05-07-2021, 10:54 AM
Let's crush an element of Western Christian mythology. This one should be easy, but I've run into it often in discussions, so maybe you haven't had a chance to think this through.
The common Western Christian lie is that we should be wide open to refugees and immigrants. This arises from the notion that the New Testament message is open to all, and that our churches should gladly receive anyone and everyone who wanders in for whatever reason. Thus, by extension, we should encourage secular governments to ignore national boundaries and allow all humans to wander where they wish.
First, let's skewer one unspoken false assumption here, that religion is a segmented compartment in your life, rather than a whole new life altogether. In Western thinking, religion is just one more aspect of your identity, and it's just a matter of accommodating various religions under the democratic secular umbrella. It makes religion something people can and should control from a humanistic frame of reference.
Serving Jesus is all or nothing. We do make a wide passage for folks who are still trying to assimilate themselves to the gospel, simply because nobody ever completely arrives in this life. Still, the whole point is that you are on that path of change -- a change that completely rules your entire human existence. More to the point, it rules your soul after that human existence ends.
Oops, the Western secular humanist philosophy never acknowledges the afterlife.
Granted, valid faith covenant bodies will vary in some ways from each other. They will not vary much within the body. The whole point is that folks with common life experiences can fellowship and commune with others who share the same human problems. The idea is to find out how genuine faith addresses certain peculiar shared challenges. Each small body is supposed to specialize in addressing issues that its membership faces. It all takes place under the Two Witness model of feudal tribal structure.
The church is not a public accommodation, but a private family gathering. So while anyone is welcome to be a guest in this private family meeting, they have to conform substantially or they won't prosper spiritually, nor will they bless the body. The greater the differences, the smaller blessing there will be. They may be given a certain amount of training within the boundaries of what they share with the body, then go off and start their own covenant body to address their unique contextual needs.
There can be no one church body for everyone. The centralized model is from Hell; it's a lie of the Devil. You cannot effectively grow in Christ unless you are in a body of folks who understand your temptations. There can be no genuine body of Christ that is cosmopolitan. Trying to do that is poking God in the eye; it's part of what the Tower of Babel was all about. That ancient ziggurat was aimed at creating one centralized common religion, and it was a religion that served a very dark agenda. That agenda was aimed at pushing out divine revelation and placing some human on the throne of religion.
The gospel envisions a vast collection of tiny little bodies scattered over the earth, each addressing the peculiar needs of its own small household of faith. Everything is under a shared covenant of faith. We don't care what secular governments do, but if they were to ask, we would encourage tightly defended borders between narrowly defined cultural entities. The key to life on this earth is seeking a high degree of homogeneity in small societies.
Everybody acts like what God did at the Tower of Babel was a punishment, but it was God's grace restoring His divine will on something that was completely out of control. Only Satan promotes the cosmopolitan dream.
So we say: Close the borders. Expel the invaders and keep your societies culturally homogeneous. Don't attack folks for being different, but don't let them sleep next door, either. It's not because their differences are evil, but that they are disruptive. God's grace on this earth requires folks congregating in homogeneous clans and tribes. Keeping outsiders at arm's length is not a sin. There's nothing wrong with doing business with them, but don't let them into your home unless God calls them to change their ways to match that of the resident family.
Bring them in and demand change, but better yet, send missionaries where they are. A missionary is someone whom God equips to see past one context to another, to see what faith requires in a different circumstance. Missionaries go into a foreign context and can discern what they need to adopt to adapt to the situation, and what must be held forth as uniquely Christian. Missionaries have to understand what sin looks like in a any context. It's not a cultural mission, but it will most certainly bring changes.
So the real problem is defining what is sin, and the Western rationalist approach is wholly unfit to discern that.
The common Western Christian lie is that we should be wide open to refugees and immigrants. This arises from the notion that the New Testament message is open to all, and that our churches should gladly receive anyone and everyone who wanders in for whatever reason. Thus, by extension, we should encourage secular governments to ignore national boundaries and allow all humans to wander where they wish.
First, let's skewer one unspoken false assumption here, that religion is a segmented compartment in your life, rather than a whole new life altogether. In Western thinking, religion is just one more aspect of your identity, and it's just a matter of accommodating various religions under the democratic secular umbrella. It makes religion something people can and should control from a humanistic frame of reference.
Serving Jesus is all or nothing. We do make a wide passage for folks who are still trying to assimilate themselves to the gospel, simply because nobody ever completely arrives in this life. Still, the whole point is that you are on that path of change -- a change that completely rules your entire human existence. More to the point, it rules your soul after that human existence ends.
Oops, the Western secular humanist philosophy never acknowledges the afterlife.
Granted, valid faith covenant bodies will vary in some ways from each other. They will not vary much within the body. The whole point is that folks with common life experiences can fellowship and commune with others who share the same human problems. The idea is to find out how genuine faith addresses certain peculiar shared challenges. Each small body is supposed to specialize in addressing issues that its membership faces. It all takes place under the Two Witness model of feudal tribal structure.
The church is not a public accommodation, but a private family gathering. So while anyone is welcome to be a guest in this private family meeting, they have to conform substantially or they won't prosper spiritually, nor will they bless the body. The greater the differences, the smaller blessing there will be. They may be given a certain amount of training within the boundaries of what they share with the body, then go off and start their own covenant body to address their unique contextual needs.
There can be no one church body for everyone. The centralized model is from Hell; it's a lie of the Devil. You cannot effectively grow in Christ unless you are in a body of folks who understand your temptations. There can be no genuine body of Christ that is cosmopolitan. Trying to do that is poking God in the eye; it's part of what the Tower of Babel was all about. That ancient ziggurat was aimed at creating one centralized common religion, and it was a religion that served a very dark agenda. That agenda was aimed at pushing out divine revelation and placing some human on the throne of religion.
The gospel envisions a vast collection of tiny little bodies scattered over the earth, each addressing the peculiar needs of its own small household of faith. Everything is under a shared covenant of faith. We don't care what secular governments do, but if they were to ask, we would encourage tightly defended borders between narrowly defined cultural entities. The key to life on this earth is seeking a high degree of homogeneity in small societies.
Everybody acts like what God did at the Tower of Babel was a punishment, but it was God's grace restoring His divine will on something that was completely out of control. Only Satan promotes the cosmopolitan dream.
So we say: Close the borders. Expel the invaders and keep your societies culturally homogeneous. Don't attack folks for being different, but don't let them sleep next door, either. It's not because their differences are evil, but that they are disruptive. God's grace on this earth requires folks congregating in homogeneous clans and tribes. Keeping outsiders at arm's length is not a sin. There's nothing wrong with doing business with them, but don't let them into your home unless God calls them to change their ways to match that of the resident family.
Bring them in and demand change, but better yet, send missionaries where they are. A missionary is someone whom God equips to see past one context to another, to see what faith requires in a different circumstance. Missionaries go into a foreign context and can discern what they need to adopt to adapt to the situation, and what must be held forth as uniquely Christian. Missionaries have to understand what sin looks like in a any context. It's not a cultural mission, but it will most certainly bring changes.
So the real problem is defining what is sin, and the Western rationalist approach is wholly unfit to discern that.