"Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth.
I did not come to bring peace, but a sword."
--Jesus
It's often a surprise who turns out to be "for and agin'" new ideas when
they are tossed out into the public square.
I'm thinking now of President
Bush and his White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives,
headed by John J. DiIulio Jr. While one would have expected howls of
protest from the secular groups lapping at the trough of government
largesse, the echoes coming from the Evangelical Christian community must
have been a bit of a surprise for Mr. Bush and Mr. DiIulio.
Perhaps it shouldn't have been.
Most groups and communities only look
like a single entity from the outside. Once you learn the secret password
and special knock necessary to gain entrance -- you also learn that the
group is composed of individuals -- each with varying views -- not
lockstep marchers. Often, their "sameness" turns out to be a convenient
front that hides the truth from outsiders. So it is with the Evangelical Christian community.
Christians --
especially Evangelicals -- have been complaining for as long as I can
remember about our marginalization as people of faith in American culture
and our exclusion from the public debate. This is heard loudest and
longest around Christmas cr?ches. Now a president has pried open the door
to the public square, and invited us in. Our response? "That's kind of a
cold breeze out there, mister. How about coming in here, shutting that
door and joining us around this nice warm fire?" President Bush is "The
Man," and he could be excused -- for being confused.
Much like our cousins, the Republicans, Evangelicals have become rather
comfortable with their minority status -- a.k.a. the loyal opposition. One
of the perks of minority status is accountability evasion. A minority can
remain doctrinally and theoretically pure -- because it will never be
called upon to implement its solutions in the real world. That means
those solutions will never be judged inadequate. The minority position is
a soapbox in a vacuum.
But that's not how Jesus lived. A light to the world covered over with a
bushel basket wasn't his style.
"Preach the gospel wherever you go. When
necessary, use words," is a good summary of Jesus' approach. He reserved
the bulk of his teaching for those closest to him. To the crowds that
thronged around him wherever he went -- Jesus often preached without
words: He healed the sick, drove out demons, and raised the dead.
If a
servant is not greater than his master -- then why do we in the
Evangelical world so often preach in our churches on Sundays -- and then
live silently in a world going to hell on Monday through Saturday?
The rest of the world -- all those people Jesus wants us to reach with
the good news of His Kingdom -- aren't going to pry open our church doors
and come inside on a Sunday morning, listen to the sermon, and next week
be singing in the choir. Those people do exist -- but they come from the
church down the street. And regrettably, it's where most new church
members come from today.
No, the people Jesus wants us to reach with what he teaches about life,
the universe and everything aren't attending the church down the street.
They're street kids, welfare mothers with too many children and no
father, drug addicts and alcoholics, prostitutes and tax collectors
(read: bureaucrats).
They are also yuppie bankers, stockbrokers and
dot.com millionaires fallen on hard times. They're school kids wondering
what Columbine means for them. They're 5-year-old boys and girls
without a dad or a mom. The people Jesus wants to reach are the same
people he wanted to reach when he walked the dusty roads of Palestine
2,000 years ago. They are the same people we see in the public square --
the ones who say mean things about us, laugh at us, and ridicule us for
our beliefs.
But guess what? They are watching us.
Inside, they are desperately hoping
that there is even the smallest shred of truth in what we say on Sundays.
They want to believe, more than anything, that it's not all just words.
"Show us!" they are silently screaming, "that the black emptiness of
Columbine isn't all that awaits, and that the God whom you serve is
different than the wood and stone idols I see everywhere in the
marketplace. Show me!"
Jesus never shied away from that challenge. Now President Bush has thrown
down the gauntlet to a community of faith that seems to have forgotten
that Jesus did most of his ministry work outside the four walls of a
church building, and his best preaching without saying a word.
When God
decided that it was time to move the Israelites out of their slavery in
Egypt, an entire generation was left to die, wandering in the wilderness.
They refused to trust God in what he was doing.