The Enlightenment did humanity a lot of favors: The scientific method. The idea of democracy and the separation of powers. The founding of public education systems and increased access to books. The development of what we now call classical economics. The beginnings of social reforms like gender equality, the abolition of slavery, and prison reform.
Within the Christian Church, this period also saw tremendous advances: Biblical scholarship and historical criticism. The rise of apologetics. The promotion of religious tolerance and Ecumenical dialogue. Abolitionist movements, care for the poor, prison reform, and practical holiness. The expansion of theological education and global mission. Movements that emphasized personal experience with God and lay involvement in the church.
High fives to all those big brains and brave hearts.
But the Enlightenment’s fruit was not all roses and cupcakes. Among the many critiques that philosophers, theologians, and social critics have raised, I want to highlight just one: HYPERINDIVIDUALISM.
In our over-obsession with ourselves we lost sight of the fact that we are communal creatures.
Among so many other aspects of life and society and faith, this has detrimentally affected the way that most of us tend to read the Bible. With my Enlightenment Glasses on, everything in the Bible is written to me. “Wow! Isaiah is talking to me! Jesus is talking to me! Paul is talking to me!” I interpret every mention of “you” **as singular rather than as a plural “you all”. (”Ya’ll”, if you’re from the South).
Now, I’m no hermeneutical Scrooge. If you wanna make Jeremiah 29:11 your life verse, go right ahead. I won’t stop you. Where the Spirit of the Lord is there is freedom. There’s more to faith than being “correct” about everything, and God’s grace, if it’s good for anything, must outweigh than our theological prowess.
All that is to say, sometimes it helps to reword a text in a way that shines light not onto me but onto us. Take, for example, this passage from Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians.
Either way, Christ’s love controls us. Since we believe that Christ died for all, we also believe that we have all died to our old life. He died for everyone so that those who receive his new life will no longer live for themselves. Instead, they will live for Christ, who died and was raised for them. So we have stopped evaluating others from a human point of view. At one time we thought of Christ merely from a human point of view. How differently we know him now! This means that anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person. The old life is gone; a new life has begun!
-2 Corinthians 5:14-17 (NLT)
Now, if you read this and your takeaway is, “If I am in Christ, that means I am a new creation! My old life is gone, and my new life has begun!” well, you’re not wrong. Thanks be to God. But that newness also expands way beyond you. A quick sweep of the broader context will help you see that.
I want to suggest that if one person can become a new person, then a whole church can also become a new church. After all, the ekklesia that Jesus talked about, that Paul wrote letters to so many times, is simply a gathering of God’s people. It would make no sense for God to care about renewing individuals, but then not give a crap about the gathering. That’s crazy talk. As a pastor, I’m hanging all my hopes on this.
So yesterday, in our weekly gathering to pray for revitalization, I read a re-written version of this passage:
Either way, Christ’s love controls us. Since we believe that Christ died for every church, we also believe that every church has died to its old life. He died for every church so that every church that receive his new life will no longer live for itself. Instead, that church will live for Christ, who died and was raised for it. So we have stopped evaluating other churches from a human point of view. At one time we thought of Christ merely from a human point of view. How differently we know him now! This means that any church that belongs to Christ has become a new church. The old life is gone; a new life has begun!
May this be true for our church. May it be true for yours. May it be true for every beloved gathering of God’s people that longs to shout, “Our old life is gone; our new life has begun!”