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by austin pfeiffer
In the very beginning of the Acts of the Apostles, the book written by the Gospel writer Luke, he accounts for Jesus telling the apostles to under no circumstances leave Jerusalem. This might just seem a quark in a myth, if you assume Jesus was not really God, just a philosopher, with some odd and cryptic reason for them. For many Christians such a claim would seem alternatively perplexing. Evangelical Christians salivate desperately over Jesus' command to go out into the ends of the Earth with His story and love. Jesus' limitation is a confusing wrench thrown in the mechanics of the one dimensional interpretation abuses used to justify colonialism, traveling the world spreading modern, western lifestyle and Jesus Christ.
Really the danger is confusing the kingdom of God with the kingdoms of earth. Jesus was certainly interested in the spread of Christianity, but imperial he was not. If God created the Earth, the rest of history is a simple reconciliation within his own kingdom and the mysteries of time and space and knowledge are difficult to define with imperial language. When people talk about going to places where the Bible is not translated or where missionaries have never been, sometimes they fabricate a paradigm where Christians are battling soldiers, conquering territory on behalf of a finite ruler. We seek to serve as purveyors of benevolence on behalf of the land's Lord.
Our intentional living community has tried to adopt these ideas as we study the book of Acts. We find ourselves not trying to start a church, fracture the cracked asphalt of Christian churches, but to fill in gaps in the transcendent collective known as Christianity. Christianity's controversy comes with two serious pieces of baggage. The first is unavoidable. Anytime you claim Jesus was the son of God, you limit your tolerance of certain societal ambiguities and will fancy yourself some form of close minded obtuseness. The second , is when you take the claims of God as a creator, Jesus as his son, and the Bible as their constitution, you choose to serve with force. A question remains once you choose to contribute, are you a diplomat for the existing or a soldier for the conquering?
1 comment:
I'd like to think one could also be a diplomatic soldier. Where one lives life pragmatically as a Christian, yet is mindful of how to be a soldier in the day to day. Often it is the lack of diplomacy in being a Christian soldier, that creates the immediate backlash of open ears in our society. We thus, perhaps unintentionally, become the enemy. We collectively become part of the forces that need to be reached as well. Brood of vipers we then join ranks with, more intent on how one washes their hands, than the actual Word.
~Julie Leacock
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