Tim Keller once said we’re now living in the autumn of Christianity’s influence in the West: the leaves are falling to the ground and winter is approaching.

For many of us, the cold wind that reminds of us the coming winter storm is the loss of religious freedom so many evangelicals see in American life today.

A Christian student group at Vanderbilt University loses official school recognition; Chick-Fil-A gets grilled by the Denver City Council for trying to move into theDenver International Airport; in California an Intervarsity Christian Fellowship is forced to elect non-Christian leaders.

Many evangelicals feel like a cat backed into a corner. A combination of fear and outbursts of rage (usually on our Twitter feeds and Facebook pages) often define our response.

Times have changed. Christians committed to the public implications of their faith are now a minority in American life.

Today many Christians are frantically searching to find a way to live in American society without cultural power.

New options are being proposed.

For example, Rod Dreher, the conservative editorial writer, has suggested the “Benedict Option. Keep the flame of faith alive in private communities as the larger culture deteriorates. Though I’m not sure Benedict — who believed his monastic communities were essentially a missionary endeavor — would opt for this route, I’m not sure how this option works with the essential Christian confession, “Jesus is Lord of all.”

In response, Michael Gerson, columnist for the Washington Post, has suggested the “Wilberforce Option,” which advocates for defending human rights in the seats of power. Yet the “Wilberforce Option” assumes Christians actually have power to change laws, which seems to be less true with each passing year — and has been untrue of Christians of ethnic minorities for centuries.

Where in church history should we look for faithful, public responses to persecution, discrimination, and marginalization? I suggest we look to the preeminent expression of public faith in American history: the American Civil Rights Movement. Perhaps moving forward, we should embrace a distinctly American legacy: The MLK Option.

The MLK Option

Instead of a non-stop protest against unfairness or unequal treatment, we’d be wise to embrace Martin Luther King Jr’s model of social change and cultural witness. MLK can help the white church see what has been true for hundreds of years for the black church: the meaning of a faithful public life without cultural power.

Now more than ever the entire American church needs to come and learn at the feet of MLK’s counter-cultural, yet deeply Christian, vision of nonviolent love, even for our enemies.

In an age of caustic political debates and divided communities, Martin Luther King Jr.’s words echo as true today as they did a half century ago: “Along the way of life, someone must have sense enough and morality enough to cut off the chain of hate and evil. The greatest way to do that is love.”

What would the way of love look like for evangelicals in America today? Here are four places we could start:

1. Acknowledge that Christians are a minority in American culture (and this isn’t going to change any time soon).

What does it mean to be a minority people in a majority culture? The black church could be a wise counselor to white churches that are now experiencing this for the first time.

Suffering and lament choruses, like the blues, might need to become just as common as praise and worship songs. Being prepared to respond to discrimination with dignity may be just as important to church discipleship as quarterly marriage seminar. I admit, as a white evangelical myself, I have a lot to learn here.

But it’s important to first recognize that we’re not going to “take America back for God” and become a majority culture any time soon. That ship has sailed. As MLK said in 1956, “We must prepare to live in a new world.”

2. Embrace the central principle of Martin Luther King’s leadership: love your enemies.

After centuries of oppression, public shame, and suffering, it’s incredible that MLK could conjure such character to counsel African Americans “to meet the forces of hate with the power of love…We’ve got to learn not to hit back. We must learn to love the white man.”

This makes me wonder: could Christians be known centrally for their acts of grace in American culture?

To do this would require us to bring gourmet meals to pro-choice co-workers; to pray deeply and honestly for our political leaders of that other political party (whether that be Democrat or Republican); it would mean finding those we despise in our neighborhoods and treating them as if they were Christ himself.

In the famous words of Abraham Lincoln, “Do I not destroy my enemies when I make them my friends?”

“Love your enemies” and “turn the other cheek” is not an impossible ethic. It is a logical plan of action for a persecuted minority.

3. Expect to suffer.

In September 1958, Martin Luther King and his wife Coretta accompanied Ralph Abernathy to the courthouse. Abernathy had been assaulted by police and spent several days in the hospital.

As King began to explain their reason for coming, two officers raced up to King, grabbed him and yelled, “Boy, you done it. Let’s go.” King later recalled, “The police tried to break my arm. They grabbed my collar and tried to choke me…When they got me to the cell, they kicked me in.”

King endured injustice at the hands of those in power in order to awaken the conscience of America. He suffered for his cause. We should be prepared to do the same.

Very few white evangelicals in America have ever experienced this kind of persecution for their faith. But should the day come, and it might, suffering for doing what’s right is perhaps the most powerful act of public witness possible.

“Do not repay evil with evil or insult with insult,” the apostle Peter commands us, “On the contrary, repay evil with blessing, because to this you were called.”

4. Remain resolutely hopeful.

In 1963 Martin Luther King Jr. said, “The forces that threaten to negate life must be challenged by courage…This requires the exercise of a creative will that enables us to hew out a stone of hope from a mountain of despair.”

We need not despair over American culture, nor believe that we will return to a golden age of American Christianity.

We have lost cultural power, but to live in the fullness of Christ requires neither influence nor power. It merely means we are willing to take up our cross and walk in the way of the Suffering Servant.

In the end, the goal for Christians in American culture today is not triumph but love.

Theology

Satisfying Work in the New Jerusalem

August 29, 2013

What’s heaven like? In Isaiah 65, God promises to create new heavens and a new earth, to undo a world of suffering and renew his beloved Jerusalem.

“See, I will create new heavens and a new earth. The former things will not be remembered, nor will they come to mind. But be glad and rejoice forever in what I will create, for I will create Jerusalem to be a delight and its people a joy.”

So what will this new Jerusalem be like? And is there anything we can do now to better reflect this new world? Isaiah 65 gives four key features of the new heavens and earth in this passage – and one that we hardly ever mention:

Long Life. In the new Jerusalem, there will no longer be infants who live just a few days, or people who do not live out their years to old age. Untimely, tragic death will be no more, and life will reign (Is. 65:20).
Peace and Justice. “The wolf and the lamb will feed together, and the lion will eat straw like the ox…They will neither harm nor destroy on my holy mountain” (Is. 65:25). There will no longer be violence or destruction. Peace and justice will flow in the streets – and even the fields – of the new Jerusalem. Strong and weak, powerful and powerless, will sit at the table of fellowship, a vision not much different from Dr. Martin Luther King’s vision that one day “on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slaveowners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.”
Renewed Family. No longer will women “bear children doomed to misfortune” but instead God will bless families and their descendants (Is. 65:23).
Satisfying Work. Because we so rarely mention work in the context of heaven, I’ll quote Isaiah 65:22-23a at length: “They will build houses, and dwell in them; they will plant vineyards, and eat their fruit. No longer will they build houses and others live in them, or plant and others eat. For as the days of a tree, so will be the days of my people; my chosen ones will long enjoy the work of their hands. They will not labor in vain.”

There are two things to notice about this passage:

The structure of the passage is built around Genesis 3 and 4. The new heavens and earth is a reversal of the effects of the Fall. Death was a result of sin (Gen. 3:19, Rom. 5:8), and Isaiah states God will reverse the effects of death with fruitful life (Is. 65:20). God curses both childbearing and work as a result of sin (Gen. 3:16-19), but both the family and work are restored in the new heavens and earth (Is. 65:22-23). Finally, one of the most devastating effects of the Fall is violence. Genesis 4 – when Cain murders his brother Abel – prefigures a world of injustice and bloodshed; Isaiah 65 envisions wolfs and lambs living side-by-side in peace.
Satisfying work is at the center of the new heavens and earth. The reason God’s chosen ones “enjoy the work of their hands” is because the can live in the houses they built, and enjoy the fruit of the vineyards they planted. The very opposite of this is “laboring in vain” and having others live in the houses they built, and others eat the vineyards they plant. Now, I think the immediate context of this passage is a promise that foreign armies would no longer rule over Israel, and essentially plunder their wealth (homes and vineyards). But nonetheless, this passage makes it clear that seeing and enjoying the work of your own hands is central to shalom, to peaceful communities. (Ecclesiastes makes similar statements about the curse of toiling so that others might enjoy your work, and, conversely, the divine blessing of finding satisfaction in your work [Ecc. 2:17-18, 3:13]).

In this post, I wanted to just lay some biblical groundwork for discussing further questions about satisfying work down the road. But for now, I’d really like to get your feedback on a couple simple questions:

What makes for satisfying work? Or, perhaps more easily answered, what do you think are the core features of frustrating work? In what situations do you say, “That was a good day’s work?”, and when do you lament, “I accomplished absolutely nothing today?”

(Note: Thank you to Robert Gelinas and Colorado Community Church for asking us [the congregation] to memorize this passage. It’s well worth our in-depth reflection.)

Photo: Jerusalem Sunrise

Work

Doing Your Job Artfully

July 3, 2013

My bright friend Reilly Flynn recently brought up a helpful quote for those struggling with job satisfaction. On 5 Sept 1957, Martin Luther King Jr said

[We] must head out to do our jobs so well that nobody could do them better. No matter what this job is, you must decide to do it well. Do it so well that the living, the dead, or the unborn (Yes) can’t do it better. (Yeah) If it falls your lot to be a street sweeper, sweep streets like Raphael painted pictures; sweep streets like Michelangelo carved marble; sweep streets like Beethoven composed music; sweep streets like Shakespeare wrote poetry; sweep streets so well that all the host of heaven and earth will have to pause and say: “Here lived a great street sweeper (All right), who swept his job well.”

Though I had heard the quote before, I was not aware of the context. MLK was encouraging blacks to do their jobs with distinction and excellence, knowing that they’d be competing with their white counterparts for the same job. The only way to level the unequal racial playing field was to do their jobs with such distinction that their superiors would have to recognize their ability and give them promotions and higher wages.

Last week Chris Horst and myself did a Q & A session at The Next Level Church in Englewood, Colorado on the topic of “How We Work.” I expected questions perhaps on how their Christian faith related to, say, their work in corporate America or even as a barista. Instead, what we mostly got was various levels of dissatisfaction. “What do you do to avoid thinking about how meaningless your job is? What do you do if your boss hates your guts?”

It’s not uncommon to be a “street sweeper” in today’s economy. But what do you do if you’re a street sweeper and you don’t feel entirely called to sweeping streets? I counseled people to not give up hope, and serve well in whatever job you may find yourself. MLK counseled his people to not only serve well, but to serve artistically, as a testimony to the nobility of African Americans living in the US.

This isn’t bad advice. As Reilly pointed out, Christians ought to be known for excellent work. Too often “evangelical” is equated with shoddy, half-baked work. But we’d be wise to remember we are made in the image of the Craftsman who does all things with artful excellence.

Discussion question: Do you see your current job as being a “street sweeper?” What would it look like to sweep streets as Raphael painted pictures or Beethoven composed music? Do you think it’s harder to do this in some jobs than others?

Jeff Haanen

Martin Luther King Jr

The MLK Option

Satisfying Work in the New Jerusalem

Doing Your Job Artfully