You're the Eye? More Like You're a Skin Cell

Another opinion column piece!  This week's thoughts on the issues facing Christianity is less controversial but just as important, oh and a lot shorter.  The topic is Church unity. 

Imagine the global church is the body of Christ.  Not metaphorically, but the actual physical body of Christ while he was on earth.  Mathematically, if you divided up his body into little sections so that each piece represented a single church with an average congregation of 75 then the pieces would be about as big as 1/20th of a drop of blood and an individual would be about the proportion of a single nerve cell (compared to the global Church of 2M+ people).  So if we think about the body trying to move without any of its pieces connected or communicating how will that go?  How much of a difference can a fraction of a drop of blood make compared to an entire body?  Or a single cell compared with a whole human?  A human can do things in its environment.  It can make calculated movements of limbs.  A 20th of a drop of blood, well… all it can do is soak into the carpet and hope to be a stain.  Imagine a house where three people and a single nerve cell all live together.  The people can talk and shake hands, they can wake one another up, cook food, build a shed, change a light bulb.  And what about their roommate the nerve cell?  He would have zero influence.  They'd probably never even be aware of his existence let alone be affected in any way by his presence. 

This is sort of a weird analogy but it is more or less mathematically accurate.  The fact is, as individuals or even individual congregations of churches, we are never going to accomplish much on earth.  Think of what we could get done if all two billion of us were working together with Jesus as the head of our body?  We could tackle immense problems like poverty, hunger, justice, and culture.  We could bring entire nations under the authority of Jesus with a single project.  We could put an end to slavery, prostitution, corruption, environmental destruction, and then go on from there.  My imagination isn't nearly robust enough to come up with it all.  If we want to be the generation to fulfil the destiny of the Church, this is what we are going to have to do.  We are going to have to figure out how to assemble as a single unit under the headship of Jesus.  This is the future of the Church. 

What do you think?  Is it possible?  Can the earth will be filled With the knowledge of the glory of the LORD as the waters cover the sea?  How can we do it? 

Thoughts on the Future of Christianity

So on the advice of a friend I have decided to write more about what I see as the important issues we are facing right now as Christians (and just humans in general, though this blog will make more sense if you are Christian).  For my first installment I have decided to revisit a topic I've brought up once before: Eschatology.  Three years ago I wrote a short essay about how and why my view of the future of mankind and the world changed drastically.  It was titled: Why I No Longer Believe in the Apocalypse, the Rapture, or the Anti-christ.  Now I need to refute one of the claims in that blog. 

In that blog I held, "the conviction that eschatology is not as important as a lot of American Christians make it out to be."  I am almost surprised to have found myself having believed that now, because of my current understanding that our eschatological theology is probably one of the beliefs that most shape the way we live our lives.  In reality, it is more important than most Christians make it out to be.  In defense of my former self, my conviction came from my belief that any theological topic is unimportant compared to the unity of Christians.  I had seen theology create sides and differences of opinion that split the body of Christ and so was skeptical of it.  The only fruit I saw coming from theology was division and pride, it didn't seem to have much of an impact on what anybody actually did, only what they thought.  However, after having experienced firsthand how a change in theology (and specifically eschatology) impacted what I actually do these last three years, I have had to revise my rankings. 

The difference between Kingdom eschatology and dispensationalism is the difference between hope and hopelessness.  And it is hope that gives us vision and fuels our efforts.  Hope that the Kingdom of God Jesus proclaimed can indeed be established on earth.  Without that hope, William Carey could have never rediscovered missions¹, Jonathan Edwards could have never started the Great Awakening², and William Wilberforce and John Wesley could have never brought about the abolition of slavery³; all achievements requiring miraculous endurance, commitment, and hope.  The modern Church needs to reconsider its abandonment of Kingdom theology in order to move forward in bringing healing and hope as a way of life and show the world how to "beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks." so that "Nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war anymore." 

If we believe anything the Bible says, we have to believe that this is possible and within our grasp!  Do we want to leave behind another world of destruction and confusion to our progeny or do we want to be the generation that finally understands the importance of treating life as the privilege that it is?  Why can't we be the generation that tackles humanity's problems with voracity instead of settling for distraction or numbness until death takes us?  At this point there are over two billion Christians in the world.  If we could just believe in the hope that Jesus gave us and assign it the importance it deserves we could finally be the ones to act as God's body.  We could bring the will of God to humanity and finally see global peace, empty jails, and the end of poverty, abuse, and addiction.  We could see a revival of proportions never before experienced. 

Yes we need unity in order to do that, but not the kind of unity that results from ignoring our theological differences; we need the kind of unity that comes from engaging in discussion until we are all of one mind.  And one of the things we need to have one mind about is the possibility of achieving our goal.  We need to make sure nobody is succumbing to fatalism or hopelessness regarding obedience to the Word of God and the greatness of the purposes of the Church.  We need to confront those among us who have thrown their hands into the air and hunkered down to wait out the hardships, thereby limiting the power of the Gospel to an invisible world that has no relationship with the here and now.

What is your eschatology?  Are you confident in it?  Do you believe "that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God?"  Do you believe that's even possible?  Or important?  If you don't really know what Kingdom eschatology is but are interested to find out I recommend reading "The Sign of the Kingdom" by George Kouri or "Victorious Eschatology" by Harold Eberle and Martin Trench. 

PS.  You might find this blog more opinionated or "rant"-y than my usual writings, which I assure you is intentional.  Please feel free to contradict me.