What Now - Answering Fundamentalists, part 2

Sometimes we talk like the best days are in the past. The most glorious period for the Christian church was back in the days of the apostles. If only we could restore the church to its apostolic purity and power. Others focus on the Reformation. If we can just recover the theological purity and clarity of the Reformers, then everything will be all right. In some Adventist circles, it is common to pine for the church of the early Adventist pioneers. If people today were more like James and Ellen White, Joseph Bates, J. N. Andrews, Haskell and Loughboro, then we could finish the work God has given us to do and we could go home.

Listening to these laments for the better church of long ago, you can get the impression that the best theology is the oldest theology. The best music is the oldest music. The best habits for cultivating spiritual life are the oldest practices. The best moral and ethical standards are found in the oldest books. If only we could make ourselves more like those spiritual heroes of an earlier time, then all would be right. We would accomplish what God wants.

The problem with this view is that there is no golden age we can go back to.

While the Christians were still concentrated in Jerusalem and holding most of their large meetings in the temple, Ananias and Sapphira engaged in hypocritical posturing that was so bad God killed them (Acts 5).

In Acts 6 we read about problems in the church's structure. The inequities in the system got bad enough people began complaining loudly. Finally, the disciples called the church together and set up a new management system. Notice, this new management system was not prompted by prayerful strategic thinking. It was prompted by problems. By unhappiness with the present system.

In Acts 8, we read about a prominent convert trying to buy into the Apostolic power.

In Acts 9, we find out the church was not willing to accept Paul's conversion as genuine until Barnabas intervened.

In Acts 11, Peter was severely criticized because he had eaten dinner in the home of a Gentile.

In Acts 12, The church refuses to believe Rhoda when she reports that Peter has escaped from prison and is right that instant knocking at the front door.

In Acts 13, we read that John Mark who had come along on a missionary journey with Paul and Barnabas, dropped out of the trip. He couldn't handle the pressure.

In Acts 15, we read that Barnabas and Paul split up because Paul was unwilling to give John Mark a second chance.

To summarize, the apostolic church included hypocrites, complainers, critics, doubters, quitters and preachers who found it easier to preach grace than to live it.

The Reformers were, if anything, even more defective. Both Martin Luther and John Calvin approved the death penalty for Christians who disagreed with them. Both rejected Sabbath-keeping.

The early Adventist pioneers were hard-driven people who knew hardly anything of grace. They set dates for the second coming in contradiction of the explicit words of Jesus. Most of them rejected the deity of Jesus. They ate pork and squirrels and other unclean meat.

Now here is the good news. God used the apostolic church to give an explosive start to the spread of the gospel. God used the Reformers to help liberate Christianity from the tyranny of papal authority and Catholic soteriology. God used the Adventist pioneers to develop a more wholisitic theology that eventually brought to light a profound understanding of the love of God.

In each of these instances, the individuals and the church as a community had obvious flaws. And just as obviously God used them to advance his cause in the world. God has a work for us, too. Apparently, God does not need a perfect church to do his work.

Our job is not to “recover” some putative purity, integrity or orthodoxy of the past. Our goal is not to “get back” to some spiritual status achieved by our forebears. Rather, our job is to cooperate with Jesus in “doing even greater things” than he did (John 14:12). Our job is cooperate with God's mission in the world (Matthew 28:19; Acts 1:8). Our calling is to pay attention to God's plans for now.

I like to say that our proof texts are Micah 6:8 and Matthew 22:37. The value of these texts is in our acting them out. One of the positive characteristics of fundamentalism is a commitment to action, to implementation of belief. It is not enough to have an idea in your head, that idea is to be fully implemented in life. In this fundamentalists have it exactly right. We who think we have "larger" ideas ought to demonstrate those ideas in real world action. Then it will be true that the best days are now.