In Concert
“Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of service, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who empowers them all in everyone.” 1 Corinthians 12:5-6
This summer makes for my first break from seminary life since the fall of 2003. In these five-plus years of being a “professional Christian” I came to realize that seminary is a lot like high school. For every “focus of ministry” there is a clique with privileges for the in-group and a semi-respectful affection for those not so fortunate to be in the club. For some of these it has been a particular pleasure to witness the dance of a given calling as it works itself out in the life of a brother or sister. For others, it has been more akin to having a run-in with the head cheerleader and her minions. The trick is everybody thinks theirs is the cool group that patiently puts up with the chess club.
The worst of these is the “Social Justice” crowd. To this crew, if you are not living in [fill in the blank urban area], then you simply aren’t living out the gospel. Mostly hailing from the affluent suburbs, they now makes trips back home to rail at the apathy of the comfortable Christians, to remind themselves why it so good not to be self-righteous like the soccer moms, and to beg for money for their newest inner-city vegetable garden. If you suggest that you think God might be calling you to a small church in the countryside or that Jesus might be at work in, perish the thought, the SUBURBS!!!, then just be prepared to be met with pitying smiles most often reserved for those who’ve lost their marbles.
The next pesky group is the missions clique. Having gone on domestic missions is okay, but if you really want to stand out/fit in, you’ll arrange to have been a real Christian and spent time overseas. Not just a little bit, mind you, but you really need to have been “in the field” long enough to become more than an American. You see, the best way to get beyond your Ameri-centric view of the world is point out how much better [fill in the blank with a foreign culture] does things. If anyone questions how being knee-jerk anti-American is superior to being knee-jerk pro-American, you can expect this to elicit from this former American to compassionately pat you on your shoulder in sympathy for your parochial ways of thinking.
Finally there is the outreach posse. With these guys you’d better have read your Camus with your black coffee at [fill in the blank independent coffee house] this morning or don’t even bother showing up. This crowd doesn’t fall for the elitism of the mass of Christians so focused on their Christian ways that they can’t relate to the non-Christians around them. Not only have they seen the latest movies, but they’ve written a lucid commentary about them on their edgy blogs. They have their finger on the pulse of the world so well that . . . wait a minute . . . this is my clique. My group isn’t like those other guys. Are they?
It’s annoying that the social justice fans conflate compassion and justice. They say we need to be like Jesus and work for those suffering but fail to note that what made Christ’s act amazing was that he died for the unjust. It gets on my nerves that the missions devotees think that a few years overseas puts them in a privileged vantage point from which to objectively judge the motivations of all critics. And it galls me that my own part of the Body acts like the key to the Christian life is to spend as little time around fellow Christians as possible. But these are not what bother the most.
The worst thing about these or any other sub-group within Christianity is that they don’t live like what they are: a sub-group of a larger body. Each of us has our attendant strengths. With all sincerity, I thank God for the compassion of the brothers and sisters who cry for the pain of poverty and injustice and for the passion of those who long to see the nations come to Christ. I even thank God for my cronies who long to build bridges to the lost and upend preconceptions about Christianity. For all this good it would be a tragedy for us to consider that our particular group is the one that most lives the gospel. The Bible could not be more plain about this. We retain our individual gifts and skills as given by God, but we must always remember that our gift is not the only gift. Our calling is not the only calling. No matter the intensity of our zeal, it is when we look to our own as the only way to be a Christian that we have failed to truly live out the gospel in our lives.
Tags: Timothy
