What Does The Bible Say About Church and Culture pt. 2
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Main question
Has God called the church to fix the world in order to make the world THE better place– God’s Kingdom?
Focus for this week
Exploring God’s plans and God’s blueprints for this better place as seen all throughout the Old Testament starting with creation and leading up all the way to the people of Israel.
Creation
What was God’s initial plan for creation?
What happened to make creation not "very good?"
Why did God kick Adam and Eve out of the Garden of Eden?
Read Genesis 3:21-23. God made it so they could not eat from the tree of life and live forever. Thus God allowed humans to die.
Is allowing Humanity the capacity to die a good thing, a bad thing, or something else? Imagine if God allowed people to live literally forever in a broken, sin-filled world, with no way to escape it. Would that be good or bad? Would a loving God allow our suffering to continue indefinitely within this “very good” creation?
By expelling humanity out of the garden and not allowing them to become immortal, God took steps to ensure that we would not be trapped in a bad, evil, sinful place forever. Yes, separation from God is not a great thing– Death is not good– However, by ending life, God creates the desire, the necessity, and the possibility for a new beginning.
What was God’s plan for creation after sin entered into the world? How did God start fixing this problem and what steps did he take?
God created the desire, necessity, and possibility for a better place.
So, whose job was it to fix the world?
Did God call Adam and Eve or the serpent to fix creation in order to bring about this future better place?
No, God took it upon himself to bring about this better place. He gave humans instructions, but none of them were to fix this sin problem or to fix this world and make it a better place: The fullness of the Kingdom of God
God took it upon Himself to bring about this better place.
The Powers of the World
So, after the story of Adam and Eve, and Cain and Able, what happens next?
Read Gen 6:5-8. God saw the evil of humans and chose to wipe out Humanity with a flood.
But was the mass killing of humanity a strictly evil, horrible, tragic event that God just did in order to kill people for the fun of it? No, to explain, someone Read Gen 6:1-3 - We see that God limitd life spans to 120 years.
Imagine if iasdHitler, Stalin, or Mussolini were still alive today? Imagine if these men would still be alive 800 years from now? Now imagine if we also would still be alive 800 years from now?
Does this sound like it would be a good world to live in? Why Not?
God chose to limit humanity’s life span to 120 years, so we would not have evil leaders who would control the world for a millenia. At worst, today, someone might be in power for 40-60 years before they died.
Imagine a dying, pregnant soon to be mother. The mother is going to die no matter what, but there is a chance to save the baby. Would the mother end her life sooner in order to save the Baby?
Most people would say yes. God had to put a stop to the evil that was the inclination of every single human being except Abraham. Yes, people were killed in the flood, but God had to stop the bleeding before there were no good humans left. God had to put a stop to the evil tendencies and the only way to do that was to start with a clean slate.
God also limited the evils of humanity by making blood sacred. Genesis 9:6 reads, “Whoever sheds the blood of a human, by a human shall that person’s blood be shed; for in his image God made humankind.” God chose to protect the lives of humanity by essentially saying that “hey if you kill someone, your blood is on your own hands, so be ready to pay the price if you kill someone.”
So, if humans could only live 120 years, if leaders would eventually die, what could humans make that could outlast a human being?
A city– humans decided to build the city of Babel to try and make something that would last longer then they could.
So, what did God do in response?
Obviously, God scattered their languages and people split off and the power of humanity was divided in order to prevent the evils that took place before the flood.
God began taking steps to making the better place by curbing the evil intentions and motives of human beings. By shortening human life spans, doing a hard reset through the flood, by underscoring the sacredness of life through protections of blood, and by scattering humanity throughout the world with diverse cultures and people groups, God created a “plurality of competing powers” that would serve as an “international system of checks and balances.”
God tasked these competing powers– Nations with governments– 1) to keep sin in check, 2) meet the basic needs of people, and 3) make the world a slightly better place than it was yesterday.
Did God command Noah to do any of these things? Where in the Noah story does it say that Noah’s descendants were tasked with keeping other powers in check, meeting the basic needs of people, and making the world a better place? It doesn’t–in fact, we don’t get any sort of instruction for the people of God until Genesis 12 or 15 with the promise given to Abraham.
God established these diverse people groups to take care of one another and to live next to one another and to establish some ground rules here on planet earth. Their governments will do government things, and God’s people don’t even come into play until later.
But What about...
But here is a counter point you might ask: “well even though governments are tasked with taking care of the world, the church can/should still help in some way right?
Well lets do a little thought experiment. Hurricane Katrina caused roughly $170 Billion in damages. The USA Government spent roughly $114.5 billion in recovery efforts for Katrina alone.
How much do you think that churches were able to cover and pay for?
According to an article by the Urban Institute focusing on public charity responses, Churches and non-profits COMBINED only provided $3.27 Billion. Not even 2% of the total money required. They go on to quote to say, “Volunteers and many of their church or agency partners tend to lack the resources or expertise to provide longer-term or more complicated services, such as job training, mental health counseling, child care, substance abuse treatment, and after-school programs for at-risk youth. Moreover, the amount of money and volunteer time contributed–while valuable– is modest compared to the overall need.”
Reference: Boris, Elizabeth T., and C. Eugene Steuerle. “After Katrina: Public Expectation and Charities’ Response.” The Urban Institute 14, (2006): 1-29.
I’m not saying that this is a bad thing. That’s a lot of money. But compared to the governments, wealthy donors, and other humanitarian organizations, the churches capacity and ability to respond to such events pales in comparison to the powers God has put in place to deal with such issues.
What I’m saying is this: “God can always find wealthy benefactors, worldly rulers, prosperous pagans, high-profile humanitarians, middle-class do-gooders, and upwardly mobile politicians…to make this world a slightly better place.”(Nugent) In fact, that seems to be God’s design, since that is how we see it play out today, and how Genesis describes the role of the nations throughout the Bible story.
So if that is the world’s specific task, established by God, then what is the task of the chosen people of God? The people of Israel?
Next week, we're going to address the purposes of Israel and why God established a set apart people for the benefit of the world and God's plans for Salvation History.
Copyright © 2016 John Nugent. All rights reserved. All credit for this material belongs to Dr. John Nugent at Great Lakes Christian College in Lansing, Michigan.
Nugent, John C. Endangered Gospel: How Fixing the World is Killing the Church. Eugene, Oregon: Cascade Books, 2016.