This article is part three of a larger reflection on the mission of the Church in a post-Christian culture. In December, I wrote about the importance of publicly proclaiming the faith (A belief that is rooted biblically and historically). In January, I emphasized the importance of instruction (and done so through education and living in wisdom). This month, I wrap up this series on the importance of practice (Discipleship)…
Practice (Discipleship)
With belief and instruction in place, the post-Christian world would benefit from a missional commitment of practice. While a Christian’s belief is rooted biblically and historically, and a Christian’s instruction is found through catechesis and wisdom, a believer’s practice is rooted in eschatology. As scholar Christopher Watkins explains, in “the church’s vision… one “eye” sees through the culture of the day – in our case late modernity – and the other is shifted with respect to this perspective, looking to the future fulfillment of the kingdom through the lens of God’s promises.”
This double focus of now and eschaton (the “not yet”) finds home inside the biblical description of the kingdom of God being “at hand”. As Chesterton wrote, this now and not yet tension mirrors how the Bible “looks at the world through a hundred windows where the ancient stoic or the modern agnostic only looks through one.” Looking through a “hundred windows” is a great metaphor that ties practice to the multifaceted biblical account of wisdom noted in my article last month.
Christian practice will find both fertile ground and challenges in a western society that has diverged from origins so deeply influenced by those same Christian practices. Dr. Christopher Watkins affirms, “yes, our society is shot through with Christian values, and yes, Christian must be an alien, revolutionary presence in late modernity.”
Practice is best expressed when it is able to maintain a comprehensive approach. More specifically, Dr. Watkin coined the term “transperspectival cultural engagement,” that is, “to indicate a way in which the same reality is experienced across and through… different perspectives.” The church’s practice can impersonate the multiple perspectives of sacred and secular wisdom intertwined in the Scriptures (e.g., Proverbs with Ecclesiastes). In a post-Christian context where modernity and postmodernity collide, the Christian community can place into practice the biblical approach of neither homogenizing or fragmenting the various voices contributing toward any topic of conversation.
One example of this practice can be found in NT Wright’s and Michael Bird’s recently published book titled “Jesus and the Powers.” In his argument for liberal democracy, Michael Bird states “in order to love our ‘neighbor’, we must allow our neighbor to be beside us and yet be different from us. Our neighbor has permission to be ‘other’ than us”. To put it simply, the church’s practice is coated in a proclamation of persuasion – not in coerciveness.
This practice is biblically informed by Imago Dei. Bird states, “there would never be human rights as self-evident truths without scriptural notions of the ‘image of god’ and the command to ‘love your neighbor as yourselves’ as it was interpreted in Christian societies.”
Conclusion
Our post-Christian society needs the church to put its mission into practice. We do so by living in the “now and not yet”, and viewing the world biblically, which satisfies the true needs of the world, all while promoting healing in the same broken world.
“For as the body apart from the spirit is dead, so also faith apart from works is dead.” - James 2:26