack”. Doing their best to “sink” their opponents theology.
The game lasts several turns, both opponents fighting to the very end. Each desperately trying to stay afloat.
Until ultimately, one miserably declares - “you sunk my theology”
I think we can do better than this.
