Robert Kysar, a noted Johannine scholar makes an interesting observation in his essay, “The Coming Hermeneutical Earthquake in Johannine Interpretation.” He predicts that twenty-first Christians, having lost their dominance over the mainstream culture in the West, will draw heavily on the Gospel of John, particularly as a resource “to understand themselves over against the world.” He predicts the coming of a “new other-worldliness” that is grounded in a sort of Johannine sectarianism.
While Kysar worries that this will be dangerous in some key ways, I find myself sitting right in the center of the faultline of this coming earthquake and loving it. As I’ve said before, I think the church needs to become more sectarian, not less. Only by doing so will we discover the forms of communal life which make for authentic culture and human flourishing.
At least in evangelical and mainline protestant cricles, there is far too much ink spilt today on how the church must become more “authentically worldly.” The church, we are told must move beyond simple preoccupation with “eternal” life and focus on the matters of real importance in the world, social justice, poverty, war, world hunger, etc.
However, this call to discover an authentic Christian worldliness comes, more often than not, at too great a price. For the sake of being timely and relevant, the church equivocates on the radicality of its message and its calling. The church cannot seek to “get involved” in the world, or become “wordly” in any way other than being precisely otherworldly. The reason for this is because the church itself is an “other world.”
The church’s true calling is in fact to be as otherworldly as possible because the message of the gospel is precisely that there is a whole new world into which our broken lives can be translated and transfigured. This does not mean that Christians seek to cut off contact with non-Christians, rather it means that the only real thing, the only truly radical thing that Christians have to offer those outside is the offer of a new world of reconciliation, actualized in Christ and made present to us by the sovereign work of the Holy Spirit.
Thus, the question the church should be asking is not, “How can we best enter into the struggles of the world?” Rather the church’s question must always by “What does it mean for us to live as the true world, the world of the gospel in the midst of this passing age of darkness?”
Wonderful insight, thanks for posting. I have been asking my readers to confront this very issue as we examine our practice in light of current events such as this group of Atheists who are have built teir own “house of worship”
http://www.morethancake.org/2008/09/building-does-not-guarantee-faith.html
Robert Gundry suggested something similar a few years back with Jesus the Word According to John the Sectarian: A Paleofundamentalist Manifesto for Contemporary Evangelicalism, Especially its Elites, in North America. The title comprises half of the book. :) Like Kysar, Gundry suggests John is a timely theological resource. But I think he would also agree with you Halden, that the church needs to become more sectarian.
Wonderful, post Halden. This is the kind of otherworldliness I long for in the Church in the world.