Get Moving I - Holding the Line vs. Advancing the Kingdom

"Hold the Line" or "Advance the Kingdom"?

How do we in the Church balance a responsibility to "hold the line"--for doctrinal purity within churches, for resisting the decay in the culture outside of them, etc.-- with the responsibility of following the Great Commission? The first implies a defensive, static position, while the second is outwardly focused and concerned with advancing the spiritual kingdom of God on earth.

It would seem the two are in conflict, and while the idea of "missional"churches, and the ramifications of it, solves some of the problems, in this post I want to suggest a lot could be improved by simply changing the way Christians think about the problem, with a little help from an analysis of tactics strategy then offer a few steps to getting back into the battle where it's actually being fought.
First, a look at some the related issues:

1. Conservatism

The first issue I want to address is Conservatism. Most people identify this with political conservatism, but the cultural phenomenon of conservatism in America is broader than politics. I strongly believe one problem in the American evangelical church (and perhaps others) is that of conservatism, again not politically but as an approach to life and ministry and "being the Church."

A reckless and overly aggressive attitude Church-wide would of course be a problem, but as per Screwtape and the people wielding fire extinguishers in a flood, it does not seem to be the special problem of our time to be primarily guarded against. On the contrary, there seems to be a default tendency to avoid action because of uncertainty, lack of clear direction, and the desire to avoid potentially costly failures. This kind of reflexive conservatism, a fear of moving lest we move wrong, actually hinders the Church's work a great deal. If "don't rock the boat," "be careful," "don't make people uncomfortable," "don't go overboard," "we'll think about it (please go away)," is the default attitude in those churches which most revere and promote careful attention to scriptural truth, it's no wonder that around the world it is not conservative and evangelical but charismatic churches which are seeing most of the rapid growth.

In the US, in this new era which began roughly with 9/11, the cultural situation looks different for millennials. They are not fighting to conserve, but either to carve out stable lives in an increasingly unstable culture, if they're self-motivated, or simply remain in their current situation, if they're not. The system of comparative stability inherited by previous generations has finally begun to break down, and so conservatism is less appropriate than building anew, something which is more suited to weather the dark times that seem to be coming and the instability that is already becoming normal.

So my contention with regard to conservatism and the Church is that we may have found ourselves in the position of making great efforts to keep alive a beloved, mighty oak whose roots are all but dead, but which is still covered in acorns each year. I believe we should be less concerned with keeping the old tree going another year than with planting those acorns as fast as we can. Take pride, if you must, not in the grand old oak, but in fields of new saplings. Some won't grow into strong, healthy trees, but many will.
Now is not exactly the time to be conservative, then; we need to be active, intentional, and busily preparing for the future more than regretting what we've lost or fearing change we can't stop anyway.

2. Zeal vs. Fear

That brings us to the second issue. Continuing the oak tree analogy, despite the need for a new forest, there are those who for various reasons are very ambivalent about the work of planting new trees to begin with. In the parable of the wheat and the tares, instead of accepting the regretful loss of a few healthy wheat sprouts as an acceptable exchange for getting rid of those invasive weeds, his landowner commands that they be allowed to grow up together. The point is not a flawless field, the point is the wheat. I believe we may be in a situation where in many conservative evangelical churches today people are perplexed with a small and shrinking harvest but nevertheless point with pride to our immaculate church fields, where all our time and effort has gone into making sure all the weeds are eradicated before any new seed is put out. (On the other hand, many churches avoid even mentioning what happens to weeds at the harvest, for fear any of them might take offense)

Planting more churches, spreading the gospel actively (while none of these things are illegal yet)... all these things engage us in the harvest work we are called to as a Church. It may even be that we should be giving thanks for this season; not as a fearful time of corrosion of the Church's cultural influence, but as a time when overgrown fields everywhere are waiting to be planted and harvested, and we can simply rise up and do so. (That especially while we can see to the East, smoke rising off burning fields.)

So we should plant with zeal while we can, advancing into new fields and not spending all our energy in "holding the line" against the influence of weeds from the next field over. Maybe one field even gets slightly overrun and in need of serious attention, but in the mean time we have planted four new ones, and can now return and attend to it. If Paul had spent his whole life in Antioch to make sure that church stayed perfect, we wouldn't have a global Church today; our times are more like Acts than we know.

3. There are Two Lines

It's clear, then, that we can neither be apathetic about holding the line of truth with regards to what is taught and preached in our churches, nor lax in our efforts to advance the kingdom by planting more churches and taking the gospel into our communities. Both things must be attended to, and how can we do that, with churches full of "attendees" plus a small core of already over-worked volunteers?
It may be that in this decade, we need to overthrow the 80-20 (or even 90-10) rule; if the church is to survive, thrive and do the work it's called to do, it cannot be primarily composed of Christians who consider showing up regularly on Sunday mornings to be the majority of their Christian duty.
Even a shift to a third of church-goers deciding they weren't content to simply sit and listen, but demanded to be involved in taking what they learned and putting it into practice, and teaching others to do the same, would mean a massive increase in manpower and what the Church was capable of.

This dance of holding the line and advancing the kingdom is not a zero-sum game, however. More of one does not automatically mean less of the other. That is because, in reality, they are of course two different lines.

Think of a war: there is a line of battle, perhaps several, and a line further back which denotes secured territory. The line that protects doctrinal purity, that ensures our foundation remains biblical truth--that line must be held. But the line that expands out into a fallen world in need of light--that line must advance.

To win battles, both things must be happening at the same time. You must take ground, hold it, and keep it secure. You cannot take new ground by holding the line, and you cannot keep it secure by moving your troops away somewhere else.

Aha, you may say, but then they do detract from each other, because you need troops to do either the one or the other. In a physical battle that's true. In a church, it is to be hoped that some of the same people capable of recognizing and defending against false teaching are also capable of taking the gospel out into new territory. In fact, being good in one area hopefully implies one is skilled in the other as well. In a healthy church, there will be priority given to having these experienced warriors training others to walk in the same way.

Hold here or advance?

4. "The Line" vs. "Maneuver Warfare"

I think there's a better picture we can use, however, for this ongoing battle. While within the church there is absolutely a doctrinal line which cannot be compromised, perhaps in terms of engaging our culture, advancing the kingdom into our communities, the appropriate image should not be "a line" at all.

In World War I, the infamous "trenches" were lines held against the enemy, with a no man's land in between into which few could venture and return alive. Early artillery pounded, machine guns rattled, and soldiers fought to hold positions and keep from being overrun, with such horrific casualties and suffering that it shook Europe to its philosophical core.

When we talk about "culture wars," we could extend the analogy to these front lines. (I believe I've actually heard the phrase "on the front lines of the culture wars" used more than once) A lot of American Christians seem to have internalized this idea. If you understand this, it makes more sense why seemingly innocuous things like coffee cups and chicken sandwiches can become massively controversial: small things in and of themselves, they represent a feint or real thrust across the (constantly narrowing) no man's land of cultural neutrality. If not rebuffed, perhaps ground will be lost, and lost ground means a new foothold for the enemy.

A "holding the line" mentality means Christians have 1) blurred the kingdom of God and the cultural footprint of the Church (not the same thing), and 2) tacitly admitted than cultural conditions are too scary, and they are not really thinking of making progress anymore. Enemy trenches in what was, until fairly recently, neutral territory (things like "the Arts," and "the Sciences") and historically constructed largely by the Church itself, are ground so long not occupied that they have become unfamiliar anyway, and possibly dubious. (Maybe that's not ground we even want to hold. We can build our own little versions of them, over here on our side.)

But let's fast-forward to World War II now. The Germans have developed a new theory of tactics, called maneuver warfare. While the initially powerful French army, still thinking in terms of "lines," has spent vast amounts of resources and effort constructing the impressive Maginot Line, the Germans have decided that lines need not be overrun by force, when they can simply be evaded and attacked from an angle of their choosing. You may remember the history: the Germans simply used their tanks to drive around the Maginot Line and through Belgium. France fell within two months.

I have often seen the technological aspect emphasized here (the innovation of armored tanks changing warfare) but in this case the much more important thing is the core idea: "Your lines will not determine where the battle happens; we will determine that."

A Tiger Tank in occupied France.

There is a two-fold lesson here for the Church:

1. Culturally, there is no "line" to hold.
There may once have been; no longer. Forget it. Regardless of what you believe about America being founded as a Christian nation or as a secular nation with Christian influence, right now in 2015, America is "The World" (As in, "The Devil, the Flesh, and...") and we need to stop talking about "taking 'our' culture back."
Like Germany vs. France, the Enemy has not countered the influence of Christianity in the culture by drawing up an entrenched line of battle against it, he's simply driven all over the place and taken over. He owns the battleground, and already does in this world by default, until Christ's spiritual victory is made terrestrially manifest.
(That is what the Church in Europe attempted to do prematurely, by flawed, time-and-culture-bound human effort, therefore creating a "Christendom" at once as glorious as cathedrals and as miserable as serfs. God's eternal version improves on the cathedrals yet elevates His serfs above the angels. Wait for it. Trust me, you don't want a theocracy before the actual Second Coming)

Think of the times recently when the church finds itself in conflict with mainstream culture over an issue, doesn't it usually seem to be behind the times, caught off guard and trying to catch up? That's not because Christians are stupid and backward (of course some people are, inside and outside the Church, but that's always been true), and not because the gospel is irrelevant to today's culture, but because the enemy has been picking the battles, having them occur at the time and place of his choosing. It may also be due to the fact that as the culture increasingly rejected Christian values, the church increasingly retreated from culture as well, losing a sense of what the big issues are outside its protective cloister walls while we argued about worship music styles within.

2. If we sit behind a line of our own imagining, we do so merely to the Church's detriment.
Since the enemy has not confined himself to any sort of line, if we are still thinking in those terms, we are merely restricting our own actions to a failing and outdated conceptualization. Meanwhile, as mentioned above, there are acres and acres of fields, formerly full of wheat, now lying overgrown and dormant, on the other side of that line. We can either languish behind a shrinking area of cultural influence, observing which denominations and cultural institutions seem to still fall on our side, and which have "gone over" to the enemy's side, or we can discard that outdated concept and start thinking of all spirit-filled, scripture-honoring churches as individual outposts in the midst of a dark and darkening culture. The light there, if it is there, will shine more and more brightly as the storm gathers. Our goal is not to control, but illuminate; therefore it should be getting easier, not harder. As the culture increasingly teaches people we are wrong and dangerous, if we are following Christ, we will appear increasingly right and whole. People will be drawn to the Truth even having been taught to shun it.

5. A Path Out of the Trenches

So then, if we want to break out of the trenches in this so-called culture war, both because the important battles are being fought elsewhere now, and also because that's not really the battle the Church is called to fight, what do we do?

Reading this, ideas may already be occurring to you. Not radical ways to reinvent the Church, which seldom take hold widely. But simple things every Christian can begin changing in the way they look at the world, that will help them begin impacting people for Christ in their own context.

Here, I will just list a few steps to get you going.
(Points if you already recognize the reference...)

Step 1. Observe
As I have explained, some churches are still sitting behind the line of a battle which has moved elsewhere. If you're still down there, you need to get out of the trenches and find out where people are right now. Some Christians have non-churched friends and know how they think differently about life and what they do with their time, and are evangelizing over the long term by bringing scriptural truth into their lives and being good witnesses. A lot of Christians spend all their extra time on Church activities and with other Christians, however, and don't have a clear idea about what goes on in the wider culture. They've grown up in an alternate, parallel culture behind the lines. They may not know what unchurched people do, or how they think, and their attempts to reach them may be based on godly intentions but also a fair amount of ignorance.
While I never unspecifically recommend giving up ministry obligations, I can state without equivocation that if you actually don't have any friends outside of church, you are not being obedient to God in this area and need to fix that. God did not give you His love and truth for you to keep them to yourself and among those who already know Him; the Great Commission is quite clear that He intends us to let the entire world know about His offer of reconciliation, love, and life.

So try going to popular places and seeing how the majority of people in your neighborhood, community, or city spend their time. Have conversations with strangers. Do a little research about your area's demographics and neighborhoods. Equip yourself with some knowledge of what things are like in the environment in which God has placed you.

Step 2. Orient
Not a reference to the Far East where I live, but of orienting yourself. In this step, taking what you found in step 1, you combine your observations with what you already know. Pray thoughtfully about how God would have you, and if appropriate, your family too, engage the people around you for His kingdom. What are your talents and your background? Is God giving you a burden for a need that exists in your community? You don't have to strike off on your own with no experience (I don't actually recommend that), so what ministries may already exist that you can join to get more experience in that area?

Step 3. Decide
Make a decision. You may want to ask wise and experienced people you know for advice, ask friends and family to pray for you, etc. What is God leading you to do? Are you already involved in ministry and have no more time? Maybe you are called to stay there. Maybe God is calling you to ask about starting something new at your church, or maybe there's something another church is doing that's in line with what you feel drawn towards, and it's a change for you to introduce a link of cooperation between two churches. You may decide to get more training in a certain area. You may even decide to do nothing for now, and repeat steps 1 and 2.

Step 4. Act
Now the decision has been made, and it's time to get moving. You may be starting something new and need to begin gathering resources and volunteers, or be joining something already in progress. It may be a slow gradual beginning, or you may be off to a running start in a ministry with which you're already familiar. What you do is up to you and God, but I will say this: If it's successful, watch out. Progress in ministry and advancing God's kingdom puts a target on your back. Don't let fear slow you down, but be alert and pray. Old temptations may return, or new ones may arise. People who previously seemed friendly may suddenly seem like they are putting obstacles in your way, or even jealous of your progress. On the other hand, other people will almost certainly appear as unexpected help and blessings.
When something great happens, write it down. (I'm guilty of not doing this enough) When difficult times come later, you can remind yourself of what God has done.

"Going over the top"... out of the trenches and into combat

That's all I've got for now. I'm tired of the nit-picking debates on who exactly said what appropriately and non-offensively, tired of the gloom-and-doom talk of our declining culture; it's time we stopped focusing on what we can't change and begin focusing on what we definitely can, in whatever context God has placed us.

The "Courage" of Bruce Jenner

Pain on Display

I have noticed something about what people post on Facebook. Every so often, some people will post a status that is basically a cry for help: "I can't handle this situation." "Please pray for me, today was really horrible." "I don't know what to do."

This kind of status is not all that common (compared to say, pictures of food) not because people don't have problems all the time, but because most people have to arrive at a place of particular pain, emotional discomfort, or desperation, before they are willing to "go public" in this way. Some people might be dealing with even greater problems, but feel they have enough resources to handle it, or simply have the kind of personality that hides the pain instead of seeking the comfort of others. They don't want to announce it to hundreds or thousands of people on a social media site.

I neither condemn nor approve of this practice; I did it pretty often in darker, younger days, and tend not to share so much now. It's not that millennials aren't tough enough to be the strong, silent type, it's that the social conditions which produced strong silent types are much less in play in 2015. We share our lives online, and that means sometimes sharing the pain too. Being strong is great, even in a time when weakness has never been more celebrated, but being silent just means you are not participating in what has become an integral part of life for developed-world internet generation kids. (Every age has its benefits and drawbacks. One day the value of silence will be rediscovered too.)

So the sharing itself is not the problem; it's a method or channel for communicating the pain someone is dealing with, a kind of pressure valve. But the more the pain, the longer it hurts, the more desperation creeps in, the less anyone cares what other people think. The pain longs to be expressed. It can't be held inside forever. It breaks out and becomes obvious to everyone.

What Courage is Not

Bruce Jenner's very public act of doctor-assisted self-mutilation (regardless of what you think about his "true identity," physically speaking that is what occurred), is being presented, even awarded, as an act of great courage. Not caring what anyone thinks, the story goes, he (My pronouns are chosen in light of genetic realities) was willing to do something still considered extremely outre, making a spectacle of himself and being held up in many cases to derision and the ogling of the general public, in order to be "true to himself/herself," and in doing so is held up as an example. I imagine some parallels to the courage required to "come out" as homosexual (into a society where lgbtetc people currently enjoy most-favored status and can shut down businesses for not recognizing that) are in play here.

The most consistent online reaction to this idea, and to the idea of his being presented with an ESPN courage award, was the sarcastic comparison of his act with soldiers of the US military, many displaying the wounds and disfigurements they have received in the line of duty. The implication is that this, by contrast, is what true courage looks like. My Facebook feed was half-filled with this kind of post for a few days.

I want to suggest this is not a very effective reply (not addressing the real issue, anyway). We all know, I think, that there are different kinds of courage. Yes, our soldiers are an excellent example of one kind, really a collection of different kinds of courage. But there are other kinds of courage, of course: a Muslim daughter's willingness to face her parents' wrath for accepting Christ; a young pianist getting up in front of everyone for a recital; someone suffering deep and damaging depression just deciding to get up and live another day. Robin Williams not killing himself; that would have been courage. To live would have been an awfully great adventure.

We do know this. And personally I don't doubt that what Jenner did involves some level of courage, though as I'll explain below I don't think that was the primary issue here. Courage is not a trait which bestows goodness or evil on those who exhibit it, it's simply a positive trait which we admire. However, if the person is clearly using their good courage to do evil, we no longer admire that in them. We may be tempted to say it's not courage at all, but give it other names, like madness. We call our friends "full of desperate courage" and our enemies "frenzied." They themselves would call it courage, of course, we just don't want to honor their motives by recognizing they too partake in common grace and can exhibit positive character traits, even while serving a cause we find repulsive.
(tl;dr- Some of the Nazis were brave too. Doesn't mean bravery is bad or they were good.)
 
So following the analogy C.S.Lewis uses at the beginning of Mere Christianity, courage is like a note on the piano, and our sense of morality tells us when to play it. To continue his analogy: we are tempted to call it the wrong note when we don't like the song, but in reality it was the same G we liked in Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, just serving another purpose.

What people are really saying, when they post those contrastive examples of soldiers, is that they feel the cause for which the soldiers exhibit courage and risk the consequences of physical mutilation (or even death) is Right and Just, and the cause for which Jenner exhibited courage (if it was courage, more on this below) and risked the consequences of his physical mutilation is wrong, weird, and sad. I think it would be more honest and courageous to just say this, rather than

It's not a question of courage. It's a question of what ideals courage should serve.

Despair and the Blade

That being said, I believe what motivated Jenner was not primarily courage. Going back the first section of this post, I believe the identity crisis and moral confusion raging inside him for years, and tendencies of which people around him were apparently aware, finally reached a head, and in despair he no longer cared what society's verdict might be. (Perhaps some interpret this as bravery because, lacking any received truth, what society's verdict might be is the final authority for them) That's not what courage is. Despair is not courage, it's the opposite of courage. Acting with courage is doing something despite the consequences; it's brave because you do actually care very much about those consequences and are willing to suffer them for a higher purpose. Acting in despair is doing something because you no longer care about those consequences.

There are those who would say I'm being too generous, and that the media circus and worldwide attention showered on Jenner is one of the reasons he did it. Maybe it's true; maybe the real battle was fought and lost many years ago, and this was a calculated decision to profit off the resulting debacle. It's impossible to know for sure. Whatever the case now, there must have been years of mental self-torment and deep delusion to even consider doing this. And the torment and the delusion have not been "resolved" with this act, but exacerbated. Letting the inner unwellness out only increases the totality of its bondage in the end; the chains of the mind are now engraved in the flesh.

Self-mutilating in an effort to force physical reality to reflect inner brokenness comes in many forms. Cutting, for example, is an epidemic which with nearly any Millennial is all too familiar. When it hurts too bad inside, many students are driven to hurt themselves on the outside too. Now imagine if, instead of trying to help those who cut and get them to stop, to bring healing to that brokenness, we glorified it. We celebrated it. We put scarred and bloodied wrists on the front page of newspapers, on the morning news, and proclaimed it a beautiful act of courage which should be praised and awarded. Wouldn't that be sick and twisted?

But that's exactly what is happening with Bruce Jenner. This is Cutting, taken from the wrists and extended as broad as the whole body and as deep as one's sexual identity. Slice it up to make the outside match the messed-up inside. But it won't stay feeling like that. There's a reason for the sky-high suicide rates after this kind of surgery. Yet we see that many of those with the authority and ability to do so are promoting this to the world's youth. Woe to them.

Sin is not a Choice

As distracting as the controversy him has become, Bruce Jenner is a symptom of a deeper problem. There is much we don't know about his motives, but the gender confusion with which he struggled would not even have to be his own choice to still be wrong; we live in a fallen and corrupted world. Flesh-eating bacteria don't ask permission to exist and wreak deadly havoc in your body, mental disorders don't ask permission to exist and corrupt your mind or psyche. Sin certainly doesn't ask permission to corrupt your soul, that's already the default state of mankind.

A particular sinful decision is a choice, but sin overall is no more a choice than being human is a choice; an unregenerated person can't refrain from sinning. That's what it means to be in bondage to sin. Sin is not freedom, it's an inescapable prison. The new life Jesus Christ offers is freedom from that prison, and friendship with Him. And who the Son has made free will be free indeed.

Bruce Jenner is not free, he is in total bondage to sin. He cannot escape by any effort of his own. That the expression of his sinful bondage is abnormal is itself not that strange. Sin breeds more sin, deeper corruption. We have simply arrived at the point in our culture where particularly unsettling forms of sin aren't being kept out of sight anymore.

It was inevitable that this would occur. Every nation, America at every point in history, every earthly culture, is entirely composed of sinful people. All cultures, all nations, eventually decline, decay, and fail. Nothing but the Kingdom of God, a kingdom not of this world, endures and remains unstained.

So if these damaged individuals were regarded as examples of unhealthy people especially needing love and patience and reinforcement of a Biblical idea of selfhood and identity in Christ, that would be the Church acting as it should. What we see in our society today, however, is a rush to exalt this deviance and praise the people who practice it. Let us not take our cues from them and think we need to fight over this issue with hopes of "retaking our culture." We never actually had it. It's pointless to try to fight a battle with society, since: 1) Society defines its values by common accord, so you will automatically lose by definition. 2) According to scripture this is the wrong battlefield. Society was a lost cause when Adam accepted the fruit from Eve. Christ will make all things new. Our job is not to make them look like that now, but to proclaim that fact. (And in doing so, some things will start to show signs of their future glorification even now)

So How Should We React?

 

One thing the Church must do, and only the Church can do, is to speak the revealed truth of God with the indwelling love of God. That means we very firmly reject the idea that what is wretchedly wrong can be called right, and that one man's confused self-nihilism should be put on display and celebrated as a model for others. At the same time, we must show sacrificial love, as Christ did. That means caring more and doing more for damaged souls than seems safe or prudent, while never legitimizing the damage itself.

If any condemnation is deserved -and indeed, the uncomfortable, twisted wrongness that is so obviously present in this situation does deserve and demand condemnation- let it be directed toward and fall on those who approve of this sin, promote it, and lead others into similar deception:

Woe to those who call evil good and good evil,
Who put darkness for light and light for darkness,
Who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter!
(Isaiah 5:20)

The deceived will sin and certainly receive their due punishment, but it is the deceivers for whom scripture reserves special condemnation. It is from them that a love of deviance spreads through our society. We all have a sinful nature, but there are those who go further, who are described by Paul in Romans 1 as "those who invent new ways of doing evil," or those Jesus speaks of as leading children astray and for whom drowning is too soft a punishment. These people are not the misled sheep, but the misleading shepherds, themselves misled by their father, the Father of Lies.

A culture cannot be saved, only individual human souls. But if a reaction is proper, let us push back against those who are actively seeking to deceive, rather than giving in to kneejerk reactions against those who have been deceived by them. In recent years this is a typical trap set for the Church, and we have a bad habit of falling right into it. Make sure you are not simultaneously condemning those who are themselves partially victims and unwittingly supporting those who promote and push for acceptance of the lies in which an entire generation of youth are being daily saturated.

Instead, pray for those youth, disciple them and model Christ to them. (You yourself may be a youth, you can still do all of those things) Pray that God would give you wisdom in how to love sacrificially while also speaking truth and not condoning sin. And pray for Bruce Jenner. He is a soul God created, one that is wrong, confused, exploited, and statistically speaking may be on suicide watch soon. But imagine the witness he would have if he was delivered from his bondage to sin into the freedom of Christ and the light of truth.

It's time for the Church to once again fearlessly proclaim the grace and freedom and power of Christ into a world burdened with disorder, violence, and falsehood.

Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound
That saved a wretch... like me
I once was lost, but now am found
Was blind, but now I see