Welcome to another edition of the Mueller Report!
This week I discuss two analogies regarding Christian living. You may also be interested in a study guide to Ruth I’ve written as well as a brief essay on how (and why) to study the Bible.
At my church we have been going through a sermon series on 1 John. The central theme of the first two chapters is that Christians ought to abide in Christ. Such abiding involves practicing spiritual disciplines like prayer, Scripture reading, fellowship, and worship. It also involves walking in the light by loving one another.
But is abiding in Christ different from knowing him? Or put another way, how does one’s theology connect to Christian living? Does it matter if you have Reformed theology versus Arminian theology? What about developed doctrines of ecclesiology, soteriology, eschatology, etc? Does that make you a better Christian than someone who does not have clear conceptions of those theological concepts?
Exercise Equipment
In answering those questions, I use the metaphor of exercising to build up one’s body. Theological knowledge or concepts are much like weight training equipment or exercise machines. The more theology one has, the more resources one has to train with. But simply having the right equipment, even very sophisticated and specialized equipment, does not give you a healthy well-formed physique.
You have to use the equipment on a regular basis.
That’s what abiding means. Dwelling on, practicing, living in communion with the Father and the Son. John writes about that clearly - abiding means fellowship, fellowship with one another and more importantly with God. It involves practical living by faith. Theology can help us do that just as exercise equipment helps us train.
But the analogy extends even further. Some exercise equipment is better and more useful than other equipment - so I would argue Reformed theology is superior to Armenian or Catholic theology. It is better suited to helping train your body (i. e. live faithfully). And those who have more exercise equipment (theological understanding) can train more intensely and achieve better results if they abide in the Lord.
At the same time, theological doctrines that are heretical are like badly calibrated or faulty exercise machines. Not only will they fail to draw you closer to the Lord or help you grow in holiness, they can cause great damage. Consider, for example, the great harm done with Prosperity Gospel theology when people go through suffering. Not only does it offer people little hope in their distress, it actively shifts the blame onto them for their misfortunes - a lack of faith or obedience.
The results of using faulty machinery can be little improvement even with great effort, significant harm or malformation, or even death. Faulty theology leads to discouragement, disillusionment, and even rejection of the faith.
All analogies have their limits, of course, but I hope this one connects the role of theological knowledge with practical living and abiding in the Lord. Another dimension of this analogy worth mentioning is that if you become overly fond of one or two particular theological doctrines (or exercise machines), you can over-work particular muscle groups at the expense of others - leading to imbalance in one’s pursuit of the Lord - like someone who builds up their biceps but neglects their back, shoulders, legs, etc.
Burning Buildings
Much has been written about the culture wars of the 1990s, and about whether Christians should align themselves with political movements to end abortion, or to promote religious liberty, or to preserve traditional Christian mores. I think those kinds of approaches are generally flawed because they misconceive the nature of the problems we face and misunderstand the relative capacities Christians have to influence culture.
If we take the Apostle Paul’s claim that creation itself is under the curse of sin and is groaning in bondage seriously, then we should conceptualize the world, including modern society, as being fundamentally broken and in need of rescuing and restoration. But what does that mean? The following analogy attempts to conceptualize the role of Christians in our fallen world.
Suppose we conceptualize our society as a giant building that has fires burning in it. Those fires can burn hotter or be more suffocating at some times than at others - this is the point made by culture warriors who want to preserve America’s “Christian” founding. People’s morals are declining and the fire is heating up and spreading. That seems to be true.
But should Christians primarily try to put out the fires, or should they try to rescue people out of the burning building?
Many culture warriors argue the first idea, but I would suggest that for most of us the second idea is better situated to our capacities and to faithful living. I am still working on this analogy, so please pardon the roughness. Let me suggest some other dimensions where this analogy can be helpful.
First, I have more than a person’s spiritual salvation or justification in mind. In the analogy, salvation has to do with people in the building 1) recognizing there is a fire; 2) recognizing that the fire is destructive; and 3) wanting to escape the fire oneself and help others to do so.
But rescuing people from the burning building is not simply reaching them with the Gospel. It involves helping them walk, or even carrying them, out of the building. Escaping the fires of the world involves a reordering of one’s habits, relationships, and desires - which can be a prolonged process. We need to build communities “outside” the burning building (think The Benedict Option).
The local church is like a platoon of rescuers working to bring people out of the burning building. Some folks work on building shelters, others provide for the material well-being of both those going into the burning building and those who are rescued from it, others in the platoon regularly go into the building to help bring folks out. Sometimes the actions are taken individually, sometimes people work in teams (like families or community groups).
A crucial part of this analogy involves recognizing our limited capacities. None of us have the ability to put out this fire. Even collectively we can’t put it out. We also are limited in how many people we can rescue at any given moment. We only have two hands (perhaps more if we are part of a team) and there is difficulty in navigating the building, finding folks, persuading them to leave, and then helping them get out of the fires of modern culture.
Rescuing does not mean firefighting. For most Christians, our job is not To Change the World - a point made quite well by James Davison Hunter.
We should consider our resources and capacities, which will help us decide the best way to use our time. Should we specialize at persuading folks outside the building to go into it to rescue those inside? Do we coordinate teams of folks inside the building in finding and rescuing folks? Are we on our own helping one person make their way out of the burning building?
As the parents of five small children, my wife and I sometimes talk about whether our hands are full or if we have more capacity to help yet others get out of the burning building. Are we doing enough?
Well, following the analogy, there are limits to how much we can do at a moment in time - God made us limited beings for a reason! But we should be asking ourselves how we are contributing to God’s rescue plan. What part of this process are we involved in? As I wrote last week, practicing hospitality is one dimension.
For Christian parents especially, we are shepherding our children out of the burning building into the fold of God. But even more than that, we should be training our children and equipping them to re-enter that burning building with us as they grow. Ministering to our children is not only for their salvation (though that is of critical importance!), it is also for equipping them to engage in the same rescue mission we are involved in. So raising children well extends and increases our capacity to serve the Lord. If you teach your son the way in which he should go when he is young, when he is old he will not depart from it (Proverbs 22:6).
The investment we make in our children when they are at home has consequences for decades and decades of their lives in the future. Will they be faithful men and women, grounded in God’s Word and in Christian doctrine, whose lives will advance God’s kingdom?
One final dimension of this analogy involves Christians fighting the fire itself. Firefighting must be done soberly and with acknowledgement of our constraints. We cannot put out the fire entirely before Christ returns. Though we may make progress in some corners of reducing the heat of the fire, or reducing its extent, those are temporary rather than permanent victories.
We also need to ask whether we have the resources to combat the fire. Someone with a bucket of water can do something. Someone with a fire hose can do much more. Christians in positions of political power or widespread cultural influence may have greater firefighting resources and can do a great deal of good in reducing the extent and destructiveness of the fires in the building.
But that is not a question that should concern most Christians. The obsession with firefighting (culture wars) among ordinary Christians is deeply destructive in my view. Most of us should be focusing on looking for folks in the burning building and getting them out - and how to do that most effectively including building local churches (platoons) and training our children to help in this work.
I’m sure more could be said but I’ll leave things there for now. Perhaps I will work out the analogy more fully in an essay on my website sometime in the future.
Please feel free to email me thoughts, ideas, or criticisms of either of these analogies.
Talk to you next week!