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THE
CHRISTIAN AND LIFE IN THE COMMUNITY -
M.P.K. Kutty
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We live in an age of individualism and
personal isolation. The purpose Christ came to
accomplish is the redemption of mannot merely as
individuals, but as members of an ideal community. In
the Sermon on the Mount , He laid down the charter of
that kingdom.
But until the time of Christ's resurrection, the
disciples were ruled by the world's system and felt
powerless. At his crucifixion, they went away and hid
themselves for fear of the soldiers and the courts. But
once they saw the resurrected Christ, they became
convinced of another reality, quite different from the
system they were living under. They became aware of a
new reality that was different from the realities which
filled them with fear and paralysed them. They began
turning the world upside down.
This is being repeated in lives around us today. When a
person undergoes conversion by the Spirit of Christ, it
transforms his private, selfcentered existence into one
of public consciousness and concern. He ceases to live
for himself. He becomes an enlisted soldier of the
Kingdom of God.
One of the current issues of the Christian world is the
puzzle why the individual transformation does not get
reflected in the life of the community. Several answers
are given. An eminent Christian writer, Jim Wallis, has
thus written:
“I once thought that the gulf between what the
scriptures say and how Christians live was simply the
result of self-interest and hypocrisy. There are enough
examples of both in the churches today to make a strong
case for that thought. But I no longer believe that
either self interest or hypocrisy is the root cause of
the great contradictions in the church's life. They have
more to do with lack of faith. Our communion with God
and with one another is so small that we just do not
have the strength or the resources to live the way Jesus
taught.”
That is a profound thought. “Despite the millions of
evangelical converts the symptoms of a deep spiritual
malaise” are evident throughout the United States. And
he goes on to list some of the symptoms as the Christian
preoccupations with money, power and success. At bottom
this conformity to the world about us is due to lack of
a faith, he concludes.
“We live in one of the most self-centered cultures in
history. Our economic system is the social
rationalization of personal selfishness. Selffulfillment
and individual advancement have become our chief goals.
The leading question of the times is, 'How can I be
happy and satisfied?'”
The Indian scenario juxtaposed with the US situation
should bear great resemblance and human nature
everywhere is the same. God is still working in our land
bringing individuals to the fold of the faith in
miraculous and often strange ways. The lukewarmness of
the church notwithstanding, people in search of the
truth find Him. But they are not making the expected
impact on society.
Critics of the faithand they are many here also will
echo what a Native American said at a religious meet
organized by believers in New York: “Regardless of what
the New Testament says, most Christians are materialists
with no experience of the Spirit. Regardless of what the
New Testament says, most Christians are individualists
with no real experience of the community.”
Listen to the conversation of most middle class
Americans. A very large part of it revolves around
consumption: what to buy, what was just bought, what
products are preferred, where to eat, what to eat, the
price of the neighbour's house, what's on sale this
week, our clothes or someone else's, the best car on the
market this year, where to spend a vacation…
Material goods become substitutes for faith. These goods
function as idols. Like in the US, installment buying is
becoming popular in our country adding another dimension
to the race to keep up with the Jones's.
It is amusing when people who have more money and goods
they can not consume in a life time spent their life
worrying about not having enough. A third century Bishop
of Carthage described the rich in this way: “ Their
property held them in chains…chains which shackled their
courage and choked their faith and hampered their
judgements and throttled their soul…if they stored up
their treasure in heaven, they would not now have an
enemy and a thief within their own household…they think
of themselves as owners , whereas it is they who are
owned enslaved as they are to their own property, they
are not the masters of their money but its slaves.”
In the early days evangelists preached a gospel that was
good news to the poor, the captives and the oppressed
and linked revivalism to social change. But later in the
US, evangelicalism identified with wealth and power, the
preoccupations of the mainstream in society.
Jesus identified with the weak, the outcast, the
downtrodden. His sermons depicted wealth as a hindrance
to trust in God. Wealth distorts people's priorities ,
makes them insensitive to others, and seriously
obstructs their relationship to God. To trust fully in
God requires that not only that we break our attachment
to possessions , but also that we identify ourselves
with the poor and the afflicted in their distress.
Evangelism must recover the social meaning of sin and
salvation. Our preaching has to make us newly aware our
active and complicit involvement in what the Bible
describes as “the sin of the world.” The same preaching
has to create a new awareness of the Kingdom of God..
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This page
is updated on April 20, 2009 |
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PRAISE THE ALMIGHTY
10 YEARS CELEBRATION
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