Interrupting the game of liberal versus conservative.

I have this habit of picking up my kids from school or sports or wherever their day has taken them and asking a couple very intentional questions. One such query is “what is the most challenging thing you did today?” It can often get varied responses but P.E. or Math are usually the culprit most often fingered in the investigation. Their answers take me back to the smell of breakfast pizza and hallway cleaner. A time when recess was the high point of my existence. I still remember the playground I grew up playing sports on at recess. They were red clay colored tennis courts in a town where nobody played tennis. They had erected a wall at one end to stop the tennis balls which was refashioned to instead be the backdrop for wallball and goals for soccer. Running in the opposite direction were basketball goals which were the most coveted of sports to be picked for. The ill planned layout was a recipe for disaster and a constant source of conflict. You would have the best athletes playing in a very serious game of basketball while running perpendicular to them and invading their space was any number of people playing soccer or chasing an errant wallball. You had a game going in one direction with one set of rules and another game going in another direction with a different set of rules. It was two simultaneous games like the beach scene in Top Gun Maverick. Constant bumps and pauses and accusations and at times need for intercession by the teacher on duty. This was not unlike the world the early Church found they had to win nor ours.

A world with different rules and expectations flying in different directions and all opposed to the game they were playing.

A landscape of constant challenges and obstacles.

Let me explain what their playing field looked like.

One of the difficulties to the Gospel penetrating entrenched Judaism in the Roman empire was undue conservatism. A conservatism that went beyond the bounds of Scripture into guarding their expressions of it. They had a culture to preserve. They had traditions of their fathers. They had a national identity built in opposition to and contrasted by their pagan neighbors. The world was going to hell in a hand basket and they were holding out like monks in a cultural mountain fortress. Novelty was a negative.

New news was bad news which put the “good news’ in a predicament.

The opposite was true of the pagan world which sought to be entertained by whatever was the newest thing (Acts 17:21). It fed off trendy and fashionable. They believed in progress even if it ran them off the cliff. The newest innovation or idea in philosophy was the best thing even if it made things worse or abandoned any good that came before it. They moved beyond truth the first time the breeze blew their feelings in a different direction. Christianity was rooted in something not just old but ancient. Surely something that went back to Creation was a bit crusty and outdated. It was from a trailer park in the corner of the empire and not a cosmopolitan city full of hipsters. It argued from its ancient roots and simple message and not from flashy marketing or slick rhetoric. One question that faced the Early Church was how would it interface with the modern world. The Church navigated this obstacle by adapting  on the surface to its culture while refusing to conform at its core to the world. Christianity in aggressive missional endeavors faced a risk each time it adapted to the thought forms of its day because it risked throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

Every theologian is a child of their age, but necessarily must be born again.

If conservatism stifles authentic Christianity, liberalism dissipates it.

By grace and the working of the Holy Spirit, there were Christians who struck a dangerous but holy balance. They griped with unwavering tenacity the apostolic message, while freely adapting their methodology to express it to their contemporaries. They walked a razor thin line with both a faithfulness and genius that was beyond them. When it came to the historic orthodox teachings of Christianity they were closed fisted and uncompromising, but when it came to innovating means of heralding those doctrines to a hostile world they were open handed and moved freely and with nimble creativity.

Often, we see Churches switch those two and suffer as a consequence.

For example, they used Greek epics to make their points along with Homeric myths which would be the equivalent of using something evil like Hollywood to point to what is good, true, and right about G-d or creation. They could quote the office in order to quote to others the Scripture. I hate using the word “relevant” (which sounds like a popularity contest winner) because it was more like insightful enough to convert honest thinkers. Stoic and Epicurean philosophy had only part of the truth which found its fullness in Christ. They were not only unafraid to enter the marketplace of ideas but planted their flag there. The early Church father Clement of Rome argued from the Eastern poet’s mythological phoenix to say something about the resurrection of Christ. The early Church was intellectually vigorous and spiritually unwavering.

There was no hesitation at the idea of talking someone into Christianity, they did what Paul did at every turn believing the Holy Spirit uses such talk.

What they also did like Paul was back it up with a salty lifestyle. At all opportunities they took sanctified risk. As they held onto the Gospel, G-d honored that witness such that they conquered the greatest superpower in the world without lifting a sword.  Justin Martyr (himself martyred) was said to be more affected by the brave deaths of Christians than by anything he ever read in Plato. They were all in with head, heart, and hand. They were not ivory tower college professors arguing at a safe distance from the front lines but those who sealed their sermons with their own blood. As Tertullian said, “the blood of martyrs is the seed of the Church.” They pioneered and paid the cost to plant the Church on every new frontier. Their mistakes were made going 100 mph in the mission fields direction. This balance was not always perfect and many found one ditch or another. I heard Dr. Godfrey say that he can be more understanding of Origen’s mistakes because he was pioneering rather than intentionally trying to undermine orthodoxy. I am no fan of Origen but the sentiment is well noted. One could argue the Church in the west has all the same mistakes without half the missionary zeal. In a world that prides itself in being divided and out of balance, we might learn something new from these ancient voices. I am often not doing half as well with balancing adaptability while conserving what must be preserved as they were. I get discouraged by how impossible it looks, instead of emboldened by the G-d who does the impossible.

I obsess over the challenges to Christianity and not the G-d who crushes them.

With a Bible full of the same promises and the same G-d who did it for their generation I am without excuse but not without opportunity. To be honest, I long for more than just a residue of their courage and a fraction of their singleness of aim. I refuse to stop short of Christ being anything other than Lord.  The challenges to the Gospel have never been bigger than the Gospel.

In fact, the obstacles to the Gospel actually work to glorify the G-d who overcomes them.

May it be so again among us.