Before I get around to my second post about Christian women in academia I wanted to pose a question for discussion: Is our vision of the church just too small?
I admit, I thought I was the more adventurous vistionary-type in my marriage. But I was wrong. Way wrong. Maybe it just means that God's workng more on my husband's heart than mine (then again, I think that part of God working on my heart is through my husband). My husband and I have been talking a lot recently about the church where we live and the Church more generally. My husband often points out that our vision for the Church is just too small (while I, tend to agree and yet think that I'm fine with its smallness). (See for instance, his posts on our blog about God's law, I and II.)
We content ourselves with paying lip service to social justice issues (take for instance, the One campaign in the States and the Make Poverty History campaign in the UK). Not that these things aren't good -- and I'm the first to support such endeavours -- but, if the Church is simply piggy-backing on to these essentially political movements, isn't there something wrong with that? Shouldn't we be setting the standard -- not only in relieving poverty but in aesthetics, business practices, academia?
And with such generalisations, I wholeheartedly agree. Yes Christian artists should be setting the trends; yes Christian businesspeople need to be setting the ethically standards of corporate behaviour; yes we should be the first ones lobbying politicians to give mercy to the poor.
But then I realise the cost.
I may not find a job in academia if I'm too outspoken. Maybe I should just be supportive of others who are in theology departments, philosophy departments, ministers of the gospel at home and abroad. Maybe I should just be quiet but yet still support the *idea* that the gospel changes everything: our worldview, our understanding of where and how we are to live -- but yet still have my own life remain complacent and untransformed by the gospel.
Is our view of the gospel too small? Is our view of the Church too small? Do we really believe it does more than put a band-aid on our sin but totally removes it and replaces it with the righteousness of Christ? Are we, with Paul, "not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith" (Romans 1:16-17)? And if the gospel, the good news of Jesus Christ, is not a band-aid but something that utterly turns our world upside down, why don't our lives (mine included, see doubts above) look radically changed and upside down to those around us?
I guess the short answer is that I'm a sinner. And yet, I have been saved by the grace and mercy of Christ. As this is the case, shouldn't the Church look different than it does? How do we go about looking like the hands and feet of Jesus instead of the comfortable middle-class suburbanites that mainstream evangelcalism is promoting.
(I know I'm coming up with more questions than answers but I hope it shall benefit the discussion.)
