Beyond Justice: Biblical Foundation for Mission and Justice Part 2 of 2

Beyond Justice, parts 1 and 2 were written by R. York Moore and are the full, non-filmed manuscripts for the InterVarsity Christian Fellowship USA and World Vision ACT:S campaign project, “Beyond Justice,” or “Get ACT:IVE” campaign.

Our Dream is Realized Through Jesus Christ

Before we begin to think that the dream of God is some far off, ethereal idea, I want to say that God’s dream is coming to pass right now, all over the world-particularly in some of the most dire situations.  The Kingdom of God is not merely a place and a time in the future.  The Kingdom of God is showing up and transforming our world.  The Kingdom of God begins with the good news of Jesus Christ.  All history is heading toward the day when Jesus Christ will reign, where he will set all things right but the good news of Jesus is that it has already begun.  Jesus declared the Kingdom of God a present reality in his first public address in Luke 4 (NASB) where he said, “THE SPIRIT OF THE LORD IS UPON ME, BECAUSE HE ANOINTED ME TO PREACH THE GOSPEL TO THE POOR.  HE HAS SENT ME TO PROCLAIM RELEASE TO THE CAPTIVES, AND RECOVERY OF SIGHT TO THE BLIND, TO SET FREE THOSE WHO ARE OPPRESSED, TO PROCLAIM THE FAVORABLE YEAR OF THE LORD.”  From this point forward in history, the Kingdom of God has been advancing toward God’s dream with the power of the present Christ.  Notice Jesus’ emphasis on the poor, on those in bondage, the sick, and the oppressed.  Justice is God’s heartbeat and the Kingdom of God revolves around making all things right, particularly for those who suffer.  When Jesus told his followers to go and preach to the cities of his day, he told them to heal the sick and to announce, “The kingdom of God has come near to you.”  (Luke 10:9, NASB).  God’s Kingdom dream has always revolved around good news to those who need it most-this is the mission of the followers of Jesus, to announce the good news of the Kingdom of God and to invite the nations to join in the dream!  The Kingdom of God is a reality that is now, not just a future reality.  Because of what Jesus Christ has done, the dream of God is breaking into our world, reversing injustices, freeing slaves, healing the sick and restoring hope.  Isn’t that exciting!?!?  What’s more is that Jesus invites us to be actors in bringing the Kingdom of God to bear upon the broken and unjust places of our world.  This is the best way to think about what it means to be an activist.  We live in an age where we long for change; we are more knowledgeable than ever about the plight of those who suffer.  We want to change the world.

Change We Can Believe In

In our faith communities, the concept of a ‘justice activist’ is taking hold as Christians begin to realize the centrality of justice in the teachings of Jesus.  Being inspired by the dream of God of a better world is fueling new expressions of Christian faith and a generation of ‘justice activists’ are rising up to take the gospel to the poor, the message of freedom to those enslaved, healing to the sick, and the message of forgiveness in Jesus Christ.  Being an activist whose vision is rooted in the person of Jesus Christ and whose hope is the coming Kingdom of God is sustainable activism that bares consistent, long-term good.  We all want change we can believe in and in Jesus Christ we find it.  The dream of God is ultimately realized only through the person of Jesus Christ.  When we think of an 8 year old who has been sold by her mother in Myanmar to an international sex tourist for $200 or a father who would sell his son as a bonded laborer in India to bake bricks, we see what kind of evil we are up against.  Ultimately, injustices always trace back to a spiritual brokenness, a soul sickness.  In the state of Ohio alone in 2010, there was an estimated 1,000 U.S. born children, most under the age of 15, sold as forced prostitutes.  We can legislate against such realities, prosecute those who traffic in the flesh of children, and build after-care facilities for victims but without addressing the hunger that would give rise to such a rape of humanity, we are failing to be holistic in our approach to evil.  Real evil exists in our hearts and in the world around us and that is something that requires real spiritual power to address.  This is why we need the power that only comes through the person of Jesus Christ.  In the life and death of Jesus we hear the echoes of another world, a world where couples stroll, laughter flourishes, and the streets hum with music.

The Dream Making Work of Christ

When Jesus died on the cross, he dealt once and for all with the evil in the world out there and the world in here.  As Jesus hung on the cross, his death paid the full price for all the things that we’ve done, all the things that we’ve left undone that are incompatible with the dream of God.  We are not just victims in this world or neutral observers of the world’s suffering-we have all contributed to the wreckage of the world in many ways.  Jesus’ death on the cross enables us to begin again and to experience God’s forgiveness.  The Bible also tells us that Jesus, three days after his death, returned to life-he was raised from the dead.  And it’s this power that raised Jesus from the dead that is available to us today.  The spiritual life we find in the person of Jesus is given to us who would follow Jesus as Kingdom activists, proclaiming and demonstrating the Kingdom of God to the world around us.  This is how the dream of God advances, as God’s activists, Jesus’ followers, take the power of God and apply it to those places that are broken, to people who are suffering, and to our own lives as well.  Divine history is going somewhere.  All that God is doing is pointing to another time and place, it is culminating in the grand dream of God.  In contrast, human history can be summarized in its totality as the dialectic rise and fall between our pursuit of the dream we remember and its vicious counterpart, the nightmare of injustice and suffering.

The Dream Becomes Reality

What does God’s dream look like in its fullness?  What picture does Jesus give us of this coming Kingdom?  In the book of Revelation, we get a vivid snapshot of the dream of God fulfilled.  We are introduced to a city unlike any city we’ve ever seen or read about.  American cinema and literature have done us a disservice by giving us images of Heaven as a place where we’ll lounge partially nude on clouds, feeding from clusters of grapes while eternally honing our harp playing skills.  But the dream of God revolves around a city, a unique city where infrastructure and agriculture are intertwined; a city where beauty and order coincide with population density and activity; a city of purpose and pleasure.  This city that we read about stands in diametrical opposition to the city of Babylon we read of earlier.  It is the city that is the antithesis of every broken and exploitative system in our cities today.  Listen to the picture that has long fueled those who follow Jesus to reach for the dream.  In Rev. 21 and 22 we read this description: (Rev. 21:21-27, The Message), “The main street of the City was pure gold, translucent as glass. But there was no sign of a Temple, for the Lord God—the Sovereign-Strong—and the Lamb are the Temple. The City doesn’t need sun or moon for light. God’s Glory is its light, the Lamb its lamp! The nations will walk in its light and earth’s kings bring in their splendor. Its gates will never be shut by day, and there won’t be any night. They’ll bring the glory and honor of the nations into the City. Nothing dirty or defiled will get into the City, and no one who defiles or deceives. Only those whose names are written in the Lamb’s Book of Life will get in.”  (Rev. 22:1-3a, Message) “Then the Angel showed me Water-of-Life River, crystal bright. It flowed from the Throne of God and the Lamb, right down the middle of the street. The Tree of Life was planted on each side of the River, producing twelve kinds of fruit, a ripe fruit each month. The leaves of the Tree are for healing the nations. Never again will anything be cursed.”  In this city of hope we see a river of life, a tree of healing-abundance and restoration.  God’s dream is a dream beyond justice though it includes the judgment necessary to establish it.  Notice in this description that nothing dirty or defiled will get into the city-it is a holy place.  God’s dream goes beyond holiness, beyond justice, God’s dream is a dream of flourishing.  Like many cities, the city of Detroit even at the height of its grandeur held only a shadowy resemblance of the city of God.  Detroit was never the final destination of slaves-they dreamt of something better, it was the dream behind their dream that fueled their journey.  At best, this city or any of the other cities of this world are mere symbols of a dream that lives in our hearts because our souls remember.  Malan, New York, Vancouver, Beijing, Buenos Aires, Dubai-all these and many other great cities hold aspects that are alluring to us.  Beauty, transcendence, natural treasures, the arts, fashion, abundant resources, power-all these things in some way are attractive to us because our soul remembers.  In the dream of God realized through the person of Jesus Christ, we see the culmination of divine history in this city of God.

Our Dream is an Invitation to the Dream of God

“All my life I been called a slave.   They tell me I belongs to my master.  That may be true about my body, but my soul remembers a time when I was free, so when I get a chance I will run.”  What does it mean to respond to the dream, the world we remember?  I believe this unknown slave has the right answer-we run!  The dream God has put in our hearts is really an invitation, an invitation to pursue something greater than ourselves, greater than the façade around us-it is an invitation to run toward the dream.  Feeling the dense air flow between our fingers, to see the sights and sounds of life the way it ought to be, and to hear the sounds of a world made right-this is what we can experience when we choose to run.  How do we make the dream a reality?  How do we respond to the dream God has for the world and each of our lives? How do we sustain our commitment to actualize God’s dream for justice.  These are the questions we will explore together.  When we choose to run, we reorient our lives.  When someone chooses to run a marathon, they set goals, they practice and train, they endure strict regiments.  When we choose to run after the dream of God, we choose to follow Jesus who sets the pace and the direction for the dream.  We learn from him and submit to his way of thinking and doing.  As a result, we begin by living a more active faith – by seeing our lives differently and joining a purpose bigger than ourselves.  The reality is that whether or not you’ve noticed it, Jesus is already setting the pace and giving your life direction.  The passion and drive we have, the joy we find in life are usually indicators of where the Kingdom of God is touching your soul.  What dream has God placed on your heart? It might be tutoring children living in poverty in your own backyard, helping to right the wrong of modern-day slavery, helping end a preventable disease like malaria in your life-time, or something else that God has uniquely placed on your heart.  Where do you see this other world tearing at the fiber of your soul?

The invitation that God is making to you now is an invitation to be more like Jesus and to pursue a world that is more like God’s Kingdom than the world of pain, suffering and injustice.  Pursuing this world requires condition.  Just like a runner will condition their body in pursuit of a goal, God invites us to condition our heart.  God wants us to begin to see the way he sees and care about the things he cares about.  The founder of World Vision, Bob Pierce, used to pray a prayer that is now famous the world over, “Let me heart be broken by the things that break the heart of God.”  Conditioning our heart to reflect the heart of God requires us to connect deeply with Jesus Christ.  Through prayer, reading the Bible, and seeing what is going on in our world we can begin to develop a heart like God.  Our souls remember so we will run.  The great news is that the run Jesus invites us to is not a solitary one-he invites us to do it together.  Moving beyond justice requires a movement.  We can only do so much on our own to change our soul or to change our society and so God’s dream is to be pursued in community. God’s dream is about both individual transformation and global restoration – and it requires each of us to do our part and all of us to do our part together. It’s not enough to simply live a more active faith individually; we must share God’s heart for the world with others and invite them to run with us.

Conclusion

There is something beyond justice and its joy.  There is a place our soul calls out for, another place that our soul remembers.  Our response to God’s invitation begins when we imagine what could be-a life together of joy, of endless summer nights-peace, safety, security- and most of all togetherness.  God longs to restore the world and that will come to pass in a final way one day but today, he invites us to run with him in bringing the Kingdom of God to our world today.  Our response to God’s invitation is to run, to run toward this place of magic, to breathe in and dream with God and to join him in making all things new.

The Building is On Fire: Our Responsibility to Soul & Society

The message of the gospel is the power that can change a world-the worlds within worlds multiplied billions of times over throughout the globe! The gospel can change the world of every person who would respond to its power. The gospel changes the world of individual people, transforming them from the inside out. The gospel is the good news of the death, resurrection, and Lordship of Jesus and is good because we stand already condemned before a holy God with the death sentence already handed out to humanity! In the gospel we see God’s glorious grace, his strong desire not for mere reform but for renewal. In the gospel we see God’s power to literally make us right and to restore our lost state of grandeur.

In the gospel, however, we also see the power that can change the world, the entire system that has crashed and merely wobbles about simulating the world intended for us by God. There is little debate that the world we live in is not the world God intended for us. There are wars in this world, enduring poverty too. There is debasing addictions along with the oppression of women and children. In this world, people die of preventable diseases by the hundreds of thousands all the time. This world seems to offer so little purpose, so little hope that even when we have plenty we still throw away our families for cheap thrills, our abilities and gifts for mere consumption and our dignity to feel connected to another person, if even for a moment. Our world is damaged and no quick fix, no political party or reform, no amount of money or determination will fix it. What we need is a supernatural, superspiritual, supra-human, extra-dimensional solution of power and the great news is that we have such power in the person of Jesus Christ! Yes, Jesus is able to save our world, but He is also able to save the world!

If it is true, that we have the power to change the world, than what do we do with it? What would you do if you could carry around with you, in your jacket or purse, a device so powerful that if it were unleashed it would literally impact everything and anything around you? Would you release it? Probably not if it were a nuclear device, an incurable virus, or a poisonous gas but what if it were an unstoppable force of hope, a contagion of love, or an enveloping power for restoration? Where would you first introduce such a power? As Christians, we do have such a power, the power to change the world! Unfortunately, most of the time, we leave it in our purse, our desk drawer, glove box, or cached on our disk drives, making sure that it changes nothing and nobody around us. Often, this power has been cemented like a memorial to a time gone by, a faith tradition that used to impact communities, countries, and continents. We have the power to change the world and we need to use it, but where and how?

Recently, I was asked by two students in two separate conversations about how to discern God’s call and how to invest themselves in God’s broad world and Kingdom. I shared with them that there are some things God calls all of us to. “It is God’s will for everyone to be evangelized,” I said, “so you are always safe including personal witness as God’s will for your life.” I said, “God wants us all to always pursue knowing Him so I’m pretty sure you should do that too.” In both conversations, however, they specifically wanted to know about the vast universe of things Christians are doing, “What about AIDS orphans, and clean drinking water for the poor, and sex slaves, and Scripture translation, and Muslims and Hindus, and unreached people groups, and…and…and….” The students felt overwhelmed by both the responsibility of the power entrusted to them as well as the vast needs and ways to use that power in the world. I think we can all sympathize with being in this place at one point or another.

I continued, “One way to look at it is as if the world were a high-rise apartment complex and we live on one of the floors. Let’s say there was a fire on one of the floors. Now, if the fire were in apartment 14B and everyone got out, it might be the Christian thing perhaps to send money or a nice card to express care for the material loss of the tenants in that unit.” I continued, “However, let’s say there was a raging fire on the top floor and the lives of many were at stake. In this case, rescuing them might require special abilities and gifts, not the least of which would include bravery and physical strength-in reality only some people would be helpful in rescuing people on the top floor of the burning building.” I ended by saying, “Now, if there were a raging fire on the first floor, threatening to spread upward to consume each and every floor, every apartment, every life-certainly you would say that we would all be called to do something for ourselves and our neighbors in the building, right?” Both students agreed. I brought the illustration to a close by pointing out, “…some fires in our world are apartment 14B fires. 14B fires matter to God and they should matter to us but our response shouldn’t be to rush in and risk our lives to rescue the material possessions being consumed-it is good enough that the people got out and will live to rebuild their lives. We can and should share our love and concern with people during their time of loss.” Continuing, “Some fires threaten a great many people and require a concerted and passionate response requiring special gifts and bravery. God equips many to respond to these needs even though in doing so they themselves may perish. Such people are heroes to us, people of whom the world is not worthy but we are not all such people-God chooses those heroes.” Finally, “There are many issues we as Christians face, however, that are like the fire raging on the first floor of the building, fires that if left unchecked would simply consume all of humanity. These fires are complex and often reflect not one gigantic blaze but rather a series of smaller interrelated fires. These fires,” I said, “require all of us, no matter what our calling or gifting is, to respond with everything we’ve got.”

It is true that our world is in shambles and there is no end to the need before us, both temporally as well as eschatologically. Each and every person is lost and everywhere we look the impact of that reality is felt. The fact that those without Christ are dying and on their way to hell is a first floor fire. No matter what we do for people temporally, unless we also share the message that can change their world, they will perish and the eternal suffering they will endure will make all suffering in this world pale by comparison. I believe the interrelatedness of modern-day slavery, aggressive secularization, the simultaneous rise of global poverty and the super-rich, the dehumanization of women and children, and mass deaths as a result of preventable/curable diseases are examples of more first floor fires. We are not given a choice by God whether to address first floor fires of the soul or first floor fires of the material world, the Church is called to them all. We must care about all suffering, whether temporal or eschatological. It is not my place to determine what are 14B or top floor fires, and people that have particular calls to such ministries that focus on these fires would not find my opinions on the matter helpful or empowering. It is clear, however, that we all must contribute what bravery, what super powers, what faith we have to doing all we can to put out the blaze that threatens to consume the soul and consume society. Again, the great news is that we have such power, the power to change a world and the power to change the world. The question is will we use it?

The New Language of Evangelism

“There is power, power, wonder working power in the blood of the lamb. There is power, power, wonder working power in the precious blood of the lamb.” This hymn represents a powerful truth of the Christian religion. A full explication of the atoning death of Christ would still do little to communicate the full power and impact of the realities behind these simple words. The blood of Christ is not a mere theological construct. The fact that there is power is also no mere propositional claim. There is, in fact, real transformative power in the “precious blood of the lamb,” but how do we speak this today? How ought the speech-act of gospel proclamation be conducted in light of such seemingly esoteric utterances about blood and wonder working power? Rightly so, in evangelism we must work to contextualize, to interpret, to exposit into culture through the lens of culture but there are limits to translation.

The fact that Jesus is portrayed figuratively as “the lamb of God that takes away the sins of the world” is something that needs background and time to develop for our un-Churched friends. Often, we do not have the luxury of such time or the relational clout to develop such concepts through teaching. We often choose to avoid such symbolism and “advanced” theological concepts. What would have been an immediate “ah ha” connection for a Jewish audience presents itself as an obstacle for hearing to our audience today. There are still some concepts that ought not be translated, some symbols that are too “precious” to contextualize and must be taught.

In Kallenberg’s seminal yet short work Live to Tell: Evangelism for a Postmodern Era, he states, “…postcritical thinking transcends modern views of language…put simply, conversion involves the acquisition of a new conceptual language,” (pp 38-39). When we come to Christ (and are coming to Christ) our conversion must include, amongst other things, connecting to our world, to God, and to others through the use of an altogether new language. Because of this, evangelistic practices must not seek to merely contextualize, as important as this is. Evangelistic proclamation must also always teach the new language of faith. Certainly, different groups will need different forms aspects of faith contextualized and there are certain symbols of faith which may be appropriate for one group while obstacles for others. Having said this, the “precious blood” and its transforming power seems to be one of several realities we need to teach our hearers to understand and take on.

The centrality of the cross and the resurrection in time and space represent so much more than mere symbolism, they are the essence of the message of faith. There is no faith without the blood shed on the cross, no hope without the power of the resurrection-simply put, there is no gospel without the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. A bloody Jesus may appear to be a stumbling block for some people groups but unless we export this grotesquery into all cultures intact we run the danger of losing the connection with the existential referent itself. Of all things, it is the death and resurrection of Jesus that must be pressed into because therein lays the power for transformation. The fear, particularly for us “experts” on culture and contextualization is that we will be seen as cut from the same cloth as those “old timers” or fanatics. We must not shy away from this but instead recall and recite another great hymn, “Give me that old time religion-it’s good enough for me!”