The Emasculated Church

Church hopping is like bar hopping, although it takes more than a night to make the rounds. The church, so it seems, is a place where people that think along the same lines join together to hang out, and if you begin to differ somewhat in ideas you can go somewhere else. Others, however, think that the church is more like a family, where people with differences are bound together. Sometimes the family squabbles, but it's family and, except under certain extreme cases, it has to stay together. In the same vein, the church is like a city or civilization. Here's a little story from Mark Horne to illustrate:

An American drives into Canada and eats at a diner. His waiter asks him where he's from. “Oh, from America! I'm actually an American, too.” “Really? You were born there?” “No.” “Are your parents American?” “No, sadly they were Canadians their whole lives, but I've been reading this tract about American ideas and I'm fascinated by them. Now I've memorized the Declaration of Independence and I'm firmly committed to Americanism.”

This is odd because one doesn't become an American by holding certain ideas. America is an institution and not primarily a belief system, and one must enter it by a certain way. Similarly, one sometimes hears that Christianity is not an -ism. Peter Leithart, in his book Against Christianity, writes: “The Church is not a people united together by common ideas, ideas which collectively go under the name 'Christianity' ” (Canon Press, Moscow, ID. p.14). Rather, we are united in one faith, which is an entire way of “leaning into life.” We are a new culture, a new people, like the old people of God. We are united by our ritual of baptism (Eph. 5.4-6). We are united because we eat the same bread (1 Cor 10.17). We are new culture, a new people, like the former people of God, and we are united by our rituals.

We are a kingdom like other kingdoms, except we are the kindgom of God. We cannot divide between the religious and the secular, religion and politics:

In the New Testament, we do not find an essentially private gospel being applied to the public sphere, as if the public implications of the gospel were a second story built on the private ground floor. The gospel is the announcement of the Father's formation, through His Son and the Spirit, of a new city -- the city of God (16).

When one understands the church not as the city of God but as a social group like the ymca or a literature society, then it loses one's devotion, and “real life” takes place outside of the church; taking part in the church is an extra thing added on to life, which one can choose to belong to or not. In Psalm 2, however, we get a different picture:

I will tell of the decree of the Lord: He said to me, “You are my son, today I have begotten you. Ask of me, and I will make the nations your heritage, and the ends of the earth your possession. You shall break them with a rod of iron, and dash them in pieces like a potter's vessel (vv. 7-9).

Jesus will destroy the other nations, not by force but by the transforming power of the Spirit. They will be assimilated.

The book of Daniel makes similar points. In chapter 2, Nebuchadnezzar has a dream about a large statue with a head of gold, breasts and arms of silver, a belly and thighs of bronze, legs of iron, and feet of iron and clay (vv. 32,33). Then “a stone was cut out by no human hand” and it smashed all the statue to bits, which the wind carried away so that no trace of them could be found; but the stone that smashed them “became a great mountain and filled the whole earth” (vv. 34,35). The different parts of the statue, according to Daniel, and of course he's right, were different kingdoms. The stone that smashed these kingdoms and was established forever was the kingdom of God. The kingdom of God is not friendly with other kingdoms. It destroys them, smashes them to bits.

Perhaps this is in the future, though. Perhaps the kingdom is not yet. In Jesus's ministry, however, he talked as though he were bringing in the kingdom. He talked as if the kingdom were there because he was there: “But if it is by the finger of God that I cast out demons, then the kingdom of God has come upon you” (Luke 11.20).

Some might say that the kingdom of God is not even on earth, but is another realm, because Jesus said that his kindgom is not of this world. We can understand this in another way, however, and in a way that is consistent with scriptural language. When something is not of the world, it doesn't use worldly methods, and we have our own methods: “For though we live in the world we are not ccarrying on a worldly war, for the weapons of our warfare are not worldly but have divine power to destroy strongholds” (2 Cor 10.3,4).

Back to Leithart for the conclusion. He thinks that the way we view the church nowadays (which I haven't well defined, by the bye) is a great heresy. He calls this heresy Christianity, by which he means treating scripture like a system of ideas to which we give our assent and then there's an end of it (14-15). He says: “Christianity is the heresy of heresies, the underlying cause of the weakness, lethargy, sickness and failure of the modern church” (13).

Like, you know, whatever.

Works Cited (In preparation for returning to school)
Leithart, Peter. Against Christianity. Moscow, ID: Canon, 2003.