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Well, my little piece on FairTrade coffee has ignited plenty of discussion and debate—not only about the pros and cons of the FairTrade movement, but about social action, doing good and political involvement more generally. It is to these latter questions of theology and principle that I now want to turn (although ‘turn’ sounds rather too grand—as if I am about to give myself to a lengthy and learned disquisition).

What I have in mind instead is three short posts that attempt to provide punchy (and doubtless limited) answers to three related questions:

1. What is the relationship between evangelism and social action?
2. How does social action relate to the Last Day and the new creation?
3. What does social action look like for the Christian?

(Incidentally, I am not using the term ‘social action’ to mean something different from ‘social involvement’ or other similar phrases—all of which refer to the good that Christians seek to do in their local communities, and in society more broadly conceived.)

Firstly, then:

Six propositions on the relationship between evangelism and social action

1. Evangelism and social action are distinct activities
   This is an obvious thing to say, but it needs to be said. Evangelism = telling weak, sinful people that they are lost and powerless, but for the amazing message of God's grace in Jesus Christ. Social action = empowering the weak, and working together with them to effect change in their temporary circumstances here and now. Evangelism and social action are both good and worthwhile things, but they are not the same thing. We should not try to justify social action by disguising it as evangelism, nor make our evangelism more acceptable to the world (and more amenable to our weak selves) by redefining it as social action.
2. Prayerful proclamation is central to the work of the Lord
   Because of the human predicament (sinners facing God's wrath), and because of the days we live in (open season on salvation as we wait for judgement day), God has given us a work to do. He has commissioned his people to an urgent task that addresses the need of the hour—that people hear the call to repent while there is time. Thus evangelism and social action are both good activities, but they are not equal in importance. There is an urgency and centrality to the gospel task.
3. Evangelism and social action are inseparable
   All the same, the language of ‘priority’ is probably not so useful (as in ‘evangelism has priority’), because it might imply that we sit down and devise our evangelistic ‘To Do’ list, and then see if there is any time left to help people (agenda items 16 through 20). In reality, the two happen side by side as we love people, live among them and seek to bring them the gospel. Proclamation may be central, but its context will be a life of love that seeks to do good to those around us. The nature of this loving social action will be largely determined by our circumstances (i.e. preaching the gospel in the slums of Calcutta will require a different form of action than if we were preaching in a leafy, materialist suburb, where the pressing need may not be material deprivation but a breakdown in relationships, marriages and family life).
4. Social action is unconditional love, not a tactic
   Godly living adorns the gospel, says Paul to Titus (2:10). But godly living is not an evangelistic tactic, and neither is social action. Good works are glorifying to God in and of themselves. They are the reason Christ gave himself for us, that he might “purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works” (Titus 2:14). Social action (like any form of godly action in Christ) may have the effect of impressing people deeply, and causing them to enquire after Christ. But then again, it might not. Those who campaign, for example, against the social evils of abortion or alcohol abuse are routinely despised and ridiculed in our society. In such cases, it will only be on the day of God's visitation that their revilers will glorify God (1 Pet 2:12).
5. Social action is not a magic evangelistic bullet
   Social action is not a key to unlock people's hearts—as if all we need to do is engage in more effective and visible forms of social improvement in order for people to suddenly understand the gospel and come flooding into the kingdom. It's not a means to an end, nor is it our gospel. We do not preach ourselves and our wonderful good deeds; we hold up a despised and pathetic-looking banner that says “Christ crucified”, and then pray for the Spirit to unstop the ears and open the eyes of the people we speak to (1 Cor 1:23).
6. The Great Commission is to make and to teach
   We might summarize all this by saying that the Great Commission has two interrelated facets: to make disciples and to baptize them into the teaching of Jesus. We make disciples by proclaiming the gospel prayerfully, and then we teach disciples to love others as Jesus commanded (which means serving others and doing good to them as we have opportunity—Gal 6:10).

Apart for asking about how this relates to eschatology/the new creation, and what it looks like in practice (the subjects of the next two parts), what do you think?

(Most of the points above are developed at greater length in a pair of articles I co-authored with Tim Chester for The Briefing back in 2005. I'll get these online at The Briefing site as soon as I can.)

Part 2.

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There was a surprising level of anger in our Bible study last night. We were studying Mark 2:13-3:6, and looking at four controversies between Jesus and religious leaders (particularly the Pharisees). We were discussing the religious background to the sect of the Pharisees. The Pharisees were a group that was very serious about keeping God's law—so serious, in fact, that they had built up a whole bunch of other laws to protect themselves from going anywhere near breaking God's law. For example, to protect themselves from breaking commandment #4 (don't work on Saturday), they had a rule that one mustn't even look into a mirror on the Sabbath because, in doing so, one might see a grey hair and be tempted to pluck it out, which might be construed as ‘work’. We in the group were able to sympathize with them a little; in much the same way that a modern Christian might make a blanket rule not to drink alcohol or visit a pub to protect himself from the possibility of causing offence or temptation to an alcoholic Christian brother, the Pharisees made rules to help them to honour God in all areas of life.

We were able to understand a bit more, then, why the Pharisees were upset with Jesus. We could see their point, for example, in Mark 2:16, where they saw Jesus pushing the boundaries in the company he kept. Recently in our own city of Wollongong, there has been a corruption scandal, involving (among other things) local government officials having meals with property developers—which is highly suspicious, to say the least! When the Pharisees saw Jesus eating with tax collectors and notorious sinners, they were probably quite suspicious as well. The next two objections from the Pharisees (2:18-28) seemed a bit more trivial, but still, you could see their point. Of course, we knew the Pharisees were misguided, but still, they were godly and faithful Israelites, weren't they?

We really were having a good Bible study—it was friendly, we were learning about interesting aspects of ancient Judaism, we were gaining some understanding of the religious thought-world of people from a different point of view to ours (i.e. the Pharisees), and we were also enjoying eating these delicious little chocolate sticks.

But then, seemingly out of nowhere, close to the end of the Bible study there was this anger! It took us a little by surprise. The anger didn't come from me or from any of the members of the Bible study; it came from the most surprising quarter: Jesus himself! Faced with the possibility of healing a man with a withered hand on the Sabbath, Jesus said:

And he said to them, “Is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good or to do harm, to save life or to kill?” But they were silent. And he looked around at them with anger, grieved at their hardness of heart, and said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” He stretched it out, and his hand was restored. (Mark 3:4-5)

What was going on? What had we missed? Why was Jesus so angry at the Pharisees? Sure, they were a little misguided and their rules seemed a little trivial, but they meant well, didn't they? Weren't they trying to honour God genuinely by their rules? At least they weren't paedophiles or corrupt property developers. Sure, they needed a bit of correction and understanding, but why was Jesus so angry at them?

We had a bit of a think, and then my wife Leonie (who often puts things well) said, “Maybe it's like the situation in Burma”. We looked at her. What did she mean? She went on: “Well, in Burma at the moment, there are these officials who are trying to keep control of their country, so they've been obstructing international aid coming in to help the millions of cyclone victims. They don't care how many of their people die, as long as they keep control. In effect, they have been causing the deaths of their own people. Doesn't that make you angry?”

We realized that Jesus had a very different take on the Pharisees compared to the impression we'd built up in the Bible study. The Pharisees may have been well-intentioned in their religious observances—they may have been trying to honour the true and living God of Israel genuinely—but that didn't matter. When push came to shove, they were more interested in their religion than in giving life and healing to a man in real need. Jesus exposed what was truly in their hearts. In reality, according to Jesus, their religious observances and their teachings were harming and even killing their own people (3:4). Jesus is angered and grieved at religious leaders—religious leaders who seem genuine, religious leaders who seem to be serving God. Because in reality, these religious leaders are destroying, killing and keeping people from salvation.

What makes you angry?

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When we say ‘Christ alone’, we mean two things: Christ's work on the cross is both sufficient and unique.

To a church that was obsessed with worldly power, Paul insisted in 1 Corinthians 1 that he was not interested in what seemed wise or impressive. He was simply interested in the message of the cross, which is “folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God” (1:18). Despite its apparent foolishness, in the weakness of the cross, we see Christ's power to reconcile people to God. Christ's work on the cross is sufficient to accomplish all of that.

However, ‘Christ alone’ also asserts that Christ's work on the cross is unique. The cross alone is powerful to save. As Jesus prays to his Father in the Garden of Gethsemane, he asks, “Remove this cup from me”—that is, the cup of his Father's wrath and anger against sin (Mark 14:36; see Isaiah 51:17 for the background to the ‘cup’). Jesus is asking his Father “If it's at all possible, I don't want to face your anger—anger I don't deserve—anger that ought to be poured out instead upon an unrighteous world”. On the next day, Jesus is nailed to a Roman cross, and there he cries out to his Father again, but this time he cries out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Mark 15:34). In that horrific moment, the Father turns away from his beloved Son because, as he looks at Jesus, he sees my rebellion. Jesus' prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane is answered, but it is answered with silence. It had to be silence because there was no other way for us to be reconciled to God.

If there was no other way for Jesus, then there can be no other way for us. If Jesus had to be forsaken, then surely we can not repair our relationship with God simply by doing good. If Jesus had to face God's wrath, then surely a few religious activities are not going to turn aside God's anger. If that had to happen, my designer spirituality simply isn't going to cut it. There is no other way except through Christ alone.

Now, when the phrase ‘Christ alone’ was first used in the 16th century, it was on the lips of Christian people who denied that they needed the Roman Catholic Church to know God or to be reconciled to him. Over the preceding centuries, the Roman Church had effectively placed itself between believers and God. They taught that Jesus' death had produced ‘merit’, and that he had entrusted the keys to that treasure chest of merit to the Church. The role of the Church was then to distribute that merit to the faithful. That is still the official teaching of the Roman Church. The Catechism teaches that the Roman Church has “the power of binding and loosing granted her by Christ Jesus” and so it “intervenes in favour of individual Christians and opens for them the treasury of the merits of Christ and the saints to obtain from the Father of mercies the remission of the temporal punishments due for their sins” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1993, p. 1478).

Our response to that needs to be the same as the Reformers. The Church is not necessary for us to know God or to be reconciled to him; the role of a Church is simply to teach the truth about Christ, because it is through Christ alone that we can be saved. You don't need the Church—you don't need other mediators, priests or advocates—you just need Jesus.

However, in the 21st century we need to add something else to this. ‘Christ alone’ also means that Christians need to deny that other religions and spiritualities can help us to know God or be reconciled to him. ‘Christ alone’ objects to the idea that the variety of religions are just different ways to the same God. ‘Christ alone’ insists that we call to repentance and faith a person who seeks to create their own designer spirituality. Christ refuses to be part of a choose-your-own-adventure, self-serving spiritual quest. Christ is everything to you or he is nothing.

Now, according to some, such exclusive beliefs like this are supposed to make people arrogant and dangerous. Of course, that will depend entirely on what it is that a person believes. If we believe exclusively that we're not saved by our own wisdom or righteousness, then this will produce humility, not arrogance. It gives Christians no cause to be proud or self-righteous, because our salvation is due to nothing we have done. And surely there's no more powerful reason for accepting those who differ from us than the gospel which, at its very heart, speaks of a man who dies for his enemies—a Saviour who loves those who don't love him. Nothing about that exclusive belief should ever make Christians arrogant or dangerous. However, what it will produce are people who humbly, boldly and urgently seek to tell people about the Lord Jesus Christ—the one who alone has the power to reconcile people to the true and living God.

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Mark Evans is a Christian who is also part of the Department of Contemporary Music Studies at Macquarie University in Sydney. (He's also written articles for The Briefing on subjects relating to his area—see Briefing #236 and #263). His book Open up the Doors: Music in the Modern Church (Equinox, London, 2006) is useful, but be warned: it is not for the musically faint-hearted. Having had piano lessons in my child- and teenager-hood, I didn't mind too much the occasional sentence like this one:

Tonally centred in A major, the song opens with a vi⁷-Vb-I-IV- vi⁷-Vb-IV progression which clearly keeps the tonal centre at bay, causing the song to float and anticipate passionate heights to come. (p. 126)

But some will find passages like that a bit daunting. In addition, an ability to read music doesn't hurt as Evans regularly quotes fragments of music scores in the written equivalent of bursting into song (which is fine, but once again, not for the faint-hearted).

That said, if you are prepared for small challenges like this in what is, essentially, a scholarly work from an evangelical perspective, there are some useful ideas, research and observation that will help push along the thinking of biblically minded musicians—especially those who have some responsibility for the music in their church. Rather than review the whole book, let me pick one chapter (Chapter 7: ‘Corporate Worship gets personal’) and highlight a few observations that I personally found useful.

Responding to the observation that many songs today are of the category dismissively labelled as ‘Jesus is my boyfriend’, Evans notices that Christians have, for many centuries, sung songs that compare God to a lover—for example,

Feel soft as downy Pillows are
while on his Breast I lean my Head
And breathe my Life out sweetly there

(an Isaac Watts hymn, quoted on p. 137)

However, Mark goes on to write, “What does appear valid in today's argument is the sheer quantity of [contemporary] songs in this ilk, not their existence.” (p. 138) He continues: “In a 2002 survey of over 150 contemporary songs, I found that the use of individual point of view in contemporary congregational song is customary. It appeared in 71 per cent of songs surveyed” (p. 137)

There is a lot of useful, empirically tested generalization along these lines. Mark gives plenty of examples and analyses of what he means by songs of ‘intimacy’, ‘dedication’, ‘confession’, ‘thanksgiving’ and ‘eschatology’. On this last category, he has a good observation about why we now sing so little about the final day of judgement and salvation:

... some Christian musicians have proposed that modern life in the Western world is far more affluent and enjoyable than previous decades. If so, then Christians' desire to see the return of Christ, or to take their place in heaven immediately, might have diminished. Combine this with modern teaching on the abundant life that can be experienced by the believer, or the general positivism present in many contemporary churches, and it's easy to see why thoughts of the ‘end times’ have been pushed further back in the collective psyche. (p. 148)

Evans goes on to mention other categories of songs, and with somewhat scholarly understatement, says of his contemporary song survey that “It is concerning that no songs declaring the judgement of God could be found” (not, as the book reveals, through want of trying!). He comments:

Now to be sure this is not the most uplifting topic to sing about—but it is a major theme of the Bible. To ignore it is to pick and choose our theology. As with Eschatology songs, hymns dealing with the judgement of God were a common feature of older hymnbooks. The ‘fear of the Lord’ was often the source of musical deliberation, with a strong rhythm and urging organ the perfect accompaniment. (p. 152)

This is a reference book for people with a particular interest. Theologically literate evangelical musicians who want to think through why we sing what we sing in church are going to find this a useful publication to consult. And as the number of books in the ‘useful’ category are vanishingly small, it is worth knowing about this one!

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Recently, I wrote about the Easter Message of the Dean of St George's Anglican Cathedral in Perth, in which he strongly asserted that the resurrection of Christ need not be understood as physical. I reported that I'd asked the Archbishop of Perth whether this was an acceptable view for a senior Anglican clergyman.

I appreciate the kind tone of Archbishop Herft's reply to me. One can only imagine how much correspondence an Archbishop must have to deal with. Presumably he received a number of letters expressing a similar concern. For this reason, I can partly understand that his reply appears to be a form letter.

My reason for thinking this is that his letter begins by saying that, “Journalists and newspaper editors, sadly, are not interested in reporting accurately on any subject”. Perhaps this is true of some journalists. But leaving aside this severe generalization, Herft goes on to imply that the problem in the current controversy is that we had a cynical junior reporter responding to deep matters of faith, and hence people reading the papers must have been misled.

It's fair enough to warn people against relying only on media sound bites! However my own letter to Archbishop Herft made it clear I had consulted both the video version of Dr Shepherd's Easter message and his full printed sermon notes made available on the Cathedral website. (Indeed, I did not read any media reports at all but heard about the issue from a colleague!) So it seems clear that Archbishop Herft did not closely read what I said at all.

He did not interact with my biblical critique of Dr Shepherd's words. Nor did he answer my specific questions about whether Dr Shepherd's views were in line with the Apostles' Creed (and hence §1 of the Fundamental Declarations of the Anglican Church of Australia) and Article 4 of the Thirty-nine Articles of Religion.

Archbishop Herft did indicate that he was considering the Dean's Easter message further with his Episcopal Team. One can only hope that I will receive a more specific answer then.

Archbishop Herft's own comments on the resurrection are a studied effort in covering every base. Herft affirms that Jesus' resurrection is “God's mightiest act” and it is bodily: his risen presence appears to us in a way we can comprehend, i.e. with “the marks of history”. So sometimes the disciples can “recognise him through his physicality”.

But then he says that at times the risen Jesus is “beyond time and space”. Possibly this is an allusion to Jesus' apparent post-resurrection supernatural ability to appear and disappear through walls, and so on. Yet it seems to imply something more. And to justify this suggestion that Jesus is beyond time and space, he simply cites 1 Corinthians 15 and 2 Corinthians 5:16-6:10 without further explanation. This leaves me uncertain of his meaning.

He also enclosed an article he wrote for his diocesan newspaper, the Anglican Messenger in March 2008, entitled ‘A Resurrection Faith—Analog or Digital?’ This article (which I could not find published online) traded on Paul Watzlawick's work on communication, describing human relationships as consisting of the digital (the verbal yes/no, true/false, it is here/not there, binary format) and the analogical (feelings, body movements, expressions in voice/facial gestures and silence) where both are needed.

Herft then suggests there “appears to be a strident movement in religious belief that parallels the movement in communication technology towards a digital only system where everything is reduced to a binary formula”. He claims that “The events surrounding the cross and resurrection lose their power in content, meaning and application when we fail to see the digital and analogical as complementary forces”.

I know of few evangelicals who would deny any importance to emotion and body language in communication (although some of us perhaps downplay them). However, I am at a loss to know what the “strident movement” towards binary only that Herft criticizes since he does not say. I fear it may be a shot against people like me who want a simple answer as to whether or not it's acceptable for a senior Anglican clergyman to deny that the resurrection of Christ is physical (as well as spiritual), even though that's what the Bible teaches and that's what our Anglican Thirty-nine Articles uphold as our standard of belief.

I don't think this is a hard question to resolve, although it might be unpalatable for his Bishop to have to admit it: judging from his own publicly available words, Dr Shepherd is contradicting the official doctrinal standards of the Anglican Church.

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