Michael Craven

In J.I. Packer’s 1973 classic Knowing God, he pointed out that “ignorance of God—ignorance both of his ways and of the practice of communion with him—lies at the root of much of the church’s weakness today.” The ignorance to which Packer refers is that of theology. Our calling is to know God and if we deny that responsibility then we deny what it means to be Christian.
 
I think many in the American church know God in the same way they know the President—they know some facts about him, where he lives, what he does, etc.—but they do not have a relationship with him. This could be described as a cultural theology but a biblical theology is more akin to the relationship between a child and a good parent. The child in this sense has a much more intimate knowledge that, through time and maturation, reveals the loving nature of the parent. Experience only confirms this knowledge and this produces trust, which in turn fosters obedience.

Others may take very seriously the study of the President and his office, its history, legal powers, etc. but this is only theoretical since this knowledge exists apart from any relationship with the person who is President. For many, this is their approach to theology; it is only theoretical knowledge that often serves to “puff up” and make people intellectually proud.
 
A proper biblical theology, that every follower of Christ should pursue, is one which seeks to know the character and nature of God as revealed in Scripture so that they may live in a way that pleases Him. There is a practicality to theology that produces relevant wisdom for living in the real world. How can one successfully live in the world without knowing about the One whose world it is and who runs it?

In John 17:3, Jesus provides the best definition of theology – he equates knowledge of God (which is theology’s ultimate goal) with Eternal Life. Here Eternal Life is not our merely our experience after death, but a life lived now qualitatively different to our old lives and the lives of those around us. A life we do not yet fully experience but one which mirrors the depth to which we know God; the greater our knowledge of God, so the more abundant is our experience of Eternal Life.
In recent weeks I have tried to offer critical analysis and a thoughtful theological response to Christendom’s collapse and the lingering influence of the Constantinian system. Many were challenged and responded with recognition that these are relevant and serious questions that must be considered if we seek to recover a biblical understanding of the Gospel and the mission of the church. Others however responded in ways that reveal a lack of reliance upon proper theology and instead rely on personal feelings or culturally induced ways of thinking, which they attempt to validate by selected proof texts.

For example, this comment which appeared on ChristianPost.com:
 

This response demonstrates a less-than-thorough “proof-text” theology, designed to support their assertions rather than a systematic approach to theology, which considers the whole of Scripture. The fact is to “be in Christ” as conveyed in 2 Corinthians is to be participating already in the new creation, which includes “one new man” or humanity as the original Greek proclaims in Ephesians 2:15.  To deny the corporate or “communal” nature of the church (the visible Body of Christ) and Christ’s call for unity is to ignore the essential teaching of Scripture. In Paul’s epistles, it is abundantly clear that the Christian life is about being incorporated into a new humanity. As Christians, we become members of the body of Christ.

However, as C. S. Lewis points out, in individualized Western culture, we hear Paul’s teaching about our being members of Christ in precisely the wrong way. For many Westerners [and apparently the critic above] a “member” is a person who merely belongs to something like a debating club or a political party. The member in this sense is a collection of individuals who happen to have joined the organization. But Paul uses “member” in an organic sense. We are members of Christ in the same way that the eye, ear, hand, and foot are members of the body.

I use this illustration to demonstrate how our failure to develop a coherent and systematic theology affects our ability to live as faithful followers of Christ. This person, because of their inadequate theology, remains for now, resolute in their individualism and thus will not submit to the biblical admonitions to do otherwise. Because they lack theological protection (armor) from the culture, modern individualism has, for them, replaced biblical community as the medium responsible to demonstrate the attractiveness of Christianity. This means that each individual is required to be a perfect practitioner of the faith, whose performance is meant to elicit admiration and the question “Why?” from co-workers, relatives and friends. However, the individual inevitably fails at some point and thus Christianity is seen to fail. By holding hands and living as disciplined congregations, we have a much better chance of offering an attractive alternative to the prevailing culture.

This point was recently reinforced by Dr. Dudley Woodberry, professor of Islamic Studies at Fuller Seminary. Dr. Woodberry’s research, spanning nearly 16 years, sought to understand what factors were involved in Muslims coming to faith in Jesus Christ. One of the most essential factors he identified was “When Christ’s love transforms committed Christians into a loving community, many Muslims [identified] a desire to join such a fellowship.”

Does theology matter? It does when you consider that poor theology leads to a less than adequate understanding of what it means to be Christian, which in turns leads to a less than adequate witness of the Gospel.

© 2008 by S. Michael Craven

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S. Michael Craven is the founder and President of the Center for Christ & Culture. The Center for Christ & Culture is dedicated to renewal within the Church and works to equip Christians with an intelligent and thoroughly Christian approach to matters of culture in order to recapture and demonstrate the relevance of Christianity to all of life. For more information on the Center for Christ & Culture, additional resources and other works by S. Michael Craven visit: www.battlefortruth.org

Michael lives in the Dallas area with his wife Carol and their three children.

For more than five decades, self-proclaimed experts and so-called sexual reformers, beginning with Alfred Kinsey, have worked to advance the belief that there are no public consequences to private sexual behavior. And Americans, for the most part, have bought into this notion, proving what Lenin said, “A lie told often enough becomes the truth!”

This ideological offensive, which gained traction during the sexual revolution of the 1960s, led to the erosion of all prior social and legal boundaries, which restrained sex to monogamous marriage. This exclusive union—which strictly limited the acceptable relationship for sex and esteemed the traditional family—was reinforced through the stigmatization of sex outside of marriage and the criminalization of certain acts.

Historically, most states in the US had legal prohibitions against adultery, often called “crimes against marriage,” which were designed to protect marriage by punishing those who jeopardized the family by seeking sexual satisfaction beyond their spouse. Virtually every advanced civilization has had some form of prohibition against adultery. Granted, these have not always been evenly applied to both husband and wife including within Christianized cultures, despite the fact that Scripture equally condemns both male and female offenders.

Today, the enforceability of criminal sanctions for adultery is problematic in light of Supreme Court decisions since 1965 relating to privacy and sexual intimacy. However, this right of privacy never existed until Kinsey asserted that there were no public consequences to private sexual behavior.

Similarly, most states had laws against fornication, which criminalized sex between unmarried persons. In 2001, Jesse McClure was convicted under Georgia’s fornication law. When McClure was 16, he was caught having sex with his girlfriend in her bedroom. The girl’s mother reported the incident to her daughter’s probation officer, who then brought charges. McClure was ordered to pay a $200 fine and write an essay explaining why he should not have engaged in sex. Instead, he wrote that it was not the business of the court to know why. As McClure told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, “Invading personal privacy just isn’t right.”

In 2003, the Georgia Supreme Court threw out McClure’s conviction. Chief Justice Norman Fletcher wrote, “The government may not reach into the bedroom of a private residence and criminalize the private, noncommercial, consensual sexual acts of two persons legally capable of consenting to those acts.”

ACLU attorney Catherine Sanderson, who represented McClure, insisted the issue is again one of privacy and therefore, “no longer does the state have any say in regulating private sexual activity between consenting persons of legal age.” Journalists and others heralded this as a “great victory” for civil liberties calling such laws “relics of a Calvinist past,” “a stupid law,” and “ancient” -- the implication being that we will all be better off now that we can legally have sex with whomever we want!

While only a handful of states maintain fornication and adultery laws on the book, none actually enforce these statutes and most people today would likely regard any attempt to do so as ridiculous. But are they right? Are there, in fact, no public consequences to any private sexual behavior? If there are, does the individual’s right to privacy trump the greater good of society?

First, our right to privacy does not extend to any and every consensual behavior. For example, one cannot evade conviction for the possession and use of illegal narcotics on the basis of using them in the privacy of one’s own home. Illegal drug use has enormous societal consequences in both human and economic terms. Therefore, it becomes an essential role of government to intervene [over and against the right to privacy] in effort to preserve and promote public safety and well-being among its citizenry.

Secondly, contrary to the propaganda of the last five decades; there is recent data which demonstrates there is in fact a public consequence to certain private sexual behaviors. In first-ever research, a scholarly study, entitled The Taxpayer Costs of Divorce and Unwed Childbearing: First-Ever Estimates for the Nation and All 50 States quantifies a minimum $112 billion annual taxpayer cost from high rates of divorce and unmarried childbearing. This amounts to more than $1 trillion in taxpayer expense over the last decade that is directly attributable to marital breakdown and out-of-wedlock births.

“These costs are due to increased taxpayer expenditures for anti-poverty, criminal justice and education programs, and through lower levels of taxes paid by individuals whose adult productivity has been negatively affected by increased childhood poverty caused by family fragmentation,” according to Ben Scafidi, Ph.D., one of the study’s authors and economics professor at Georgia College & State University.

Add to this, the highest rates of sexually transmitted disease among all other industrialized nations, the highest rates of teen pregnancies, the largest producing and consuming nation of pornography, the highest rape rates, and more than 40 million abortions since 1972 and one must be willfully blind to suggest that there are no public consequences to any private sexual behavior.

By first accepting sexual activity outside of monogamous marriage, the legal and social structures, which served to protect and promote marriage were either weakened or eliminated. As sex was increasingly separated from marriage, marriage became less and less necessary. Alternative family forms such as single-parent, cohabitating and most recently same-sex came to be merely modern family “options” equal to the traditional two-parent family. I understand that single-parenthood is a pervasive reality, and that these single-parents are working as hard if not harder than any other parent to raise and care for their children. So, I am not denigrating these families by asserting that the traditional family is superior. The two-parent family is by every objective standard, both today and throughout history, the best possible arrangement. I’m sure most single-parents would be the first to agree.

Suffice it to say, divorce and out-of-wedlock birthrates all skyrocketed as society separated sex from marriage, demonstrating there is a devastating public consequence (or cost) to private sexual behavior, apparently more than $112 billion a year!

As God’s called people we are to demonstrate the reign of God. This is a significant area in society where we can begin to act as a redemptive influence by living under God’s rule related to sex and the family. Of course this means that Christians stop divorcing at the same or greater rate than those outside the church. It means that Christians stop cohabitating, that they remain chaste until marriage and that Christians stop “struggling” with pornography and actually flee sexuality immorality—three vices within the church that are near equal in scale to those outside the church!  If we do this then we can proclaim that Christ changes us!

By living in obedience in these areas we can once again advance the establishment of social and legal structures that promote and protect marriage as the only acceptable relationship for sex. This is not mere moralizing on the part of simple “religious folk” but the answer to a pressing social problem that, as the evidence demonstrates, has enormous human, social and economic costs.

© 2008 by S. Michael Craven

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S. Michael Craven is the founder and President of the Center for Christ & Culture. The Center for Christ & Culture is dedicated to renewal within the Church and works to equip Christians with an intelligent and thoroughly Christian approach to matters of culture in order to recapture and demonstrate the relevance of Christianity to all of life. For more information on the Center for Christ & Culture, additional resources and other works by S. Michael Craven visit: www.battlefortruth.org

Michael lives in the Dallas area with his wife Carol and their three children.

At the conclusion of my series on the Church in Post-Christendom, I argued that demonstrating the reign of God [or gospel] within a distinct community may be the American church’s greatest challenge to its mission.

I further stressed that this community, in which diverse people, locally and generally, are united by a common love for Christ and each other, is an essential witness to the in-breaking reign of God. In essence, the nonappearance of this “community” renders our acts of service indistinguishable from any other and our proclamation of Jesus shallow and without basis.

What hinders this community is NOT a weakness of the institutional church and its leadership but rather the radical individualism of its members. This is not simply a matter of concern over sporadic church attendance or mediocre participation in the church potluck dinner; this is a central underlying principle, which nullifies the witness of God’s people and opposes the redemptive mission of God!

Observing the ascendency of radical individualism, Charles Taylor, the acclaimed philosopher and author of Sources of Self pointed out that over the course of the last two centuries “our sources of self-identity have shifted from the external and transcendent to the internal and subjective experience of the individual.” In one sense, as modern societies advanced beyond the necessity of community for shear survival, we gradually and naturally began to transfer our dependency from other people and the local community to technology and ubiquitous governing structures. As our need for other people in order to survive diminished, and as means of transportation and communication evolved; we were less and less bound to our local communities. The bonds of connection and the sense of shared identity were weakened and our reciprocal responsibilities toward others began to evaporate. As an example, for those of you who live in the larger cities; consider how often you see a stranded motorist on the freeway in which hundreds if not thousands of people will pass by without the thought of offering aid. Such a thing would be incomprehensible to those living with this sense of shared identity.   

Again, this is not a problem unique to the church in America; it is a fundamental problem within American culture as a whole. For Christians, the problem arises when we fail to recognize the worldly nature of this condition and blindly incorporate it into the church. This would be akin to the church in Corinth trying to assimilate their former pagan practices into their new Christian life and worship. By not subjecting ourselves and the culture from which we spring to biblical scrutiny; we are essentially doing the same thing, which in turn makes us less distinguishable from the world around us. Robert Putnam, Harvard professor and author of the definitive book on the collapse of American community points outs:


This is a stinging indictment of the American church by an outsider, demonstrating that we clearly live in the presence of a watching world – a world that longs for that which only Christ can give, whether they realize it or not.  And, one of the things all human beings need and long for is love and acceptance by their fellow human beings. We want to belong and when we do; this is community! This innate longing emanates from our imago Dei and its absence exists because of the Fall. It is for remedy that Christ’s victory and reign serves, and it is His body, the church, in which the firstfruits of this redemptive work should be seen.  

I am quick to add that this witness-bearing community is not inwardly focused and separate from the world but rather it represents a distinctly different way of living through which the church serves, and engages the world. In addition to local Christian communities expressed in and through the local church, there is also the larger “community” represented by all followers of Christ from various traditions and denominations, which at present is sadly and deeply divided.
As if the present diminution of community were not bad enough, we as a culture appear to be descending further into an almost hyper-individualistic sense of “community.” An example of this can be found in the phenomenon of social-networking websites such as Facebook and MySpace that have gripped the next generation in particular.

Writing in the Spring 2008 issue of Culture Magazine, Felicia Wu Song, Ph.D. makes the point:


I would add that many Christians likewise view the community of God’s people as merely one of their many “systems of friends, contacts, and acquaintances” from which they can obtain the benefits common to networking. Dr. Song adds that these sites are not a causal force in this condition but merely “reflect and reinforce the basic dispositions toward networked individualism.”  

So, let me ask you: If Christians living within a distinct community is an essential witness to the mission of God, and because so many of us seem unwilling to surrender the independent self, and since our present understanding and expression of this community falls painfully short; what can we do to remedy this situation?

Clearly, this problem is enormously complex and deeply embedded in our collective psyche. I don’t claim to know the solution (I have some ideas) but I think we the church, by God’s grace, can through prayer and reflection turn our greatest challenge into what could be the church’s greatest opportunity: the recovery of distinctly Christian community.

So, I am asking you: What practical steps can churches and individuals take to foster and promote a healthy, distinctively biblical, and witness-bearing community? Share your ideas HERE

© 2008 by S. Michael Craven

Subscribe to Michael's weekly commentary here

Subscribe to Michael's podcast here

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S. Michael Craven is the founder and President of the Center for Christ & Culture. The Center for Christ & Culture is dedicated to renewal within the Church and works to equip Christians with an intelligent and thoroughly Christian approach to matters of culture in order to recapture and demonstrate the relevance of Christianity to all of life. For more information on the Center for Christ & Culture, additional resources and other works by S. Michael Craven visit: www.battlefortruth.org

Michael lives in the Dallas area with his wife Carol and their three children.

If the ecclesiocentric view of the church’s mission tends to focus on the building and maintenance of the church then a proper theocentric view rightly focuses the church on the mission of God or missio Dei.

For the church to be a relevant instrument and faithful witness of the gospel, especially in the wake of Christendom’s collapse; we must recover this God-centered understanding of the church’s mission. The “mission” of the church is not reducible to simply maintaining the institutional church; it is not a program of the church, and it is not an activity that only occurs on foreign fields. The church is a body of people who are called together and sent by God into the world to represent His rule and reign: the kingdom of God. The church exists for the mission of God and not for itself! 

My friend and pastor of Church of the King in Corpus Christi, Dave Lescalleet describes the in-breaking reign of God well when he says:


In essence, the church bears witness to the in-breaking reign of God and serves as the instrument by which God is making “everything sad come untrue.” There is an optimism that should naturally flow from the perspective that “our God reigns.” (cf. Isaiah 52:7) Sadly, this optimism is, in my estimation, largely missing from the Evangelical church in America. Many Christians seem to live and think as if Christ has been overcome by the world rather than vice versa. (cf. John 16:33) Or that the gates of hell do indeed prevail against the church. Perhaps by recovering the biblical mission of the Church as participation in God’s unrelenting reign; we can, once again, be a people who live as more than those who are simply surviving!

So, understanding that the church is not the kingdom of God but rather its ambassador; how does the church represent the mission of God in the world? The biblical narrative seems to outline a three-fold approach. One, the church demonstrates the reign of God within a distinct community; Two, the church serves the world by doing justice and meeting human needs through compassion and mercy thereby setting things right, and three; the church proclaims the message of the risen Christ as the only means by which one may enter the kingdom of God.

Given that “service” and “proclamation” are fairly self-explanatory, I want to focus on what I believe is both the church’s greatest weakness and her greatest challenge: Demonstrating the reign of God within a distinct community. Because as George Hunsberger put it, “Before the church is called to do or say anything, it is called and sent to be a unique community of those who live under the reign of God.” In a radically individualistic America, this may be the church’s greatest obstacle to the missio Dei.

Jesus’ invitation is to “enter the kingdom of God.” Practically, this means that we are saved out of our individual isolation and alienation and into the community of faith. Recall that the Great Commission given by Jesus was to “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit...” (Matt. 28:19) Jesus is stressing the conversion of individuals through relationships (i.e. make disciples) followed by their being joined to the Body of Christ through baptism. There is a “corporateness” to the kingdom message.

Paul stresses that the Gentiles who were once alienated from “the commonwealth of Israel” (God’s covenant people) have been brought near “by the blood of Christ” that “he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace, and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross.” (Eph. 2:12, 13, 15) There is a corporate sense to God’s redemptive plan that carries forward from national Israel to form a new covenant people (the church) out of both the Jew and Gentile into the new Israel.

At the conclusion of chapter two Paul writes, “Built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord. In him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit.” (Eph. 2:20-22) Again, the emphasis is on the corporate nature of God’s redemptive plan.

One commentator writes:  “The last verse…reminds the readers of the enormous privilege that they are part of this whole construction. They are incorporated in the building, the one universal church, which God makes his dwelling by the Spirit. And they are incorporated in it precisely by union with Christ, in whom all things are being brought into the cosmic harmony and peace enabled by reconciliation inaugurated at the cross.”

This community is not merely the social gathering of a people with common values but rather a people who display proof of God’s redemptive work in the world. This “proof” flows forth from converted individuals whose transformation is authenticated through their interaction with each other. This community, the church, is intended to bear testimony to the restoration of fellowship with God and each other—a community of self-sacrificing love and support that stands in stark contrast to the fallen world. Jesus himself established this as the authenticating fact of our faith when he said “By this all people will know you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” (John 13:35) Was this not the preeminent testimony of the first century church in which “they had all things in common?”

As Americans, we enter the church with nearly overpowering individualistic inclinations. We come with and cling to “expectations” and demands that are centered on ourselves. We want people to talk to us but we are unwilling to talk to strangers. We have a myriad of personal preferences that we impose on the church about worship styles, music and the like. We grade the pastor on whether or not he has met our needs through his sermon. And we certainly aren’t interested in anyone getting in our business! We don’t humbly submit to one another. We argue and divide over inconsequential issues. We attack those outside our theological framework and we rarely listen to those with whom we disagree. Often our attitudes and actions toward each other are shameful and bring disgrace on the name of Christ.

We simply do not fulfill this essential part of God’s mission because we fail to demonstrate the reign of God within this authenticating community. If we don’t get this right, our service will remain indistinguishable from any other and our proclamation of the risen Christ will appear shallow and without basis. If we want to be faithful witnesses to the King who has come and is coming again; we must repent of our self-centered individualism that thwarts the authenticating community of God’s people and humbly submit to one another. Make it so, Lord!

© 2008 by S. Michael Craven

Comment on this article here

Subscribe to Michael's weekly commentary here

Subscribe to Michael's podcast here

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S. Michael Craven is the founder and President of the Center for Christ & Culture. The Center for Christ & Culture is dedicated to renewal within the Church and works to equip Christians with an intelligent and thoroughly Christian approach to matters of culture in order to recapture and demonstrate the relevance of Christianity to all of life. For more information on the Center for Christ & Culture, additional resources and other works by S. Michael Craven visit: www.battlefortruth.org

Michael lives in the Dallas area with his wife Carol and their three children.