Assimilation and Disciple-making

When persons become Followers of Jesus, every aspect of life is re-evaluated.  Their new King commands obedience with regard to everything from sexuality to finances, from how to deal with oppressors to what to do if your job makes you an oppressor.[1]  New disciples enter a new story (God setting the world aright on His own terms) and a renewed community (God’s “counter-cultural insurgency that actually believes the world can be put back together.”[2]).  It is up to that community to collaborate with the Holy Spirit to help cultivate their new heart for the good works God would have for them (Mat. 13:5-6); for though we are not saved by works, we are saved for them (Eph. 2:10).  Thus communal orthopraxy is as integral to discipleship as indoctrination.

Improvising God’s Revolution Today – Biblical Strategies for the Emerging Context

Today’s North American culture has no sense of future, no sense of hope.  Much of the population knows there is a lot of brokenness in the world, but seems spiritually paralyzed to do much about it.  It is stuck without hope or vision of another world.  Perhaps today the good news of God’s gracious Revolution for creation could be rephrased again as, “Another world is possible – with God.”  If biblical evangelism is an announcement which proceeds from demonstration, then radical demonstrations of jointly improvising Jesus’ Revolution of “another world is possible” must be immediately imagined.  Another world must be demonstrated.  Christians in today’s Roman Empire, the United States, must echo the steps taken by early Roman Christians by looking hard at how their lifestyle, votes, and occupations might enable systemic global oppression.

In a consumer society, they must share with the poor among them.  In a country which spreads freedom and salvation at gunpoint, Christ’s Body must attest to the power of Christ’s cross.  In one of the world’s loneliest and unhappiest of cultures, the Church must concoct and share the healing salve of joyful community.  In a sexually confused world, Christians can model dignified sexuality.  Amid a media fixated on the lifestyles of the rich and famous, Christians can enter into relationship with the poor and ignoble.  Instead of keeping up with the Joneses, Christians can demonstrate God’s love by mowing the Jones’ lawn.  In an economy which celebrates and thrives on the consumption of the seven deadly sins, followers of Jesus must implement an alternative economy which celebrates and thrives on the Beatitudes and fruits of the Spirit.  In a culture of death, they can with God’s power model a true culture of life.

Such radically subversive ways of living demand inquiry (indeed, persecution!).  Regardless of the inquiries raised, it is along with these demonstrations of God’s dream really being better than the American dream that Christians may proclaim Christ risen.

It is no longer enough to say that the gospel is God’s free gift of grace; it must rather be God’s free gift of grace which makes another world truly possible.  The Revolution of God really is at hand: “the good news that there is another kingdom or superpower, an economy and a peace other than that of the nations, a savior other than Caesar”[3].  Returning to this radical (and radically biblical) gospel in such a hurting world is every Christians’ faithful duty, for as the late Padre Guadalupe said, “to be a Christian is to be a revolutionary.”[4]