Killing the Communal Aspects of the Gospel
A while back I wrote a post on how we sometimes domesticate Jesus. He becomes a Jesus who always supports our own causes and defeats other’s causes. As I noted before, it is easy to turn the radical Jesus, who always confronts our own assumptions as well as those of others, into a domesticated slave that carries water for our own agendas.
In today’s charged health care battle an interesting Jesus has emerged. The Jesus who cares little about social issues or even social groups. The one who is seeking to set up a kingdom has been turned into one who cares little about social groups and only individual entities. It is interesting what the West has done to Christianity. We have taken a religion with its strong social component and turned it into a individualized thing. No wonder many feel no problem with disobeying the suggestion to “forsake not the assembly of yourselves…”(Hebrews 10:25)
The reality that Jesus is coming back, not for an individual, but for a church (Ephesians 5:27). No wonder our ecclesiology is nonexistent and deficient. What has happened? A subtle facsimile of Christianity has taken the place of the true article. And this counterfeit has removed our corporate responsibility, but more than that, the very idea of a corporate identity that matters. It is time to go back to the East and lay aside our “rugged individualism” if we are to truly grasp the gospel. If not, we will totally lose all vestiges of our corporate identity and turn the Kingdom of God into a vassal of the American state.
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