STE:What are we to do  by Calvin Culver

   (A sober response)

   By Calvin Culver

   As I read through the Old Testament, I see God's purpose for Israel
to be the establishing of a society governed by the absolutes of
justice, mercy and compassion. The Law is replete with commands of the
Lord to look after the orphan and the widow, and goes to great length
to establish mechanisms for doing so, because God knew that left to
itself society would rather exploit them than care for them.

   Of God's purpose for Israel, Samuel and Sugden say in 'Evangelicals
and Development' (Ron Sider, ed., p.55) "He called a community to be
the sign of the kingdom by demonstrating God's action of Law and
promise in their life. The community was to exhibit in her economic,
social and political life the operation of God's Law and promise,
breaking down and building up, putting to death and renewing.... The
purpose of his Law in the Old Testament was to prevent structures from
exploiting the poor and to provide protection and relief for the poor
and vulnerable.... [The Law] did not preserve the status quo, but
sought to change it and open it up for the ultimate acceptance of God's
promise."

   Walter Bruggeman, in 'The Prophetic Imagination', speaks of the
"alternative community of Moses", whose role was to act as a prophetic
voice to the nations, and presents the thesis that "The task of
prophetic ministry is to nurture, nourish, and evoke a consciousness
and perception alternative to the consciousness and perception of the
dominant culture around us." (p. 13) He then goes on to argue that this
same purpose energized Christ's ministry, that Christ came to establish
the kingdom of God - in the hearts of men, to be sure, but equally
within the socio-political and economic structures of this world.

   It is my conviction that Christ's redemption was intended to
encompass not only man's vertical relationships (man-to-God, God-to-
man) but just as importantly his horizontal as well (my relationship to
my fellow man - my "neighbor"). Here, I humbly take exception to those
who say, "Christ always first cared for people's immediate predicament
whether pain, hunger, fear, whatever before going on to teach them
about the Kingdom." If you mean by this that needs such as hunger,
homelessness, health, and the like are certainly important and to be
addressed out of Christian compassion (what is often called meeting
"felt needs"), but they are really only important insofar as they
prevent men from seeing their true need - a relationship to God through
Jesus; it is this latter - the winning of men back to God - that is the
church's true vocation. This is where, to my mind, Western Christians
have dichotomized the spiritual (vertical) and physical (horizontal),
declaring that redemption consists only of the former. Salvation means
the establishing of a proper relationship to God; man's relationship to
man will correct itself once the vertical relationships are restored.

   And this is precisely where I disagree. I am convinced that true
redemption encompasses both the vertical and the horizontal, and in
(more or less) equal measure. Any schema which stresses the one
component at the expense of the other is unbalanced and distorted.
Thus, the liberal social gospel of the early 20th century, which
stressed social action and justice but ignored God, was fundamentally
in error. But equally in error is any theology which declares that
redemption consists only in the vertical, and this is precisely what I
perceive most modern evangelical/fundamentalist theology to be doing.

   Now, all this would remain a purely academic debate were it not for
the fact that it is precisely this sort of theology which is
responsible for a lack of true commitment (and indeed a sort of
blindness) toward the fundamental issues of justice, compassion and the
human rights of our neighbors. I look out upon the cries of a hurting
humanity and grieve that the church of our Lord is failing to "do unto"
its neighbor as Christ intended. Largely, perhaps, this is the result
of a reaction against the excesses of the early 20th century social
gospel, a sort of gun-shyness vis-a-vis any sort of activity which
might smack even remotely of liberal theology. But I think it is also a
consequence of the wealth (and I mean not just financial, but material,
political and sociological as well) of the West which has allowed
Christians the leisure to do abstract theology.

   Theology, you see, was never meant to be done in isolation from the
issues of life. Paul, for example, was a "task theologian" who did
theology not as abstract reflection but in reaction to and in dialogue
with the life-situations he encountered. We, in our leisured, abstract,
philosophizing, have so sterilized and formalized our theology that we
have divorced it entirely from the human situation; we have become
anesthetized to the very pain and anguish which God intended to inform
and shape our theology. We have ceased to grieve as we were meant to
grieve.

   What would I call upon you to do, then? Look with me upon the
griefs, the aches, the anguished cries of the world in which we live.
Look out, and grieve. Look out, and ache. Look out, and feel its pains.
But most of all, understand that Christ, our Lord, lived and died and
rose again, not only that we might be redeemed to God but that we might
be redeemed to one another as well, and that we might come to live out
that redemption by building a community of justice and peace.

   Computers for Christ - Chicago
