I recently submitted a revised edition of my earlier post on Billy Graham to a student published paper at my school. This is the revised version:
One of the regular critiques of Medieval Christendom highlights the way in which infant baptism became the method by which entire societies and whole nations of people were made Christian. There was little focus on discipleship or the formation of a Christian identity that posed any sort of challenge to the reigning powers. Within Christendom one was simply born into both the Church and the state and one revealed oneself to be a model Christian by living as a model citizen. Naturally those of us who live after Christendom have good reason to question such an understanding of Christian identity.
However, what we tend to overlook is that this is essentially what Billy Graham did to American Christianity in the twentieth century. Only Reverend Graham made it even easier. No ritual was required – all that one had to do was ask Jesus into one’s heart in order to be a born again Christian. Once more being a good Christian was equated with being a good citizen. Christians were those committed to the morals and values of America. With such an understanding of Christianity there was little need for any sort of ongoing discipleship, identity formation, or the practice of the disciplines that build Christian virtues. Billy could just travel from arena to arena and soon America was (yet again?) a Christian nation.
The result of this was churches closely linked to social and political power full of people who didn’t have a clue about what it meant to live as a part of the people of God. Consequently, as the Christian gloss over the practice of socio-political power has become increasingly unnecessary these churches have discovered themselves to be impotent, uninteresting, and empty. Essentially Reverend Graham built God’s house on the sand. But, as Jesus said, such houses will not stand when the storm comes. The storm has come and the house that Billy built has collapsed.
After Christendom’s history of false baptisms the Church needs to return to a truer understanding of this sacrament. After all, one becomes a Christian not by having Christ “in me” but by being in Christ. Graham proclaimed a gospel that placed Jesus in my heart and thereby made me, the individual, the body of Christ. Yet St. Paul is clear that what matters is not having Jesus in my heart but being in Christ – and this is what baptism is all about. One is baptized into Christ and into Christ’s body, the Church. We, the Church (not I, the individual) are the body of Christ.
Therefore, baptism rightly understood is seen as the act by which one becomes committed to the discipleship, the formation, and the discipline of the Church. Of course this is much more demanding than simply asking Jesus into one’s heart, and I suspect that it is the demands of discipleship (disguised as an aversion to ritual?) that have caused baptism to lose its significance in the contemporary Church. However, it is crucial that we recover the centrality of baptism. For since it links the individual believer to the body of Christ it is a genuinely salvific act.
It should be emphasized that those who undergo this baptism cannot remain on intimate or comfortable terms with socio-political powers. In baptism one becomes crucified with Christ – and Christ was crucified by the socio-political powers. Therefore, to try and wield such power is a (literally) violent contradiction of Christian identity.
Once again Graham’s (per)version of the gospel misses this central point. Billy takes the gospel of the New Testament – the good news of Jesus’ Lordship – and turns it into a message that offers individual souls a way to get into heaven when the body dies. Such an individualistic, disembodied, and otherworldly gospel means that Billy has no problem being connected to socio-political powers. Yet when one understands the gospel as the proclamation of Jesus’ Lordship one cannot help but be drawn into conflict with state powers. It is baptism into the communal practice of cruciformity that is the true foundation of God’s House.
Interestingly enough Dr. John Stackhouse wrote a response that will be printed in this week's paper. For those who are curious, here it is:
I write in regard to Dan’s piece, “Jesus in My Heart: How Billy Graham Built God’s House on Sand.” I am dismayed by it.
To be sure, I am not against vigorous, opinionated journalism. (The record shows that I have undertaken a bit of it myself.) Nor am I against criticism of the North American evangelical movement. (Ditto.)
I want to say, furthermore, that I like Dan personally, I have enjoyed having him in my courses, and I respect his commitment especially to the poor. He is a zealous Christian.
Alas, this article shows some of his zeal, at least, to be “without knowledge” (Rom. 10:2). As one who has published scholarly research on Billy Graham, I can categorically say that Dan does not understand Brother Graham either historically or theologically.
Historically, Billy Graham has not played the role Dan ascribes to him in the development of either evangelicalism or American culture. The tensions in American culture that trouble Dan about religion and society go back to the Puritans of America’s founding. There is no big change with Graham in these tensions, and it is wildly inaccurate, not to say libelous, to lay these issues at his door.
Theologically, Billy Graham simply does not say what Dan thinks he says. Having myself listened to dozens of Graham’s sermons and read hundreds of pages of his writing and of his biographers’, I wonder on what basis Dan presumes to characterize Billy Graham’s message. Graham has always emphasized holiness of life and the importance of church membership, and his organization has worked hard in both publications and in programs to link those who sign “decision cards” at rallies with local churches to avoid exactly the kind of cheap conversion against which Dan inveighs.
Others in our community likely will want to take issue with Dan”s soteriological and ecclesiological musings, including his highly selective reading of the New Testament, in which he privileges the language of “in Christ” while ignoring even denigrating–the multiple uses of Christ in us (e.g., John 15:1-10; Gal. 2:20; Col. 1:27).
For now, I will simply point out that Dan has built his criticism of Billy Graham not on the rock of serious scholarship, but on the sand of journalistic impression. Such a criticism cannot be allowed to stand, and it will not.
John G. Stackhouse, Jr.
Sangwoo Youtong Chee Professor of Theology and Culture
Yowza!
Subjects of the King
In his book Jesus Remembered James Dunn argues for three primary titles given to the new community of people that formed around Jesus. I find it telling to compare these titles to those that John Stackhouse gives to the people of God in his teaching (these titles were the central motifs of his course The Christian Life, and also merited attention in his course Theology of Culture. I suspect they will also be operative in his upcoming book on that subject).
Stackhouse says the the people of God should understand themselves as (1) children of God and (2) disciples of Jesus. Dunn is in agreement with this — his second and third titles for the people formed around Jesus are exactly these. However, what is significant is what Stackhouse leaves out. Dunn first title, and the one that is given primacy, is “Subjects of the King.”
(Dunn does a beautiful job of showing how these titles fit into Jesus' threefold call to (a) repent, (b) believe, and (c) follow me. Repentance is required for subjects to once again return to submitting themselves to the reign of God; belief is the corollary of discovering that this Divine Sovereign is also Father — and one can thus have faith like a child, and live as a child of God; and following Jesus is the vocation of Christian disciples.)
When Dunn gives primacy to an understanding of Christian identity that focuses on being subjects of the King he notes how little notice this topic has received in much of modern theology and biblical studies. However, he emphasises that such an understanding is intimately linked to Jesus' proclamation of the kingdom of God. The proclamation of the kingdom come (and coming) highlights the reign of God, and implies a subject/king relationship.
Neglecting this title is a significant blind-spot in Stackhouse's theology. Or is it a blind-spot? It is rather convenient for theologians like Stackhouse to deemphasise this topic. As a theologian Stackhouse has been highly influenced by the likes of R.R. Niebuhr and is committed to working alongside of (and as a part of) the powers that be in order to enact social transformation. To prioritise the theme of God's reign, and the proclamation that Jesus (and only Jesus) is Lord jeopardizes this approach — which is why Stackhouse would rather see the likes of Yoder and Hauerwas as sectarian, rather than giving any priority to the implications of Jesus' Lordship.
This is not to say that nothing good has come from the Niebuhrian school of thought. However, there may well be a better way. “Christian realism” is markedly hopeless leaving little room for such major biblical motifs as the exodus, the coming of the Spirit at Pentecost, and the inauguration of a new creation. The faith of the biblical authors is far more defined by hope than by any sort of “realism” — yet this hope is assured because it is grounded in the proclamation that God has returned to reign at Zion, and Satan has been defeated. Christian realism actually gets itself behind the 8-ball and, from the get-go, prevents itself from attaining that for which it strives — transformation.
(Hauerwas applies the same critique to Christians that are focused on relevance. A Christianity that strives after relevance will end up being irrelevant; it is only a Christianity that strives to be faithful that will discover that it is radically relevant. Which is one of the reasons why I can't stand Relevant Magazine. A friend of mine gave it a more appropriate title — Self-Indulgent.)
Writing in the Dust
And everyone has memories from the night that melted stone
The neighbour's nightgown, the screaming on the phone
And the tired man at the station says “we can't tell who's alive
All we ever know is that the tourists survive”
“Tra la la, tra la la, let's go” they say
“Let's go Pompeii”
~ Dar Williams, This Was Pompeii
Rowan Williams in his book Writing in the Dust: After September 11 speaks of his experience in New York (he was a few blocks from the World Trade Centre when the planes hit) and tries to articulate some sort of Christian response. One of his central points is the need for people to initially stay silent when crises occur. One's initial response can too often be co-opted by a religious or political agenda that only makes matters worse for everyone. Thus he talks about the importance of taking time to stoop and write in the dust (like Jesus did when the crowd brought him a woman who had been caught in adultery) before speaking. Those first moments of silence can change everything.
I have been thinking about what has been happening in New Orleans and have been on the edge of writing a post about it, responding to some of what the mainstream media has been saying but I realised that I needed some time to “write in the dust” before I spoke. And even now I submit these thoughts tentatively.
You see, my initial reaction was to cry out against voices that wanted to glamourise the event or trivialise other tragedies. Calling the hurricane's impact on New Orleans “our tsunami” only makes sense if American money is valued more than the lives of people in the two-third's world. The impact just isn't comparable. What such headlines reveal is the way in which those in positions of power are able to write history. Jon Sobrino makes this point in his book Where is God?. We all know the date when the planes hit New York but who can name the day when Afghanistan was first bombed, who can name the date when war was brought to Iraq?
However, I don't mean to make light of the loss of life and the suffering that has occurred, and continues to occur. In particular, I don't want to make light of the suffering of the poor. As Sobrino also notes, while reflecting on the earthquake that hit El Salvador in 2001 (who in the West remembers that date?), natural disasters have a way of revealing deeply rooted inequalities that remain hidden during other times. It was the poor in El Salvador who were genuinely devastated by the earthquake, and it will be the poor in New Orleans who bear the brunt of this crisis. This is becoming increasingly clear as the police, the major political forces and the media turn their focus to the protection of property and businesses — instead of focusing on saving lives.
I don't mean this to be a rant against the powers that be, I don't mean to trivialise what the people of New Orleans have experienced. Some who rail against the “our tsunami” comment mock the whole idea — people were told to evacuate the city 10 days before the hurricane it. There's no comparison. Yet what option do the poor have? Many people just don't have the ability or the resources to leave.
Thus, it seems to me that one of the inequalities that the hurricane reveals is the deep-seated racism that still exists in much of North America. It is saddening that most of the pictures of mourning and suffering people are of African-American people (at least the pictures that I've seen). It seems that poverty in New Orleans is still very much related to ethnicity.
And when the Associated Press runs a photo of a young black male with a bag of food he is described as “looting” a grocery store. When it runs a photo of a young white couple with bags of food they are said to have “found” the food at a grocery store.
So although I don't mean to rant I am trying to follow Sobrino's footsteps and “speak honestly about reality.” Especially since so many other voices will try to use this to reinforce lies that the hurricane threatens to expose.
August Books
Well, the summer is coming to an end so don’t expect to see any more fiction on my list until December. Of course this is potentially my very last year of course work (what is this year #6?) so that’s leaving me with an interesting feeling. Anyway…
1. Performing the Faith: Bonhoeffer and the Practice of Nonviolenceby Stanley Hauerwas. A somewhat mixed collection of essays but — as can be expected from Hauerwas — a worthwhile read. As always Stan is concerned with showing how the Christian practice of nonviolence is linked to the communal development of virtue. He thus argues for a form of nonviolence that cannot be divorced from discipleship. For this reason he argues that Yoder is not a “pacifist” (understood here as one who appeals to nonviolence as some sort of abstract universal standard), for Yoder understands the contingency of all things. This is also why he argues that Milbank should admit that he is a “pacifist” for he is still dealing with an epistemology that buys into absolutes — it is because of this that Hauerwas also argues that Milbank smacks of triumphalism. Stanley argues that Christians are called to endure in the world — Milbank, says Stan, wants Christians to win. Of course this is only a wee sample of a collection of essays that touch on many more topics than this.
2. Dominion and Dynasty: a Theology of the Hebrew Bible by Stephen Dempster. Two biblical studies professors that I have stayed in touch with from my undergrad have continually recommended this book to me and I finally got around to reading it. Basically Dempster argues that there is an overarching narrative that guides the Hebrew Bible (Tanahk) from the first to the last book — and this narrative is shaped by the twin themes of dominion and dynasty (or genealogy and geography). A beautiful work that does a find job of showing the Tanahk to be a single coherent Text and not just a collection of somewhat random texts. Of course part of the beauty of this book is its readability and brevity. A great primer for anybody interested in moving into more serious biblical study (so that should include all Christians).
3. The Rebel Sell: Why the Culture can’t be Jammed by Joseph Heath and Andrew Potter. This book is an excellent critique of the counter-culture that reveals how the counter-culture is self-defeating. Far from providing an alternative to consumer capitalism the counter-culture with its rampant individualism and sense of distinction actually exacerbates all the problems that the counter-culture pins on “the system.” While I tend to disagree with the authors on several points (i.e. they have bought too wholeheartedly into Fukuyama’s notion of “the end of history”) this book should be required reading for anybody (like myself) who has been influenced by the likes of Naomi Klein.
4. The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus. I have always had a strong affinity for Camus. The Plague was a beautiful and heartbreaking piece that any Christian who wants to write-off atheism needs to take the time to read. This work is Camus’ defense and explanation for “absurd” living. Living the requires lucidity and hopelessness. It is the absence of hope that is the most fundamental certitude here. Of course a link that Camus does not make explicit — but which undergirds much of what is said — is the way in which hubris is connected to this hopelessness. Reading this I can’t help but think how far the Church has lost its way, for it too, while speaking of hope, tends to live in a hopeless way in our culture. Christian hope, built not on pride but on trust in God, is what enables things to be made new — something that Camus cannot perceive as possible.
5. The Picture of Dorian Grey by Oscar Wilde. Wilde is certainly a master of the bon mot. He can consistently turn a phrase and writes very beautifully at times. Unfortunately the content of this book feels somewhat… juvenile. This is the mentality of a self-absorbed rich kid elevated to the best way to approach all of life. I hate to say it, but that’s the description that comes most readily to mind. It feels juvenile in the sense that the philosophy espoused by the central characters (and by Oscar himself?) is one that has no concern for others. Indeed, the characters (and Oscar) claim that one should not be concerned with ethics — only with beauty — but this itself suggests that none of the people involved understand what ethics are. Oscar’s book is an ethical work — it just suggests a different ethic than what was the norm. And a much more troubling one.
6. Nicholas Nickleby by Charles Dickens. Hooray for Dickens and his (mostly) happy endings. This book reminded me of David Copperfield and was good simple pleasure reading.
7. Sons and Lovers by D.H. Lawrence. That’s the kind of title that has the potential the creep me out (i.e. does a woman have a son that is also her lover?) and there is a rather creepy mother involved. What makes the book more interesting is the fact that it was in this work that Lawrence was trying to sort out what kind of relationship he had with his own mother. This was my first time reading Lawrence and I think I’ll pick up another one of his in the near future.
8. Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood. I don’t know what it is with Canadian novelists and their seeming obsession with writing psychological novels (cf. The Manticore by Robertson Davies, or The Piano Man’s Daughter by Timothy Findley, etc., etc.) but this book was excellent. I’ve often scoffed at Canadian lit and said that the only reason it qualified as “literature” was because it was the best of what was available. Thankfully this book actually is the real deal. Atwood writes with a distinctive voice that took me a bit to get into but fully drew me in until I couldn’t put the book down. This is a work of historical fiction around the notorious “murderess” Grace Marks who lived in the 19th century.
9. Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury. A classic that I hadn’t read in years and so I decided to pick it up again. That hound still scares the hell out of me — but still doesn’t quite scare me as much as Montag’s wife. Yikes.
Boldness and the Joy of the Beloved
I was listening to a presentation that Stan Grenz, Darryl Johnson, and Charles Ringma gave on the topic of Brian McLaren's “A Generous Orthodoxy” and the emerging Church “non-movement” and I was struck by Stan's opening prayer (Stan was another Christian leader who passed away this year — I hope to say more about this presentation in another post. Although I can't resist providing a teaser from Ringma. Ringma says that Brian is a “mischievous” fellow, and so, in that same spirit he comments, “Brian is like a kid in a lolly shop with twenty cents in his pocket. He wants to try everything — he licks every lolly — but he also plans on leaving with his twenty cents still in his pocket.” Or, “Don't even bother reading Brian's chapter on the seven different Jesuses. He's like a fellow who marries a woman that he is madly in love with — who then wants to tell you about each of his ex-girlfriends”).
Anyway, Stan opened his prayer in a traditional way speaking about being able to, through Jesus, enter boldly into the presence of the Father. For some reason this got me thinking about the whole notion of Christian boldness. And I think it must be rooted in the joy of the beloved. I always sort of pictured boldness like a sort of cockiness — because of Jesus we could swagger into God's presence and dare anybody to try to tell us otherwise. I've always associated boldness with a sort of Christian triumphalism or arrogance.
However, it is the boldness that stems from joy that is free of arrogance or fear. And this joy stems from being known as God's beloved. When one is beloved one does not hesitate to run into the presence of one's lover. There is no second guessing, no hesitation, no lingering or hanging back. Rather, “I am my beloved's and he is mine” and the joy that comes from this leads us to enter boldly into God's presence. It is as if love moves us beyond the categories of bravery and fear and into the categories of intimacy and delight.
Jesus in my Heart: How Billy Graham Built God's House on the Sand
One of the regular critiques of Medieval Christendom is the way in which infant baptism became the method by which entire societies and whole nations of people were made Christian. There was little focus on discipleship or the formation of a Christian identity that posed any sort of challenge to the reigning powers. Within Christendom one was simply born into both the state and the Church and one revealed oneself to be a model Christian by being a model citizen. Naturally, those of us who live after Christendom have good reason to question such an understanding of Christian identity.
However, what we tend to miss is that this is essentially what Billy Graham did to American Christianity in the 20th century. Only Rev. Graham made it even easier. No ritual was required — all that one had to do was ask Jesus into one's heart in order to be a born again Christian. Not only that but being a good Christian was equated with being a good citizen. Christians were those committed to the morals and values of America. With such an understanding of Christianity there was little need for any sort of ongoing discipleship, identity formation or the practice of disciplines that build Christian virtues. Therefore, Billy could just travel from arena to arena and soon America was (yet again) a Christian nation.
The result of this was churches closely linked to social and political power full of people who didn't have a clue about what it meant to be a Christian. Consequently as the Christian gloss over the practice of socio-political power has become increasingly unnecessary these churches have discovered themselves to be impotent, uninteresting, and empty. Essentially Rev. Graham built God's house on the sand but, as Jesus said, when the storms came, it collapsed.
After Christendom's history of false baptisms the Church needs to return to a truer understanding of this sacrament. After all, one becomes a Christian not by having having Christ “in me” but by being in Christ. This is what baptism is about. One is baptised into Christ, and into Christ's body — the Church. Baptism, rightly understood, is seen as the act by which one becomes committed to the discipleship, the formation, and the discipline of the Church. Of course this is much more demanding than simply asking Jesus into one's heart — and I suspect it is the demands of discipleship (disguised as an aversion to ritual?) that have caused baptism to lose its significance in the contemporary Church. Yet it is crucial to recover the centrality of baptism. For, since it links the individual believer to Christ and his Church, it is a genuinely salvific act.
It should be emphasised that those who undergo this baptism cannot remain on intimate terms with socio-political powers. In baptism one becomes crucified with Christ — and Christ was crucified by the socio-political powers. Therefore, to try to wield such power seems like a violent contradiction to the Christian identity. It is baptism into the communal practice of cruciformity that is the true foundation of God's House.
Brother Roger: May 12, 1915 – August 16, 2005
Brother Roger, the founder and leader of France's Taize community, has been murdered. While Roger was leading the community in prayer last night a woman arose and stabbed him three times in the neck. He died quickly — he was 90 years old.
It is a sad day for those who have been deeply influenced by our Brother's understanding of Christianity community, reconciliation, and peace. It is tragic to hear of murder and think of bloodshed. But unlike many I am not shocked by the news. It just makes sense. Brother Roger followed in the footsteps of Jesus and, in the end, like so many other humble disciples, he had his life taken from him. Roger spent his life carrying a cross and martyrdom, although sad, is not surprising but rather what could be expected. So I will mourn the violence — I will grieve especially for the woman that killed him — but I remain convinced that on this cross Roger has triumphed. Jesus has taken the power of crucifixion, of murder, and of death, from the hands of the enemy, and we can be certain that resurrection awaits our Brother.
It seems that this year is one for the passing of renowned Christian leaders. First John Paul II and now Brother Roger. It is interesting to compare the two. Both lived long lives but one, the leader of a Church still closely tied to the practice of state power, died a slow laborious death that incapacitated him, took away his mental faculties, and made him unable to speak; the other, committed to a more humble path of reconciliation, worship, and peace, died the death of a martyr. This then marks the passing of two witnesses. Those who have ears to hear, let them hear.
Incomparable God, Incomparable People?
One of the major themes that seems to regularly emerge in theological studies of the Old Testament is the incomparability of YHWH. YHWH is nothing like the other gods, nor is YHWH like any other kind of ruler, lover, person or thing. Indeed, it is incomparability that is the definitive characteristic of the God found within this story. This God is odd and (perhaps to the exasperation of the reader) strangely indescribable.
Similarly, Israel, as the first-born child of God, is to be an incomparable people. As a nation of priests set apart to mediate the divine presence and blessing to the nations they should stand out in peculiar — and sometimes painful — ways. Unfortunately the history of Israel often details the way in which the people tragically fail in this calling. Instead of being a peculiar people they become just like (and sometimes even worse than) the nations around them.
Even after the coming of Jesus this point remains. Granted Christians affirm that Jesus is the “human face of God” and a revelation of God's mystery — but the revelation of Jesus is genuinely incomparable. Jesus picks up on many of the things that set YHWH apart from all else, especially in his affirmation of strength in weakness and glory in shame. The notion that one should triumph on a cross is perhaps the oddest thing imaginable. In fact, it would not be imaginable had not Jesus done exactly that.
Therefore, if the Church is the people dedicated to following Jesus they should also be, at the very least, what Rodney Clapp calls “a peculiar people.” These Christ-followers should be exceedingly odd. We get a glance of this oddness in both the Pauline epistles and the description of the early Jerusalem church in Acts. Unfortunately the Church, just like Israel, has done a fine job of failing in its vocation and instead of mediating God's blessing to the ends of the earth it has become just like (and sometimes worse than) the other institutions around it. It has succumbed to the lure of power instead of embracing weakness, and has embraced a self-protecting pragmatism instead of traveling the road dictated by suffering love. Consequently Christians today end up looking just like everybody else and the whole idea of living like the Church in Acts seems too absurd to even contemplate. If we are to follow Jesus we must recover the oddity that is peculiar to Christ-followers.
This is one of the reasons why debates about “Christian relevance” continually miss the point. We should not worry about being relevant, we should worry about being the people of God — and we can trust that, when we do so, the world will also be transformed.
Free to Read the Story I Love
For the least few years I've struggled a lot with the whole notion of bible reading. As I've learned more and more about the bible as a collection of historical (and deceptively esoteric) documents I've felt increasingly incapacitated when it came to engaging in the simple practice of daily reading. I felt like I couldn't pick up the bible without also picking up a whole slough of commentaries. There is so much present in the texts that I felt unable to read it casually. Of course I felt that I was somehow missing the point, but I couldn't really figure out why. And so, over the last few years, I have spent far more time reading books about the bible than I have spent reading the bible itself.
Just last week I finally realised how I was missing the point.
I had recently read Lindbeck's Nature of Doctrine and was continually reading authors who approached the bible as story. But I continued to miss the point until I picked up Stephen Dempter's Dominion and Dynasty: a Theolgy of the Hebrew Bible. Dempster repeatedly asserts that the key to understanding is found in reading, rereading, and rereading the texts — and then all the pieces fell into place for me. Learning a language requires immersion and so does entering into a story. I realised that daily reading is something like a daily baptism by the texts. Suddenly I find myself free to simply read and enjoy the story I love so much. I don't always need to bring all my exegetical, historical, theological, and literary tools with me — I can put all those down and simply enjoy the pleasure of being immersed.
Now it just makes sense to engage in regular reading — what doesn't make sense is neglecting the very texts that are so formative to the people of God.
Proclaiming Forgiveness and Living Peaceably
If one actually takes the time to study Jesus as he is portrayed in the texts (instead of studying the texts through the lenses of various faith traditions) one is struck by the manner in which Jesus proclaims the forgiveness of sins. You see, unlike most of contemporary Christianity, Jesus did not go around telling people that they needed to have their sins forgiven. Rather Jesus proclaimed that their sins already were forgiven. My, my, wouldn't that change the way in which Christians proclaim the gospel today — what would happen if we were to proclaim the forgiveness of sins, instead of proclaiming that people are in need of the forgiveness of sins?
Of course there is a way in which the Church has done this already. In Discipleship Dietrich Bonhoeffer talks about “cheap grace” and the ways in which the Church uses forgiveness to white-wash society and exonerate those who are seated comfortably in positions of privilege, wealth and power (that means the likes of you and I). Of course when the Church does this she engages in exactly the opposite of the proclamation of Jesus. When one looks at who Jesus is talking to when he proclaims (and embodies) forgiveness one realises that it is those who are damned by society that are privileged with this message. Those who fit comfortably into the corrupt social system — those in the positions of social and religious power — are the ones Jesus talks to about judgment. To the “damned” Jesus says, “you are forgiven.” To the “saved” Jesus says, “you need to remember that you will be held accountable one day.” It seems that we've gotten this message backwards. To the “saved” we say, “hooray, we've made it into heaven.” To the “damned” we say, “Woe to you for judgment is coming.”
Yet it is the very proclamation of forgiveness that enables the “damned” to live transformed lives. Forgiveness is an agent of reconciliation and when people are reconciled they are enabled to live new lives. If we do not offer such people forgiveness we offer them no alternative to the life they are already living.
This is why forgiveness must be at the heart of Christian attempts to live peaceably. Recognising the reality of sin Christians are able to live honestly within reality and not settle for a peace that is premised upon lies and injustice. Thus the Church must be able to engage in confession with the world — being honest about herself — in order to create a space for others to be vulnerable. It is the existence of a forgiven and forgiving people that creates the hope for a real and lasting peace.
…there is revealed that reality which is the ultimate and only tolerable ground of any community of peace, the forgiveness of sins. There is a community of peace for Christians only because one will forgive the other his [sic] sins. The forgiveness of sins still remains the sole ground of all peace.
~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer, No Rusty Swords