"I Didn't Move; You Did" (Part 18) - The Shift Toward Accepting Unjust Scales Of Justice

My last post bemoaned the willingness of so many evangelical Christians, followers of a faith that commands us not to bear false witness, to minimize, defend, repeat, or simply stop caring about truth.

In this post, I want to look at how Christians damage the credibility of the gospel when we highlight failures of character and integrity in our opponents while finding ways to excuse it in our allies.[i]

Throughout this series, I have been returning to the same claim concerning the conservative evangelicalism in which I was raised: I didn't move; you did.  When I look at the things that increasingly separate me from American evangelicalism, I keep finding that it's because of the values evangelicalism itself taught me.

For example, I remember being raised amidst the conservative evangelical insistence that character and integrity mattered in private and public life. This wasn’t reduced to merely our sex lives. Greed was spiritually and societally dangerous. Dishonesty and hypocrisy eventually corrupt everything they touch. Having power or being popular did not excuse immorality but made character even more important, because the consequences impacted so many more people. 

The statements and declarations I have been revisiting throughout this series are remarkably consistent in warning about greed, corruption, selfish ambition, dishonesty, covetousness, the seduction of wealth, and the danger of Christians becoming too comfortable with the rich and powerful. They insist that Christian proclamation must be accompanied by Christian character unmarred by greed and corruption, because otherwise our testimony loses its credibility.[1]

“When there is no distinction in conduct between Christians and non-Christians – for example in the practice of corruption and greed…then the world is right to wonder if our Christianity makes any difference at all. Our message carries no authenticity to a watching world…”

“The proclamation of God’s kingdom necessarily demands the prophetic denunciation of all that is incompatible with it. Among the evils we deplore are destructive violence, including institutionalized violence, political corruption, all forms of exploitation of people and of the earth…”

“Our challenge to others to deny themselves, take up their cross and follow Christ will be plausible only if we ourselves have evidently died to selfish ambition, dishonesty, and covetousness, and are living a life of simplicity, contentment, and generosity.

“We are called, as those who serve God and not mammon, to recognize that greed perpetuates poverty, and to renounce it."

Scripture repeatedly condemns dishonest scales, an image I think will be helpful for this post. For example:

“A false balance is an abomination to the Lord, but a just weight is his delight. When pride comes, then comes disgrace, but with the humble is wisdom. The integrity of the upright guides them, but the crookedness of the treacherous destroys them.” (Proverbs 11:1-3)[ii]

There is something profoundly unjust about having one measure for one person and another measure for someone else. It’s not just about weighing grain; it’s about measuring a fair, righteous and consistent judgment on all attitudes, words and actions.

What happens to our Christian witness when the standards we once proclaimed loudly become negotiable when applying them consistently would cost us political power?

I see a relevance here not just for individual witness (which is really important), but to corporate witness as well. To whom or what have we hitched our moral wagons? And at what cost? And is it a consistent, steady scales or a compromised, sliding one that a watching world sees the people of God using?

"I Didn't Move; You Did" (Part 3): The Manila Manifesto (1989)

In my first post in this series, I explained why I have become increasingly uncomfortable identifying as an evangelical, as it has become increasingly willing to excuse attitudes, behaviors, and priorities that seem incompatible with the character and teaching of Jesus.

 

My second post began the process of offering a sampling of decades of statements (beginning in the 1970s) put out by evangelical leaders, organizations, denominations, colleges, and ministries. They are declarations and manifestos explaining what they believed Christian evangelicals should value and how Christians should engage the world. They provide a record of what the movement publicly claimed to stand for, even if evangelicalism did not always live consistently with its principles.

 

This post is about a major manifesto in the 80s called the Manila Manifesto. The Manila Manifesto was produced and drafted by the British evangelical pastor and theologian John Stott. He led the drafting team at the Second International Congress on World Evangelization (Lausanne II) held in Manila, Philippines in July 1989. [1]

THE CULTURAL CREED OF THE UNHOMED

If I’m honest, I’m not sure where I fit in anymore.

When I look around to see who is my political neighbor, I realize I’m in a land triangulated between the liberal Left, conservative Right, and those chaotic Libertarians. I didn’t feel like the 2016 presidential candidates from any of those three parties represented my moral universe adequately enough to get my vote. I cringe at CNN and Fox in equal measure. I increasingly feel that it is important for me not to be beholden to a “side” culturally or politically.

I’m just not the kind of guy who can say, “This party or person, do or die.” 

So I increasingly find myself wandering uneasily in the topography of a world that seems intent on filling in all the Valleys full of Gray Uncertainty and leveling all the Hills of Important Nuance.  

Don’t get me wrong - I like the Plains of Certainty and the Fields of Truth. I just want to acknowledge that those mountains and valleys of Uncertainty and Nuance exist. And I don’t want to climb them with cable news talking heads, youtube faux philosophers, conspiratorial bloggers, tweeting politicians or blindly partisan Christian leaders. 

I want fellow explorers who don’t mind the hard work, who know when and how to pick a philosophical fight full of grace and truth, and who will join me at The Brew afterwards at a table full of the laughter and tears of friends because, in the end, we are determined to love each other well in a world that is broken enough already.  

If we can do that with mutual thoughtfulness and respectfulness, that table might just feel a bit like home no matter what land I inhabit.

Here we go, in no particular order: The Cultural Creed Of The Unhomed.

                                                              * * * * * * * * * *