Jesus and the System

An older pastor I know (in another state - local readers should not be guessing) made the comment last autumn "I think I'm going to become more active in politics this year." I don't know his politics, though I would guess center-left, but either way, my first thought was "This could be the greatest destruction to your faith you have ever faced, and you likely won't even notice." Even worse than politics in general, which has wasted the energies of many a good Christian, I think he means current events, though he doesn't realise that.  Pastors have a legitimate need to preach to people where they currently are and to speak the language of the people, including cultural references.  Yet simply put, the Church does not do current events well. I won't say Never, but contrary examples aren't occurring to me. It is too rapidly drawn into one secular side or another, convincing itself that this is Jesus's side as well. These days, it is drawn into three or four sides and taking sides, even though they are maddeningly oversimplified. Seminaries are not especially aloof from fashions, but especially in danger from academic fashions.

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It is a common idea in Christian circles beginning in the 20th C that Jesus's or Paul's, or God the Father's intent with many of his words and actions was to change the system. Paul writes the Letter to Philemon and gradually, eventually, slavery is made illegal.  Jesus speaks to the woman at the well who is a Samaritan to boot and gradually, eventually, the nations of the world learn to live together and found the UN, and women get treated with increasing respect and can even become Prime Ministers of important countries. The idea is attractive to people who think in terms of systems being the important thing.

It seems a rather odd God to prefer, as it places our modern lives on this earth at the center of the plan.  All those people who suffered all those years...well, we have smuggled in the idea that this was all somehow worth it, because we were always moving toward that goal of justice and finally had some victories. It seems rather hard on everyone who is not us, actually. Not to mention all the people still living under oppression today.  If God's main intent was changing the system so that mankind would live in justice, we would have to conclude He didn't do a very good job of it. The delicate tweak of the system in the 1st C that eventually bore fruit centuries later has a poetic feel to it, an admirable efficiency in doing this little bit, this flap of butterfly wings again, but I doubt we would be so impressed if we weren't living at the good end of that deal.

God does want his people to live in justice.  He says it often. But the emphasis seems to be on the people, and the living, rather than on what systemic legacy they leave. I imagine He prefers just systems to unjust ones, consonant with His character, but He doesn't seem to mention it much. Yet everything coming out of the denominational schools these days seems to be focused on systems as if they, not the people, were the important thing. I am reminded of this these days certainly, because issues of "systemic" justice are in the news.  But this is a longer pattern, going back to my own childhood when I was in the UCC, continuing on into the Lutheran denomination I was in as a young adult, and increasingly even in the Evangelical Covenant Church I now belong to.

There is a sense in which we can call Jesus's actions and teaching, and more generally the teaching of both testaments of the Bible as focused on system.  Yet I think in its current application it misses a central point of scripture. God's plan was never to reform Ur or Babylon or Egypt, but to call out a separate people acting in contrast.  That those people are organised according to some system I readily concede. Yet that was the point, a new system, not reforming the system they were living in.  In the NT, neither Jesus nor any of his immediate followers say "We have to reform the empire," or "We have to work for peace between Jews and Samaritans," or anything similar that is geared to a system.  As in the OT, calling Jews out of other places to found a new people, Jesus does the same. I suppose you could say he is founding a new system, but I think that is a 19th, 20th, 21st C idea applied retrospectively to all the other centuries, including Jesus himself. In this new system, Christians will treat each other as equals without regard to origins or status.  Yet I don't see much emphasis on rules and institutions, I see commands given to individuals as to how they will treat each other. Calling that a system is an imposed category.

Jesus did not come so that Greeks and Romans could get along better, but to offer any within those groups the opportunity to join a new people that (should) get along. Newness is frequently on His lips.  Reform is not.

It is ironic that this focus on systemic change is now coming from the left with the right resisting, as it was not long ago that it was conservatives who wanted to change systems so that abortion or gay marriage would not be allowed.  I suppose it isn't that odd, because the left wanted to change sexual and family systems also, just in another direction.  It is one of the hallmarks of the age that both sides think in terms of putting their energy into the system, rather than persuading individuals, or being a tribe which showed the correct approach.

I think it would be fair to identify working for justice as a legitimate goal for a Christian.  It may even be that individual Christians are called to that as a ministry.  But I don't see either OT or NT support for the idea that it should be a primary focus for all Christians. Plus, as in my previous post about the dangers of systems thinking, treating it as primary might be dangerous, drawing focus to the things of this world and away from the everyday Eternal Beings that humans are. Focus on systems is a serious departure from scripture and our understanding of the nature of God.

“There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations - these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub and exploit - immortal horrors or everlasting splendors."  CS Lewis, The Weight of Glory

Two additional notes:  I recognise there are downstream issues about the Church becoming a secular power, first locally and them more globally many centuries ago, and of the relationship of Christian thought on Western Civ and the American founding in specific. As these have been treated at book length many thousands of times I won't attempt any ridiculous summary here.  My objective is to point out that in Scripture, or in the known words of Jesus and the apostles, this fascination with systems just isn't there.  It is a modern idea, which we apply retrospectively only by bending the definition of words to suit ourselves.  Secondly, I have a follow-up post about the modern idea of Jesus being especially concerned with The Marginalised, which I believe is similarly modern.