Love is War

Saturday 6/7/2014 7:54 AM

I think that part of my job as a Christian is to give those who come within my sphere of influence a small glimpse of what heaven is like.  This leads me to try to be an excellent teacher since God, and those made in his image, deserve the best.  I try to be a good neighbor so that others can live with a sense of security and community, and so forth.

Today I read an excerpt from The Community of the King, by Howard Snyder, that makes me think twice.  He writes, “So the church is not to be understood primarily as a means to the end of transforming society.  This would be to trample over the uniqueness and infinite worth to God of the Christian community.  Besides, the amazing and profound fact is that the church most transforms society when it is itself growing and being perfected in the love of Christ.  In fact when the church is taken merely as a means to transform society, very little is accomplished.  For in that case the uniqueness of the church is denied and we enter the battle on the same terms as secular and godless forces.  We assume the battle for right and justice can be won by force, by technique, by doing.  It can’t.  These very clearly are not the weapons of Christian war.  Truly Christian transformation of culture comes through Christ-like (and hence sacrificial) love, community and being.”

I believe this excerpt describes what is wrong with the broader evangelical Christian community in the United States today.  We are trying to transform our society using political strategies to effect new laws while at the same time the communal aspect of the Christian community is pooh-poohed with the stress given to the individual Christian’s witness.  We somehow think that if we can only get prayer back in the public schools and the Ten Commandments back up on the walls of our public institutions then everything will be copasetic.  At the same time the church is divided and characterized by hatred and infighting rather than by love.  I’m afraid that until we learn to love like Christ loved us any efforts to change society will be useless.