Cruciformity

One of my friends is looking to plant a church in a part of Sydney known for its strong advocacy of Gay rights and for its dominant Gay community. Somehow, the question of the Bible’s teaching on Homosexuality arose and, in his attempt to articulate a Christian position, they took him to be a bigotted, fundamentalist ignoramus. The result has been a furious storm possibly resulting in the local Council actually banning his Church group from using the local community centre for their meetings, leaving the Council open to a law suit. You can read more about it in today’s Daily Telegraph here. I just wanted to post a few reflections on this.

First, care is needed by Christians in their communication of the Christian message. I’m struck by the sensitivity of this issue. My friend isn’t a chump when it comes to explaining things, and so it strikes me that Christians have to be extra careful about how they respond to avoid being quickly discarded or blown completely out of proportion.

The way to achieve this, I think, is a constant retreat to the greater context of the Christian message. The main things need to remain the main things. The passages of Scripture are not to be avoided, dodged or belittled, but neither are they to be construed apart from the God of love and truth revealed in Jesus. The context of Leviticus, Deuteronomy and Romans alike is a love story of which the aggravating verses are part of a chapter. A sensitive response will appeal for people to keep reading! God has loved the world at great self-expense.

A corollary of this, and this is undoubtedly not a criticism of my friend, is that the context of the Christian message extends to Christian behaviour. The medium is the message, and so the message of Jesus requires lives that are worthy of the calling that we’ve received.

Secondly, I’m saddened that the Council is so willing to prevent my friend and his community bringing them great blessing. The ideas that these guys have sound great and I think that locals would actually really love them. They’ve got a genuine love and care for the people that live there and a deep commitment to community. The extent to which they’re going out of their way to think through ways of benefitting the community is indisputably lovely!

Thirdly, I’m angered and confused by distortions of the truth. That the media have severely twisted the intentions of my friend’s group, is evidenced by the conspicuous addage “allegedly” and the complete lack of supporting evidence. This angers me but isn’t confusing in itself as I understand that it’s quite common.

What continues to be confusing to me is the deep hatred that so many people have of Christians, Christianity and ‘the Church’. I can understand that there are a number of people that have had poor experiences in Church communities that are difficult to forgive. That I can understand. But a true representation of Christianity surely cannot be reduced to these experiences. When similar evils occur both within and without the church, doesn’t it make more sense to conclude that there is a problem with People, of whom Christians are a subset? I have personally experienced great good and great evil within the church, but this only affirms for me the way that (to quote Alexander Solzhenitsyn) “the line between good and evil passes through each one of us.”

I’ll be praying that the ‘thorough investigation’ hinted at in the article will be give my friend a good chance to explain the vision for the Church and that he’s given an open and thoughtful audience at the Council.

That the Council and much of Sydney’s broader population have over-reacted is evident in the comments in the article cited above. Just flick through the comments in the article to see how much hatred is generated around this issue! I’ve seen obscene video footage of pseudo-Christian groups in the US that explicitly hate Gays and Lesbians but what evidence is their of such hatred in Australia?

I’ve had one of those beautiful “ahh!” moments tonight, my eyes opening to see just a little bit more of God’s vision for his people in his world.

What does the Apostle Peter mean by the following sentences?

“Dear friends, I urge you, as aliens and strangers in the world, to abstain from sinful desires, which war against your soul. Live such good lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us.” (1Pet 2:11-12 NIV)

How are we as Christians to relate to the world around us? Do we reinforce a distinct identity from the world? Or do we embrace them - becoming socially and politically winsome?

This week’s reading for Social Ethics was an article by Miroslav Volf call Soft Difference where he considers these questions. It’s opened my eyes to 1 Peter and to the way I relate to the rest of the world.

Volf observes in 1 Peter a vision of the Christian life in a community of believers that sums what people mean by “in the world but not of the world”. These Christians find their purpose and significance in God, living without the pressures from the world around them to break away for survival or to accomodate their beliefs for approval. They have a quiet and gentle confidence in God’s future for them. The boundaries they form around them are not hard in order to isolate themselves, nor absent in order to be absorbed in world, but soft. Not soft as in weak. But soft as in ‘not hard’. Not born from fear or indignance, but soft and born from above into a Christ-given hope and love (1:3). What results is a Christian community refreshingly different, born from above, properly outrageous and winsome to the world around and about.

It’s difficult to reproduce the profundity of it, but here is section that I thought hit a nerve for me as I try to relate properly with my neighbours:

The distance from society that comes from the new birth into a living hope dies not isolate from society. For hope in God, the Creator and Savior of the whole world, knows no boundaries. Instead of leading to isolation, this distance is a presupposition of mission. Without distance, churches can only give speeches that others have written for them and they only go places where others lead them. To make a difference, one must be different. (p24).