Hearers and Doers (eBook)

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THE ROLE OF THEOLOGY IN MAKING DISCIPLES

Some Important Preliminaries

Two very different films frame the concern of the present book.

The 2008 Pixar animated film Wall-E offers pointed social commentary. Like many science-fiction films, its story is set in the future, but what motivates it is a very present environmental concern.

The film depicts a traumatized earth and a future society of consumers who have so depleted the world of its resources and, in the process, created so much rubbish that it is not darkness that covers the earth but debris—piles and piles of it (in contrast to the robot-hero, Wall-E, who recycles). In fact, there’s so much garbage on the earth that all of humanity has to take to space in search of a new place to live, a new world with new raw materials to consume. However, a good planet is hard to find, and old habits die hard, so, after seven hundred years of life on board their “Executive Starliners,” where all tasks have become automated and there is no garden to keep, the humans have developed into full-time consumers who do nothing but eat and enjoy asocial media. They are too bloated even to get up off their deck chairs. One critic says that the film describes humankind as “obese, infantile consumers who spend their days immobile in hovering lounge chairs, staring at ads on computer screens—in other words, Americans.”1 Ironically, the human passengers aboard the Axiom are more robotic than Wall-E, for they passively allow themselves to be programmed by whatever program, or advertisement, they happen to be watching. They are sleeping with their eyes wide open, glued to their electronic devices. Sound familiar?

The second film, Cold Souls, is a “metaphysical tragicomedy” that also comes wrapped in science fiction. It appeared a year later and features Paul Giamatti as an anxious New York actor (a fictionalized version of himself) who has trouble disassociating himself from the characters he plays, a problem that takes a significant emotional toll. As he struggles with his current role, in Chekhov’s emotionally fraught play Uncle Vanya, whose protagonist is stuck in a melancholic funk, Paul decides to avail himself of a high-tech company that promises to deliver a life free of angst by extracting his soul and then putting it into deep-freeze storage. The idea is that, once divested of their souls, people can enjoy relief from all the emotional burdens and existential sorrows that afflict and weigh them down. Accordingly, he undergoes the procedure, piercing to the division of soul and body, only to discover that his soul resembles a puny chickpea. Being soulless helps neither his marriage nor his acting, however, so he returns to the company and leases a Russian poet’s soul to give more authenticity to his performance of Chekhov’s play. His acting improves, but his marriage doesn’t. Eventually, Paul decides to get his own soul back, only to discover that it has been stolen by someone who thinks she can become a better actor by implanting Paul’s soul. The film depicts humans as tormented souls who move through life searching, unsuccessfully, for meaning.

These two films may not represent the state of the art in thinking about bodies and souls, but they do represent the state of contemporary social imaginings about what it is to be human and in what human flourishing consists. Elsewhere I have sounded the alarm about how the imaginations of many churchgoers are being held captive by secular pictures of human flourishing and the good life.2 It is an alarm worth sounding again, for what rules our imaginations—the pictures and stories that yield self-understanding and give coherence to everyday life—orients us to the world and directs our steps toward success. The time, energy, and money we spend during our roughly fourscore years on the world’s stage is largely a function of the stories and images of human flourishing in which we believe and put our trust.

KINGDOM PICTURES ISRAEL LIVED BY

Consider the kings of Israel. Each of them had a certain picture of what he wanted his kingdom to be. No doubt many of these pictures were influenced by the many kingdoms that surrounded Israel. Where else would they get their pictures of “successful” kings? Indeed, the Israelites got the very idea of having a king in the first place because everyone else seemed to be doing it. The elders of Israel approached Samuel with just this logic: “We want a king over us. Then we will be like all the other nations, with a king to lead us and to go out before us and fight our battles” (1 Sam 8:19–20 NIV). Interestingly, some of Jesus’ disciples were in danger of making the same error when they thought the kingdom of heaven he came proclaiming would reinstate the kind of Davidic earthly monarchy marked by military might and political power (John 18:36). Even after his resurrection, his disciples’ imaginations were still captive to certain stereotypes and misconceptions of the kingdom: “They asked him, ‘Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?’ ” (Acts 1:6). I wonder: how different are disciples today?

Back to Israel’s kings and concept of kingdom. As I was saying, the imaginations of most of the kings after David and Solomon, especially in the northern kingdom, were captive to secular pictures of what successful kingdoms were supposed to look like. The basic error of these Israelite kings was to trust in human resources (fighting men, chariots, silver, gold) instead of the word of the Lord. To place one’s ultimate trust in anything but the Lord God is to commit idolatry, ascribing worth to the worthless (mute and impotent images made of wood and stone). What is of particular significance is how the misleading royal/social imagination led to the wrong kind of walking. This description of Jehoram is typical: “And he walked in the way of the kings of Israel.… And he did what was evil in the sight of the Lord” (2 Kgs 8:18). Or again: “But Jehu was not careful to walk in the law of the LORD, the God of Israel, with all his heart” (2 Kgs 10:31). It gets worse: “He [Ahaz] did not do what was right in the eyes of the LORD his God … but he walked in the way of the kings of Israel. He even burned his son as an offering, according to the despicable practices of the nations” (2 Kgs 16:2–3). A false picture of kingship held them captive, though they were of course personally responsible for their idolatry.

Not all the kings were evil. Josiah, for example, discovered the words of the covenant with the LORD God, and this fueled his imagination enough to work important reforms (2 Kgs 23). In reminding Israel’s kings of God’s word, the prophets were purveyors of what Walter Brueggemann calls a “counter-reality,” a different way of thinking about and socially embodying power, success, and justice.3

In the end, however, it was not enough simply to listen to the word God spoke through the prophets. The hearing fell on hearts hardened by a false picture of what a successful nation looked like. What counted was what Israel did, and the kings, representing the whole nation, did not walk in the way of the LORD. In an event of poetic justice, Israel eventually got a king like the other nations—the king of Assyria, who captured the capital, Samaria, and took all the Israelites from the northern kingdom away. The Bible is clear about the cause-and-effect relationship: “And this [exile] occurred because the people of Israel had sinned against the LORD their God … and had feared other gods and walked in the customs of the nations” (2 Kgs 17:7–8). The holy nation had defiled itself.

THE CHURCH AS HOLY NATION

The church, like Israel, is called to be a “holy nation” (1 Pet 2:9). Peter also calls the church a “chosen race” and a “royal priesthood.” The church is not only an assembly of individuals but also a social reality—but of what kind? Church history is full of suggestions: everything from “Holy Roman Empire” to “counterculture.” In this book, I want to focus on the striking biblical image of the church as the corporate body of Jesus Christ, composed of many embodied persons. What body image rules how we think about the church? Many may be tempted to think of the church as only another earthly institution whose dynamics can be studied, explained, and improved on by psychologists, sociologists, or those with PhDs in institutional management.

The apostle Paul, for his part, is more interested in bodybuilding. And so, he thinks, is the Lord Jesus Christ: “He gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ” (Eph 4:11–12). Church leaders do this partly by building up the individuals that are its members. What disciples do with their bodies contributes to the building up of the body of Christ. Moreover, contra popular opinion, our bodies are not our own, to be used anyway we like. They are rather temples of the Holy Spirit, constructed on the basis of Jesus’ pouring out his own body for our sake: “You are not your own, for you were bought with a price” (1 Cor 6:19–20). Pastors are to engage in bodybuilding to God’s glory by awakening disciples to the reality that their bodies are members and instruments of Christ’s: “So glorify God in your body” (1 Cor...