"Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on to take hold of that which God has called me heavanward in Christ Jesus." (Phil. 3:14)
Perhaps you have heard the story of the minister who told his congregation, "I am determined to bring this church into the 1980s!"
Afterward, a deacon gently told him, "pastor, you said you will bring us into the 80s. This is 2007!"
The pastor replied, "I am taking us there one decade at a time."
Occasionally I run into Christians who equate their virtueousness to a particular century or decade (the King James Onliest who visited our church a couple of years ago comes to mind). Despite their volume and passion, my sense is that in total they are an anomaly. By historical standards, Christianity is most progressive. Although the modern church is often guilty of borrowing too much from culture, there is also a positive reverse affect we don't often see. Christianity has always influenced a forward movement- a progression. In spite of what we might think, it is not always the other way around. Jesus told Peter, "upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it...". The church has played offense ever since.
My belief is that the proper interpretation of scripture is to see it as progressive history in motion. Every book of the Bible is eschatological in nature. That is to say, it is pointing us to a future point in time. In the Genesis account, the Lord God tells the enemy, "He will crush your head and you will bruise His heal..." Thus the entire theme of the Old Testament is established, and the rest of scripture is the story of a how history moves us toward that central event when Christ deals Satan a deadly blow at the cross.
But still this is not the end of the story.
From the point of His resurrection and ascension He points the church to that time in the future when history culminates into the final victory at His coming. The text is living and active; as such it is constantly moving us through time and into every culture until the day that every nation, tongue and tribe will behold His glory.
Scripture, in other words, is dynamic in nature, it is not static, fixed in time. From the beginning we learn that God is on mission and is calling us into His redemptive work. By it's nature and it's objective, His word is obsessed with the future, pointing us to the coming day of the Lord. As one reads scripture, the cumulative affect is that his eyes are continually pointed forward.
The church therefore is called to redeem culture and move it along. Throughout history the product of a "Christianized" culture has been an openness and optimism. The City of God pulls upwardly on the city of man. Consider that Christian theology is the parent of all the sciences; that when you find the vestiges of Christianity, you will find soup kitchens, charity houses, hospitals, and orphanages. But you will also find elementary schools, universities and seminaries.
As John Calvin famously said, "all truth is God's truth."
Contrast this with other religions. When you google the words "Hindu hospital", you will get about 150 hits; "Buddhist hospital" gets about 700. When you google "Christian hospital" on the other hand, you will get about 150,000 hits. This fact is all the more remarkable when you consider the sheer poverty numbers in the populations of Hindu and Buddhist dominated countries.
Not a scientific study I know, but when many of us went to Sri Lanka a couple of years to help out with tsunami relief, there were Christian charities on every street corner- we did not see a single Hindu or Buddhist charity.
When I asked one Sri Lankan what he noticed that was different between Christians he met in the relief effort and the Buddhists he has known his whole life, his answer was, "Christian monks serve the people, Buddhist monks are served by the people."
In his book "The World is Flat", Thomas Friedman points out that Muslim societies are far behind Judeo-Christian ones not just in economics and technology, but in education and innovation. He theorizes that unlike Christianity or Judaism's view of their scripture, Islamic dogma forbids the interpretation of the Koran. It is to be memorized and quoted, but not interpreted into it's current culture. The affect of this is that Islam is fixed in the middle ages. As the world has been "flattened" by affects of the Internet and satellite television, the Muslim world is humiliated by her relative lack of power and influence.
He quotes an Egyptian playwright who wrote of the hijackers after 9-11:
"They walk around the streets of the world
looking for tall buildings to knock down,
because they know that they cannot be
as tall as the buildings."
There are some Christians who are fixated on the past. There are some who read their Bibles and look negatively at the future. I think they are reading it upside down and backward. When I read scripture I am joyful and optimistic. "Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on to take hold of that which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus."
Sometimes the most effective way to understand the necessity of a truly wholistic biblical world view, and to see the reason that it has always been and must always be pressing us on to what God has called us to, is to contrast it with what it is not.
Afterward, a deacon gently told him, "pastor, you said you will bring us into the 80s. This is 2007!"
The pastor replied, "I am taking us there one decade at a time."
Occasionally I run into Christians who equate their virtueousness to a particular century or decade (the King James Onliest who visited our church a couple of years ago comes to mind). Despite their volume and passion, my sense is that in total they are an anomaly. By historical standards, Christianity is most progressive. Although the modern church is often guilty of borrowing too much from culture, there is also a positive reverse affect we don't often see. Christianity has always influenced a forward movement- a progression. In spite of what we might think, it is not always the other way around. Jesus told Peter, "upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it...". The church has played offense ever since.
My belief is that the proper interpretation of scripture is to see it as progressive history in motion. Every book of the Bible is eschatological in nature. That is to say, it is pointing us to a future point in time. In the Genesis account, the Lord God tells the enemy, "He will crush your head and you will bruise His heal..." Thus the entire theme of the Old Testament is established, and the rest of scripture is the story of a how history moves us toward that central event when Christ deals Satan a deadly blow at the cross.
But still this is not the end of the story.
From the point of His resurrection and ascension He points the church to that time in the future when history culminates into the final victory at His coming. The text is living and active; as such it is constantly moving us through time and into every culture until the day that every nation, tongue and tribe will behold His glory.
Scripture, in other words, is dynamic in nature, it is not static, fixed in time. From the beginning we learn that God is on mission and is calling us into His redemptive work. By it's nature and it's objective, His word is obsessed with the future, pointing us to the coming day of the Lord. As one reads scripture, the cumulative affect is that his eyes are continually pointed forward.
The church therefore is called to redeem culture and move it along. Throughout history the product of a "Christianized" culture has been an openness and optimism. The City of God pulls upwardly on the city of man. Consider that Christian theology is the parent of all the sciences; that when you find the vestiges of Christianity, you will find soup kitchens, charity houses, hospitals, and orphanages. But you will also find elementary schools, universities and seminaries.
As John Calvin famously said, "all truth is God's truth."
Contrast this with other religions. When you google the words "Hindu hospital", you will get about 150 hits; "Buddhist hospital" gets about 700. When you google "Christian hospital" on the other hand, you will get about 150,000 hits. This fact is all the more remarkable when you consider the sheer poverty numbers in the populations of Hindu and Buddhist dominated countries.
Not a scientific study I know, but when many of us went to Sri Lanka a couple of years to help out with tsunami relief, there were Christian charities on every street corner- we did not see a single Hindu or Buddhist charity.
When I asked one Sri Lankan what he noticed that was different between Christians he met in the relief effort and the Buddhists he has known his whole life, his answer was, "Christian monks serve the people, Buddhist monks are served by the people."
In his book "The World is Flat", Thomas Friedman points out that Muslim societies are far behind Judeo-Christian ones not just in economics and technology, but in education and innovation. He theorizes that unlike Christianity or Judaism's view of their scripture, Islamic dogma forbids the interpretation of the Koran. It is to be memorized and quoted, but not interpreted into it's current culture. The affect of this is that Islam is fixed in the middle ages. As the world has been "flattened" by affects of the Internet and satellite television, the Muslim world is humiliated by her relative lack of power and influence.
He quotes an Egyptian playwright who wrote of the hijackers after 9-11:
"They walk around the streets of the world
looking for tall buildings to knock down,
because they know that they cannot be
as tall as the buildings."
There are some Christians who are fixated on the past. There are some who read their Bibles and look negatively at the future. I think they are reading it upside down and backward. When I read scripture I am joyful and optimistic. "Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on to take hold of that which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus."
Sometimes the most effective way to understand the necessity of a truly wholistic biblical world view, and to see the reason that it has always been and must always be pressing us on to what God has called us to, is to contrast it with what it is not.
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