The Thing (Again)

This is a repost, but in light of the current series about U-Church values (see About), I felt it worth a second look.

It is ancient and insidious. Feigning expedience, masquerading as orthodoxy, it creeps in like a white shadow, subtly devouring original intent, spreading like a virus through every organ of sincerity, mutating everything it touches, draining immediacy and purpose, sucking vital juices, leaving only shells, relentlessly transforming the living ecclesia into the merely ecclesiastic.

It’s the Thing, that vague but very real not us that assumes supremacy in Western church organizations and demands our religious fealty and tribute. We have believed that the Thing is us—is church—but it is not and it smothers all that is authentic, vital, and divinely intended. Contrary to the assumptions of the prevailing corporatism, the Thing is unnecessary and easy to dispatch, that is if we really want to do it.

The Thing takes on many forms, but the common factor is an implied obligation to an organizational entity whose reality is not dependent upon its members. We are asked to devote ourselves, not to the collective us, but rather to something else to which we want to belong. In this way we become merely a subset of a larger, more important thing often called “the Church,” as though the Church somehow exists apart from us. We are detached “members” of something that transcends and supersedes us.

I know this has a ring of truth to it. (After all, aren’t we taught that the “body” is bigger than any individual member?) But this is not the Biblical concept at all. For example, John writes, We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard, so that you also may have fellowship with us. And our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ. The purpose of the Gospel witness, according to John, is to invite others into a fellowship, a relationship among its members. There is no “thing” beyond this relationship, no larger reality. The participants themselves define the fellowship and it is into the midst of this organic relationship that outsiders are invited to come. In fact, John sees this fellowship as the very Gospel itself. It is in joining the fellowship of believers that the outsider enters into relationship with the Father and Son. There is no other “thing” to which the outsider must attain. The fellowship is all there is.

Salvation is citizenship. Citizens are church; church, citizens. Without citizens, there is no city, heavenly or otherwise. As a believer in Jesus Christ, I am, along with all who believe, the transcendent fruit of Christ’s work. There is no Thing here, only us.

Explore posts in the same categories: Chûrch, Terms of Use