Is the Christian Gospel Any Good For the World?

Christians talk a lot about this thing called the Gospel, and that it is ‘good news’.  However, just how good is it when it is often encountered as a demoralizing message of shame and guilt over things people have done wrong, and that behind all this is a God who will punish you if you don’t conform (but hey – accept Jesus and you’ll be saved).  The church as the corporate purveyor of this so-called good news hasn’t had a good run of it lately either.  Public perception of the church (warranted or not) is coloured by many things that detract from the ‘good news’ such as the impact of colonialism, residential schools, anti LGBTQ stances, and in some contexts, Christian nationalism and its related issue-politics. 

This is not His ‘good news’. It makes me sad and frustrated at how far the expression of this Gospel has strayed from its original story. 

It’s only in the last decade I have come to extricate myself from a narrow and truncated version of God’s Grand Story for the world that was so often put forward by some within evangelicalism. Yes, I am deconstructing – and in reality we all should be.  Not to destroy and abandon, but to renew, rebuild and restore.  Our faith is not static.  How can it be if it is focused on the Creator of the Universe????  Can you remain in your knowing, thinking you’ve ‘got it’?

What happened to love?  What happened to inclusion?  What happened to embracing the outcast?  What happened to radical hospitality? What happened to resisting and even challenging the straitjacket that is religion?  What happened to living as a representative of Jesus Christ, who displayed all these things I just mentioned? 

What happened is that instead of living out His ways in the workplace, the neighbourhood, and wherever we go in our lives - and thereby attracting people to that way and truth about real, abundant life -  contemporary Christianity chose to slice and dice the Bible as though it was merely a divine last word theology-text, draw the lines of who can qualify as a Christian, develop the words and the rules of entry into God’s Kingdom and in effect, take on the role of humanity’s judge.

A tragic case of missing the point.

The Gospel is indeed Good News for the world in that ALL THINGS will be restored to God’s original intentions though Christ.  As we live according to His ways, that process of restoration is being enacted in real-time. God’s good news is that in Christ there is a path to abundant living with nature, with each other and with our Creator.

The earth desperately needs good news.  My personal sense is that everyone in this world has a primal sense that things could and should be better.  Don’t we all long for more peace, more love, more abundance and joy?  The Good News is that Christ is the Way to that kind of life.

Let’s show up and show that Way.

That "Deconstruction" Word

Words create worlds. Epic works take you to fantastical places.  A despots' rhetoric can destroy lives in a once-wonderful world.

Words create and shape your world.  Never underestimate their power over you or others.

Here’s a sample from my world. The buzz word/reality among many people of the Christian faith these days is ‘deconstruction’. For many that word creates a world of destruction, of tearing down, of assuming what was built is no longer functionary. It infers that ‘what I believed was wrong’.  Moving forward from that world, what’s the motivation to re-construct?  Your world becomes one of tearing down, with no other goal in mind.

Carefully chosen words shape your world and your approach to it.  They open new vistas (good & bad) and point in new directions.  It’s one reason why they are powerful. I am going to suggest an alternate word/world to 'deconstruction' later in this blog.  However, let’s first look at the power of some words that have shaped the evangelical Christian world: 

• Punishment vs. Sacrifice - Viewing the cross as God’s punishment of Jesus in our stead vs. His willing sacrifice to put the world right, has led to a punitive faith narrative where God is angry and requires punishment to assuage that anger. It results in a faith relationship informed by rules and perhaps some fear. 
• The Bible is the Word of God vs. The Living Word - In reality, Jesus Christ is the only true Word.  The Bible (Scripture) is a narrative script of God’s working in the world.  Though divinely inspired, it isn’t without its anomalies, contradictions, and inconsistencies.  (inspiration is another word to deal with). Yet everything in it points to and is subject to, the real Living Word.  Yet the world created by the words “the Bible is the Word of God” results in the words of the Bible interpreted and taught as though they were an unchanging, perfect legal document vs. the dynamic revelation/script of God’s working in the world.  Many have felt the shaming and the power exercised by those who ‘preach’ this approach to the Bible.  Jesus ironically becomes a secondary agent to the Bible. 
• Mission vs. Salt, Light, Yeast, Seed, Sent… (I could go on and on with more of the Scriptures' descriptors). ‘Mission’ (not even a strictly ‘Biblical' word) has carried with it a sense that we have a superior message.  It creates a world where we need to draw you and bring you into our understanding & expression of that message.  It leads to words like “outreach”, which infers a reaching TO the other to bring them IN to something. The truly Biblical words of salt, yeast, etc. instead create a world of participation with and among people vs. executing forays to spread the gospel. ‘Mission’ can truncate a message of global world restoration into a fixed point of light represented by a ‘decision for Christ’ and a joining with a church.

Oh and another word to examine: Gospel. What actually is it?

These and many other words have shaped the world of Christians for generations.  They are scripts, and we become so accustomed to these scripts, we often don’t even hear them anymore when spoken. While Christendom is still the dominant script for too many western churches, it’s clear that it’s over – except in our minds and attitudes, which are fueled by words & scripts that perpetuate our worlds.  So, do we need to deconstruct all of this?  Is it all wrong? 

Perhaps there’s a better way to view this by allowing a new word to shape our world of perception and inquiry;  a new word to help shape a faith that is so under scrutiny and reflection these days. 

I suggest that rather than de-construct, we rediscover in order to re-script the story.

Walter Brueggemann (bio below) uses this language to help us understand that we are a part of a STORY, a SCRIPT, and that we have to often examine it, and potentially re-script.  He once said that “This script turns out to be an alternative way of life. (But) we’re being seduced by bad melodies”.  NT Wright (bio below) often says that like the Israelites who had to get outside everyday to collect the manna God provided for them, we too need to refresh our relationship to God (which includes our understanding) on a regular basis.  In a sense, everyone at all times is a newcomer to faith.

Many of you are not singing the evangelical melody any longer.  I am one of those.  Yet it does not have to mean a rejection of the greatest story.  It could be that instead of de-constructing, you need to re-script. There is more to God’s Grand Story than we have been told.  Time perhaps to believe Jesus Christ when He said the Spirit will lead you into all Truth. 

Revisit and refresh the Script.

Harv Matchullis

 

Walter Bruegemann is the William Marcellus McPheeters professor emeritus of Old Testament at Columbia Theological Seminary, Decatur, Ga. https://www.walterbrueggemann.com/

NT Wright is Research Professor Emeritus of New Testament and Early Christianity
at St Mary’s College in the University of St Andrews and Senior Research Fellow at Wycliffe Hall, Oxford.  https://ntwrightpage.com/