Best of It: The Story and the Mission (Part 3)

[Series Index]

We return to Chapter 6, “The Story and the Mission,” in John Stackhouse’s Making the Best of It.

I’ve been reviewing the chapter section “The Christian Story – and Us Within It.” So far, we’ve seen how the biblical story might inform our ethical considerations and noted the importance of keeping the whole Bible together as God’s inspired word. We need to move on in this chapter, which is very challenging. This chapter is like a big fat steak that needs lots of chewing. So I’ve given up squeezing it into two or three posts. There will be at least two or three more after this one.

The Core Ethical Question and Response

On page 194, Stackhouse writes:

We have implicitly circled around a fundamental point of dispute in Christian ethics, so let us now take it on: what are Christians today to make of the deeds and words of Jesus in his earthly career?

Stackhouse identifies two common responses. One is a dispensationalist scheme that places Jesus’ example and instruction in a previous dispensation that no longer applies to us today. He doubts that many of his readers connect with this response so he moves on to the second.

The second response:

This view affirms that Jesus meant literally what he said and intended us to do what he did. The Sermon on the Mount is meant to be applied directly, as everything else in the gospels. Any ethical alternatives to this literalism are then scorned as disobedient compromises with the world, as failures to take up the cross with vigor and courage, as substandard and ultimately sinful. (195)

Stackhouse gives three reasons why this response is not coherent.

Internally incoherent – Passages about turning the other cheek are present along passages that would have us gouge our eyes or cut off limbs to avoid sin. We are told not to resist evil. Should parents not resist the exhibition of evil in their children? Should churches not exercise discipline? Literal application would seem to suggest we should.

Incoherent within the Christian Story – Jesus alone lives totally within the Kingdom of God. We are part of the Kingdom in its not yet fully realized state and it is futility to believe we can achieve it.

Incoherent with 2,000 years of Christian experience – From Jesus’ day to present, we’ve not seen evidence of people living at this ethical level. It doesn’t prove that it can’t be done but it puts the burden of proof on those who would argue otherwise. We are mandated to begin the journey toward completeness but we do not realize it until the consummation of the new creation.

We Aren’t Destined for the Garden

Next, Stackhouse tackles one issue I’ve repeatedly visited on my blog. The Christian story begins in a garden but does not end there. Nor does it end with humanity ascending into some ethereal, heavenly existence. It ends with a garden city … the New Jerusalem. It is not a new ex nihilo creation but the redemption of the old creation. He quotes all of Revelation 21:1-22:5 to make his point. Then he writes:

This vision is our “imagined future,” without a clear sense of which no one can resist the relentless conformist pressures of our culture and strive for something different or better. This vision is the hope of shalom, the rich Hebrew word that goes far beyond the cessation of hostility and disruption to encompass flourishing: each element (human, animal, plant, and so on) flourishing as itself, enjoying flourishing relationships with everything else, and joining with all creation in flourishing relationship with God.  … (202)

The New Jerusalem vision has five implications: (202-203)

1. “The individual matters, and so does the social. …”
2. “The physical matters, and so does the spiritual. …”
3. “Unity matters, and does diversity. …”
4. “The world to come is in continuity with this world, and fulfills the noble aspirations of this world, even as it clearly transcends this world. …”
5. “Implicit in this vision of the New Jerusalem and fundamental to the Christian ethos is what I call the principle of “win-win-win.” Shalom is an all-embracing life of mutual contribution and benefit. Within it, individuals and groups are never finally in a situation of choosing whether to benefit themselves or others, never finally in a situation of choosing to honor God or their own well-being. Much of Christian piety and preaching, I daresay, has been importantly misguided and misleading on this account, so let’s expand on this theme.”

Stay tuned until tomorrow when I look at his expansion on point 5. I want to quote him at length on this one because of its significance to economic ethics.

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Comments

[Travis Greene]

Re: literalism and the sermon on the mount...I get the point of avoiding wooden literalism (lest we end up like Origen--yikes!), but Jesus does seem awfully interested in us doing what he says. The house on the rock and all that.

Maybe it's just my quasi-dispensationalist background, but I get uncomfortable when the "turn the other cheek" stuff starts to be explained away as difficult/idealistic.

So I'll be interested in what Stackhouse's alternative is to the two responses.

[Michael W. Kruse]

There is clearly a tension. Jesus clearly does want us to do what he says but we know we live an already/not-yet Kingdom. I think both cultural accommodation and strict adherence to the letter of Jesus's teaching are human attempts to escape the tension. Living in the tension takes things out of our control to some degree. We must act amidst great uncertainty, at times, while trusting God.