Back in 1988 Tony Campolo wrote a book entitled 'We Have Met The Enemy and They Are Partly Right'. It was an overview of many different faiths and worldviews, acknowledging that there is truth in them and that we can learn from them... however, they were considered 'the enemy'...
These days I can't help wondering if he would use a different title.
I'm sure Campolo would agree that other people - whatever they believe - are not 'the enemy', but his title belies an understanding of faith that was in existence 20 years ago, but today would be considered dodgy at best and abhorrent at worst.
The notion of non-Christians as the enemy - while rarely verbalised - was a point of view that had some currency in the later part of the 20th C. That old favourite hymn 'Onward Christian Soldiers' never took that tack, but I remember singing it as a teenager and somehow feeling that we were the good people taking on all those evil people who didn't believe the same things about Jesus and the Bible as we did.
As a result evangelism was often combative and confrontational as we sought to win people to Christ and out of the clutches of the devil. It was serious business and along the way we had to be careful not to let ourselves get corrupted in the process.
And here we are now in the much enlightened 21st C and few of us would see our non-Christian friends as the enemy. In fact even using the term 'non-Christian' can be considered offensive these days.
As we move to a different place in our understanding of ourselves and our place in the world I find myself wondering has it been a healthy shift?
There's no question non-christians are not the enemy, but in our attempts to reach the world have we lost our distinctiveness as the people of God?
Good evangelism joins faithfulness to the Bible and the gospel with a genuine engagement in the culture we are a part of.
Have we got the balance right?
Have you got the balance?
I write this on a day when my 7 year old daughter came home from playing with one of her Indian friends bearing a red dot on her forehead, courtesy of the mother. As we left she asked if I 'minded' that she had received this mark. She told me it was a symbol of good health.
Hmmm... should I mind?...
4 comments:
Can't remember where I read this, and I may be totally misquoting it, but as I recall the question was: How would God measure the success of the Church? Would it be the number of people attending church, or the number of people not attending church?
might have been on my blog rob!
Bingo
We've just come away from a week long conference in Kigali dealing with reconciliation.
Brian McLaren touched on this topic when he contrasted our human "stories" (world views) with Jesus Kingdom story.
He talked about the different stories in different terms (you can read a little about it on my blog - look for the "Amahoro day 3" post), but I think the term that relates most directly to this post is what McLaren called the stories of domination and purification.
They are stories that seek to identify those who are "in" and those who are "out" and to try and make those who are "out" like those who are in. This is pretty much what the colonials did in Africa and in Australia.
Jesus Kingdom story, however is different. It is a story of inclusion not exclusion. Instead of domination Jesus calls us to servanthood (serving those who are different in love rather than seeking to make them like us) and instead of purification, acceptance, healing and love.
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