Concluding thoughts.

Jesus’ teachings are so radical and challenging that it is easier and more comfortable to focus on a quiet, private, and personal relationship with Him than it is to follow his teachings that call for a public prophetic witness—i.e., doing both his “works” and “greater works” (John 14:12). So for too many Christians, they passively pass their days on earth looking forward to our citizenship in heaven.

Yet the Bible is full of politics (Mark 6:14-29; Acts 17:7) and we see God placing people strategically in the political realm (Joseph, Daniel, Nehemiah, Esther, Deborah). This testimony of Scripture means we cannot divide life down the middle, putting God on one side and politics, social involvement, and/or other things on the other side. Yet politics, for one, is a major arena that affects everyone and all aspects of life. It can become the most terrible of all institutions if left unchecked vs. being subject to God and his human and “dominion-mandated” stewards.

Sadly, much of the Church is preoccupied with itself and greatly ignoring (or only giving lip service to) the needs of the community. But there is an old evangelical saying, “If He’s not Lord of all, He’s not Lord at all.” This means we must recognize, realize, and honor that salvation covers the whole of human existence. It’s a “comprehensive salvation.” Moreover, we should not be out to “Christianize America”—but rather to advance Christ’s kingdom throughout the whole world! What else does the Great Commission mean but that?

This advancing, however, does not mean we take up the sword to force Christ’s kingdom on others. That methodology has been tried before—the Crusades, the Inquisition, and the witch-hunts, or shooting abortion providers. That is not the way of Christ.

But it would take many more pages than can be allotted on this website and in this topic area to cover all this as well as the numerous objections theologians have contrived to justify their and our shirking away from this level of Christian involvement and responsibility in society. So we’re going to save that material for John Noe’s book, A Once-Mighty Faith: Whatever happened to the central teaching of Jesus?

We’ll close this topic with these two relevant quotations:

 

“The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried.”

G.K. Chesterton, What’s Wrong with the World (San Francisco, CA.: Ignatius Press, 1994), chap. 5.

“This takes a reformation of our thinking.”

 Cindy Jacobs, The Reformation Manifesto (Minneapolis, MN.: Bethany House, 2008), 168.

Source:

1 A Once-Mighty Faith (future book – est. 2014-15) by John Noe