For the past several weeks, I’ve been slowly writing a long post about the cultural translation of the gospel for today with reference to Andrew Walls’s Ephesian Moment. It’s gotten long. And as I’m editing, there’s a large portion that pains me to cut because I spent so much time writing it so now it’s gonna be its own post here =D The larger post which will have to come later.
In the Ephesian Moment, Walls articulates two dangers — errors to avoid — when we engage in the work of cultural translation. I’ve seen the church (of which I am a part) fall to both of these traps in its engagement with culture. He writes,
“There are two dangers. [1] One lies in our instinctive desire to protect our own version of the Christian faith, or even seek to establish it as the standard, normative one. The other, [2] and perhaps the more seductive in the present condition of Western Christianity, is the postmodern option: to decide that each of the expressions and versions is equally valid and authentic, and that we are therefore each at liberty to enjoy our own in isolation from all the others.“
the first danger
My experience of the first danger comes in the church’s fixation upon a culture war that we’re supposed engaged in, both with the world and even other Christians. When the church sees its engagement with the world as a culture war, we become closed off and suspicious about others. This is apparent in some of the ways that we describe the world. We speak about the fill-in-the-blank agenda that goes against our “biblical” values. When we succumb to this danger with other Christians, we get trapped in a kind of tribalism. We seek to uphold our particular brand of faith as right, asking, “What’s your position on [LGBTQ+, Abortion, Women, Black Lives Matter, Baptism, etc.]?” We double-down on our distinctions as confirmation that we are being righteous — not of the world, not like those Christians. We quote passages like John 15:18, “If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first”, when we encounter resistance and then pat ourselves on the back for being different as if difference was the goal — our litmus test of faithfulness. We have a posture of fear and anxiety when we engage with others, both in and out of the church.
Sometimes this closed-ness comes not in pushing forward our church, but what we imagine to be the ideal church. The early church, as described in Acts, often serves as that ideal. We get lost mimicking their actions rather than their posture with the world. We think that their methods were a “purer” form of the faith.[1] If not the early church, then we idealize a period when we thought the church was best: the early church fathers, the desert contemplatives, the reformation era, the enlightenment etc. And when the people do not respond and conform to this ideal, we lament, “That’s what’s wrong with the world today,” or “The world no longer cares about truth,” blaming the world for its disregard of the church’s message. But this often betrays a posture of wanting the world to come to the church and on the church’s terms rather than the church going out, learning about the world, and seeking to communicate the gospel in terms the world understands.
Thus, fear and anxiety permeate all of our interactions with others and we develop a functionally defensive attitude toward our neighbors, hindering our ability to listen and learn from them. We fail to see the ways in which the Spirit of God was already working in the culture long before we encountered it.
the second danger
In today’s church I see the second danger manifest primarily as a byproduct of the “deconstruction” and “exvangelical” movement: church members that, after deconstructing[2], reconstruct in ways that are new and creative but severed from the great cloud of witnesses that have come before.
To be fair, I’ve seen really creative expressions of faith come out of this: churches centered around dinners gatherings, book discussions, community beautification, social causes — ways that people in our culture understand to be good and relevant. Relationship and belonging were central; these communities are beautiful. But I wonder how these new forms of church see themselves in relationship with the “old church.” What will be their posture towards the church that seems stubbornly broken, corrupted by politics, money, patriarchy, bigotry, racism, etc.? Have they given up on them? How will people in these new communities be discipled into loving the whole church?
I very much see myself as part of this movement. I have experienced disillusionment and frustration with the state of church. I had once desired to be and promote the “right” church or “right” theology; to use power and knowledge to have other conform, falling to the first danger. And there were (and still are) times when I wanted to leave the stubborn church behind and start anew… to fall into the second danger that Walls warns about. But these warnings act like safety bumpers for me as I’m trying to reconstruct and rearticulate my faith. My heart needs to make room for others as Jesus makes room for me. These safety bumpers lead me to check the older/orderly/dutiful brother in me, as well as temper the younger/prodigal brother in me.
| 1 | For anyone who has ever studied the early church, the rose colored glasses we wear get dirty quickly; the early church had its own problems, and we’d be wise not to set it up as some sort of ideal church. |
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| 2 | I’m using this word freely and in the broadest sense despite how charged this word has become in some circles. By deconstruct, I mean any activity where one is trying to work out their questions and objections to the beliefs they had previously received and accepted. As a brief aside, I lament that many have had to deconstruct their faith in isolation because their faith communities were not been places where they could wrestle with their questions and doubts. Without being told in explicit terms, they understood that their options were to conform without question or leave — and they have had to choose the latter. They are often grieving the loss of community alone — grieving the very people and relationships that would have grounded them in the life of faith. |