The intensity of the problems we face today render traditional approaches and solutions inadequate and counter-productive. The brutal realities of global poverty, new alignments of repressive power, economic systems which ravage the environment and crush the poor, political corruption, the escalation of violence in all its forms, the ugly spirit of racism and sexism, uniformity through technology accompanied by the loss of human freedom and dignity, and the social disintegration, boredom, and meaninglessness of affluent mass societies all point to the moral bankruptcy of traditional solutions and established leadership. The continual promises of those in power and of those who aspire to power suggesting that solutions are just around the corner have proved to be illusory and deceptive.
Traditional solutions and the various ideological strategies that put themselves forward as alternatives have not been comprehensive enough in their scope. In the most accurate sense of the word, these solutions are not radical enough; they have failed to attack the roots of our problems. Some continue to view the problems individualistically rather than seeing the cancer-like sickness that affects whole systems. Others continue to cling to the belief or hope that our problems can be solved within the assumptions and structures of present systems and fail to comprehend the need for alternative vision. Still others define everything ideologically and see solutions coming only through their gaining and manipulating political power which merely perpetuates one of the most central idolatries of the present system.
To deal with the root causes of our problems, to begin to offer more comprehensive solutions on the road to meaning-full social change, we must deal with the need for basic change in human values and relationships on both personal and corporate levels. Anything less will lead to disillusionment, futility, and conformity to present historical realities.
I have no confidence that the vision and power for new human values and relationships can be generated from the present system or from its ideological opponents. Christians have that responsibility. Social leadership in providing alternative vision and values is a Christian responsibility because the necessary breaks with the mind-set of the present system require deep and thorough-going transformation and life redirection which is at the heart of the power of Christ in the world. Fundamental change of this proportion is basic to the claim of the gospel and its outworking in the con text of a body of believers committed to Christ and to one another.
But Christians will never provide social leadership so long as they continue to live as the children of this age rather than as the children of God. The body of Christ, as described in the New Testament, is something quite different from Sunday collections of the children of this age who go to church. The local community of believers is to be Christ in the world and to embody the new order that was brought about by the entrance of Jesus Christ into history.
Their common life as the new community is intended to be an outcropping of a whole new order of things, the first fruits of a new creation, a place where men and women can begin to experience the quality of life God intends for human society. Their life together is to be nothing less than a new society growing up in the shell of the old. Theirs is a life where everything is shared fully and freely--money, possessions, time, decisions, family, work and vocation, deepest hurts and greatest fears, strongest dreams and hopes, joy and sorrow, worship, ethical and political discernment, ministry and active witness in the world, and the healing that God grants to them through their love and trust for one another. The church will not be used as an instrument of God’s healing among the nations if we are unable to be vehicles for the healing of one another in our local fellowships.
For the children of God, the ethic of individualism is ended in the New Testament understanding which sees our individuality expressed as various parts of a physical body. That powerful metaphor for the church must be revived in our congregations where even the thought of it is now so foreign. What is now emerging in many quarters is a new vision of the church, in its common shared life, in its presence in a neighborhood community, and in its witness in the world. The vision of the church as a new society is coming to be shared among many Christian communities from a wide variety of theological traditions in this country. One evidence of that spirit came at a Detroit gathering of Christian communities in the fall of 1975. The following resolution was adopted to express their common concerns and commitments:
We believe the action of the Holy Spirit in our day, while including individual conversion and personal renewal, is largely intended to bring about renewal of the church itself as an alien and charismatic society of God’s people fully involved in the secular world, and testifying to certain neglected biblical, principles as foundational to its renewed corporate life. This testimony proclaims the gospel to necessarily include a vision of the church, the Body of Christ, as an alternate society to the secular order in which it operates with prophetic force.
Resulting from a commitment to this vision, several local congregations (from a variety of theological and social origins) are discovering for themselves radically new lifestyles, new structures of corporate life and leadership, and new types of ministry that stabilize and strengthen their own internal church community while enabling it to serve the need of their surrounding neighborhoods and the needs of the world.
With these new discoveries proving themselves to be viable expressions of local church life and ministry, there is now emerging a pressing concern for the renewal of the church in its larger dimensions both denominational and ecumenical.
There is legitimacy to the charge that, for some groups of Christians, community has been an occasion for withdrawal from the world, a means of escaping the responsibilities for Christian witness and action in the world. When this happens, it is a clear sign of disobedience on the part of God’s people and an indication that they have again lost touch with their biblical identity. God’s purpose in gathering a people together into community is so that they might be the vessels and vanguard of God’s liberating and healing activity in history. Christian community must never mean withdrawal from the world but, on the contrary, is intended to be the very means of the church’s engagement with the world, the basis and source of all Christian involvement.
Similarly, the style of servanthood is neither a reason for withdrawal from conflict or an illusive desire for purity, but rather is the means that God has chosen in Christ and in the church for the liberation of the world. We are to be servants of God and not slaves to this world. Servanthood can only come from freedom. In order to be free to serve we must first knew who we are. Jesus was clear about who he was. His authentic freedom and control over his own life before God enabled him to give himself fully in serving the world. His life was freely given; it was not taken from him. While slavery is imposed, servanthood is a choice and originates in freedom. The slavery that is imposed upon the poor, the oppressed, women, blacks, and other minorities by the social and economic circumstances of their lives must never be confused with servanthood. Those who counsel the poor to passivity and resignation distort the example of Christ’s servanthood and ignore the central truth of freedom as the basis of servanthood. Christians must be those who are free before God to serve, who refuse to struggle for power for themselves, but rather struggle to empower others who have no freedom. That is the servanthood of Christ, and that is the key of social change for biblical people. The servanthood of biblical people is another mode of power which is the very power of God in the world.
This is the style of a biblical people. This is the style of those who lived as sojourners in the land, and this is the way that God has so mightily used a faithful people in history and will again in our own day.
Jim Wallis is editor-in-chief of Sojourners.
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