Thoughts on Jubilee

Posted on February 19, 2009 by dsnoke |1 Comment

I attended the Jubilee conference in downtown Pittsburgh last Friday night, as a guest. Overall, I thought it was a great time to get all these college students together to get them thinking about culture and God’s calling in their lives, and worshipping together.

I want to respond to some comments made by the keynote speaker for the night, Gabe Lyons, who is apparently making a name for himself as someone who is applying marketing research and strategy to the church. Overall, I could relate to where he was coming from, and appreciated his zeal for the kingdom, but I see some dangers in how it was expressed.

Gabe’s main point was that he had done marketing research and found that evangelical Christians have a very bad reputation in the world, and while some of it may be unfair, much of the criticism is fair, and we should change some of our ways to be more Christlike.

I generally agree. However, at one point he talked of how we need to not focus on heaven, but on the building of the kingdom in this world. This was followed up after his talk by a fellow giving a book plug, saying that this is a theme of the Jubilee conference, summed up by the book titled “Heaven is not my Home”, by Marshall and Gilbert. I understand the desire of Lyons as well as Marshall and Gilbert to emphasize the cultural mandate, which I certainly believe in, as a physicist, and I have heard the cultural mandate stressed since my undergraduate days. As Christians, we have a high calling to make this world better. But in recent years I have become firmly convinced that to truly fulfill the cultural mandate, we need to focus more on heaven, not less.

Think of how much Scripture focuses on our hope of heaven:

Matt. 5:12 Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.

Matt. 6:19-20 Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal.

1Cor. 15:19 If in this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.

1John 2:15-17 Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world— the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride in possessions—is not from the Father but is from the world. And the world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever.

And how can the statement “heaven is not my home” be reconciled with statements like these:

Phil. 3:19-21 Their end is destruction, their god is their belly, and they glory in their shame, with minds set on earthly things. But our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body.

Heb. 11:13-14 These all died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar, and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth. For people who speak thus make it clear that they are seeking a homeland.

Can anyone honestly say that it is a valid summary of the above theme of the Bible to say “heaven is not my home”?

My impression is that Gabe was reacting against a presentation of the Gospel which could be called “fire-escape” Gospel– a get-out-of-hell-free card, now you get to go to heaven, and then nothing further said about God’s call in this life. But where I see the error is that the get-out-of-hell-free approach does not actually focus on heaven. It says, quickly, you get to go to heaven, so don’t worry about it, and get on with your life. It does not dwell at all on the glories of being with God, on the way an eternal perspective changes everything in our lives now, on the fading value of storing up riches, etc. If you read the great classics of those who really changed the world, they all had a very heavenly perspective. By contrast, I have been hearing about the how we should not be too heavenly-minded, but rather focus on culture, from evangelicals for 30 years now, and it seems to have dulled their impact, not increased it. As Andy Crouch says in his book Culture Making, evangelicals have gone from retreating from culture, to critiquing it, to simply consuming it. Where I see historically revival happening is when people became intensely concerned about the state of their eternal souls. From time to time I am absolutely awestruck by what it means, to be with God forever, and that changes my whole outlook.

But even at a pragmatic level, I think that a real sense of hope of heaven is of greater benefit to the cultural mandate than a lack of it. Those with a firm sense of the realness of heaven have no fear or frustration. Like the heroes of Hebrews 11, and like the Apostle Paul, they can attempt dangerous things. By contrast, those who are fixated on this world will fear they will lose what they have in this world. When I think of those students from Jubilee going out to change the world, what will they do when they face real opposition, maybe even persecution, for the first time? Will a this-worldly focus carry them through in the face of opposition? Will they be willing to be sawed in two, to live in obscurity on the missions field for decades, or even to change poopy diapers for years as a parent, without a firm hope of heaven? The fact is that much of what we do seems to have no impact, and we do not see the kingdom visibly being built by our works, most of the time. If our hope is in what we do in this world, even good works in this world, then we are much to be pitied, because many times our story is the story of Job, who was righteous but his works were destroyed, or the story of the tired parent changing poopy diapers and feeling it is thankless and endless.

This brings me to a second critique of the Gabe’s talk. He came across to me as presenting a fairly naive view of the world. There was nothing said about what happens when powerful forces come against you in opposition. I’m sure he was simplifying, but it came across as, if we all just become more Christlike, then all men will speak well of us, and we will redeem the culture. For that matter, it came across that he was saying a goal should be to get all men to speak well of us. What about Christ’s saying “woe to you when all men speak well of you” or Paul saying “all who desire to live a godly life will be persecuted”?

Of course we do not have an aim to have all men speak badly of us, but if we are focused on God’s goals, it is unlikely that they will line up with worldly goals all the time. And when our cultural goals oppose powerful interests in this world, they can play hard ball to make us look bad. The idol-makers in Ephesus could whip up crowds against the Apostles. The indulgence-sellers could make Martin Luther look stupid. The slave owners could make Wilberforce look stupid. The industrialists could make William Jennings Bryan look stupid (and it was his opposition to their social Darwinism, not his opposition to biological Darwinism, that made him their enemy). And those who use sex to sell can make those who insist on a Christian sexual ethic look stupid. Notice how Rick Warren, who went to great lengths to be evenhanded in the last election and has been involved in all kinds of mercy ministry, was immediately branded as a gay-hating maniac when he came out for the traditional definition of marriage.

I see many in the church running away from being branded as the Christian Right, without asking whether the bad image is partly due to the opposition. I agree that much of the bad image is due to reality, i.e. superficiality in the church, etc., but I also know that Christians have been genuinely helping with solutions for decades, making crisis pregnancy centers, sheltering homeless, counseling centers for the sexually broken, etc., and it has not changed the image. I’m sure it would not be Gabe’s view, but I wonder if the take-home message for many of those at Jubilee was “don’t do controversial things, instead do things that everybody approves of, like helping the poor, so that we can have a better image for the church”.

I encourage people to read the story of Wilberforce. he played hardball politics and got a lot of people angry at him, out of a sense of eternal values of right and wrong. What I see in the evangelical world is people dropping out of the pro-life movement out of fear of a bad image, not realizing that in politics, if you take any position, the opposition will try make you look bad. The only way to have all men speak well of you is to take only non-controversial positions, which means you are not trying to change the culture at all.

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