Justice, Silence, and Grace.

"A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another.  By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” John 13:34-35

Racism, child abuse, slavery, the fate of the lost, abortion, poverty, war, pornography, doctrinal compromise, substance abuse, etc.

Which of these is the MOST important?

Which of these MOST deserves your "speaking out"?

If you had to rank them, which would come out on top?

Which is the one which demands the church's voice NOW more than ever?

If you are simply consulting yourself, you might be able to find a clear place for one or two, but I'm betting there'd be one or where you'd have trouble deciding which went where.

If, instead, you are consulting someone else, you might be able to agree on one or two, but I'm betting there'd be one or two where you couldn't find common ground.

If planning a course of action, you might be able to agree on THE correct policy for one or two, but I'm betting there'd be one or two where you and a friend come to diametrically opposed ways forward.

If one of you thinks that a quiet approach is better than confrontation, the other may think that a strong public statement is in order.

If you think contemporary events demands that X be emphasized, your friend may think that it is Y that needs more attention.

You may decide to dedicate your Twitter/Facebook feed to "raising awareness" about one of these real problems, but your friend may find that the "dialogue" is doing nothing to help.

You may find it incomprehensible that anyone could remain silent about one of these, while your friend finds your silence on another one just as morally baffling.

You may conclude that it is best to stand up to those who support an immoral activity, but your friend may decide that this will only feed the fire.

How many people today blame the politically active evangelical church of earlier years for driving away nonbelievers because of the church's attention to abortion?

How many people today blame the politically inactive evangelical church of earlier years for driving away nonbelievers because of the church INattention to racism?

Maybe in twenty years you'll decide that the church's focus today was too much on one issue, your friend will find that the focus was too little.

Maybe in twenty years you'll decide that it was you who had the focus too much in one place and that maybe your friend was right.

We may tell ourselves that each of these issues is valuable and that they each deserve equal attention, but we can never be as engaged with any one of them as we'd like, let alone all of them. With only twenty-four hours in the day, and the daily grind of providing for our families taking up most of those, we cannot be fully "on" for each of these all the time.

It is inevitable that members of Christ's body will disagree about what is the most pressing issue of the day. Sometimes this is a matter of disagreement, but sometimes it is a matter of discerning what was needed at that moment. James, at his time and place, found it necessary to warn the church against abandoning works in the quest faith. Paul, at his time and place, found it necessary to warn the church against abandoning faith in the quest for works.

Sometimes this is a matter of a particular sensitivity you have towards one or another problem. Perhaps the pain of that issue in your own life will lead you to focus on it. Perhaps the realization that the comfort of your life was not shared by others will lead you to focus on another. Perhaps, seemingly out of nowhere, God will have led you to care about one of these more than you do another. This is not a failing but the way God has led you to spread his kingdom in this particular way.

For you, in the place where God has called you to serve him, perhaps one of these very real problems will be the thing which dominates your thinking, either for just a season or perhaps your entire life. For your friends, in their places, perhaps it will be another one which will define their moral quest.

As we do this, as we seek to encourage Christ's kingdom in this world, let us keep a few things in mind. We must always make sure that it is Christ and his glory that we seek. Let us not be like Martha, whose tasks serving the Lord distracted her from waiting on the Lord and his leading as did her sister, Mary. We can, like the proverbial cart and horse, all too easily shift our focus from following Christ onto an path to following path whether Christ is there or not.

We must always make sure that we remember that just as we have been wrong before, as a church or as individuals, we may be wrong now. Much of the passion fueling the socio-political debates going on right now flows from the conviction that the church of the past got it wrong and we must now get it right. We look at the past and we say that they believed the wrong things or did the wrong things or didn't do the right things or didn't say the right things.

If we are able to look back fifty years, a hundred years, a thousand years, and say that they were wrong, then what are the chances that our little brothers and sisters in the Lord will not do the same? Will they not look back fifty years, a hundred years, a thousand years, into our time and say that we got it wrong, that we had the wrong emphasis, that we were silent when should have spoken or spoke when we should have been silent? We all like to think that the future will only judge others in this way. But, if others in the past, just like us, were confident that they had chosen the right path, just like us, what are the chances that those of the future, just like us, will not find some great failing in our lives as we have found fault in others?

Finally, we must be gracious with one another. Maybe your friend is wrong, but maybe it is you who is wrong. If you think that your brothers or sisters in Christ are wrong by their emphasis or inattention, by their actions or inactions, by the statements or silence, then by all means plead with them, argue with them, challenge them, try to get them to see it another way, but we must do it in a way that grants to them the grace that they might be right and the humility that we might be wrong. They might well be in the wrong. They might be failing to see how their choice is harmful, or they may even be guilty of supporting an evil in the world. This in no way releases us from the call to love one another.

Love doesn't mean coddling. There is a time for vigorous debate and a time to challenge one another. The Bible is full of prophets and apostles using strong language to condemn evil, but it also full of those same prophets and apostles speaking grace to those same sinners. Love can and, at times, demands confrontation. Love doesn't mean accommodation of evil, but love does mean love. If, in our disagreements with one another, we cannot see ourselves in the words I Corinthians 13, then what are we doing? If our passion for the work of Christ leads us to speak derisively of the Bride of Christ, then perhaps we need to reevaluate our priorities.

The Legacy of the Reformation

I was recently asked to "briefly" discuss the legacy of the Reformation, and that is just mean. Asking a historical theologian to describe the significance of the Reformation and its legacies briefly is a cruel and unusual punishment. Whether speaking of the general scope of “secular” history or specifically in reference to historical theology, the Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth century is one of the most significant events in all of the grand story of humanity. It was at one and the same time a great retrograde revolution which sought to turn back the clock and an integral moment in the creation of the modern world. Its legacies include both the good and the bad, the heroic and the villainous, the social, political, artistic, economic, and philosophical make-up of the Western world. Then, through the subsequent European conquest of much of the globe, it helped to shape the course of history since its time.

While there are a myriad ways to approach so overwhelming a topic, there is one moment which exemplifies so much of the era and all that flowed from it. In April 1521 Martin Luther was called before the Diet of Worms. There, he stood before the powerful man in the world and said, “No.” He had already been condemned by Pope Leo X, the spiritual head of Western Christianity. Now he told Charles V, king of Spain, Austria, the Low Countries, vast swaths of the Americas, and Holy Roman Emperor that he was wrong and Luther was right. In contrast to the inertia of human society which puts great weight in the consensus of numbers, Luther declared that he was willing to die for his beliefs unless he could be convinced by Scripture or simple reason. Echoing the words attributed to Athanasius so many centuries before, Luther stood against the world.

So very much of the Reformation and its legacies, both good and bad, are encapsulated in this moment. This is the manifestation of the previous few decades of protest against church corruption. This is the culmination of humanist tradition challenging the weight of custom by looking back before the prior few centuries. This is the declaration that the gradual accretion of church traditions could not overrule the Word of God and that there was a standard by which to judge all human institutions, whether church or state. This is the archetype of the bold individual standing for truth against all authorities, decades before Galileo was even born.

From this inspiration came the great explosion of protests against political and religious powers and a constellation of sometimes allied, sometimes warring Christian entities. Within the decade the German speaking world had Lutheran, Anabaptist, and Reformed denominations. Within three decades the French speaking world was fractured into Calvinist and Catholic factions and the British Isles were seesawing between Rome and Geneva. By the end of the century this second great schism of Christendom was recognized as permanent.

European society was shattered, and the age of religious wars that had begun in Luther’s day would not come to an end until 1648. Yet this story of division was not the only one to come out of the Diet of Worms. There was also the story of political liberty which, although it took quite some time and many wars to become realized, had its antecedent that one moment of defiance. In the following decades Puritans, Huguenots, Jansenists, and Dutch rebels would lay the intellectual foundation for liberty of conscience a century before Voltaire or Jefferson.

This focus on the Bible as the supreme authority had its great social and even effect in the breaking of the dichotomy of life into sacred and secular spheres. Suddenly butchers, bakers, and candlestick makers were possessed of as much dignity as any prince or prelate. Extra-biblical restraints on financial activities were removed and cash flowed and news means of production were implemented. The elevation of commoners in art begun with the Renaissance in Italy continued among the Dutch of the Reformation. The idea that consensus of the majority was not coextensive with the truth greased the wheels of the Scientific Revolution and set the stage for the technological advancements of the Industrial Revolution.

The power of the individual to stand against authority had its great and positive effects and also its great and negative effects. The epistemological crisis sparked in part by the Reformation and the wars which followed led to the skepticism and overconfidence of the Enlightenment. Rather than standing against the world on the basis of Scripture and simple reason, now people stood against others and the universe itself on the basis of their flawed perceptions and limited perspectives. In our day this principle had devolved into the Magisterium of the transient moment, where all values and truth-claims shift as quickly the latest clothing fad, and the Protestant doctrine of the priesthood of all believers has mutated into the demand for all individuals to create God, the universe, and their own selves in their own image of themselves.

And yet, even with such dour results as some of these, the overall legacy of the Reformation is positive, indeed. In the 1950s movie on the life of Martin Luther, there was a scene where the then-monk Luther was speaking to his fellow Augustinians about the glories of the grace of God even as he was coming to an awareness himself. After he longs that the common people of the world could see such divine grace, a superior chides Luther, asking what would happen if all ordinary believers had the Bible in their own hands to interpret for themselves. Luther then broke into a broad grin and enthusiastically replied, “Why, then we might have more Christians, Father!” Through the efforts of Luther, Calvin, and many others, the gospel of Jesus Christ was set free and salvation came to many around the world who would otherwise have remained lost.