Page 774 – Christianity Today (2024)

Your issue on Luther reminds us of how much we owe him. But we might also be reminded that he didn’t expect to change the status quo of 1500s Europe, in which practically all of the population was Christian by default as a consequence of the almost universal practice of infant baptism. It remained for subsequent reformers to change the default to being a Christian by choice, either through the introduction of confirmation or believer’s baptism.

Marlin JeschkeProfessor Emeritus, Goshen College, Goshen, IN

Luther the Cipher p. 7

Well, if you go to the trouble of nailing your ideas to a church door, marrying a nun, and getting excommunicated, you ought to have something to show for it.

Robin Scott Andress

If you’ve read Martin Luther’s writings and commentaries, you’ll understand how important his influence was, and still is. He’s not perfect, but he’s monumental.

H. A. Bass

The Church’s Integrity in the Trump Years p. 23

I respectfully suggest you missed the painful truth about the election of Donald Trump. It’s not the political divide or even a divided evangelical community that should be our main concern, as difficult as they are. The flagrantly godless behavior of the President is the soul-searing problem here. That is the deep wound to which the church must respond.

Sandra Van DykCambridge, NY

I was very strongly “Never Trump” during the campaign and supported third-party candidate Gary Johnson. Everyone else in my small Honolulu church, which is mostly Asian and Native Hawaiian, voted for Trump. I felt almost isolated. After some very awkward moments in the days after the election, we have overcome our various political differences and have re-committed ourselves to the God who brings rulers up and takes them down. Strong political differences are in and of themselves not worth cutting yourself off from the church, especially when all are united on the essentials of the faith and our purpose for proclaiming Christ.

I wish other evangelicals would follow the example Mark Galli has given us, but pride and ego (both part of our fallen sinful nature) have driven us to dig in our heels, attack each other, and even judge one’s salvation over who one voted for or which party they support.

Rich Rodriguez

Justify Yourself p. 34

The essay “Justify Yourself” inadvertently put its finger on the major malady of contemporary evangelicalism by claiming that “the gift of Christ” is “a gift with no strings attached.” Of course the gospel comes with strings attached! Or rather, a yoke (Matt. 11:29), a cross (Luke 9:23), a community (Eph. 4:25), and a mission (John 20:21). Zahl’s surprising misinterpretation of Hebrews 8:10 shows the problem. The reference is to the New Covenant (not the Old) in which by grace God’s law—his character—is written on the heart. The point of the gospel is not escape from law but the law written within, internalized—where we find it to be the law of life, love, and grace (Rom. 8:1–4; cf. Ps. 119).

Law and gospel are not opposites, but rather a gracious circle of receiving and giving. This article runs the risk of turning robust Reformation theology into mere psychology.

Howard A. SnyderWilmore, KY

Wow! Well written, engaging, directly applicable. Thank you.

@I_Mephibosheth

Self-justification has far reaching implications including relationships.

@PastorKMcgill

The 2017 Book Awards p. 52

My most meaningful 2016 Christmas gifts came through the January/February issue of CT. In my world, there is no better gift than the recommendation of a great book. I’m only on page 14 of You Are What You Love: The Spiritual Power of Habit by James K. A. Smith, but I’ve already told myself, “This could be the most life changing book of your life!” The Crucifixion: Understanding the Death of Jesus Christ by Fleming Rutledge arrived today, and I’ve added reading it to my 2017 goal list. Each year, only four of the most top-priority items make the list! And lastly, my husband and I are savoring the reading of one masterpiece a night from 75 Masterpieces Every Christian Should Know by Terry Glaspey, along with a gin and tonic!

Shari PlunkettSan Leandro, CA

The CT Book Awards were all deserving titles, but there was one category missing entirely—business, management, and leadership. Such good books as Gary McIntosh’s Growing God’s Church, Mike Bonem’s Thriving in the Second Chair, Aubrey Malphurs’s Ministry Nuts and Bolts, Bill Easum’s Execute Your Vision, Shawn Lovejoy’s Be Mean About the Vision, and many more were published in 2016. After all, what were Luther’s theses about but managing, leading, transforming, and growing the church to better health?

Ronald E. KeenerFormer editor of Church ExecutiveChambersburg, PA

When I grow up, I want to be like Kristen Johnson: mother, teacher, preacher, and award-winning author!

@RevLaurenTaylor

Why Our Body Destroys Itself p. 60

Fascinating science and a great connection to faith, growth, and life.

@hpweb

Support for fasting and health at the cellular level and spiritual parallels as well!

@Kristen_Herbst

My Uber driver in Nairobi (where I’m living for a few months) had a good playlist going, so I was pressing him for recommendations from East African artists. As we talked, the music shifted from Belgian-Congolese Zap Mama to a familiar Australian voice.

“Do you know this song?” he asked.

“Definitely,” I replied, hoping my disappointment didn’t show. I like Hillsong’s worship anthem “The Stand” well enough, but I wasn’t in the mood. As it continued, I got a little grumpy. Kenyan gospel music is spectacular—and spectacularly popular. As one pastor here told me, emerging artists drop gospel albums whether they believe the gospel or not. Importing a Western gigachurch’s hits struck me as unnecessary at best and culturally imperialistic at worst. Then he said, “I became a Christian last week because of this song. This very song, right here. Now I listen to it all the time.”

He had been driving around one day and the song came on the radio. “You stood before my failure / And carried the Cross for my shame,” the song said. “I’ll stand / With arms high and heart abandoned / In awe of the One who gave it all. I’ll stand / My soul, Lord, to you surrendered. / All I am is yours.” The song came as a personal call to repent and surrender. He did and found a church. Now he was reading Abide in Christ between rides. He dropped me off at my apartment, parked nearby, and began reading Andrew Murray’s 1894 spiritual classic again.

Thoughts of God’s surprising and transforming grace, our global church, my snobbery, and finding identity in Christ were still with me as I headed upstairs to edit Mark Galli’s cover story for this issue. But it was Murray’s volume that came to mind as I read Galli’s insistence that identity, diversity, justice, and true fellowship find their home in our union with Christ.

“Abiding in Jesus, you come into contact with his infinite love; its fire begins to burn within your heart; you see the beauty of love; you learn to look upon loving and serving and saving your fellow men as the highest privilege a disciple of Jesus can have,” Murray wrote. “The very spirit of the Vine is love; the spirit of love streams into the branch that abides in him.” My driver found that spirit in a song from the other side of the world. Now he and I are somehow mystically united, both of us, in Christ. And in awe of the One who gave it all.

The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy,” Jesus says in John 10:10. “I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.”

A quick quiz: Who is the thief?

When I ask my students this question, they almost always give the same answer: “The Devil.”

The problem is that the Devil doesn’t appear anywhere in the context of the passage, but other thieves are clearly identified.

When I ask my students how many of them believe in reading Bible passages in context, almost all raise their hands. We’ve been trained to know it’s the right answer, like knowing we should buckle our seatbelts or brush our teeth. But it’s when we see the wreck at the side of the road or hear the dentist’s drill that we realize that the “should” is not just a nicety. Reading Scripture in context sometimes simply enriches the reading, but other times it changes the verse’s meaning altogether. It protects us from reading the Bible as merely a safe, spiritual, familiar book. In John 10, there’s a wreck on the side of the road that Jesus is desperate for us to see.

The art of the steal

John 10:10 is part of a larger discourse that mentions other thieves, a flock, and a good shepherd. It’s tempting to identify the thief simply by referring back to John 10:1, which says that whoever does not gain access to the sheep by the door (Jesus), but tries to reach them some other way, is “a thief and a robber.” It’s a true answer, but an incomplete one. There are other identifying markers. In 10:5, the sheep are wise enough to not follow the voice of a “stranger.” In 10:8, all those who came before Jesus, pretending to hold the role of chief shepherd, were “thieves and robbers.” And in 10:12, wolves, like thieves, come to scatter the flock.

What do thieves, robbers, and wolves want with the sheep? They want to eat them, sell them, or otherwise exploit them. Their concern is for themselves, not for the sheep (see Ezek. 34:2). Their interest in the sheep is the exact opposite of that of the faithful shepherd, who wants to protect the sheep.

In contrast to the thief who comes to kill, John 10:10 mentions the good shepherd who comes to give life abundantly. But it will cost him something, because he will have to face off with the thieves. Some caretakers would abandon the sheep rather than risk their own safety to confront the wolves (John 10:12–13). But Jesus, the Good Shepherd, is different: He knows and cares for every one of his sheep; they also know him and recognize his voice (10:3–4, 14–15).

“I am the good shepherd,” Jesus explains (10:11, 14). Jesus is so committed to his sheep that he lays down his life to protect us against the wolves, thieves, and robbers who seek to harm us (10:11, 17–18). But just as the “Good Shepherd” is a real, physical person, so are the thieves and robbers Jesus is talking about.

Will the real thief please stand up?

In John 9, one chapter back, Jesus heals a man blind from birth near a pool. This miraculous sign prompts the religious leaders to interrogate the healed man, but they don’t believe his story that Jesus must be from God. They finally dismiss the man from the synagogue. As chapter 9 closes, Jesus is defending the healed man against the disdain of the religious authorities.

The Devil doesn’t appear anywhere in the context of the passage, but other thieves are clearly identified.

That is the immediate setting for chapter 10 and the reason why the NIV adds “Pharisees” to Jesus’ address, “very truly I tell you,” in John 10:1. The original Greek text of John had no chapter breaks. Jesus was addressing the religious leaders at the end of what we call chapter 9, and he is still addressing them in chapter 10. The healed man is an example of the sheep who have heeded Jesus’ voice. Jesus is the shepherd, and the religious leaders are thieves and robbers. In this Gospel, it is conflict with the religious and political authorities that ultimately culminates in Jesus laying down his life for us and taking it up again at the Resurrection (10:15–18).

Some more background will make the point of this narrative even clearer. In the Old Testament, God’s people often appear as his sheep (e.g., Pss. 95:7; 100:3). Israel’s leaders were supposed to be their shepherds, but often in Israel’s history the shepherds exploited the sheep for their own interests instead of caring for them. Although figures such as Moses and David are called shepherds of Israel, the image of the shepherd of God’s people is most often applied to God himself (e.g., Ps. 23:1; Ezek. 34:15). God promised that someday he would himself be the shepherd of his people, delivering them from the ones who exploit them (Ezek. 34:2–16).

In John 9, the religious authorities excluded the healed man from the synagogue, treating him as if he did not belong to God’s people (John 9:22, 34). But the true shepherd of God’s people, Jesus, now affirms that this healed man is indeed one of his sheep. Jesus, as God’s Word become flesh, defends his own, even though this conflict brings him another step closer to his own execution.

Harming the flock

Jesus is still the shepherd today, but who are the thieves and the robbers? There are still those who would exploit God’s people for their own interests. We have all heard about fraudulent preachers who promise healing or prosperity for financial gifts. Sam Lael Zulu, a friend of mine who is a Pentecostal pastor in Zambia, Africa, lamented with me about a few examples of thieves in his own context. When promises of prosperity fail to materialize, some extreme prosperity preachers attribute the blocking of blessing to demons. So they minister “deliverance” only they can provide to those who are experiencing problems. With a cheap magic trick, one South African “prophet,” Lesego Daniel, turns fuel into juice and allows his members to drink it. Another, Penuel Mnguni, had some church members munch on live snakes. Still another, Lethebo Rabalago, sprays a highly toxic insecticide onto congregants, sometimes in their faces, to heal them. Though these leaders are not representative of genuine Christianity or of most of us who believe in genuine gifts of the Spirit, their antics taint us all in some people’s eyes.

This isn’t a new idea: Already in the first century, some envisioned piety as a way to get profit (1 Tim. 6:5). Motivated by greed, some teachers made up stories or teachings so they could exploit God’s people (2 Pet. 2:3). While urging the elders of Ephesus to care for the flock that Jesus died for, the apostle Paul even warned that greedy wolves would come in among them and would harm the sheep (Acts 20:28–29). My wife’s family knew a man blessed with prophetic gifts who initially seemed to be walking with God. In time, however, the accuracy of his prophecies waned, and it was soon discovered that he had begun sleeping with some young women whose “help” he had enlisted. Like Samson or Saul, he started well but finished badly.

But thieves and robbers aren’t always so deranged, so obvious, or so far away from us. We might also think of thieves and robbers that try to gain access to the sheep without coming through Jesus (John 10:1). If Jesus claims to be the only way to the Father, those who try to lead the sheep in other ways will harm the flock (14:6). This would include not only false messiahs but also anyone who seeks to lead us away from Jesus.

Those of us who are spiritual leaders must make sure that we serve the interests of the shepherd and the needs of the sheep. In a world where messages are often driven by consumer-sensitive marketing, it can become too easy for us to forget what we are and whom we represent. We need to make sure that we are leading people toward Jesus and not just to ourselves. We can get big heads about our own ministries and neglect the fruit of the Spirit, even though Jesus never said, “You’ll know them by the size of their ministry.” He did say, “You’ll know them by their fruit”—by their obedience to the Father’s will (Matt. 7:15–23).

Hearing the voice of the true shepherd

Although I have focused so far on the thieves, the real focus of the verse itself is the shepherd. Whereas thieves come to kill and destroy, our shepherd came so we could have life (John 10:10). In John’s gospel, “life”—here described as “abundant life”—normally means eternal life. This was a familiar Jewish phrase in Jesus’ day that meant the life of the coming age, after the resurrection of the dead (e.g., Dan. 12:2). According to John’s gospel, however, we do not have to wait until the future to receive eternal life. Because the promised Messiah gave his life for us, we are able to be born from above (John 1:12–13; 3:3–6) and so begin that future life now, in the present.

So, what about the Devil? I certainly recognize that in the Bible the Devil does bad things to people. In fact, just 66 verses before John 10:10, Jesus announces that the Devil was the first liar and murderer (John 8:44). There is no reason to doubt that he was the first thief also! The same verse, however, shows that the Devil was not alone in these practices; human beings were following the Devil’s example.

But here, Jesus is telling us to beware not of the Devil but of false, exploitive teachers. The question is not whether the Devil does bad things such as those described in John 10:10, but whether John 10:10 is talking specifically about the Devil. It seems clearly not to be. And when we spiritualize such passages, we lose the urgency of addressing other real threats to the church today. Leaders and teachers who want the church’s numbers and power for themselves without submitting to Jesus’ authority are not just fallible humans who’ve “forgotten what church is really about.” They’re murderers. Thieves. Liars. Jesus used such strong language about them and about himself that many who heard it said, “He is demon-possessed and raving mad. Why listen to him?” (10:20).

As Jesus’ sheep, we need to recognize his voice, distinguishing it from the voice of strangers (John 10:4–5). Sometimes we will hear his voice in prayer or through godly believers who model his teachings. And because the Bible is God’s Word, we can grow in recognizing the Lord’s voice there—especially if we read it in context.

Craig Keener is F. M. and Ada Thompson Professor of Biblical Studies at Asbury Theological Seminary. His most recent book is Spirit Hermeneutics: Reading Scripture in Light of Pentecost (Eerdmans, 2016).

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When I visit a church, I notice things. The number of blacks, Asians, and Latinos in relation to whites. Whether women are on the platform. How people are dressed. The quality of the cars in the parking lot. I notice whether the congregation is old or young, and assume that if it’s young, it’s vibrant. As an Anglican, I notice the order of worship and naturally look down my nose at all that is liturgically incorrect. I also notice how much paper is wasted in thick worship bulletins, how much empty air is being heated needlessly above the worshipers, and other signs of environmental friendliness.

I do this because I’ve been catechized to notice all these big and little differences. I’ve been catechized not by one group but by many different groups, each with its own identity and mission. It’s a phenomenon we might call identity churchmanship.

This is a Christian version of identity politics, which has come under severe criticism as of late. But before we join the chorus of critics, we are wise to remember the value of identity politics. Groups that feel oppressed or simply misunderstood find comfort and strength in banding together around their common identity. Many scholars consider the black identity politics of the 1960s as the beginning of this wave, and it was key to the success of the civil rights movement. Black identity politics gave African Americans the courage to work together for their rights. Since that time, we’ve seen identity politics play out in terms of gender, sexual orientation, generations, disability, and many other identities.

My late brother, Steven, for example, was blind from birth. Sometime in the ’90s he joined what was a blind identity politics group, with whom he could vent about public policies that discriminated against his disability. For a time, he found it deeply encouraging to be with the likeminded.

I participated in a kind of evangelical identity politics when I was a mainline Presbyterian. We evangelical pastors recognized we were in a minority in a liberal denomination. Sometimes, frankly, we were a despised minority. So we formed local and national support groups not only to commiserate with one another but also to plan together how we might prod the church in more orthodox directions. Those meetings are some of my fondest memories in ministry.

So identity politics has been a force for good in many arenas, including the church. But as Rowan Williams, former Archbishop of Canterbury, noted, maybe it’s time for us to shift gears: “We are now, I think, beginning to see the pendulum swinging back and saying identity politics is all very well, but we have to have some way of putting it all back together again and discovering what is good for all of us and share something of who we are with each other so as to discover more about who we are.”

I think he was on to something. As I said, one reason I notice all these things about a church is because different identity groups in the church have taught me to notice them. But now I not only notice the differences, I look down on and disparage the church if it has failed to meet my newly adopted criteria.

Given human nature, identity churchmanship seems to inevitably degenerate into judgmentalism and division. Identity based in common interest, experience, or even conviction cannot enable the one thing that Jesus is most eager for us to do: come together in unity in him.

Yet the problem with identity churchmanship goes even deeper than disunity. It encourages me to notice what is passing away while failing to notice the reality that will last: the profundity that lies at the heart of the Good News.

Eastertide is a good time to reawaken to the gospel. But to my surprise, it wasn’t meditating on Jesus’ resurrection appearances that helped me see how faulty my vision of the church has been. It was when I noticed the lack of them.

Resurrection Absences

Jesus roamed Galilee in his resurrection body for 40 days. And yet in those 40 days, it seems he appeared to his disciples only about 10 times, depending on how one integrates the various accounts.

On the first Easter, our resurrected Lord appeared to Mary Magdalene (John 20:11–18), “the women” on the way to tell the disciples about the empty tomb (Matt. 28:8–10), Cleopas and a companion on the road to Emmaus (Luke 24:13–35), and the disciples, minus Thomas (John 20:19–25; Luke 24:36-43).

Eight days after Easter, he appeared to the disciples plus Thomas (John 20:26–29), and in the ensuing weeks, Jesus appeared to 7 disciples at the Sea of Galilee (John 21:1–23), some 500 disciples at a large gathering (1 Cor. 15:6), the disciples in Galilee (Matt. 28:16–18), and James (1 Cor. 15:7). And on the 40th day after Easter, he appeared to “all the apostles” at the Ascension (Luke 24:49–53; Acts 1:3–11).

Though only ten, this is nothing to scoff at; these appearances changed history. They demonstrated that Jesus was truly alive again. They opened the apostles’ eyes to what God had promised and foretold in the Scriptures. Paul lists the appearances alongside Jesus’ death for our sins and Jesus’ resurrection as “of first importance” (1 Cor. 15:3). But given the import we rightly grant to the bodily resurrection, one might have imagined that Jesus would have appeared many more times during those 40 days. In fact, during those 40 days, he is absent much more than he is physically present. And when he is present, he discourages people from holding on to his resurrected body.

“Do not hold on to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father,” he told Mary. “Go instead to my brothers and tell them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’ ” When Thomas confesses his faith, Jesus gently scolds him, “Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.” Jesus doesn’t seem to want his disciples to put too much stock in his resurrected body. What’s going on here?

The bodily resurrection is not first and foremost intended to dazzle. It’s not a spiritual spectacular designed to knock our spiritual socks off.

Reading the rest of the New Testament, the answer seems to be this: While Jesus’ resurrected presence during those 40 days is “of first importance,” so also is Christ’s bodily absence.

The bodily resurrection is not first and foremost intended to dazzle. It’s not a spiritual spectacular designed to knock our spiritual socks off. It clearly doesn’t do that, as the Gospel writers note. When Jesus appears to the 11 to give the Great Commission, for example, Matthew notes that while some worshiped him, some still doubted (28:17). And Luke notes in Acts 1:3 that Jesus had to give “many convincing proofs that he was alive.” His resurrection appearances were not a slam dunk for faith.

Theologically, this helps us see why the Resurrection is crucial. First it is a vindication of what was accomplished at the Cross: the forgiveness of our sins and our reconciliation with God. Second, it looks forward to what our bodily life will be like in the kingdom of heaven. These are the two great truths of the Resurrection. This is why the physical, bodily resurrection of our Lord is crucial to the preaching of the Gospel and why we can never go the route of the old liberalism, which argued that Jesus rose only in spirit or in the hearts and minds of the disciples.

Still, why does Jesus seemingly downplay or relativize his bodily resurrection? Because he knew that what was coming was more miraculous and astonishing still. He was not satisfied to be a mere object of wonder and worship, someone we observe and marvel at from afar. Someone we could merely touch, see, and hear as someone separate from us. He did not want to establish a religion that memorialized this miracle, set it in lifeless stone.

No, the great miracle that the gospel proclaims is not merely that Christ lived bodily after the Crucifixion but that he lives dynamically in us today. The Resurrection is one with the Ascension and Pentecost—we cannot grasp the meaning of the Resurrection in isolation, because these two other events display an even greater miracle: Christ in us, the hope of glory (Col. 1:27).

In Christ

There are few phrases more important in the teaching of Paul than his repeated affirmation that we are “in Christ”—he uses that phrase over 200 times in his letters. Christians do not merely believe truths about Christ; we do not merely trust in God’s forgiveness given at the Cross and that Jesus rose bodily from the grave. The most distinctive mark of Christians is this: We are people in whom the resurrected Christ dwells (Eph. 3:17).

At the day of Pentecost, note where Peter ends his sermon. He has already acknowledged the reality and vindication of the Resurrection (Acts 2:32–33). He recognizes that the Cross has accomplished the forgiveness of sins (v. 38). But all this seems to be in service of something else. We are to repent and be baptized for the forgiveness of sins, he says, because then “you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit” (v. 38).

This Spirit, of course, is identified in the New Testament with Jesus Christ: “You, however, are not in the realm of the flesh but are in the realm of the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God lives in you. And if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, they do not belong to Christ” (Rom. 8:9). This is part of the mystery of the Trinity: We receive the third person of the Trinity when we receive the Holy Spirit, but given the unity of the Trinity, we can also understand why Paul sometimes says we are indwelt by the “Spirit of Christ.”

It is this reality—that we are in Christ, and that Christ is in us—that drives so much of Paul’s theology. Union with Christ is no small doctrine. The great Reformation theologian John Calvin said that union with Christ has “the highest degree of importance.” John Murray, the great Scottish theologian, agreed, calling it “the central truth of the whole doctrine of salvation.”

This doctrine is crucial in part because it completely reorients us, helping us to see ourselves in a new light. It clarifies our real, deepest, and lasting identity. As Paul put it memorably, “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me” (Gal. 2:20).

The most remarkable thing about each of us is that through the Holy Spirit, Jesus Christ dwells in us and we in him. We are unified ontologically, that is, at the core of our being. We are not unified because we’ve agreed to adhere to certain doctrines and behaviors, nor because we have a lot in common culturally. Unity based on such matters is all well and good, but it remains external to us; it’s only as good as our intentions.

The unity Paul proclaims stands at the very core of our being and identity: We each are fully identified with Christ, for Christ fully lives in each of us. We are one because of Jesus Christ’s indwelling presence in each one of us. Everything else we can say about ourselves pales next to this statement.

Scott Black Johnston, senior pastor of Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church in New York City, puts it well:

I am 100 percent confident that the people in our sanctuary on any given Sunday do not all think the same thing about God or Jesus or the Holy Spirit. What connects us to the two billion Christians spread out across this planet, with all their different languages and customs and beliefs and hopes, is baptism. In baptism we are joined to Christ.

He’s just riffing on Paul: “We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life” (Rom. 6:4). This is not mere symbolism, but something essential that unites us intimately with Jesus Christ and Christ with us. It’s that most glorious reality: Christ in us, the hope of glory.

A Troubling Reality

This reality is glorious, yes, but also unnerving for someone like me.

First, it means I am intimately united with all manner of people in my church, even those whom I try to avoid after worship, those who annoy me, those whose culture seems strange and off-putting to me, those whom I believe discredit the faith because of their political preferences or whatever. I’m even united with believers when they sin (see 1 Cor. 6). These are not just “brothers and sisters” in some vaguely sentimental sense, but people with whom I am united at the deepest level of existence.

Second, it means all the distinctions I make when I enter the church—and especially the distinctions about myself of which I am most proud (male, Reformed, white, Anglican, theologian, journalist, husband, father, etc.) and by which I naturally understand my identity—these distinctions are relativized in Christ. Instead of noticing those things I naturally think are most distinctive about me and about those around me, I am invited to see the deeper reality—that Christ dwells in each of us, and each of us in him. To see that first and foremost, before and beyond all distinctions, we are one in Christ.

I am likely at this point to nod in agreement but add a line that is so important to me: Yes, we are united—and united in our diversity! That’s the line I comfort myself with especially when I find myself judging and distancing myself from others inadvertently as I tally our differences. But when I read the New Testament closely, it appears that God does not seem as interested in the diversity I’m interested in.

Paul, for example, when he does notice the church’s diversity, does so only on the way to talking about our unity in Christ. In his discussion of the unique gifts the Spirit gives individuals, he says, “Just as a body, though one, has many parts, and all its many parts form one body, so it is with Christ. For we were all baptized by one Spirit so as to form one body—whether Jews or Gentiles, slave or free—and we were all given the one Spirit to drink” (1 Cor. 12:12–13).

Even more unnerving is his statement in Galatians. I have often said that the church is unified—both Jew and Greek, male and female, slave and free—and then I riff on the racial, ethnic, gender, and class diversity in the church as being one of its glorious marks. It’s dismaying to realize that Paul does not move in that direction. What he says is: “[F]or all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (3:27–28).

Paul seems anxious to do away with those categories by which we naturally form our identities, those aspects of our lives of which we are in many ways rightly proud, those dimensions we imagine make us unique and special. Instead he wants to drive home that which really makes us truly remarkable, that which forms our deepest and most astounding identity: our union in Christ Jesus.

The Great Check on Identity Churchmanship

As Rowan Williams noted, identity politics tends to divide us from one another and does not have the tools to bring us back together. Let me note how that works itself out in the culture, and then suggest how those same dynamics can potentially sabotage church unity.

Mark Lilla, professor of humanities at Columbia University, critiqued liberalism’s fixation on identity politics in a recent essay in The New York Times.

The fixation on diversity in our schools and in the press has produced a generation of liberals and progressives narcissistically unaware of conditions outside their self-defined groups, and indifferent to the task of reaching out to Americans in every walk of life. At a very young age our children are being encouraged to talk about their individual identities, even before they have them.

He went on to note that the best politics is able to transcend our distinct identities:

It is at the level of electoral politics that identity liberalism has failed most spectacularly, as we have just seen. National politics in healthy periods is not about “difference”; it is about commonality. And it will be dominated by whoever best captures Americans’ imaginations about our shared destiny. Ronald Reagan did that very skillfully, whatever one may think of his vision. So did Bill Clinton, who took a page from Reagan’s playbook.

Had we been paying attention, we might have seen this earlier. Michael Lewis’s newest book, The Undoing Project: A Friendship That Changed Our Minds, talks about the groundbreaking work of Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky in the area of behavior economics. The Prospect Theory (for which Kahneman won the Nobel Prize in 2002) has revolutionized the way we understand how people make decisions.

One aspect of their work looked at how grouping things together shapes decisions we make. In terms of class, race, or ethnicity, Lewis says, they discovered this: “Things are grouped together for a reason, but, once they are grouped, their grouping causes them to seem more like each other than they otherwise would. That is, the mere act of classification reinforces stereotypes.”

In other words, the more we identify ourselves in a particular way in a unique group—I’m male, I’m white, I’m blind, I’m Anglican—the more likely we are to see others in terms of other groupings we label them with and, therefore, to prejudge them. As Lewis put it in a recent Freakonomics podcast, identity politics (one of whose assumed goals is to challenge stereotypes) actually ends up reinforcing stereotypes.

The same dynamics are at play in identity churchmanship, but here’s what checks us from going down that path: This not-so-little reality of union in Christ. As we keep reading the New Testament faithfully, this reality sinks into us more and more deeply. As much as we recognize and rightly take a measure of pride in our social, economic, gender, theological, and many other differences, we’ll keep coming back to the most amazing thing about each of us: We have each died with Christ, and it is not we who live (with all those various identities markers we’re so proud of) but Christ who lives in us. That’s our real glory, that’s our real identity.

Lord, Have Mercy

This does not mean that institutions and churches that sense God’s call to increase their social, ethnic, gender, theological, or whatever diversity should stop, as if that is no longer a divine call on them. It’s one of the unique movements of the Spirit today to see so many Christians engaged in such enterprises.

We certainly feel that call at Christianity Today. We pride ourselves on being an organization that represents “big tent” evangelicalism. We do that well in some areas but not in others. Certainly when it comes to the racial and ethnic diversity of our staff, we can do much better at representing the breadth of our movement. So we’ve committed to change—an initiative we call Culture, Diversity, and Innovation—and, God willing, we’ll be able to make some progress over the next decade.

But as I noted, any group worthy of the name Christian that embarks on such an enterprise will be grounded in the Word, and the Word will help us keep all this in perspective. So I’m not all that concerned about diversity initiatives in Christian groups grounded in Scripture. There’s this self-correcting reality at work in the church that is simply not present in the larger culture.

Why wouldn’t I want to die to my identities to get authentic human existence?

But I am worried about people like me. For if I am honest, I’m not all that keen on saying, “It is not I who live, but Christ who lives in me.” Let alone, “I have died with Christ.” I have the hardest time losing my life (Mark 8:35)—that is, letting go of my various and sundry identities—even if I’m promised by Jesus that I will gain my life back in a way that is glorious.

It’s a sign of how little I trust God’s goodness. I hear these words and I imagine God saying he wants to erase me, to eradicate my uniqueness, to simply swallow me up so that “I” no longer live but only Christ in me. That’s when I realize that while I believe that Christ is truly God, I’m not so sure he was truly man—that is, the True Man, humanity in its fullness. The late theologian Lewis Smedes said in his book Union with Christ that our union with Christ is “at once the center and circumference of authentic human existence.” My gosh, why wouldn’t I want that? Why wouldn’t I want to die to my identities to get authentic human existence?

And yet, even after 50 years of faith, I still think the most interesting things about me are my gender, my race, my roles in life, my hobbies, my denomination, and so forth. The world has done a good job of shaping me into its mold. This is one reason I keep falling back on that part of Peter’s sermon that comes before the filling of the Holy Spirit: “Repent . . . for the forgiveness of sins.” And why I lean upon Paul’s reminder, “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” In Christ Jesus. I know that I really am in Christ and Christ in me, as much as it startles and frightens me some days.

That’s also why this Easter, I’m going to spend more time thinking about the resurrection absences and about the resurrected Lord who has made a home in me in the Holy Spirit. I’m going to pray to let go of the identities I fearfully clutch, and when I walk into church, to stop the labeling that separates me from others—and especially to remember that the most astonishing miracle of Easter is right before my very eyes as I scan the congregation: Christ in us, the hope of glory.

Mark Galli is editor in chief of Christianity Today.

Have something to add about faith transcending divisions? See something we missed? Share your feedback here.

Portland (one of the foci of our recent This Is Our City project) continues to provide a glimpse into the future of American ministry. More than a third of its residents are religiously unaffiliated, with minority faiths growing quickly.

Journalist Melissa Binder recently convened a panel on evangelism to the “nones” and Muslim refugees at the Christ & Cascadia conference, an annual gathering of Christian scholars, ministers, and culture leaders around the Pacific Northwest.

Binder spoke with James Gleason, pastor of Sonrise Church; John Baskaron, pastor of Arabic Christian Church; D. L. Mayfield, author of Assimilate or Go Home. Josh Chen, who directs Cru’s city ministry in Portland, later contributed to this conversation.

We live in a city with a lot of “nones,” and many view the church with skepticism or apathy. How does that cultural reality shape your approach to evangelism?

Gleason: We’ve constructed a culture around Christianity that isn’t the gospel. It’s not the gospel that’s the problem. The gospel is amazing. It’s what we’ve done to the gospel. We have to deconstruct the wrapper of culture that we’ve put on.

We want people worshiping God for eternity—that’s no question—but we also want people fed, people healed, and people to find homes. Words and works bind together in a way. When we do both, I think we have an open door for people who are more skeptical of the institutionalized church.

Chen: I’m careful about the language I use when I talk to the “nones,” or really any millennials. There are a lot of words we throw out there that mean something different to the person we’re talking to than what we’re trying to say. Instead of using a word like sin that has a lot of meaning behind it, I just say what I mean. The second key thing for evangelism is knowing what is good news for the person I’m speaking to. I listen to their story and listen for what they’re longing for. I ask myself, “How does the gospel resonate with this person?”

What kinds of “Christianese” words do you avoid, and how have you replaced them?

Chen: As part of my research, I went out and tested a bunch of Christian words—like sin, faith, repentance, salvation,and prayer—to see what nonreligious people hear. Prayer was really the only one received positively. Those other words tended to carry a lot of baggage. But I found that people responded pretty well when I communicated the same ideas with different language.

I’ll use sin as an example. Sin sounds to people like ideas of judgment, behavior modification, and trying to fit someone into a narrow box. It comes with baggage and can put people on guard. So, when I want to talk about sin, I talk about it in terms of heart issues. I use the concept of finding life where there is no life, which people recognize. People understand the concept of seeking fulfillment in something empty—for instance, they’ll tell me they binge-watch Netflix or seek life in something else that isn’t life-giving. That’s a starting point for a deeper conversation.

James, you said good works open the door for conversations about the gospel. Can you give me an example?

Gleason: Sonrise employs two women at the Hillsboro School District. (Well, we give the money. The district pays them, so I’m not their boss.) That came about simply because I asked, “Who in the district knows about all the needs at the schools?” and the district said, “Nobody.” I met the superintendent and said, “I have an idea. I want to pay a person, and you just set them loose to find all the needs in the community.” That led to a strong relationship.

I cannot tell you the number of gospel conversations I’ve had in the last six years. Whether you call it “friendship evangelism” or “works evangelism” or “social gospel” or whatever, I just know people have come to Christ because we showed up.

Josh, I want to come back to something you said—that a key to evangelism is understanding what would be good news to the person you’re talking to. Tell me more about that.

Chen: I’m over-simplifying this, but older generations were asking: “How do I get to heaven?” and “What do I do with my guilt?” Millennials are asking, “What does it mean to thrive?” If we approach millennials with a pitch for Christianity that was designed to resonate with their parents, it isn’t going to sound like good news to them.

The way Jesus explained the kingdom of God was different from person to person. To one person it was that they can be healed in this life. To another person it was that they belonged, even if they were marginalized. He told them how the kingdom was good news to them, in their unique situation. We have to do that kind of customization.

You’ve noted that there’s a broad difference between generations, but how about at an individual level? How do you know what is good news to someone?

Chen: What I like to listen for is what people complain about. I listen, and I think about how my own experience connects to them.

A clear example of this was this gal I was talking to who was really stressed out at work. She complained she didn’t have time for anything else. And I said, “Man, I feel for you. I was there six months ago.” And she goes, “Six months ago? Are you still stressed now?” I said, “No, I’m not.” She said, “What changed?” I said, “Honestly, it was this Bible verse that gave me a new perspective.” She asked, “What was the verse?” and I said, “It was ‘God demonstrates his own love for us in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.’ I extrapolated this idea that we are inherently valuable. It’s like this: God demonstrates his value of us in that while we had nothing to offer, Jesus came to pursue us to the point of death. With that in mind, I realized I was so stressed because I was trying to derive my value from what people thought of me at work. But if I’m inherently valuable, why do I look for value outside of myself? As that sank in, my stress melted away.” That was really good news to her. Months later, I overheard her telling someone that the verse had eased her anxiety about work.

That’s a micro example of the gospel, but I don’t think the good news has to be all encompassing at any one moment. The goal of evangelism isn’t to present all of theology to someone at once and have them make a choice. The goal has to be that evangelism moves them closer to surrendering their life to Jesus.

It sounds like the evangelism you are talking about happens within long-term relationships with nonbelievers. What do you do when there’s no response to the gospel, even after years?

Mayfield: One of the things I love about being a Christian is that we have a theology of caring for people even when they don’t convert.

I was in a missions organization called InnerCHANGE for a few years, and they have a few different ministry tracks. One is called “ministry to the most broken,” and in that track it’s just expected you will not see fruit. You will not see conversion. You will not see people come out of addiction. And that’s a valid ministry. Those people are still worthy of mercy and love and a just life. For me, it was so freeing to realize that is still evangelism.

From a cultural standpoint, people pay attention when you do that. In Minneapolis I taught English to people from East Africa. Most of the people I taught had been so traumatized that they could not retain information. Most of them were never going to learn English. They knew it and I knew it, and yet it was still important to show up and be there and build that relationship. I ended up having a lot of influence in the rest of the community because of my commitment to be with people who were never going to make progress.

Baskaron: It is not up to you to covert them. It is up to the Lord. You are just planting the seed. One Muslim woman I baptized came to Christ because of her neighbor, and her neighbor never preached to her. She saw how her neighbor lived, how she talked. That’s why she was open to becoming a Christian when she moved to the United States. Her neighbor planted a seed; only the Lord could grow it.

John, you used to evangelize to Muslims by handing out tracts. Now you’ve abandoned that approach and focus on supporting Muslim refugee families as they arrive. Can you talk about that shift?

Baskaron: When I was in Bible college in Lebanon doing outreach, I thought, “I’m going to give you a tract, I’m going to talk to you about Jesus, and that’s all I’m going to do.” We can’t get through to people with that kind of attitude. We have to live with them, we have to humble ourselves and deny ourselves. It’s not about you. It’s about the message. If you share life with them, feed them and do things for them, they are going to ask you, “What are you doing that for?” That’s the open door.

The Lord changed my view of outreach. I thought outreach was to just go out and talk to people about Christ. Yes, that’s the goal, but you have to open the door for them first.

Do you have any advice for Christians who want to engage Muslims in conversations about faith?

Mayfield: Muslims love to talk about God. I love talking about wanting to be obedient to God, and that’s something Muslims like talking about, too. In that way, starting conversations about faith is easier because you have something in common.

Some people love to go to mosques and argue with the imam and talk about doctrine. I’ve found that to be counterproductive for me. Instead, I am always on the lookout for people who are hungry. I’m looking for people who we would call “people of peace.” I don’t really try to have faith conversations with people who don’t want to listen.

Learn something new from this interview? Did we miss something? Let us know here.

For it is not mere words that nourish the soul, but God himself, and unless and until the hearers find God in personal experience, they are not the better for having heard the truth.

—A. W. Tozer

Eden is 12 and a firm believer in a variety of mythological forest goblins. In particular, he detests the Pombéro, chief mischief-maker among the fabled Paraguayan creatures. People say the diminutive furry scamp steals chickens’ eggs, drinks cow udders dry, and generally upsets local farm animals. Leaving bottles of whiskey out at night supposedly appeases the nocturnal beast.

I consider letting my young friend continue to believe in these amusing cultural anecdotes, but my sense of duty as a Peace Corps volunteer and, therefore, arbiter of scientific fact, compels me to correct him.

“The Pombéro is a myth,” I explain in a mix of broken Guaraní and Spanish.

We are sitting outside the dilapidated shack I call home. Evening quiet has settled on Tuna, Ava’i, Caazapá, a rural village situated hours from any paved road. As the day’s stifling heat dissipates, it leaves a palpable somnolence.

Éden insists that the Pombéro’s counterpart, Kurupí, has impregnated a number of virgins. To Éden, their newborns are prima facie evidence of goblin tomfoolery.

I attempt to distinguish between myths and legends: Forest goblins are mitos, I explain. When real world people—such as local teenage mothers—are involved with mythic creatures, these stories are called leyendas. Neither are true, I say resolutely. The only way those girls got pregnant is from real men.

Obviously dissatisfied with my explanation, Éden says nothing for quite a while. Eric Clapton softly croons from a battery-powered CD player in my shack, a half-played game of chess sitting on the table between us. It has become our nightly ritual to eat black beans and yucca together like this.

“What about La Virgen, Peter?” Éden asks.

I don’t have the heart to tell him that the Virgin Mary is also a legend. I have only been in Paraguay a few months, but I know life is sometimes very difficult and hope often hard to come by. Life is especially tough for Éden, who has already established a solid reputation for smoking, drinking, and petty theft. His dad drinks too much and his mom looks perpetually exhausted from caring for Éden’s four younger siblings. I have become Éden’s hero because of my habit of subverting longstanding cultural norms and occasionally snubbing highly respected community leaders. I like to think of Éden as a Paraguayan version of Huckleberry Finn.

“La Virgen is the one exception,” I reply, casting my eyes toward the chess board that sits between us. Éden has the uncanny ability to recognize when the adults in his life are lying to him, which I attribute to his spending so much time with unpleasant men often drunk on cheap cane rum. I can’t tell if he believes me or not, but I suspect that if I look him in the eye, he’ll know for sure that I don’t believe my own words.

A Hero’s Journey

Paraguayans love dubbed-over versions of Baywatch and Walker, Texas Ranger. Because of this, I learn that I am almost universally admired by the villagers for my culture’s adherence to a strict code of honor (à la Chuck Norris’s insistence on a fair fight) and clear aesthetic preference for a certain archetypal blonde female. Also my light complexion, green eyes, and baby face serve to reaffirm the stereotype that los Estados Unidos is a country of delicate Nordic peoples.

At the same time, residents are wary of my motives. Why would anyone fortunate enough to be born in a wealthy country populated by honorable men and beautiful women choose to spend two years in a poor country where corruption is a fact of life and where the only blondes are descendants of Nazi criminal refugees? One popularly imputed motive, according to Éden, alleges my involvement in international espionage. The real reason for my sudden appearance in Tuna is part of a secret plan by the US government to expropriate Paraguay’s reserves of agua dulce (fresh water).

I am grateful for the rumors and cultural stereotypes. They make me sound heroic. One of the main reasons I joined the Peace Corps right after graduating from New York University (NYU)—though I would never have admitted it to friends and family—was because I felt destined for heroism. My career prospects as an English major fresh out of college—copyediting trade magazines and ghostwriting fundraising letters—seemed like jobs for nerds. I was fated for something more.

My mission in the Peace Corps, teaching beekeeping to subsistence farmers, sounded exotic and noble. Maybe even heroic. To my chagrin, no one seems even remotely interested in beekeeping except for Felix Tavy, Crazy Felix. Felix is my age—22—though a lifetime of working outside has left him looking much older. He is easy to like, with gentle, squinty green eyes and a quick laugh that reveals a row of missing front teeth. I am desperate to make an adult friend and thankful for Felix’s singular aim: He wants to harvest honey.

I pledge to make Felix’s wish come true, though it does not occur to me that a liberal arts degree and three months of cursory beekeeping training might not have adequately prepared me for the rigors of capturing colonies of killer bees from the Paraguayan jungle.

Our first attempts to capture bee colonies from the wild are fiascos, involving long days of getting stung repeatedly in the stifling Paraguayan heat. We sift through tens of thousands of killer bees looking for the queen. Slightly longer than the rest, sometimes of a deeper hue, she is the key to success: If we fail to capture her in a matchbox, the bees swarm in unison, an amorphous shadow rising in the sky spectacularly punctuating our failure.

We return to Felix’s house, a modest thatched roof hut, and are greeted by his four excited children who quickly relieve us of the few panels of honeycomb we pilfered from the hive. They don’t ask about the empty wooden bee box.

I accept the invitation to eat dinner with the family out of courtesy, but I have a hard time looking his very pregnant wife, María, in the eyes. Felix could pick another way to provide for his family instead of spending long days failing to capture bee colonies.

His faith in me and the whole dubious enterprise of beekeeping as a significant revenue stream seems misplaced or imprudent. But Felix remains undeterred.

Eventually we learn the trick for finding the queen: Instead of focusing on individual bees, we must watch the whole colony. The tens of thousands of worker bees behave differently near the queen, creating a discernable order in what seems like total chaos.

Felix and I spend almost every day together for several months, laboring to increase his stock of beehives. Before long, he has a dozen hives on his tiny plot of land, a mostly unfarmable two hectares of marsh, full of cattails and scrub brush. Even when we aren’t beekeeping, I continue to spend my days with Felix, and he welcomes me.

In conversations I am often struck by the gulf between us. One day I find myself talking with Felix about his plans for the family, and he confesses that he knows nothing about human sexuality—despite his growing family. It puzzles Felix that people would do anything to impede pregnancy.

“Kids are a blessing, Pedro,” he says matter-of-factly.

I try to explain the economics of children, something that I think he ought to easily understand. He is unconvinced.

“Why don’t you want a wife and kids, Pedro?”

I use a term that has become a refrain in our conversations.

“Es complicado, Felix,” I say. It’s complicated.

Our conversations range from the daily minutiae to our dreams, fears, loves, and losses. When I spend time with Felix, I forget how lonely and homesick I am—even though I often find I have a hard time explaining myself to him.

Why don’t you find a Paraguayan girlfriend, Pedro? Es complicado. Why you are not content, Pedro? Es complicado. Do you believe in God, Pedro? Es complicado.

Es complicado is an insufficient response on the night that Felix’s oldest, Teresa, rouses me from sleep. I run with Teresa through the sultry night to her house, and find a sweet, fat newborn baby and an exhausted mother sleeping in bed. Felix, teary-eyed, brings the girl to me and shows me the baby’s feet. They’re clubbed.

Es complicado is trite. That night, looking at that tiny crippled baby in my friend’s arms, I realize it has always been.

A Personal Relationship

Once a month I journey to the municipal seat where a bank provides me with my means of survival, a $100-per-month Peace Corps sueldo. The journey takes four hours by bus on a rutted dirt road.

San Juan is a sleepy city where it is not uncommon to see cattle grazing in the public squares. The whole trip would hardly seem worth the effort except that an American missionary family resides there, and the patriarch, Brad Word, is known to be generous with his stockpiles of American cereal and peanut butter. All the Peace Corps volunteers know about Brad, and we debate whether it’s worth enduring Brad’s unique form of evangelism in order to enjoy the coveted American foods.

A big Okie with a freckled, bald head and piercing blue eyes, Brad’s proselytization style is intense and dramatic, focusing mainly on the eschatological horrors that await us. He graduated from Moody Bible Institute but has lived in San Juan for over a decade and has a throng of blond children who speak Guaraní like the natives. As a tactic to shut down Brad’s evangelism, I tell him I am Jewish, which is technically true because my mother is Jewish. If I were honest, though, I would tell him I don’t believe anything.

I am surprised to find that Brad thinks being Jewish is a good thing. He assures me that my people have a specific role in the apocalypse. I find his diatribes amusing and not at all unpleasant enough to give up the occasional opportunity to eat his tasty American foods. When I have eaten my fill, he foists poorly written evangelical screeds upon me, which I accept only because I know my appetite for Frosted Flakes and Rice Krispies will return.

My evenings in San Juan are spent in a dumpy local inn where the proprietor’s daughters flirt with me.

I am half-drunk in the lobby of Ña Mirta when I lose myself reading A. W. Tozer’s The Pursuit of God, one of those evangelical “screeds” Brad gave me. “In this hour of all-but-universal darkness, one cheering gleam appears,” writes Tozer. This line immediately appeals to the world-weary, jaded sensibilities that I had meticulously cultivated during my four years at NYU. Finally, I think to myself, here is an evangelist who sees the world the way I do.

Most astonishingly, Tozer describes the nature of my lack of faith with intimate detail. He calls it “inferential” faith. “To most people, God is an inference, not a reality,” Tozer writes. “He is a deduction from evidence which they consider adequate; but he remains personally unknown to the individual.”

I have always fancied my skepticism as something tempered by the intense fires of university classes led by some of the world’s finest modern philosophers. Yet, here Tozer describes my skepticism with such deftness that, for the first time in my life, I cannot help but see it as superficial.

Tozer encourages the reader to take a broader view of the Divine. The God of the Bible is a Person, knowable not through inference, but through relationship:

“The modern scientist has lost God amid the wonders of his world; we Christians are in real danger of losing God amid the wonders of his Word. We have almost forgotten that God is a Person and, as such, can be cultivated as any person can.”

I finish the book in one sitting. I have never read anything quite like it—part exhortation, part achingly intimate invocation—prose flowing seamlessly into metered verse, reveling in mystery and mysticism.

I realize with sudden clarity why Éden continues to have such a hard time accepting my sanitized view of Paraguayan myths. While I had long suspected the goblins were personifications of the baser passions, I had never before considered what it means to Éden that we can be in relationship with them—even if the relationship is as simple as leaving a tribute of whiskey at night.

As in all relationships, there is some give and take, implying personal freedom. In the face of powerful forces—whether a sovereign God or the mysterious passions of the heart—the fact that human beings remain free to choose our own path, free to choose the nature of our relationship with these powerful forces, suggests that all of creation is infused with a certain moral character.

Instead of insisting that the stories are not true, I should be asking Éden what he thinks the stories mean.

And, perhaps a more important question: What does the Person of God mean to me?

The rest of the night I lie awake in my stuffy motel room, unsure how to respond to this invitation. I cannot articulate the nature of the hunger Tozer ignited in me, but one line sticks with me: Self is the opaque veil that hides the face of God from us.

I begin reading anything I can get my hands on that speaks to the idea of a mysterious, hidden spiritual and moral signature infused in all creation. I read the entire Bible cover to cover, the Bhagavad-Gita, an English translation of the Qur’an, the complete works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, the poet Rumi. I write long treatises in a leather-bound journal on subjects like the “over-soul” and “transcendence.”

I find myself returning to the literature with Christian symbols, themes, motifs. Maybe this is because all the books I enjoyed in my university classes suddenly seem much deeper and richer. My favorite scenes from Shakespeare, Hawthorne, and Faulkner—and even some of my favorite movies and music—are imbued with a transcendent quality that I now grasp as I recognize the biblical allusions I had missed. For the first time, I appreciate that I grew up surrounded by artifacts of Judeo-Christian culture.

Soon, imagining the Person of God gives me comfort. When I am alone in my hut at night it calms me to think that I might be in the company of a God who lived as a human—with the capacity to empathize with my fickle and sometimes overwhelming emotions.

I become fond of the English-language program I’ve found on my shortwave radio. Every morning a station billing itself as “The Voice of the Andes” brings me a sermon from Chuck Swindoll, whose down-to-earth stories illuminate this God-saturated world that I am just starting to see. I listen to Swindoll one innocuous day and realize that I am a Christian. It is not anything in particular that he says as much as it is the fact that I am beginning to see the world like he does: a place infused with the mark of the Holy Spirit, saved by the divine Person of Jesus, created for and by God.

Plants and Prayer

I make friends with another Peace Corps volunteer, Daniel, a farm boy from Iowa who is the only person willing to talk about the strange ideas that have captivated me. Daniel participated in Nevada’s Burning Man festival several times while he was in college and says it may be the most important thing he has ever done in his life. He thinks I ought to consider consuming hallucinogenic mushrooms, which are plentiful in rural Paraguayan communities. They’ll help me plumb the great mysteries of my life, he argues.

I am with Felix when I carefully pluck a small cluster of hallucinogenic mushrooms from the top of an old cow patty, where Daniel told me to look.

“Why do you gather those?” Felix asks.

I tell him. Felix stops in his tracks.

“Pedro, those are drogas!” he says.

“They aren’t drogas; they’re medicina—they’ll help me see things differently, maybe better,” I insist. I use the term I learned from Daniel—psilocybin—because I think it sounds more clinical, more scientific.

“Pedro, do you know why they call me Felix Tavy?” he asks, exasperated. “They call me Crazy Felix because I went crazy for a while. My woman left me to go back and live with her parents and took Teresa.”

Felix’s gentle green eyes are glassy, tears running down his craggy face. I don’t know what to say so I put my hand on his shoulder and look away.

“Pedro, I used to see things that are not real—like with those mushrooms—and it is the devil. I am just a poor farmer and have not read many books like you, but I know this. It is only thanks to God that I regained my sanity. Please, Pedro, don’t take it.”

I drop the mushrooms in the dirt.

“Thank you, Pedro,” Felix says, wiping his face.

I feel awful and try to think of something to say that will make me sound slightly less like a spoiled American, ungrateful for his own health and sanity.

“I read something,” I tell Felix finally, trying my best to translate my favorite line from Tozer. “ ‘Self is the opaque veil that hides the face of God from us.’ I guess I thought the mushrooms might help remove the veil, you know?”

“You want to know God, Pedro?” Felix asks.

I nod, realizing suddenly the source of the longing I feel, a hunger for relationship with God.

“Let me tell you how to pray,” Felix says.

He tells me how he talks to God when he is alone in the jungle. He tells me that sometimes God replies and, for reasons I couldn’t begin to articulate, I believe him. His prayers are at once conversational and reverential. He says that faith isn’t actually knowing anything about God; it is about acting a certain way. He compares faith to a garden.

“I plant seeds,” he explains. “I do not know if something will grow. That is faith.”

Locating the Queen Bee

Looming ominously in front of us is Hospital Central del IPS, a huge medical complex composed of uniform cinderblock buildings in Paraguay’s capital city of Asunción.

“This is where I will stay,” I say to Felix and María, pointing at a café across the street from the hospital. Felix’s wife is visibly pregnant again and the happy, fat little baby with clubbed feet, who I call bebe’i, sits snugly on mommy’s hip.

Felix nods and stuffs his big bare feet into the knockoff Nike tennis shoes we bought a few hours earlier. He hates wearing shoes, but knows they’re required for most places in the capital. He and his wife look apprehensively at the enormous building across from us.

“This is just a preliminary visit,” I try to reassure them. “Remember what they said at the Ministry of Health.”

Felix nods again, and he and María set off toward the hospital. I watch as the two figures walk through the automatic doors and are swallowed by the darkness of the lobby.

I find a seat at the café, overcome with a sense of anxiety and sadness. My Peace Corps service will conclude next month, and despite repeated trips to the capital—first to a series of doctors’ offices and then to some manufacturers of leg braces—we still haven’t settled on a solution for sweet little bebe’i.

Several months earlier, a Mennonite told me that my Anglo complexion would prove a liability to my friends if I accompanied them on their medical visits.

“Your skin and hair,” he said, pointing at me. “They will know you are American and insist on exorbitant prices for the medical procedures that are supposed to be covered by the state.”

I took the advice, but here I was, a month from the end of my Peace Corps service, and we continued to be lost in what seemed like an endless series of visits to various government-sponsored medical facilities. Surgery was required, the doctors had decided, which pushed us into some sort of Kafkaesque bureaucratic nightmare of endless appointments that never seemed to result in an actual surgery.

Meanwhile bebe’i grew bigger and fatter, and even began scooting about in the dirt because she could not use her feet to walk. It broke my heart.

Some hero I turned out to be. A waitress comes to my table and asks what I’d like. I plan to drink Pilsen until I feel something different from the sadness that is making it hard for me to breathe.

The waitress nods and disappears into a back room. I am all alone, staring at the monolithic concrete edifice across the street that has swallowed my friend, his wife, and their beautiful baby. My eyes become glassy and the building blurs into a pattern of uniform shapes.

My distorted vision reminds me of the way Felix and I first found the queen bee. Eyes unfocused, looking for patterns, searching for the order in what presents itself as chaos.

The waitress brings me the beer and I pretend something is in my eye while she pours it into a jar. It is an insufferably hot day and small beads of condensation gather on the glass, refracting the light from the sun. Then, as if carried by a soothing breeze, a peace that surpasses all understanding washes over me. I am not alone. Not now. Not ever. God is a Person and can be cultivated as such. A Person like that queen bee, the center of order in a mad world. I just need to remember to take a broader view should I wish to find him.

Peter Johnson works at the Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty in Grand Rapids, Michigan. He is married to Ashley and has three children, only eight fewer progeny than Felix now has.

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I have long been sympathetic with Father Yves Congar’s famous remark that if figures on both sides of the Reformation divide had been a bit more open-minded and open-hearted, there might be a Lutheran order in the Catholic Church today, just as there are Dominicans, Franciscans, Benedictines, and, indeed, Augustinians, the religious family to which Martin Luther himself initially belonged.

Implicit in Congar’s observation is the conviction that there was something altogether right and important in some of the Reformer’s moves and that the church catholic would have benefitted from incorporating them into its own life. Implicit too is Congar’s sense that, sadly, things got out of hand: exaggerations, over-reactions, impugning of motives, awkward formulations, etc. on both sides. The result was that a reform movement within the church gave rise to a divided church.

If he had limited himself to saying “gratia prima,” Luther might have effected a needed reform within Catholicism.

The Second Vatican Council, at which Congar played a major role, valorized a number of themes dear to the hearts of the Reformers: the primacy of Christ, the need for ardent evangelization, the central place of the Bible in the life of the church, using both bread and wine in Communion, the priesthood of all believers, etc. And it expressed its fervent hope for the unification of all those baptized into the body of Christ. For this, both Protestants and Catholics should give thanks.

The Primacy of Grace

At the same time, there were and are substantive issues that separate Catholics from Protestants, and it is only right that, on this 500th anniversary of the Reformation, we look critically at them.

The single most significant contribution of Martin Luther and those who followed in his theological path was the stress on the primacy of grace. Absolutely essential to the biblical witness and to the best of the Christian spiritual tradition is the assertion that the divine love comes first. The people of Israel are important, not because of their heroic spiritual attainment, but because the Lord chose them. Jacob is not obviously “better” than Esau and hence the object of the Lord’s love; rather, he is loved by the Lord and hence becomes the bearer of the promise. David was not the handsomest or most obviously gifted of the sons of Jesse, yet “the Spirit of the Lord came powerfully” on him (1 Sam. 16:13). The Lord didn’t ask Simon’s permission or assess whether he was the most effective fisherman; he just got into the man’s boat and commenced to give orders. And Jesus sums up this principle of the primacy of grace with admirable directness: “You did not choose me, but I chose you” (John 15:16).

When this principle is forgotten, myriad problems ensue in the spiritual order; chief among them is Pelagianism, or the illusion of auto-salvation. If we can save ourselves through heroic moral effort, we turn God into an object of manipulation, and we eliminate the necessity of a savior.

Along with many others in the early 16th century, Luther saw this danger in the life of the church and so he cried out, with true prophetic vigor, on behalf of grace. In doing so, he was echoing his spiritual father, St. Augustine, who many centuries before had contended against Pelagius himself.

And it goes without saying that we need this protest, especially today, when it is taken for granted in our radically secular society that we believe we can not only save ourselves but even invent the meaning of our lives. For this witness, the entire Christian family owes Martin Luther an enormous debt of gratitude. And if he had limited himself to saying gratia prima (grace first), Luther might have effected a needed reform within Catholicism. The problem was that he insisted on gratia sola (grace alone).

The Problem with Grace Alone

This might seem a quibble, but everything hinges upon the difference. By setting grace and “works”—or moral achievement—in stark opposition, Luther demonstrated that he was operating out of a competitive understanding of God, so that giving God all of the glory necessarily entails giving no glory to humanity. And this view was grounded in Luther’s formation in philosophical nominalism. The classic conception of being, proposed by Thomas Aquinas, viewed our being as humans as only analogous to God’s being as God—not the same. By contrast, nominalism embraced a univocal conception of being, initially proposed by William of Occam, which understood that humans and God both have the same sort of being.

On Occam’s interpretation, both God and creatures are items within the general category of “being,” so that God becomes one existent being, however exalted, among many. On Thomas’s reading, God is not the “supreme being,” existing alongside a lot of other beings; he is the sheer act of being itself, through which all creaturely things have their existence. This means that God and the world do not compete with one another on the same ontological “field.” In the classical view, the created realm neither adds to nor subtracts from the perfection of God’s manner of existing. Therefore, giving God all the glory does not require stripping away glory from the creaturely realm—just the contrary. As St. Irenaeus said: Gloria Dei homo vivens (the glory of God is a human being fully alive).

This is why the Council of Trent, the Catholic church’s official response to the challenge of the Reformers, nodded vigorously toward Luther in denying Pelagianism and stressing the primacy of grace, but at the same time insisted on our “cooperation” with grace as an essential feature of salvation. Precisely because of the unique manner in which God relates to creation, this human cooperation doesn’t compromise the absolute primacy of the divine love. The two can co-inhere, as the prophet Isaiah knew: “Lord, you establish peace for us; all that we have accomplished you have done for us.” Catholics are happy to embrace Luther’s Reformation in the measure that it revived a healthy Augustinian anti-Pelagianism; but we wish that it had stopped at gratia prima and not insisted on gratia sola.

Bishop Robert Barron is an Auxiliary Bishop for the Archdiocese of Los Angeles and the founder of Word on Fire Catholic Ministries.

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Bishop Barron’s critique of the Reformation doctrine of sola gratia raises many questions. I will not endeavor to respond to all of his points. I certainly would not even attempt to defend everything Martin Luther said, did, or wrote. I will focus on the good bishop’s claims about grace in Protestant theology generally.

The crucial question seems to be whether “sola gratia,” within a Protestant perspective, means “gratia sola.” Does Protestant theology teach not only that salvation is “by grace alone” but also that it is “only by grace,” by which Barron seems to mean the exclusion of any human cooperation?

Only God, by grace, can effect salvation, but only faith can be the instrument of salvation’s reception.

Protestants disagree among ourselves about the suitability of the language of cooperation. Lutheran and Reformed Protestants tend to discourage it to avoid any hint of Pelagianism (or semi-Pelagianism). Arminians and Wesleyans (e.g., Methodists) are not as shy about it—if it is understood correctly.

What all Protestants agree on is that if a person has a right relationship with God, forgiven and justified, it is not because of any personal merit that person can claim. Our main objection to Catholic theology is the implication (if not straightforward claim) that merit other than Jesus’ own comes into play in the sinner’s reconciliation and right standing before God.

Protestants do not see how it is possible to give any glory to the sinner before or after salvation and at the same time honor Paul’s telling the Ephesians, “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast” (2:8–9). Protestants do not see how it is possible to talk about good works playing any role in a reconciled relationship with God and at the same time acknowledge it as a sheer gift of God’s grace.

Grace Alone or Grace Only?

Does this mean, then, that Protestants affirm “gratia sola” (as Bishop Barron means it) and deny the value of good works, works of love, in a reconciled relationship with God? Not at all.

Even Luther heartily affirmed good works—not as a cause of reconciliation with God but as its natural and inevitable result. (See Luther’s A Treatise on Good Works.) For him, as for all Protestants, grace is the sole efficient cause of salvation. Faith is the instrumental cause of salvation: “by grace through faith.” But even the ability to exercise faith is a gift of God and therefore comes by grace.

Protestants disagree among ourselves about whether faith itself is a gift (monergism) or whether it is the ability to exercise faith that is the gift (synergism). All agree, however, that, whatever the case may be, there can be no talk of human “merit” and no ground for boasting of salvation (except boasting of what God has done for us in Jesus Christ).

Bishop Barron digs deeper into the philosophical underpinnings of Luther’s doctrine of grace. In my opinion (and not all Protestants will agree about this), Luther was mistaken to adopt nominalism, the medieval philosophy that led to a denial of God’s eternal and unchanging nature and character. Certainly not all Protestants embrace nominalism. Whether even Luther embraced it as the bishop describes—making God and creatures examples of the same category of being—is debatable.

The bishop’s claim that God and the creature enjoy a non-competitive relationship of agency raises serious questions about God’s goodness and human evil. Surely sin and evil are solely the creature’s doing—not God’s. So there must be some element of competition in the philosophical sense between God’s agency and the creature’s—especially in view of sin and evil, which cannot be attributed to God.

Grace Through Faith

In salvation, however, there is no competition, but there is cooperation. Philippians 2:12–13 points to this paradox: “[C]ontinue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfill his good purpose.” This is the paradox of grace. The creature acts, but insofar as anything worthy is achieved in terms of salvation, everything good and glorious is attributed to God. English translations use “work” for both God’s contribution and the creature’s, but the Greek uses two different words. The thrust of the two verses together is cooperation between God and the creature with God’s agency supplying all the ability and deserving all the glory.

Bishop Barron quotes church father Irenaeus: “The glory of God is a human being fully alive.” Protestants agree, but we like to point out that the Bishop of Lyon did not say anything there about the glory of the creature; the glory is all God’s. If a human being is made “fully alive,” it is solely due to God’s grace, even if the creature “contributed” assent through grace-enabled repentance and faith.

For Protestants, both followers of Luther and of Wesley, gratia prima is not strong enough to prevent human boasting. Grace is not only primary; grace is all and everything, even if it is a gift to be freely received.

Does this Protestant account of salvation “by grace alone” denigrate the human? Not at all; it elevates the divine love for humans—that “God should love a sinner such as I. . . .” “Nothing in my hands I bring, only to Thy cross I cling” testifies of my helplessness, not my worthlessness.

So, in sum, gratia sola is true and right for all Protestants when we are looking at the effectual cause of salvation and even the ability to exercise faith in God. It excludes any possibility of talk of human merit in salvation. However, for many Protestants, it must be qualified so as not to exclude faith as the sole instrumental cause of salvation. “For by grace are you saved through faith,” not “by faith are you saved through grace.”

Unfortunately, even many Protestants do not understand the difference between grace as effectual cause and faith as instrumental cause of salvation. Only God, by grace, can effect salvation, but only faith can be the instrument of salvation’s reception.

Roger E. Olson is the Foy Valentine Professor of Christian Theology and Ethics at Baylor University’s George W. Truett Theological Seminary. His latest book is The Essentials of Christian Thought (Zondervan).

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Recently, I was with Christians who live under a Communist regime. They’ve been thrown in prison repeatedly due to their faith, and descriptions of their awful imprisonment are peppered with details of the sweetness of Christ’s presence.

They spoke of the growing spiritual hunger of younger believers as the Communist regime proved unable to deliver on its grand promises of utopian equality. These young people are choosing the narrow road of Christianity rather than the broad road of conformity and compromise. Our friends’ words were studded with the jaggedness of rough-roads-not-yet-made-smooth, and it was difficult not to notice their missing body parts and visible scars—disturbing threads woven into their testimonies’ tapestry.

After decades of watching revolutionary power dynamics, our friends spoke a valuable truth: Revelation is a stronger force than revolution.

By revelation, I mean the wisdom and knowledge revealed to us by our infinite and personal Creator, essential for navigating both the earthly and unseen realms. By revolution, I mean the overthrow of an existing order in favor of a new order.

Revolution is in the air around the globe. Recent studies report class struggles are driving millennials, who are rightfully concerned about their future. They challenge power abuses and seek political and economic alternatives to democratic capitalism. In a December 2011 survey by Pew Research Center, almost half of Americans aged 18 to 29 viewed socialism favorably.

The death of Fidel Castro, and the subsequent praises accorded his revolution (like “absolute giant” and “beacon of light”), revealed how morally neutral dictatorial regimes appear to many. Many Christians today are attracted to the ideas of historical Marxist revolutionaries, despite the philosophy’s historic tendency toward violence to achieve and maintain control.

Thankfully, cautionary voices have risen in response. Russian pro-democracy leader and human-rights activist Garry Kasparov paraphrased Tolstoy in a recent article: “Every repressive state is repressive in its own way—but socialism has proved uniquely toxic. . . . Soviet leaders squeezed the soul from their citizens by forcing them to perform in the macabre perversion of human nature that is totalitarian socialism.”

Power without revelation ultimately produces tyranny; resistance without revelation ultimately yields to anarchy.

Satan offered Christ all the kingdoms of the world and their glory—revolution without revelation. Yet Christ resisted in favor of the ultimate kingdom that shows forth his glory—the one for which he would die.

In some way, revolution beats in every human heart. The winning 2008 and 2016 presidential campaigns both danced to refrains of “not a moment, but a movement.” Some Christians today view the 2016 election as a petite revolution; others see it as heralding the necessity for one.

Yet power without revelation ultimately produces tyranny; resistance without revelation ultimately yields to anarchy.

Revelation views its opponents in ways that revolution alone cannot. Christ, our Ultimate Revelation, died on the cross for his opponents. Revolution dehumanizes the opponent. Christ humanizes his enemies and fosters the hope of their transformation. Only when revolution is empowered by Christ’s transformative power can it produce something better.

Are Christians on the left and right forgetting that transformation is vital to change? There is a supernatural force at work when revolution is empowered by Christ. My friends reported, “Humanizing those who are taught to hate us is our first act of resistance. They are the real oppressed.”

Revelation also humanizes and transforms both parties and exposes the limits of mere revolution. Black Panther Eldridge Cleaver echoed my friends toward the end of his life when he opened his formerly raised fist: “We have a spiritual and moral problem in America. Our problem is not economic or political; it is that we do not care about each other.”

Under revolution alone, power is merely shifted from one set of hands to another. It’s the hunger for dominance, rather than the hunger for humanity.

Karen Ellis is an ambassador for International Christian Response.

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Elvis. Tupac. The ivory-billed woodpecker. Sometimes it’s hard to let go and acknowledge when a celebrity or a species has left us. Christians find it particularly hard to come to terms with the passing of the “moral relativist.” Yes, there is the occasional reported sighting in the local university’s philosophy wing or at the late-night dorm room’s impromptu debate club. But compared to this creature’s former range and numbers, they’re all but extinct in the wild.

Many Christian preachers, apologists, evangelists, and writers have taken heed of the declining numbers, but decades of pitting “Christian worldview” against “moral relativism” left habits that are hard to break. You’ll still hear Christians assume that the reason for so much rampant immorality in our culture is because people reject objective right and wrong. Many still assume that discussions over morals are likely to end with, “Well, that’s your truth, but I have mine.” Make no mistake: Disputes over morality are as strong as they have ever been. But if we view these disputes through the lens of “moral relativism,” it’s not only our understanding of our culture that will suffer. Our evangelistic witness will also be severely blunted.

If anything, today we live in an era of constant moral indignation. This magazine has repeatedly observed and lamented the modern outrage culture, especially in its most performative social media outlets (see “Slow Down, You Hashtag Too Fast”). Recent CT cover stories looked at the American outrage culture’s similarities with global shame cultures (“The Return of Shame,” and its tendency toward self-righteousness (“Justify Yourself”).

In the past, lament over moral relativism had a political edge: Conservatives were cast as judgmental, liberals as morally lax. At least that was the caricature. Recently, researchers have asked: Do conservatives really have a more robust moral mindset than liberals?

Conservatives and liberals each appeal to a different transcendent moral foundation.

The answer has been a qualified yes. Jonathan Haidt’s influential The Righteous Mind (2012) argued that liberals and conservatives really do have radically different moralities and ways of weighing loyalty, authority, sanctity, liberty, care, and fairness. Conservatives embrace all six but emphasize the former ones, he said. Liberals are “indifferent at best” to the first three. Haidt (a self-identified liberal who believes there is no “one true morality”) argues that conservative moralities are more persuasive because they are broad; liberal moralities, he said, are impoverished.

Other researchers have argued for different value frameworks, but now a new study is questioning the moral superiority of conservatives.

“If liberals want to know what it feels like to be a conservative opposing same-sex marriage, they only need consider how they themselves feel about the environment,” said psychologists from the University of Winnipeg and University of Illinois at Chicago. In the researchers’ experiments, conservatives arguing against same-sex marriage based those arguments in sanctity. But in arguing for the Keystone oil pipeline, they based their case in fairness. Likewise, using almost the same language, liberals argued against the pipeline by saying it violates the sacred order of things, and argued for fairness when supporting same-sex marriage. “Liberals and conservatives may be more alike than previously thought,” the researchers said in Analyses of Social Issues and Public Policy. “We demonstrated a near-complete role-reversal vis-à-vis sanctity-based justifications of moral opinions.”

It isn’t that conservatives and liberals have shrugged off transcendent ideas of right and wrong. Rather, they each appeal to a different transcendent moral foundation. We are not in an era of moral relativism but moral pluralism.

That’s not necessarily good news: It’s hard to build a unified society when we hold radically different moral visions. It’s even hard to have a conversation when we view each other as immoral.

But it does offer evangelistic opportunities. Our Great Commission was never to convince liberals that there are objective moral truths. Our neighbors already have a deep sense that something has gone terribly wrong in our world, that “all have sinned.” In our conversations with unbelievers, we owe them the respect to try to understand their moral commitments and frustrations. They very well may be motivated to look for answers, especially as they find their best moral efforts frustrated. The fields are ripe for the harvest.

Our culture’s moral indignation offers opportunities to proclaim Jesus’ saving grace and direct people to the one who is truth, beauty, and goodness.

Ted Olsen is editorial director of Christianity Today.

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