Are Evangelicals the Worldly Ones?
“They build their world so hard” - Bob Marley
“The kingdom of God is within reach” - Jesus Christ
I came of age listening to Bob Marley and the Clash. Joe Strummer, lyricist and frontman for the Clash, is often quoted using the phrase, “The future is unwritten.” Bob Marley and Joe Strummer were both social critics and artists. My passions were shaped by these men, but, during this period of my life, I also had a bible under my bed. The bible was a family bible. It was a red letter edition of the King James Version of the bible. I think it was a gift to my mother from a friend. Today, I would call myself a “Red Letter Christian” in memorial to that bible that was under my bed during my formative years.
In my heart and mind, Jesus was like Bob Marley and Joe Strummer, a critic who offered a new vision of how to live life, a radical departure from the world as we experience it around us, the world as it is.
In 1 John 2:16, John defines the world as it is and worldliness by saying, “For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the boastful pride of life, is not from the Father, but is from the world.” This is the world that Marley labels as “hard.” The world structured around the values of the desires for comfort, wealth, and status is a brutal world of haves and have nots. The winners have comfort, wealth, and status while the powerless are left with long shifts, poverty, and shame. Jesus was a friend and advocate for the latter, the have nots, or as Howard Thurman called them, “Those with their backs against the wall.”
In the passage above, John is defining the deep structures of human society. In every era, the structures, economic, social, and political, evolve, but these desires for comfort, wealth, and status remain constant. So too, the results of haves and have nots remain with us. The structural hierarchies, be it of empire and the conquered of Jesus day, nobles and peasants of medieval times, or of owners and workers of today, are all brutal and unjust. The Christian, I contend, is to be a critic of these worldly systems, but, instead, conservative, white evangelicals are the system's most ardent defenders.
What is Meant By Structures or Structural Injustice?
Today, we hear terms like “structural racism,” but what is meant by the term “structural?” One way to answer this question is by asking “Do people make their culture or does the culture make the person?” The obvious answer is both.
The above picture is from 1959 in Little Rock Arkansas during the integration of Central High. If we consider the young boy holding the “Race Mixing is Communism” sign, we see an example where clearly the culture is making the boy. The boy is not making the culture. The child is the product of the culture. The culture holds the child. The child does not hold the culture. The system of centuries of racism is making the mind of this child. When seen in the aggregate, the entire sum of all the young developing minds, it is easy to understand that the centuries of history is a powerful force. That powerful force, the political, economic, and ideological structures of the culture, influences the laws and customs that are the culture as the picture above of Little Rock illustrates.
What is a Critic?
A critic, as I am broadly defining the term, is a thoughtful person who observes deep structural aspects of culture that, then, the critic names and gives evidence as unjust. For example, there have been decades of studies showing name bias against Black applicants with respect to callback rates. Job applicants with Black sounding names, “Jamal” as opposed to “James,” receive less callbacks when every other detail on a resume is exactly the same. I would label the economists and sociologists who name and give evidence to such injustices “critics.” Clearly, the prophets of the Old Testament and Jesus in the New Testament were all critics. In fact, these critics were so radical in their critique of the world as it is, during their era, that they were unanimously killed by the powers that be.
During the time of the prophets and the time of Jesus there were religious leaders who were defenders of the status quo and those religious voices that were critics of the status quo. I would contend that evangelicals today are defenders of the status quo. Evangelicals consistently argue that critique of the injustices of capitalism or mentions of race as a systemic injustice is a distraction from what they believe is the vocation of the Christian to populate heaven.
Evangelicals today deny injustice and call the journey toward justice a distraction from the purpose of the Gospel, but, that view is built on a wrong view of the Gospel. I would argue that evangelicals believe this version of the gospel because first white evangelicals have power in the status quo and, secondly, because evangelicals have the gospel all wrong. The first premise that white evangelicals have power is a given in my opinion. So, let’s focus on my second contention that evangelicals have the gospel all wrong.
Jesus and The Gospel of the Kingdom
When Jesus walked the earth, He proclaimed “the Kingdom of God is within reach. Repent and believe this good news.” Jesus said this good news was good news to the poor. Furthermore, Jesus said “the kingdom of God is here and people are aggressively entering into it.” So what is this kingdom of God Jesus is saying is within our reach or at hand and that people in His day were already entering into? It is simple. The gospel of the Kingdom is the announcement of the beginning of heaven on earth. It is a world where “thy kingdom come” is an answered prayer. The kingdom that is within our reach and which people are aggressively entering into is a world that, at the local scale, is beginning to solve the structural injustices under which the poor suffer, a world without haves and have nots.
As evidence of this new vision of life, we can look to the actual life of the early church.
In Acts chapter 2, we have a description of the day of pentecost. Jesus had told the disciples to wait for “power from on high” or the coming of the promised Holy Spirit. The cultural meaning of this coming of the Spirit must be understood to understand what Jesus is promising. A huge question in the minds of 1st century Jews like the disciples was “We have the temple. We worship and sacrifice, but where is the Shekinah glory of God? Where is God’s power?” Jesus is promising that His sacrifice and His resurrection is the key to the return of God’s presence, God dwelling with His people. And when the Holy Spirit comes, the people of God will again become a model and example to the world of how the world ought to be. The kingdom of God is exactly this. The kingdom of God is the world not as it is but as it ought to be. The kingdom of God is that city on a hill that cannot be hidden.
So when the Spirit came, what did that new city, that new community of God’s people, look like?
Acts 2 describes that early Church community as follows:
“42 They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. 43 Everyone was filled with awe at the many wonders and signs performed by the apostles. 44 All the believers were together and had everything in common. 45 They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need. 46 Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, 47 praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.”
Acts 4 gives another description:
32 All the believers were one in heart and mind. No one claimed that any of their possessions was their own, but they shared everything they had. 33 With great power the apostles continued to testify to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. And God’s grace was so powerfully at work in them all 34 that there were no needy persons among them. For from time to time those who owned land or houses sold them, brought the money from the sales 35 and put it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to anyone who had need.
When the vocation of God’s people was restored, the calling to be a light to the world and a blessing to the nations, “they had all things in common.” When we enter the kingdom in this life, “no one claims any of their possessions as their own.” We live as a revolutionary community. “There are no needy persons among us.” The kingdom of God is a distinctively just community. The kingdom is the world as it ought to be. And most importantly, it is within our reach. The kingdom is now.
But in order to enter one must see the injustice of the world as it is. To enter the kingdom, one cannot defend the economic status quo or the structural injustices of race, class, and gender. In a word, one cannot be a conservative with respect to systemic injustice. Indeed, how hard it is for the rich, those who benefit from the status quo, to enter the kingdom. Worldliness is the defense of the world as it is. Worldly religious leaders are those who defend the haves and undermine the pleas of the have nots.
Yes, indeed, the evangelicals are the worldly ones.