Absolute Essentials – V

I am what is called a Restorationist in the sense that I like to get back to what was originally intended as far as the practice of faith is concerned. For me, that means looking at what Jesus originally intended when teaching his disciples or what the book of Genesis is trying to tell us about what God intended in the Creation before the fall. What did this or that passage in Scripture mean to those who first heard it?

Sometimes a restorationist approach leads to something idiosyncratic like those signs in front of some 60-year-old church buildings in 100-year-old towns that read, “Founded A.D. 33”. There is no way for us to go back before the Fall to what God intended in Creation. We cannot get back to innocence in the Garden of Eden any more than we can return lock, stock and barrel to the culture of First Century A.D. Palestine. So I am also what is called a Contextualizer, meaning someone who tries to take the original intent and put it into a context that makes sense in the present.

Sometimes when reading Jesus, you hear him say something like “I didn’t come to abolish the Law, but to fulfill it” and you wonder if Moses would actually recognize what Jesus was doing any more than Peter and Paul would recognize our modern Christian communities. Even so, Jesus calls us to follow his example in taking what was written long ago and applying it to the present.

But we can’t approach Scripture with the same authoritative analysis as Jesus did. He obvious had an inside track we don’t have, being the Word Himself and all. Which is why, he said when he was on earth, that he was leaving us the Holy Spirit as our guide. And not only the Spirit, but also the Community of Faith otherwise called the Church. And the Word. Jesus was/is the Word, come in bodily form. But what he then provided for us is the written Word, something we can carry around with us.

Now we didn’t get that Word just by having it drop out of the sky all King Jamesish and such. No, it took about 30-70 years to get written by human authors and then another couple of centuries first for the Jewish leaders to settle on what the Old Testament looked like and then for the Christian leaders to settle on what the New Testament looked like. And it is that very set of books that says that the Holy Spirit helps us understand what the this Book of Books is trying to tell us.

So it is through the triple combination of Spirit, Community and Word that we have a guide to find out what God really meant way back then. And we have the same Spirit, Community and Word as our guide to help us understand how we contextualize that meaning into our own world and culture.

Travel just about anywhere in the world – go through what tourists call “culture shock” and all – and you will be less “shocked” than if you travel back in time 2,000 years to Galilee and walk alongside of Peter, James, and John. And yet, the Book we ascribe to as our foundational articles of faith – I’m talking about the Bible here – speaks to us out of that dim and culturally distant past.

The Community of Faith – the Church Universal – goes back just about as far. When we all get to heaven and start hanging out with other Believers around the Pearly Gates, we will probably be quite taken aback by how diverse a lot we all are. And that diversity is reflected as highly variegated in how we worship and live out our lives as people of faith.

Any 21st Century American Evangelical who thinks he or she would have no problem jumping into a gathering of the New Testament church in its opening days in post-Pentecost Jerusalem is in for some real surprises. We may think we are closer to Peter, Paul and Mary of the 1st Century than we are to some obscure monks in the 11th, but it only takes a generation or two in human time to open a very wide gap.

So when Believers bemoan changes in the church and how the church is adapting to culture, they don’t understand that this has been a necessary part of the walk of faith from the very beginning. In fact, it is a struggle that Believers of all ages and places have grappled with from Abel and Enoch on down to you and me. This is in part what we mean by walking by faith.