As I progress through life on my spiritual pilgrimage, I struggle with identity. As do we all, I want to belong to something bigger than myself. I want to identify with others who share similarities of some sort. We are created as social beings and can’t find fulfillment in isolation.
So, I struggle as I feel the need to separate myself from a group that I have so long been affiliated with. I vacillate as to whether I still find identity with them or have moved beyond the point of identification. Would I be considered an insider, a member by them?
I grew up a Fundamentalist, which is, on the continuum, to the right of Evangelical (big E). In my Fundamentalist years we were warned against the social gospel, which placed temporary good above the eternal good brought through receiving the message of repentance and forgiveness through Christ! Things like medical missions could too easily become caught up in the immediate need to such a degree that we might forget to invite people to receive Christ! If anything, we needed to use social service as a means to attract “fish” so we could “set the hook” with the Four Spiritual Laws or the Romans Road.
As Fundamentalists, we also were taught “secondary separation”; not affiliating with those who affiliated with “sinners”. We debated, and decided against supporting the “Evangelical” Billy Graham, because he did not confine himself to affiliating and working with Fundamentalist groups, but was too cozy with the “liberals.” He would refer his new converts to any church that would cooperate with him, possible into a church that preached a “false gospel” where their new faith would flounder and fail, lost in liberalism.
As I moved through life, I found myself more comfortable with Evangelicals than with Fundamentalists, becoming a missionary that was concerned with both the social needs of the present, but still seeking to present the “Gospel Message” that would assure eternal life to those who would “receive” it and be “born again.”
But my time in Honduras “rocked my boat” a bit as I saw in caricature what we Evangelicals had brought to Latin America in the name of Christ. The interpretation of the “Gospel Message” was so focused on a point in time decision that it seemed to neglect a transformed life, other than that the new convert was to taught to consume his time with recruiting others to make the “decision”, who then in turn would recruit others. The actual teachings of Jesus; love, forgiveness, self sacrifice, peacemaking, seemed lost in the drive to make converts! People felt so secure with eternity, having made the “decision for Christ” that they felt comfortable living like the world. The churches were wracked with divisions, pride and superficiality, missing the point of Jesus’ “good news” which he taught in the Sermon on the Mount!
So, I have become uncomfortable now with being identified as an Evangelical (big E). But I am not ready to abandon my identification as an evangelical (little e). For I truly believe that I am to spread the good news of Jesus throughout the world, but this takes a different form than it did in my Evangelical days. I am involved in modeling (although with significant shortcomings and failures) the teaching of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount. And I invite others to join me in the journey, which is “evangelism” in my thinking.
There is a Lord whose name is Jesus who teaches us to live a life that is different than what we are encouraged to live in the world by politicians and businessmen, by our neighbors and coworkers, and sadly even sometimes by our pastors; a life which certainly is different from our natural inclinations to promote self. This life that we are invited to live is a change from what we would naturally choose, and requires a decision (or series of decisions), a transformation, that may not be so much a point in time response to a preacher’s or evangelist’s invitation, but a gradual restructuring of our world view (repentance, in my thinking) so that we promote the common good as originally intended by God, which someday will become the rule of the land when Jesus returns and puts everything to right again.
That for me is the “gospel message” with which as an evangelical (little e) I am engaged, and immersed in living and promoting.
So what am I? If not an Evangelical or Fundamentalist, maybe I am “emergent” or maybe becoming (shudder) a “liberal”? Some are concerned that I am flirting with “universalism”! How about “a follower of Jesus”? With that label, I am content. I find that the path of Christ does not necessarily coincide with the manmade paths that have manmade names.
Dave Drozek,
Thoughts from Athens
