they worked because God works with whatever broken thing God can, not because they were terribly effective or faithful tools. When faced with a particularly sticky lug nut, one might be tempted to reach for the shotgun (which I think we can all agree is a big mistake). It’s just a lot more effective if you use the right tool for the job.
I have come to believe American Evangelical Christianity as a whole has been using the wrong tool for the job when it comes to the way we view the Christian gospel, and the way we share that message with the world. The reason can be a little complicated, but it’s really, really important to understand. It’s complicated because it’s theological in nature. The word theology is just a ten-cent word which is really two words in one: theo, meaning “God,” and ology, meaning “talk.” Theology is “God-talk.” The way we talk about God has become problematic, especially when it comes to the way we talk about the gospel itself. The words we use work powerfully to shape our understanding of the gospel, and thus they shape who we are becoming as the people of God.
Over the past few centuries, the way we tell the story of God has changed. It has become overly individualized, reduced to a way of managing the guilt we feel as the result of our sinfulness. This gospel has little or no moral or ethical implications. It makes few demands on our lives right here and now. I find this strange given the emphasis Jesus places on obedience. The gospel which most of us who grew up in the evangelical church were taught—the one we know how to tell—is only part of the story. It’s just about how to deal with sin and “go to heaven” when we die. But this is not the major theme of the teachings of Jesus. This “gospel of sin management,”2 as Dallas Willard calls it, does not do justice to the good news we find in the Scriptures, and thus it doesn’t have the desired effect on us, on our communities, and on our world.
Most of us who grew up among evangelicals were taught a gospel which went something like this: Everyone is a sinner, and the punishment for sin is death. Jesus took our punishment on the cross and if we believe in him, receive him as Savior, and invite him into our hearts, we will receive eternal life and go to heaven when we die. That’s what we were taught, and for the most part, it is the story we tell. But if we consider it carefully, we will realize that version of the gospel is only about the individual and God. It’s about you and Jesus and what you believe about who he is. It is all about each individual winning heaven and immortality through faith in Christ. At its heart, this version of the gospel is about us getting something we want or need, i.e., forgiveness and eternal life. It is ultimately selfish and individualistic. It requires very little from us apart from mental assent to certain truth claims about Jesus. It is all about the individual and God, and carries with it few social implications, if any. And in a nation of selfish people who have individualism forced upon them from the day they are born, our faith has become too individualistic as well. The gospel we tell is too individualistic, and has become indistinguishable from the narrative of the culture at large. It should be no wonder it doesn’t call people to change.
What if the reason the gospel has become ineffective is that it has been co-opted by individualism? What if our gospel is more about individualized religion than authentic good news? What if the gospel has become so dominated by individualism, that in a country full of individualists, the gospel doesn’t stand out as anything different, doesn’t ask us to live differently? Maybe this is why we give our lives to try and share the good news with people and are continually frustrated and disappointed with the results. We’re not telling the whole story! The truth is hard to hear, but I believe this is true: the version of the gospel most American evangelical Christians tell bears little resemblance to the gospel Jesus preached, nor does it echo the kind of life-altering pursuit of the kingdom which we see at work in the lives of the great saints of the New Testament.
I wish I could say I’ve never been frustrated enough to take a shot at this sticky lug nut. I cannot. I’ve fired in frustration countless times and I typically end up injuring myself in the process. I’ve handed out my condemnations, and I usually regret it. I’ve slandered, complained and threatened to leave. But I haven’t left because I think deep down I realize this is who I am; these are my people. For better or for worse, I am in and of the tradition of American Evangelicalism. So I don’t write this critique as an outsider, but as one who has great love for the evangelical church. However, I am resolved to confront my tradition, even to poke it with a stick because, well, it is my tradition. I’m not going anywhere and the truth is we need to rethink a few things. This book is the best way I know to show my love. Wounds of a friend and all . . .
A Break in the Clouds
Here’s the problem as clearly as I can state it. For the past few centuries, individualistic conceptions of the gospel have championed some truly good things: the emphasis that every human person can have a personal relationship with God through faith in Christ; the essential nature of personal faith; the priesthood of the believer; the missionary spirit; the consistent appeal to the authority of scripture; the resistance of the absolute power of a corrupt church; and many others. But, the resulting forms and modes of what it means to follow Christ have been overly-geared toward individual salvation and self-enhancement. As a result, the individualistic nature of the gospel has become distorted and overplayed. Individualism has usurped the essential communal and corporate nature of the Christian faith, and the social claims which Jesus makes on the life of his followers have been drowned out and ignored. When this happened the gospel lost its power.
When astronauts take a trip to space, they have to carry their own oxygen. They can’t just open up the windows of their spacecraft and get a breath of fresh space air. Space is a vacuum. The air would instantly be sucked out of their lungs, which I’m guessing is not a very good way to go. The lack of oxygen in space means rocket fuel will not burn either. Rocket fuel in and of itself is worthless in space. Without oxygen it cannot burn, it cannot oxidize, and thus cannot propel the spacecraft. If you want your rocket fuel to burn in space, you have to carry your own oxygen with you. Only then can you fire your rockets and get where you are meant to go.
The gospel is like this. It has a personal dimension—just between you and God—and this is a critical piece. It also has a corporate dimension—between you and all of humanity, even the created order—and this is a critical piece as well. You have to have the personal and corporate dimensions working in tandem for the fire to burn and get you where you are meant to go. As oxygen is to rocket fuel in space, so the corporate dimension is to the personal dimension in the Christian gospel. In American Evangelicalism, we have the personal covered, but we are lacking in the corporate understanding of the good news. The nexus of the personal and corporate is where all the power is.
The tradition which protected and emphasized the corporate nature of the gospel has often been called the Social Gospel movement. It has been attacked and maligned by evangelicals for a century, sometimes rightfully so, for shunning any mention of personal faith and a relationship with God. But we need to put that behind us. It is time to realize the gospel is personal for sure, but it is also corporate. Today, individualistic ideas of what it means to follow Jesus hang like a cloud over the message of Christ we find in the Scriptures. Jesus, following in the footsteps of the prophets who came before him, was very serious about the corporate nature of the gospel. Yet, perhaps in our day and our time there is a moment—a break in the clouds—a chance for us to hear the true gospel which binds us together as the people of God and sends us out in the mission of God. Shouldn’t the gospel be good news for the cultures and institutions of all societies, as well as the individual persons? To rediscover the corporate aspect of the gospel will require a clear theological exploration of the gospel in ways that favor the solidarity of all humankind over the primacy of the individual. Maybe if we began to preach the gospel this way, we would discover this is how God has planned it from the very beginning.
As I said, I am writing as an evangelical Christian. If that is not your cup of tea, it is entirely possible this makes absolutely no sense to you so far. Yet I hope the issues I address here will challenge all of us who call ourselves followers of Jesus. The church is on the verge of irrelevancy in our culture, but our problem is not a lack of cultural relevancy
