Being in the midst of a group of university people discussing how we should engage matters of faith and conscience in a public university has made me think more and more about how the gospel message (and the messengers with whom that message is inevitably attached) can and should operate in a pluralist society. I posted once before about my response to 'all religions are really just one' (see Response to Religious Convergence: A Parable) but there's so much more at stake here.
I'm stealing both the title for this post and lots of the thoughts I'll present here from one of my author-drinking buddies, Lesslie Newbiggin, who thinks about these issues far and away better than just about any Christian in church history.
Over the past several years, for better and for worse, Christianity has been 'prime time.' We've got a card-carrying evangelical president, we've had a blockbuster movie (The Passion of the Christ), we've sold billions of books and trinkets (Purpose Driven Life). The two issues that I suspect will push us back into the margins (where I think we are generally better behaved) are homosexuality and secular pluralism.
Secular pluralism seeks to affirm all cultures everywhere (except Western culture, which is generally targeted for pinata-like critique [I can never figure out how to get that squiggly over the n!]). As such, it is often married to a religious universalism--all religions are a-okay. Christian pluralism radically affirms that cultures are good--but then it also radically calls all culture to repentance, transformation and change--and yes, let's please start with Western culture. Just like in the individual, God meets a culture as is and then invites it enter into the process of redemption and sanctification. Believers in every culture are called to participate in that process.
So what exactly does that look like? Newbiggin offers us some helpful places to start our dialogue in a pluralist society.
First off, all worldviews have some sort of core faith-assumptions: Jews, Muslims, Christians, Atheists, Pluralists, etc. Every world view not only has it's own core faith assumptions, it also has explanations for every other world view's faith assumptions. Since we are all coming to the table with our own core faith assumptions, which include explanations for everyone else's faith assumption, no one world view can presume to have 'higher ground' with which to see everyone else's faith.
In other words, FUNCTIONALLY, as Christians in this conversation with a variety of people and perspectives, we do not come to the table arrogantly or presumptuous that we have all the answers locked in already. We have our answers that make sense from our faith perspective, and so do the other folks at the table. In Christ, we believe that we have been given the ultimate revelation about who God is and how we are to relate to him. We share that message unashamedly but also in great humility because it is only by the power of the Holy Spirit that someone else can and will affirm that statement. We will not win over others through pompous certainty nor through our own wisdom but through the Spirit at work in the hearts and minds of our listeners. Our own humility in the conversation is a participation in the Spirit's work of showing what truth actually is, humility seasons the conversation for receptivity.
As Christians we must learn this skill-set of humble conversations around a pluralistic table. We no longer have a monopoly on our cultural understanding--which in some ways is good because, like I said earlier, I think we behave much better from that place of margin than monopoly. In order to engage conversations with others, we engage in authentic dialogue that means a genuine exchange of ideas...and trust that the Holy Spirit is at work in our encounter to bring people to Himself.
2 comments:
I don't think it'll work in the text space blogger gives, but if you open up an MS Word and type CTRL+SHIFT+~, let go of everything, and then type n, you'll have a nice pretty ñ to copy and paste wherever you'd like.
(Accents in MS Word in English are CTRL+', let go, then whatever vowel.)
You could also go to Control Panel, Regional and Language Options, Languages tap, Details button, Add button, and choose Spanish (and whatever else you want!) to add to your computer. Then there will be a little "EN" for English just to the right of all your windows on your taskbar (but before your little icons and the clock), and but clicking that and goign to ES, you can temporarily have a Spanish keyboard (you have to choose Spanish for whatever specific window you're in though-- so be sure Firefox is the window you have on top at that point). Then an ñ is just the ; key and accented letters are just [ before the letter.
Haha, and now you know more than you ever wanted to know about keyboard languages... but you DO know how to make an ñ!
what i mean is that if you survey much of christian history, when christianity has some sort of hegemony and is in places of power and influence, we tend to abuse that just like everyone else does. when c'ns were being fed to lions and burned alive, their witness and faith was fierce and deep and powerful. when constantine was converted and becoming a Christian was pretty much necessary for government jobs, land ownership and the like, the Christianity of the time was lax, luke-warm, and tyrannical over all who did not fall in line with the state religion.
lots of athletes will say that they prefer it when their team is an underdog going into a big game--it gives them something to rally around together. i think the same thing is true missionally when Christians are more the oppressed minority than when we're fat, dumb, and happy running the show.
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