Relevant vs. Relative

I've been thinking about the difference between relevant and relative lately, particularly with regards to the Church. There's a lot of buzz (from what I can tell via the Internet) in the Church today regarding the way that some churches are "doing church." (Surprise, surprise. We've been doing that for Christianity's whole existence.) I'm noticing a few things: 1) parachurch organizations, 2) Emergent churches, 3)the mainstream response to both.

So the whole parachurch thing, I don't know how I feel about it. I can see the need, and the benefit they have, but I also understand the feeling that some of these organizations take away from the role of the local church. On the whole, I think they are a good thing that should work in conjunction to local churches in a way that allows the church to take ownership of the program that the parachurch is promoting/doing. This would make parachurches something that sharpened as iron sharpens iron the local church, which, at times, seems rather dull these days.

The Emergent church movement. I've read some particularly malicious things about this. Which leads me to believe that there is probably something God wants us to learn from this movement. I've read a few books by authors that get grouped within this group (some by association to the movement, some by similarity of thought). While I'm not so keen on throwing out some of the aspects of the modern church in favor of a church adept to ministering in the postmodern world, I do think that the movement has some ideas that are on target.

One such idea is a redefinition (maybe re-terming is more appropriate) of the "saved" or "born again" label. I would identify myself as both saved and born again to the "Christian-ese" speaker, but to postmodern "outsiders" I would be careful to make sure that the terms mean the same thing to both of us.

This is an example of a bigger problem with modern Christianity. We have isolated ourselves in a sub-culture. There are wonderful aspects to this sub-culture, but the bottom line is that it cripples our effectiveness because we don't know how to operate outside of it. One of the ways that we are particularly unable to operate outside of our Christian sub-culture is communication. Particularly in a spiritual context. Going back to the example: [conversation to you, a fellow Christian] I say "saved" you think "follows the teachings of Jesus, therefore going to heaven." [conversation with a postmodern non-Christian] I say, "saved" he thinks "judgemental, exclusive, and self righteous."

So what if we re-term our speech? Will that make us un-biblical? To abandon terms coined by people that lived in the past 200-300 years? Sounds to me like that's the same sort of thinking that people had after reading Martin Luther's 95 theses, or some people have in regards to using something other than the King James Version.

Really, what I'm starting to think is that the reactionary modern church might be the ones doing the real damage. Sure, they talk about sin being evil and bad, bad, bad for you. But does all of this talk make them less of sinners? I'm seeing a lot of reflections of the Pharisees in this sort of thinking. Will telling people that sin is bad really help them not sin, or will it make them sin more by hiding or not admitting their sin. You can't hide a wound and expect it to heal itself, it will only get infected. Why would we think that communicating to people that having a spiritual wound is unacceptable would cause them to bring it out in the open where they can get it treated? I think it will convince them of this:

"Even though this spiritual wound hurts, and might be killing me, I can't afford to let others see it and risk the rejection. I'll hide it and try to suture it myself. Instead of going where I can get antibiotics (since it might cost me the shallow and ineffective fellowship that I get), I'll pour my own household cleaners and chemicals on it to try to kill the infection. Maybe that will work."

I'm actually impressed with how well we do suture ourselves, or at least keep the old scars covered, but wouldn't it be better if we could make each other feel like we were a safe group to get help from? This is what I propose we do: start being like Jesus. Not the Jesus that would never swear or have a negative thought (although we should strive for that), but the Jesus that loves people that need it. Remember this line, "It's not the healthy that need a physician..."? We are the doctors. Do we know how to triage patients, because I think we live in an emergency room full of deathly ill people that need doctors, and they need them now. Should we be treating headaches, bellyaches, and sore throats or internal bleeding, broken bones, cancer, removing cataracts, and building prosthetics. How is our bedside manner with the patients that might want to walk out of our clinic, carrying their own severed limb, compared to the ones that come back every Sunday? Maybe we should love a little differently than we do.

But I said I was going to write about the difference between relevant and relative. The difference is this, if the Gospel (which is "the kingdom of God is at hand") isn't relevant, then it isn't going to make sense. You have to make the words fit the context. Relevant is when what you say out loud produces a picture in the other-half-of-the-conversation's mind that is at least similar to the one in your own. Relative is when you marginalize the truth for the sake of making that picture acceptable in someone else's mind. HUGE DIFFERENCE! The gospel isn't "be a good person and go to heaven", but it's also not "just say Jesus, I'm a sinner, and You're the way to heaven, and I believe in You." It's "Jesus is real. He is showing you how to live today, right now, right here, a hora. He's not teaching you the best way to get what you want. Follow His example, which is in accordance with the way He made you to work, and guess what? You will work! and at the end of it, you get to enjoy life with Him just like He intended!!!"

The thing is, you can't really say that and it make sense to a person if you live like most Christians live. Why? Because they don't see how Christians are like Jesus. They see Christians like televangelists or as an exclusive club that doesn't even have any benefits until after you die. It's less appealing than saving for retirement is to the average college senior!!!

I think it's time that we started taking righteousness seriously and pursuing it rather than the imitation of it. I think it's time that we started taking evangelism seriously and meeting people where they are instead of letting them be in our club if they ask nicely. I think it's time that we started taking love seriously and not just reciprocating it when we feel obligated. I think it's time that we started taking Jesus seriously. The kingdom of God is at hand, remember?