Monday, June 30, 2008

1000 Word Gospel (Narrative Gospel Part 1)

I'm taking a "Christ and Culture" for my grad school program at Lipscomb. Last week's assignment was to write out my understanding of "the Gospel" in 1000 words or less (if we went over 1000 words, the paper was to be returned to us ungraded). We are allowed to go back and revise it later if we need to, but I wanted to share what I wrote:



This Is My Gospel

I want to tell you a story. Telling you this story is a risky endeavor. For starters, I believe that the Gospel contained in this story must be embodied before it can be spoken. If I tell it too early, it can come off as a meaningless fairytale that seems to fit the bill of Marx’s “opiate of the masses”. On the other hand, if I fail to tell it at all, I may rob you of the choice to embrace or reject a hope and a destiny that you may never know of otherwise. All of this is further complicated by the fact that I am massively condensing an enormous amount of material. Think of the story I’m telling you as the movie version of a really great, really long book. Without question, the book is much better than my version of it. Doubtless I will blow certain aspects of it. Unquestionably, I take too much artistic license in places and gloss over parts that are extremely important. Admittedly, some parts of it are more than a little hard to believe. Even so, I believe it. I don’t mean to imply that it has been empirically proven to me. Rather, it is a story that I have confidence in, or rather, that I have “faith” in. It is a story that both requires and is characterized by… hope.

Normally, you begin with the beginning of a story. However, we are going to begin before the beginning. Before the beginning there was God. But this God is somehow a community of three; a Father, a Son, and a Spirit. This community is so unified that the only way to truly capture it is to say “God is One”, or maybe “God is love”.

This God decides to create everything that exists, and He loves everything He creates. In the middle of His creation, God creates human beings “in his image”. They are given a special commission to bear and reflect the image of God to the rest of creation. These human beings live in a state of perfect harmony: harmony with God (he actually is said to “walk” with them), harmony with each other (indeed, it is only in community that they can bear the image of this communal God), and harmony with the rest of God’s creation. Eventually, though, the human beings are persuaded to make an incredibly selfish choice that breaks this perfect harmony, and sends all of creation on a trajectory towards death, decay, and isolation.

But God doesn’t give up on his dream. He begins to enact a plan to restore the broken harmony and make all things new. Time passes and God makes contact with a man named Abram (who’s name is eventually changed to Abraham). Though Abram is old and childless, God makes a covenant with him, in which he promises to create a great nation out of his descendants. They will be God’s people and God will bless them. However, this blessing is explicitly intended to serve an equipping function for a broader mission. These people are to be a light to the world. They are blessed in order to be a blessing to the rest of the world. Abram puts his faith and confidence in this God and begins stumbling down a path toward a God who insists that this faithful stumbler is, in fact, righteous. God is true to his word, delivers on his promises, and a nation is born.

However, as time passes it becomes clear that Abram’s descendants are vulnerable to the same selfishness and self-centeredness that the rest of us are. They are very interested in being blessed, but not so interested in being a blessing. They are very good at pointing out the darkness in others, but not so good at being light. Undeterred from His dream, God takes another step that is as radical as it is unexpected.

God becomes a human being. Not only that, but virtually everything he does in this regard seems counterintuitive from our perspective. God becomes an embryo. He is born as one of us, not in a palace, but in a stable. The heavens open and announce the event first, not to people of great importance…but to shepherds, who are arguably on the lowest rung of the societal ladder of the day. He apparently doesn’t do much that’s worth recording until he’s around 30 years old, and then everything he does goes against our notions of what a respectable God should be like. He pays special attention to the outcasts; to the poor and oppressed; to those who are drowning in their shame. He proclaims something he calls “the Kingdom of God”, which is less like political upheaval, and more God’s dream of harmony that is breaking through into our dissonant reality. Eventually, “the powers that be” make an example of him with a public execution that is as humiliating as it is excruciating. It does not have the desired effect. This man-who-is-God doesn’t stay dead. Three days after they kill him, he is alive again, but he is also changed. He is somehow both physical and eternal. He commissions his followers as a community to be to the world what he was and is to the world, and that is exactly what we are stumbling towards. It is true that we are inadequate for the task, but here’s the thing: After Jesus returned to God’s reality in his new form, He sent his Spirit to live in us, changing and forming us into who we are becoming. We believe that there is a future reality where Jesus returns to us, everything is restored to God’s intention, and all things are made “new”. Our God beckons us from this future to become what we already are from his perspective, and to partner with him in his in-breaking dream for the world. He offers freedom from death, decay and shame. In short, He offers hope.

--AE

13 comments:

Gilbert said...

Good stuff! Well put.

rachel =) said...

beautiful. =)

Mike L. said...

Adam,

Is the gospel that specific story or is it a truth (the good news) contained in and conveyed through that story?

In other words...

Is it possible to tell the gospel without telling that particular story about creation, Israel and Jesus?

Adam said...

Mike,
I would argue that the Christian Gospel is that story...though I will readily admit that my telling of it is probably flawed. I find mining the narrative for proposition or "timeless truths" to be hopelessly reductionistic and an unwanted synchretism of theology and modernity. (Not that you were necessarily suggesting anything like that).
I would, however also argue that if the Gospel is, in any sense true, then we would expect to find resonance in other (competing?) narratives. I am also not under the impression that Scripture records history in the way that modernity demands that history be recorded. I am not insisting on the acceptance of a literal interpretation of the text in its entirety.
AE

Mike L. said...

Adam,

I think you told the story as well as anyone could. I liked it. But, I might disagree that the Christian gospel is limited to this story of how Isreal is formed, fallen, saved, fallen, saved (rinse and repeat three times) and then finally saved again by Jesus.

Instead I think the gospel is the truth that liberation from oppression is possible. The truth that restoration into community is feasible. The truth that justice is obtainable. The truth that self-sacrifice trumps selfishness and non-violent protest trumps violent rebellion. I think those are the key truths in the story, and any story that tells those truths is also the same gospel.

The stories we love and embrace are carriers for truth but not truth themselves. Maybe that is where modernity got off track by fighting so much over the historicity of these stories themselves.

For example, Jesus didn't seem to tell this story (that we know of). Instead, he told other stories with the same deeper truths (parables). I'm not convinced that the apostles told this same story either. I'm not sure that story would have gotten them killed. However, repeating the truths in the stories about liberation from empire and restoration of justice might do the trick. Retelling this story with new symbolism that implicated contemporary Jewish leaders and Roman occupation would do the trick.

I'm not sure we are faithful to the tradition of gospel telling if we continue to tell a story that implicates a past era. Maybe it is our task to tell the gospel through symbolism that implicates the current empire and corrupt religious leaders of our day. I think that follows in the tradition of the early gospel tellers.

Sorry, I'll get off soapbox now.

peace

Adam said...

Mike,
I don't our perspectives are as different as you think they are. I was pretty frustrated with having to reduce to 1000 words. Liberation from oppression is a major part of whats going on in the narrative (I actually had it in there in an earlier draft). I do think there is something particular and unique going on with the narrative I told, and I'm not quite able to say any story that carries the same theme is the Christian Gospel (though it may indeed be valuable and/or resonant with the Gospel). Part of the usefulness of postmodernity is to disentangle all of the ways that modernity knocked us off track. The truth is that this story certainly would have got them killed, because it boldly claims that Jesus is actually whom we follow and that Caesar and "the powers that be" are nothing. It is not a privatized individualistic spirituality that this narrative engenders. If the reality (kingdom) of God breaks through, then all of those powers are necessarily threatened. If a community of believers truly believes that, then those "powers" are under the threat of losing their power and means of coercion.
AE

Mike L. said...

I agree! I like your clarification and I think we are on the same track.

It is true that this story could get them killed. But, only if it is clear to others that the story isn't talking (only?) about "other worldly" or supernatural things. It would need to be clear that the players in the story (satan, the beast, the oppressors, etc) are the current powers of the "this world" that need to be replaced by another set of powers. It needs to be clear that the story about demons being cast out of a man into unclean pigs and then drown in the river is not another simple miracle story about literal demon possession and healing. It needs to be clear allegorical reference to Jesus' intention to cast the infestation of corrupt leaders from the temple and then run the unclean pagans (romans) from Jerusalem where they were not welcomed. As you know, we've glossed over those meanings in pop-Christianity.

This is the one place I do agree with Tom Wright. We have to realize the story is about the real physical world and real political powers.

ok, now I need to work late to get my work finished.

Mike L. said...

and....

we need to keep telling the gospel story that the corrupt spirits need to be cast out of our capitol city and justice can be restored. But, like our faith ancestors, we should probably use metaphors or else the guys in black suits might show up at our doors (did I mention it is an election year?)

ok, i'll stop now.

Adam said...

Mike,
I'm with you. I'm not convinced it's an "either/or" proposition though. One of modernity's little "gifts" to us was to force us to make choices of binary opposition ("it's either this or that") where there were either more choices available or where no choice was necessary in the first place. Another of modernity's "gifts" was limiting reality to only what we can access through our 5 senses in a closed universe. One of the refreshing things that postmodernity opens up for us is the possibility that there is more to the universe than our senses can access and more that we can wrap our 3 pound brains around. I'm not sure that "supernatural" necessarily equals "otherworldly escapism".
AE

Dan Jones said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Dan Jones said...

Hey Adam, I was wondering if I could use this with a group that I meet with. I belive it would spur great discussion.

Adam said...

Dan,
Of course. Hope you and your family are doing well.
AE

Keith Brenton said...

I pretty much have to love a gospel that's told in present tense.