In something of a follow-up to yesterday’s post on homosexuality and justice, I had a few thoughts on the pragmatic nature of my argument about endorsing civil liberties as an expression of love. To be sure, there was a bit of a theological component as well, an appeal to Jesus’ commands to love our neighbor, but when it came right down to it, I argued that people know, to a certain degree, when they are being met with love and when they are being met with… well… something else.
Yesterday I alluded to the Good Samaritan story as one depiction of the pragmatic nature of love. But I think the thread is even more extensively woven through the Gospels narratives.
When we see Jesus encountering the world around him, we find him willing to respond to and rectify the ills of the felt needs of the people around him.
We cannot love without pragmatism. What we see in Jesus is that, for all that he was advancing an agenda to proclaim and inaugurate the reign of God, he was ever submitting himself to the agendas set by the people who came to him.
What this tells us about the Kingdom of God is that it is more extensive than the agenda of proclamation and conversion that we as Christians will always, to some extent, carry with us. Once we recognize that the Kingdom of God is not just about the saving of souls, or the sanctification of the church, but the wholesale reordering and rectification of the cosmos, then we realize not only the possibility but the responsibility to work for holistic restoration of the space within which we find ourselves.
Or, to put it more simply: I am as much an agent of the Kingdom of God when I work for accessible healthcare and when I proclaim that Jesus died for our sins.
When the gospel is big enough to rectify not only the sinful and enslaved condition of individual human hearts but the brokeness of human bodies and the corruption of human systems then we can see that the gospel itself gives us space to act as agents of the good news even where those who would benefit are not interested in bowing their knees to the resurrected Lord.
It’s when we apprehend the breadth of the gospel that we are free to serve and to love–being willing to respond to the needs of the people around us rather than leading with an agenda of conversion.
It’s then that we can see that holding onto a gospel call to faith and repentance is no enemy of agitating for the civil liberties of those who do not affirm the Lordship of the one who is giving them liberty.
Daniel, I’m not sure I’d say I am “as much as” an agent of the kingdom when I am active for a left-wing (or right-wing) political agenda as I am when I proclaim the gospel or share my faith. I don’t mean to downplay the former, and I certainly want to connect it to the kingdom in ways conservatives often don’t. But I think we absolutely have to have priorities, and at the end of the day while I love the “cosmic” focus of redemption that is being emphasized in much recent theology, I worry that this is seen as an alternative to individual redemption, not as enlarging and enriching it.
I would want to say loud and clear and unapologetically–in both my life and my words–that apart from a person’s individual faith in Christ and participation in the new covenant people of God, nothing they do will matter in the end–not because the things they have done are themselves worthless, but because the human being created in God’s image will be finally and irrevocably lost. That I created beautiful art or had a healthy body for 80 years (or whatever) is small consolation if I lose my soul. People can still lose their souls even after gaining the whole world in our theologies, right? I worry about our increasing tendency to bypass Jesus and sin and faith when it comes to “kingdom work” today. I’m sure you aren’t advocating that–I just worry a bit about overdone tone and emphasis
Can it include a reordering of the cosmos by bullets?
Can it include a reordering of the cosmos by tax policy?
Am I as much an agent of the Kingdom of God when I join the army and kill Taliban soldiers as when I proclaim Jesus died for our sins?
see this, too. (disturbing magazine cover this week)
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2007269,00.html
Good points/questions.
Nick, I agree that there can be the loss of soul that needs to keep its pride of place/focus. But, I don’t agree that these things won’t matter in the end. What is it that the pagan nations get to bring into the New Jerusalem, anyway? What is that “glory of the nations” that God is pleased to receive into God’s Holy City? Hmm…
Pduggie: I’d tend to think that the use of bullets typically means that one is not acting as an agent of the Kingdom of God. There’s the cross and all that, you know. Though I would allow for a few exceptions. However, reordering the cosmos through the use of peace–now that’s more like it.
I will say Stafford Carson, a sometime critic of Wright, basically cribbed Wright in this excellent sermon at Tenth on the topic of pragmatism you address.
http://www.sermonaudio.com/sermoninfo.asp?SID=4221011623
I liked how he uses the response to the Sadducees about resurrection. They tried to pose a difficult question mocking Jesus premises about resurrection. This was to the effect that people can raise all kinds of pragmatic concerns about the way we might claim a reordered cosmos is good and necessary and should be worked for, but that the resurrection moots those pragmatic issues entirely.
I had some pragmatic concerns about the sermon, but didn’t dare voice them
Good stuff.
Yes. I like the thought on pragmatism. I think it is there in Jesus in the gospels.