Confronting Politics with the Gospel (or, Another Boring Post for the Mission, Church, & Culture Categories)

Finished up reading “Foolishness to the Greeks” over the weekend. Definitely one I’ll be going back to once in a while to review, ponder, and chew on. Towards the end of the book, in chapter five, I was impressed by Newbigin’s concise explanation of the weaknesses of the two dominant economic systems in the world, namely socialism and capitalism. The chapter begins in the context of politics, asking the question again, “What would be involved in a genuinely missionary encounter between the gospel and our post-Enlightenment culture?”

Christians in England and other parts of Europe would obviously be ready to defend socialism, arguing that heavy taxation is needed for government to adequately provide for the poor and encourage some level of equality. Socialists are perplexed at the unfettered potential for the rich and powerful to oppress the poor in capitalism. The capitalists’ complaint is that socialism limits economic freedom. Some would even say that it discourages charitable giving and a good work ethic.

The bottom line, of course, is that the Gospel confronts the unjust extremes on both sides.

“In the quest for equality [the Marxist states] sacrifice individual freedom, as capitalist states in the name of freedom sacrifice equality. Yet neither system can survive except by modifying the rigor of its ideology. All Marxist governments have to give some place to free-market enterprise, and all capitalist governments have to use state power to limit the injustices that unrestrained free-market enterprise creates.” (p. 110, emphasis mine)

For the American church, it is the greed and abuses of power invited in by the capitalistic system that must be challenged. As someone who grew up under American capitalism and only after college began questioning the indiscriminate acquiescence to that system, what Newbigin has to say about the dark side of capitalism is both refreshing and enlightening to me.

Here are a few other things that Newbigin has to say on the issue:

“Traditional Christian ethics had attacked covetousness as a deadly sin, and Paul had equated it with idolatry: the putting of something that is not God in the place belonging to God (Col. 3:5). The eighteenth century, by a remarkable inversion, found in covetousness not only a law of nature but the engine of progress by which the purpose of nature and nature’s God was to be carried out.” (p. 109)

“The driving power of capitalism . . . is the desire of the individual to better his material condition. It is the unleashing of this power from the
restraints imposed by traditional Christian morality that has transformed static societies into the dynamic and growing society of which we are a part. . . . The capitalist system is powered by the unremitting stimulation of covetousness.” (p. 113)

Newbigin goes on to say much more about the weaknesses of the American “Religious Right,” in confusing “a particular set of political and moral judgments with the cause of Jesus Christ,” for which he was spot on, even 20 years ago when the book was written.

However, I’ll conclude with a reminder that the church has been called to announce and demonstrate the Kingdom of God in the context of earthly kingdoms that determine neither our most fundamental identity nor our purpose in life. It is within that context that we as Christ-followers must learn to critically evaluate the earthly ideologies that subversively make their way in to our hearts and minds, opposing the very things that Jesus Himself taught. Only then can the church engage in a truly missionary encounter with the world around us.

Categories: mission, church, culture