Peacemaking from the Christian Worldview

Peacemaking from the Christian Worldview

I come to you as an Evangelical Christian today, and for that I make no apology. Because I am an Evangelical Christian, I shall speak from that worldview, asking those of other belief systems to give me a wide berth, as I have no intention of offending anyone.

As an Evangelical, I stand on four doctrines that speak not only to
”What would Jesus do, but to “What would Jesus have me do?” Those four core doctrines are:

The sovereignty of God…

The Lordship of Christ…

The authority of Scripture…

The presence of the Kingdom of God…

The three Abrahamic faiths share in vastly different ways the doctrines of the sovereignty of God and the authority of Scripture. To recognize that commonality, however, is to begin to understand our cultures.

From the Christian worldview, it is the Lordship of Christ and the dynamic presence of the Kingdom of God that guides our faith and practice.

Those two doctrines – the Lordship of Christ and the dynamic presence of the Kingdom of God – come together to move the Christian from an insistence that God act in a concrete-sequential, linear fashion in human history to a worldview in which redemptive history breaks through in the form of the hope to come of that which is already present.

Unfortunately, there are millions of biblically illiterate American Evangelicals who view the person and work of Jesus Christ as a day on the calendar that has become their ticket into Heaven. This Jesus, the risen Lord, has gone away. He has taken with Him the Messianic kingdom that He came to announce and to inaugurate.

It is up to American Evangelicals, apparently, to bring Him back and to make a place for His Kingdom with the blood of millions on the Plains of Megiddo.

Tragically as well, there are numbers of charlatans who head multi-million dollar pop-Christian industries, referred to in the more acceptable term, “ministries.” These charlatans – snake oil salesmen – have stepped into this sea of biblical illiteracy as wolves in sheep’s clothing.

It is in response to those charlatans that we gather here today.

I am a latecomer to pulpit ministry, having completed my seminary work at age fifty-four. The edge of cynicism concerning the Christian Right, however, had become deeply imbedded many years before, as I was owner of a small New England chain of Christian Bookstores for twenty-five years. I was, in other words, a purveyor of the culture of pop-Christianity – making a buck off Jesus.

In 1988, Hugh Barbour of Barbour Books (formerly an owner of Fleming H. Revell Publishers) published my first book, No Turning Back: Journal of an All-American Sinner. This was a plea to Evangelical Christians having trouble living up to the moral and ethical expectations of their self-righteous brethren to change focus from the American Dream church to the suffering servant image of Jesus Christ.

The book sold 10,000 copies. I quickly enrolled in Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary to see if I knew what I was talking about. Since then, I have simplified the worship of the American Dream into the term “McChurch.”

What McChurch has done is to codify Premillennial Dispensationalism through its merger with, or takeover of, the Republican Party. The old bumper sticker, “Jesus is coming, and boy is He mad” has changed to, “Jesus is coming, and boy are we mad!”

Some years ago, at the beginning of my ministry at the little North Manchester Meeting House Church, I had shared Easter sunrise service with a very bright local pastor who had been educated at Oxford University. Imagine my surprise when, at the end of our last service together, he said to me, “Maybe next year we’ll be in Jerusalem,” referring to the so-called Rapture.

My response was this: “I’ll tell you what; when you get the sewer system ready, give me a call. Jerusalem with billions of Christians and overloaded utilities is not a place I should like to spend six hours, let alone 1,000 years.”

I fail to see anything Utopian in the Day of Judgment as Peter describes it in 2Peter 3:10. If you are a biblical literalist (which Premillennial Dispensationalists seem to be), and you are a Christian, this verse of Scripture, which I interpret as referring to the AD 70 destruction of the temple in Jerusalem, has to have you wondering why anyone would want the Kingdom of God to physically be brought to earth:

But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up.

Off hand, I would say that the prospects for a glorious rapture just went up in smoke, as did the prospects for a separate kingdom for Jews in Palestine.

We are here today because this biblical illiteracy that author and theologian Mark Noll calls “versification of Scripture,” has burst out of its self-imposed ghetto of the local church and into the very core of political power in this nation.

Versification of Scripture takes place when the Bible is viewed as standing by itself, removed from history or its cultural context. As a result, assortments of Bible verses are strung together to support previously-conceived dogmas practical to the survival of a particular movement or idea.

That is the setting in which we find ourselves. It represents the polar opposite of peace in the Middle East. It cares not for the even hand of justice. It obeys not the eternal command for God’s people to show mercy.

You need no reminder of these facts. You are all well acquainted with the groundwork that has been laid by these good folks behind me today.

My task is to struggle with the question, “What would Jesus do, or want us to do, about peacemaking in the Middle East?”

The short answer, in the Christian worldview, is that what Jesus would do, He already has done. The work is finished; God has spoken His best and last word; in the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, all theocracies have ended.

Dostoevsky’s Grand Inquisitor in The Brothers Karamazov, has Jesus coming back softly, unobserved but widely recognized. The Grand Inquisitor imprisons Him and intends to burn Him to the stake as the “worst of heretics.” Jesus’ heresy was to speak the truth against the tide of human pragmatism:

Hadst thou taken the world and Caesar’s purple (the Grand Inquisitor insists), Thou wouldst have founded the universal state and have given universal peace. For who can rule men if not he who holds their conscience and their bread in his hands? We have taken the sword of Caesar, and in taking it, of course, have rejected Thee and followed him.

Jesus answered not. When the Grand Inquisitor was finished, Jesus approached him and softly kissed him on the lips. That was His answer, whereupon He was released and told, “Go, and come no more – come not at all.”

For the professing Christian, the final answer comes from the cross, “It is finished.” What Jesus would do, He has done.

There are Christians today who are willing to stake their hopes and our lives and the future of this great nation of ours on Caesar’s sword and Caesar’s purple. Peace has become for them, not the power of God made manifest in our weakness, but an illusive and impossible fantasy.

For those who cling to belief in a sovereign God, however, peace demands self sacrifice. There is no room within self-sacrifice for the armchair Christian apologist. The Bible is not a puzzle representing the future written beforehand. Instead, the Bible is the revelation of Jehovah God. This revelation cuts through both Testaments.

From the Bible comes down through redemptive history the ringing voice of the Prophet Micah:

He has showed you, O man, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God (Micah 6:8).

That is the answer to the question, “What would Jesus have me do?” “Act justly, love mercy and walk humbly with my God” wherever I am planted. This cuts across the worldview of both Jew and Christian.

To act justly is to act with integrity and honor, two virtues sadly missing in Christian Zionism, whose agenda is to claim the land at all cost, including the cost of human life.

To love mercy is to desire for the family of man that the heavy boot of imperialism and oppression be lifted from God’s most recent creation everywhere. This is sadly missing in the sectarian worldview of Christian Zionism.

To walk humbly with your God demands of Christian and Jew alike that we stand in a certain spontaneity that lives in the reality of a sovereign God. Instead, Christian Zionism has tired of waiting for God and has decided to take matters into its own hands.

The Christian Bible explains what it means to “act justly, love mercy and walk humbly with your God.” “Be ready,” the Apostle Peter says in 1 Peter 3:15, “to give an answer to everyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you. And answer in reverence and respect.”

The hope for the Christian is not the so-called Rapture. It is the Lord of the Rapture. The hope for the Christian is not the so-called Millennial Reign of Christ. It is the Lord of the Millennial Reign of Christ. The hope of Israel is not the land. It is the Messiah who, for the Jewish people is yet to come, and who for the Christian is “already.”

From the early days of post-exilic Israel it was the Messianic kingdom that was their hope. For professing Christians, that same Messianic kingdom fulfilled in Jesus Christ ought to be both the present and future reality of their great hope.

The “hope that is within you” does not come in the form of a book, The Late Great Planet Earth, or Left Behind. It comes in the form of the law of Moses fulfilled in Jesus Christ:

“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and spirit…

“You shall want for your neighbor the best of what you want for yourself, especially when that neighbor is perceived to be your enemy” (and I paraphrase).

Therein lies the law and the prophets. Therein lies the hope that is within us, believers in God and lovers of our enemies. There is nothing there about land – only about turning enemies into neighbors. There is nothing there about “good vs. evil” – only about God’s strength being made evident in our weakness.

It is not an easy thing, Jew or Christian, to keep the Messianic Kingdom alive. It is far too easy to go back to the land because the land is physical, while the Kingdom is spiritual. The struggle for truth has always involved a balance between what is seen and what is unseen – between the temporal and the eternal.

Evangelical Christians who profess belief in Him whose message was, “Repent for the Kingdom of God is at hand, have no excuse.

Yet, in a world of sound bites and slick charlatans of the Christian faith, illiteracy among believers rules in both the faith and practice of as many as thirty-million Evangelicals.

For these folks, Jesus saves, but He is “away” except in some inexplicable sense of being “in the hearts” only of those who have repeated the official version of the “sinner’s prayer.”

For these folks, the Kingdom of God that Jesus came to inaugurate is wholly future, rendering moot the radical teachings of the Sermon on the Mount.

For these folks, God waits, not for the last of His kids to come home, but for righteousness to be instituted through law, through war and through politics – three venues that the Scriptures condemn from Genesis to Revelation in their call for circumcision of the heart of God’s people, Jew or Greek.

For these folks, fear reigns because they know of no “perfect love.”

Simply put, it is easier to wage war than peace. It is easier to eradicate evil than to do good. It is easier to trust the armies of Caesar than it is to follow God. It is easier to condemn than it is to love. It is easier to dictate righteousness for others than it is to repent.

Patriotism being the “last hiding place of a scoundrel,” it is easier to be a patriot than it is to trust the Almighty but uncertain hand of a sovereign God.

The narrative that threatens not only the fragile stability of the Middle East today is best summed up in the words of a letter that I received in 1999 from something called the “Pre-Trib Research Center. The letter had this to say:

As we near the year 2000, many contemporary events are pointing to our Lord’s return. The fact that Israel has been back in her land for 50 years constitutes “God’s super-sign of the end times.” In our lifetime, the stage is being set for the end-time drama that has been laid out for us in the Bible.

…We have two main objectives: First, to help Christians avoid the deception our Lord predicted would plague people in end times. And, second, to help them anticipate His imminent coming. Historically, whenever the church has anticipated His return, it has motivated Christians to holy living in an unholy age, greater evangelism and more zeal for world-wide missionary giving and sending.

…This letter is sent to you because we believe you are vitally interested in promoting those same effects in your congregation…It (their upcoming conference) will help offset some of the “false teachers, false prophets,” and even “false messiahs” Jesus predicted would come, by presenting them the truth about future things.

This letter was signed by such luminaries as Tim LaHaye, Dave Hunt, Hal Lindsey, Charles Ryrie and John Walvoord. No apology has been offered by these “true prophets,” whose dire prophesies of Y2000 were scandalous lies.

Instead, these charlatans continue pointing the finger of anti-Semitism at those who would dare expose the heresy of escalation of war in the Middle East as a means of triggering the return of Jesus.

Make no mistake about it; this pop-Christian industry has found its voice in the highest seats of power in our government. Current leaders of this collapse of faith are the Rev. Jerry Falwell, the Rev. Pat Robertson, the Rev. John Hagee and those who would have Christians “focus on the family” rather than the Lord of the family.

True to form, you who would call the Church of Jesus Christ to live in the power and sovereignty of God rather than in the arm of flesh are branded as “false teachers and false prophets.”

The narrative has taken on a very real agenda in recent days.

It began with the proper response to 9/11 by bombing terrorist camps in Afghanistan and unseating the Taliban. The theatre of war then shifted to Iraq for reasons that had no relationship to Al Qaeda and the threat of terrorism.

Now that we have strengthened the hold of Shiite control over Iraq, Iran and Hezbollah and have reinstituted the Taliban in Afghanistan, we have, in four short years, given rise to a whole generation of radical young jihads who see the United States as the Great Satan.

The charlatans of the Christian faith, instead of repenting and seeking forgiveness, are calling for an invasion of Iran to trigger Armageddon. In the words of a dear Jewish friend with whom I frequently talk about these matters, “They want to herd all the Jews into Israel so they can kill us!”

We understand the narrative. The question remains, “How can we reframe the narrative?”

Re-Framing the Narrative

Restoring to Israel the Doctrine of the Kingdom of God:

From the worldview of the Christian who understands that he has been grafted into the root of Jesse (rather than the other way around), Israel has expanded its tent from physical boundaries to a boundless spiritual realm in the inauguration of the Messianic Kingdom.

The Baptist and Jesus called it “Kingdom of God.” The Prophet Isaiah called it the “Highway of the Redeemed.” Whatever it is called, a principal purpose was the destruction of the Jew/Greek barrier through the ministry of the Church, the Community of the Redeemed.

We carry into that community freedom from cultural and religious constraints and live in a state of anticipation, not of the next cataclysmic event in human history, but anticipation that is responsive to God alone.

The mandate of the Christ-walk is carried into the world in which we live through hearts turned away from self.

Central to our rejection of self is the theology of the cross. If we are indeed a people set apart, we must minister first to each other and then to those of that other kingdom, the world.

The legitimate call of the Gospel is very simply away from our demonic ideologies. The ideology of Christian morality; the ideology of self-preservation; the ideology of prosperity; the ideology of a Utopian, war-free society – these are all perversions that arise when a legitimate end becomes the thing worshipped.

It is, then, within the Kingdom of God that love is possible and that men and women can be freed to be peacemakers in the true sense. Rather than devising clever means of getting into Caesar’s door, such as taking over the Republican Party, our energies would be better directed toward building a “visible alternative” to Caesar.

Theologian William Willimon, in a 1989 article, “An Offering of Slogans,” said it this way:

The church is God’s attempt to create a plan of peace and justice where we might be saved from the disasters of our efforts to take matters into our own hands…The “peace that passeth all understanding” is about the One who came to us because we could not get together and come to Him – the One who comes to guide our feet into the way of peace (Willimon, “An Offering of Slogans, Christianity Today, August 12, 1989, p. 24).

Willimon reminds us that our task as believers is not to be “…useful within the present scheme of things, but to be helpful…Setting things right, in itself, is not the supreme moral action. The supreme moral action is to live and die as Christ (p. 25).”

Of this I am certain. The bottom line of Christian ethics demands that we treat others as we ourselves would be treated. To carry that out is to stop our judging and to earn the right to speak by bearing another’s burdens until it costs us something.

If we cannot practice this here in our culture, we have no business invading other cultures with our pious ideas of right living. By definition, then, to be a tourist, a Christian in somebody else’s land or a short term resident, is to pray, not for the plight of “the lost,” but for an obvious and constant humility.

To witness to the power of the cross with our lips and not our lives is to do violence to the cause of Christ and our brothers and sisters who come after us.

The “ugly born-again American” never stays long enough to repent for the damage he has caused.”

What, Then, Must We Do?

Christians who take seriously the presence of the Kingdom of God have a few basic requirements by which to live out their lives of faith:

1. We have a requirement to know what we believe and to measure what we hear by the core doctrines of the faith…

2. We have a requirement to reject all doctrines that fail to square with the Sermon on the Mount…

3. We have a requirement to expose and reject false prophets who teach anything other than the Gospel of peace and the power of a sovereign God…This includes those who have built corporate empires around the false worship of the American Dream ethic of power and prosperity…

4. As tourists to the Holy Land, we have a requirement to studiously avoid the tourist traps and to seek out Christian communities there so that we may be linked with brothers and sisters who prayerfully seek only God’s will…

5. We have an obligation to pray, not for the so-called Second Coming of Christ but that the presence of Christ and His Kingdom might be made evident through His bride, the Church…

6. We have an obligation to prayerfully vote, not for a person steeped in Christian idiom and little else, but for him or her who is the right person to protect and defend the United States of America…

7. We have a requirement to live in prayerful anticipation of God’s hand in human history in times and in manners unknown to us…

8. We have a requirement to reject the United States of America or the nation of Israel as our hope and to accept the Kingdom of God as victorious over all such hegemonies, while at the same time respecting and protecting the rights of others…

9. We have a requirement to live with a race-free, color-blind, sex-blind, classless worldview that strives to do its best with our weak, human institutions…

10. Finally, we have an obligation to faithfully build the church and believe that God is capable of working through the church to His good purpose…

It is only in community that we can offer hope to a world spinning out of control and aided by false prophets.

If there is gathered together the community of the redeemed in the Holy Land, and if any one of us is indeed called to bear witness there to the reality of the living Christ, may God give us strength to endure the death required of our pre-conceived agendas.

For, of all places on earth, the true witness of Jesus Christ clearly stands in violent opposition to all sides. Peacemaking, therefore, because it is the fruit of true Christian love, will cost us our right to be right and may indeed put our very lives at peril.

May God have mercy.