Resisting the Idolatry of Our Cultural Story

Michael GoheenVancouver, B.C.

What do we need to resist the idolatry of this powerful story?

• Equally comprehensive and compelling story of meaning of human life

Resisting economic and consumer story with the biblical story

The reality of our world is not the end of grand narratives, but the increasing dominance of the narrative of economic globalization. . . . This is the new imperialism . . .

What do we really need in order to recognize and to resist this new metanarrative of globalization? Surely a story that counters the global dominance of the profit-motive and the culture of consumption . . .

- Richard Bauckham

What do we need to resist this powerful story?

• Equally comprehensive and compelling story of meaning of human life

• Community that embodies that story!– Know biblical story and power of

gospel– Recover our missional identity

Recover Our Missional Identity

• Inner missionary consciousness: Sense of missional nature– Role and identity in biblical story

• Outer missionary consciousness: Sense of missionary encounter with culture– Deeper tension between

contrasting stories

“God’s mission involves God’s people living in God’s way in the sight of the nations.”

- Chris Wright

Mission is not primarily about going. Nor is mission primarily about doing anything. Mission is about being. It is about being a distinctive kind of people, a countercultural . . . community among the nations.

- Howard Peskett and Vinoth Ramachandra

God’s Mission and the Church

• Locus or place of God’s redemptive work or mission (foretaste of kingdom)

• Instrument or channel of God’s redemptive work or mission (agent of kingdom)

Three Directions• Backward to creation: Embody

God’s original intention and creational design for human life

• Forward to consummation: Picture of end of history—restored humanity

• Outward to nations: Missionary encounter with idolatry

A Missional People: Abrahamic Covenant

• Backdrop of creation and sin (Gen. 1-11)

• Abrahamic Promise: Blessed to be a blessing (Gen. 12.2-3; 18.18-19)– Blueprint: 2 part plan:

•Part 1: Make you a great nation and bless you

•Part 2: Bless all nations through you•How: election, walking in way of Lord

• Incorporated into Abrahamic covenant: Gal. 3.7-9

A Missional People: The Sinai Covenant

• Exodus: Formation of a holy people– A redeemed people (1-18)– A covenant people (19-24)

•Vocation: an attractive, distinctive life shaped by Torah

– A people of God’s presence (25-40)• Church takes up Sinai calling: 1

Peter 2.9-12

A Missional People: The Church in Jerusalem (Acts 2:42-47)

• Devotion to apostles’ teaching, fellowship, breaking of bread, and prayer: Celebrating and nourishing kingdom life (v. 42)

• Life of kingdom manifested: Attractive ‘good news people’ (v. 43- 47)

• Lord adds to number (v. 47)

A Missional Church: The Church in Antioch (Acts 11, 13)

• ‘Evidence of the grace of God’ (11.23)

• ‘Great number of people were brought to the Lord’ (11.24)

• Sent Paul and Barnabas to establish witnessing communities in areas where there was none (13.1-3)

Mode of Witness in Acts• Attractive life of community• Spontaneous evangelism by

common members of church• Planting new churches

- Spontaneous Expansion of the Church (Roland Allen)

What do we need to resist this powerful story?

• Equally comprehensive and compelling story of meaning of human life

• Community that embodies that story!– Know biblical story and power of gospel– Recover our missional identity– Know our cultural story especially its

religious nature•Myth of Christian culture•Myth of secular neutral culture

What do we need to resist this powerful story?

• Equally comprehensive and compelling story of meaning of human life

• Community that embodies that story!– Know biblical story and power of gospel– Recover our missional identity– Know our cultural story especially its

religious nature– Develop ‘redemptive tension’

Importance of Painful TensionThe deeper the consciousness of the tension and the urge to take this yoke upon itself are felt, the healthier the Church is. The more oblivious of this tension the Church is, the more well established and at home in this world it feels, the more it is in deadly danger of being the salt that has lost its savour (Hendrik Kraemer).

What do we need to resist this powerful story?

• Equally comprehensive and compelling story of meaning of human life

• Community that embodies that story!– Know biblical story and power of gospel– Recover our missional identity– Know our cultural story– Develop ‘redemptive tension’– Willingness to suffer

No human societies cohere except on the basis of some kind of common beliefs and customs. No society can permit these beliefs and practices to be threatened beyond a certain point without reacting in self-defense. The idea that we ought to be able to expect some kind of neutral secular political order, which presupposes no religious or ideological beliefs, and which holds the ring impartially for a plurality of religions to compete with one another, has no adequate foundation. The New Testament makes it plain that Christ's followers must expect suffering as the normal badge of their discipleship, and also as one of the characteristic forms of their witness (Newbigin)

Suffering in callings• Businessman in business driven by

profit motive• Ph.D. student in postmodern university• Worker in humanistic psych hospital• History teacher in public school• Politician in liberal government

". . . if we take seriously our duty as servants of God within the institutions of human society, we shall find plenty of opportunity to learn what it means to suffer for righteousness sake, and we shall learn that to suffer for righteousness sake is really a blessed thing." (Newbigin)

What do we need to resist this powerful story?

• Equally comprehensive and compelling story of meaning of human life

• Community that embodies that story!– Know biblical story and power of gospel– Recover our missional identity– Know our cultural story– Develop ‘redemptive tension’– Willingness to suffer– Training the next generation (Deut. 4.9-10)– Communal life (nourish, support, equip)– Deep spirituality

. . . if the church is indeed to be Jesus’ agent in bringing his whole agenda to his whole world, it needs his own Spirit. Indeed, if the church attempts to do what has to be done without constantly seeking to be filled and equipped by Jesus’ own Spirit, it is committing blasphemy each time it opens its mouth. This is not a plea that all Christians should enlist in the charismatic movement. Rather, it is a plea that all Christians, particularly those involved at the leading edge of the church’s mission to bring healing and renewal to the world, should be people of prayer, invoking the Spirit of Jesus daily and hourly as they go about their tasks, lest they be betrayed into the arrogance of their own agendas or into the cowardice of relativism (N.T. Wright).

. . . our struggle against worldliness in the modern situation and against the secularization of modern society and culture must never be construed as simply one of description, analysis, and calculated resolution. Rather, our labor calls for prayer, supplication, and obedience.” (Craig Gay)

What might a contrast community look like today in North America?

• A community of justice in a world of economic and ecological injustice

• A community of generosity and simplicity (of ‘enough’) in a consumer world

• A community of selfless giving in a world of selfishness

• A community of truth (humility and boldness) in a world of relativism

• A community of hope in a world of disillusionment and consumer satiation

• A community of joy and thanksgiving in a world of entitlement

• A community who experiences God’s presence in a secular world