Ten Shekels and a Shirt: A Missional Narrative/Theology
I was saved at the age of 34.
Long story.
What I was told is that I would now be going to heaven when I died, because my sins were forgiven, and I had come to believe in the method by which that occurred. I'd reached my life's goal. That was pretty cool.
What I soon discovered, though, was that if salvation was the goal, it was a very anticlimactic goal, at least from the perspective of life here on earth. Fine—I was saved and my postmortem eternity would be glorious, filled with love and praise to God and never-ending bliss.
But down here on earth, I started to realize that the questions and struggles in which I was mired before my salvation were still around. The same weaknesses, the same fears, the same doubts. I prayed and meditated daily about how I should now face these issues, but the fact that I was saved was a given. It was non-negotiable.
The logical answer, therefore, was that life after salvation would be pretty similar to life before salvation, except with a change of perspective. The goal of this earthly life was not to make anything better down here, though that often happened as a little fringe benefit. The goal, salvation, had already been attained, and my job was to get as many others to that goal as I could. The means were irrelevant. This was my duty here on this vile earth before I went on my eternal vacation.
And there were hundreds of writers, teachers, and preachers who fed into this conception of the “Saved! So now what?” question. I became particularly enamored with a popular old sermon by a preacher named Paris Reidhead called “Ten Shekels and a Shirt.” It is one of the two or three most downloaded sermons on the internet, hugely influential and extremely powerful. It is essentially a treatise on Christian Mission, as it stands in stark contrast against the secular philosophy of humanism, which Reidhead defines as “a philosophical statement that declares that ‘the end (or goal) of all being is the happiness of man.’” The sermon reaches its climax in the following testimony, which essentially summarizes the message of the entire message:
Yes. The end of all being is the glory of God. That was it. That was the mission. The battle between the glory of God and the happiness of man. It had to be. Otherwise, how would we deal with these pesky little sinners that we were trying to save who seemed to want no part of such salvation? Answer: they deserved hell anyway, so don’t worry too much about it. You just go on trying to save them "for the glory of God." Translation: it’s OK if you don’t love the sinners, because Jesus did and He died for them, and if you grit your teeth and try to deal with them, you are serving Him who is worthy of service, “not for the sake of the heathen, but for the Savior who endured the agonies of hell for them.”
So I started on my mission, assuming the role of the saved one and casting everyone around me as “the heathen.”
With this self-serving cast of characters in place, the analysis was easy. Why was I enduring the continuing hardships of community and relationships, given that I couldn't be causing those hardships, what with my being saved, and all? Answer: For the glory of God. Not as a result of my love, per se, but for the love of Jesus that I could not possess (because He was God, and I wasn’t), yet through longsuffering and a change of perspective could implement. Not for my sake, or for those around me, because none of us deserved it, but for Jesus’, who did. Human happiness was not the goal. Why would it be, given that our role as “humans” was so transient in relation to our ultimate role as disembodied spirits?
The problem with this view of Christian mission, apart from the fact that it is wholly and utterly unbiblical, is that “the heathen” have a tendency of sensing that you're viewing them as heathen. Someone once said that Jesus never ate with prostitutes and tax collectors. When people would confront him with biblical references saying that He did, he said, “Yes, but He never viewed them as prostitutes and tax collectors. He viewed them as people, as children of God.” Paris Reidhead didn’t view the Africans as people. He didn’t view them as children of God, but as potential children of God. And he did so both before and after his epiphany. The only change was in himself. He came to a realization that would allow him to tolerate the heathen, and the struggles and disappointments he felt in trying to save them. The goal was salvation. The goal is always salvation, not people.
The people around me knew that this was my perspective. They could sense it in the tone of my voice. They could see it in my body language. I started to sense this fundamental error in my belief system from the strange fact that I could not communicate it to people during times of calm, but only during times of anger and strife. The summary of the perspective was “I don’t love you. But I know that Jesus does, and I’m only here for His glory.” That’s not something that someone you love wants to hear. It’s an insult that you hurl at someone in times of anger.
A lot's changed since then.
Another long story.
Mainly, I no longer speak of the gospel (as I have come to understand it) simply during times of anger...
...To the glory of God.
Grace and Peace,
Raffi
Long story.
What I was told is that I would now be going to heaven when I died, because my sins were forgiven, and I had come to believe in the method by which that occurred. I'd reached my life's goal. That was pretty cool.
What I soon discovered, though, was that if salvation was the goal, it was a very anticlimactic goal, at least from the perspective of life here on earth. Fine—I was saved and my postmortem eternity would be glorious, filled with love and praise to God and never-ending bliss.
But down here on earth, I started to realize that the questions and struggles in which I was mired before my salvation were still around. The same weaknesses, the same fears, the same doubts. I prayed and meditated daily about how I should now face these issues, but the fact that I was saved was a given. It was non-negotiable.
The logical answer, therefore, was that life after salvation would be pretty similar to life before salvation, except with a change of perspective. The goal of this earthly life was not to make anything better down here, though that often happened as a little fringe benefit. The goal, salvation, had already been attained, and my job was to get as many others to that goal as I could. The means were irrelevant. This was my duty here on this vile earth before I went on my eternal vacation.
And there were hundreds of writers, teachers, and preachers who fed into this conception of the “Saved! So now what?” question. I became particularly enamored with a popular old sermon by a preacher named Paris Reidhead called “Ten Shekels and a Shirt.” It is one of the two or three most downloaded sermons on the internet, hugely influential and extremely powerful. It is essentially a treatise on Christian Mission, as it stands in stark contrast against the secular philosophy of humanism, which Reidhead defines as “a philosophical statement that declares that ‘the end (or goal) of all being is the happiness of man.’” The sermon reaches its climax in the following testimony, which essentially summarizes the message of the entire message:
Yes. The end of all being is the glory of God. That was it. That was the mission. The battle between the glory of God and the happiness of man. It had to be. Otherwise, how would we deal with these pesky little sinners that we were trying to save who seemed to want no part of such salvation? Answer: they deserved hell anyway, so don’t worry too much about it. You just go on trying to save them "for the glory of God." Translation: it’s OK if you don’t love the sinners, because Jesus did and He died for them, and if you grit your teeth and try to deal with them, you are serving Him who is worthy of service, “not for the sake of the heathen, but for the Savior who endured the agonies of hell for them.”
So I started on my mission, assuming the role of the saved one and casting everyone around me as “the heathen.”
With this self-serving cast of characters in place, the analysis was easy. Why was I enduring the continuing hardships of community and relationships, given that I couldn't be causing those hardships, what with my being saved, and all? Answer: For the glory of God. Not as a result of my love, per se, but for the love of Jesus that I could not possess (because He was God, and I wasn’t), yet through longsuffering and a change of perspective could implement. Not for my sake, or for those around me, because none of us deserved it, but for Jesus’, who did. Human happiness was not the goal. Why would it be, given that our role as “humans” was so transient in relation to our ultimate role as disembodied spirits?
The problem with this view of Christian mission, apart from the fact that it is wholly and utterly unbiblical, is that “the heathen” have a tendency of sensing that you're viewing them as heathen. Someone once said that Jesus never ate with prostitutes and tax collectors. When people would confront him with biblical references saying that He did, he said, “Yes, but He never viewed them as prostitutes and tax collectors. He viewed them as people, as children of God.” Paris Reidhead didn’t view the Africans as people. He didn’t view them as children of God, but as potential children of God. And he did so both before and after his epiphany. The only change was in himself. He came to a realization that would allow him to tolerate the heathen, and the struggles and disappointments he felt in trying to save them. The goal was salvation. The goal is always salvation, not people.
The people around me knew that this was my perspective. They could sense it in the tone of my voice. They could see it in my body language. I started to sense this fundamental error in my belief system from the strange fact that I could not communicate it to people during times of calm, but only during times of anger and strife. The summary of the perspective was “I don’t love you. But I know that Jesus does, and I’m only here for His glory.” That’s not something that someone you love wants to hear. It’s an insult that you hurl at someone in times of anger.
A lot's changed since then.
Another long story.
Mainly, I no longer speak of the gospel (as I have come to understand it) simply during times of anger...
...To the glory of God.
Grace and Peace,
Raffi
0 Comments:
Post a Comment