Are we building an enduring Christianity or not?

Communities of believers who do not do the hard work of answering the hard questions can expect their children and future generations to abandon their faith.

By Beth Snodderly

Editor’s Note: Last week, here on the RWI blog we published an introduction to Ralph Winter’s Four Seeds of Destruction. Today, Beth Snodderly begins a four-part series exploring these topics in more depth. Enjoy.

Ralph Winter often talked and wrote about why people turn away from faith. He wanted the mission world to be aware that newly reached peoples will eventually follow the pattern of post-Christian Europe if we don’t stop exporting a gospel that contains the seeds of its own destruction. He recognized that communities of believers who do not do the hard work of answering hard questions can expect their children and future generations to abandon their faith in God, as was the case in 19th and early 20th century England. Winter saw that intellectual insight into God’s Word, God’s world, and who God is, needs to accompany emotional and experiential awareness of God. Otherwise, as Winter observed, people turn away from faith once they start asking hard questions about the rampant evil in this world, thinking this is God’s will and not realizing there is a Satan behind it. And if they are unaware of what the Bible really says and means on key issues, if they perceive the Bible to have feet of clay, thinking people are unlikely to be interested in following the Jesus of the Bible.

Winter wanted mission and church practitioners to recognize that they need to lead the way in restoring God’s reputation and glory in the eyes of the on-looking world. Believers need to help potential followers of Jesus see that suffering, violence, and evil are not God’s will and are not from him. Rather, societies and all creation experience the consequences of human and angelic choices, both good and bad, and God does not overrule the free will he has granted his creatures. Winter pointed to the importance of seeing the historical big picture—that God is in an ongoing battle with a spiritual adversary, starting even before Genesis 1. Salvation is thus not just a “ticket to heaven.” Rather, God is asking humans to choose to join him in the battle to destroy the works of the devil (1 John 3:8) and demonstrate God’s will for shalom for human societies and all creation.

In my next installment, I’ll explore Ralph Winter’s thoughts on why Christianity has succeeded among rural populations all over the world but is facing increasing opposition from the educated world.

Photo Credit: vonderauvisuals/Flickr

Beth Snodderly is the RWI's Theologian in Residence and Chair of the Board.

Blessed are the Peacemakers

John Bennett/Flickr

By Beth Snodderly, D.Litt. et Phil. 

God wants his children to be known as peacemakers. Jesus is the Prince of Peace.

Greg Boyd wrote in a Sept. 2010 ReKnew blog that, “A number of scholars have argued that the whole point of the book of Revelation is to vindicate God’s sacrificial lamb-like way of overcoming evil. That is, God’s way of defeating evil by being willing to die, rather than conquer with violence, looks like it loses throughout history, but all will see that it triumphs in the end.”

One of these scholars is Sigve Tonstad, author of the book, Saving God’s Reputation. He points out that as a deceiver, “Satan wins support for his cause and programme by something other than what he truly represents. If this is the case, simple demolition of the deceiver will not suffice unless or until his true character has become manifest” (p. 129). If God were to simply demolish the devil, those who have lent their support toward the evil one by believing his lies would then continue to believe the lies about God’s character.

Erich Sauer (The King of the Earth, p. 73), writing after the violence of World War II, explained his view that Satan’s area of power had been granted to him legally before his fall. (“The whole world lies in the power of the evil one,” 1 John 5:19.) Sauer believes it is God’s plan to take back the rulership of the world from Satan in a way that is “legal” and that reflects God’s justice. This meant, according to Sauer, that God would have to take the rulership of the world back without force, through the free choices of human beings who have to decide for themselves which ruler to follow. This was obviously a big risk for God, as Gregory Boyd points out (Satan and the Problem of Evil, p. 86). By creating humans and putting them in charge of the world, God was setting up a counter Kingdom and throwing out a challenge to Satan. The serpent’s insinuation to Eve was Satan’s initially successful response to that challenge. But God struck back with a long-term plan, first mentioned in Genesis 3:15, to defeat the dark prince of this world and restore the world to what it was originally intended to be, under the rule of the Creator-King.

Satan has to wait until humans give him an opportunity to act (Trevor Ling, The Significance of Satan, p. 38). God likewise has chosen to limit himself to acting when intercessors and his obedient people pray, “let your kingdom come; let your will be done” (Matthew 6:10).

Beth Snodderly is the RWI's Theologian in Residence and Chair of the Advisory Board.

N.T. Wright and a Theology of Disease

Flickr/Jordon Cooper

By Beth Snodderly

One way to describe the overarching goal Dr. Winter had in mind for the Roberta Winter Institute (RWI) is, “To prompt the theological world to begin working on a ‘theology of disease.’” Admittedly this came to Dr. Winter’s mind as a crucial need due to his first wife’s fatal bout with cancer. Throughout those and the following years he reflected on the types of inadequate responses to disease that are prevalent in the evangelical world and concluded that this was an obstacle to the spread of the gospel among thinking people in major unreached blocs of the world’s peoples. After his wife’s death he founded the RWI to address these issues. These are some quotes from a compilation of his writings I put together several years ago:

The Roberta Winter Institute will try to upgrade our desire to bring glory to God by ending our apparently Neo-Platonist truce with Satan in the realm of all his ingenious and destructive works. Our global mission agencies, which already have to their credit the discovery of the nature of leprosy, will declare war on other sources of disease in addition to being helpfully kind to sick people and preaching resignation amidst suffering.

We need to rectify our understanding of a God who is not the author of the destructive violence in nature, including disease, and who has long sought our help in bringing His kingdom and His will on earth.          

To “destroy Satan’s works” (1 John 3:8) means to take it as part of our efforts, our mission, to glorify God to restore, with God's help, what Satan has distorted. Thus, you see the rationale for establishing the Roberta Winter Institute.

The primary focus of this new institute is public and mission awareness of the need for a new theological sensitivity for destroying the works of the devil.

Several years ago, I came across N.T. Wright’s work and noticed that in many of his writings he has come close to the perspective Dr. Winter was advocating.

Those who now belonged to Jesus’ people  … were thrust out … to fulfill Israel’s vocation on behalf of the world. (The New Testament and the People of God, p. 458)

[Messiah’s message] … compels the followers of Jesus, energized by the power of his Spirit, to go out into the world and make new creation happen, confident that as that work has already begun in Jesus’ resurrection, and will be completed when heaven and earth are united at last, so the signs of that completion can truly be brought to birth in changed lives and societies in the present time. (Judas and the Gospel of Jesus, pp. 145, 146)

The New Testament points to the ultimate future, to the promise of a world set free from evil altogether, and invites us to hold that in our minds and hearts so that we know where we’re going. We are to implement the achievement of Jesus and so to anticipate God’s eventual world. (Evil and the Justice of God, p. 104)

The Christian imagination … needs to be awakened, enlivened and pointed in the right direction. … Christians need to sense permission, from God and from one another, to exercise their imaginations in thinking ahead into God’s new world and into such fresh forms of worship and service as will model and embody aspects of it. We need to have this imagination energized, fed and nourished, so that it is lively and inventive, not sluggishly going around the small circles of a few ideas learned long ago. (Evil and the Justice of God, p. 126)

It seems to me that the Roberta Winter Institute is trying to do what Wright is calling for, attempting to awaken and enliven the Christian imagination to include this new form of service to bring glory to God. Once we acknowledge disease in the category of “evil” (rather than as “God’s will”) we can see the need to mobilize the body of Christ to seek to eradicate diseases as a means of anticipating “God’s eventual world.”

Ultimately, what Dr. Winter would have loved to see is someone like N.T. Wright publicly acknowledge efforts to eradicate disease as one of the signs of what the new creation will look like, and getting behind a scholarly movement to work toward a theology of disease.

---

Beth Snodderly is the RWI's Theologian in Residence and Chair of the Advisory Board.

Choices: The Challenge of the Evil One

By Beth Snodderly

A Story to Illustrate Ralph Winter’s "12th Frontier of Perspective: The Challenge of the Evil One." 

Flickr/Steve

Once upon a time …
Well, actually, before our time began,
God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit called for a very special meeting of the Heavenly Council. “We have decided to make a new kind of creature in our image,” the Trinity said. “And we want some of you angels to be their guardians and watch over them and help influence them to make wise choices. We are appointing Lucifer, the cherub closest to our glory, to be the ruler of the new world where these humans will live.”

A dialog between God and Lucifer might have gone like this:

God: We are taking a big risk in creating humans and putting you in charge of their world. But we think the risk is worth it because of the GREAT potential for GREAT LOVE. We want heaven’s rule to be freely chosen on earth.

Lucifer: I’m honored that you have chosen me above all the other angels, to be the ruler of these new creatures in my world. 

God: Well, you need to realize that they may not always choose to follow your leadership. They may rebel against you, or even try to harm you. We’ve already taken that risk in giving free choice to you angels.

Lucifer: Don’t worry. I won’t let them disobey. I’ll MAKE SURE that they follow my rules.

God: “The meek shall inherit the earth.” My kingdom is not ruled by force.

Lucifer: You made ME the prince and ruler of the earth. Now it is MY kingdom and I’ll do things MY way. I’ll KILL OFF anyone who doesn’t want to do what I say. In fact, I, the cherub closest to your glory, will expect my humans to worship ME.”

God (sadly): “You were the seal of perfection
          Full of wisdom and perfect in beauty.
          …You were on the holy mountain of God.
          You walked amidst the fiery stones.
          You were blameless in your ways
          From the day you were created—
          Until wickedness was found in you.”

Then there was WAR in heaven.

“Michael and his angels had to fight the dragon.” “The great dragon was hurled down—that ancient serpent called the devil, or Satan, who leads the whole world astray. He was hurled to the earth, and his angels with him.”

“How you are fallen from heaven, day star, son of the dawn; you are cast down to the earth.”

As for the earth, after Michael and his angels got done battling with Satan and his angels, the earth was a mess. It was tohu wabohu. You can read in Genesis 1 how God went about refashioning the earth to make a place where humans could live—because he still intended to create those humans.  

But you might think that now God had a problem. How was heaven’s rule going to be freely chosen on earth when the ruler of the earth had already rebelled against heaven’s rule? Now the whole world was lying in the power of the evil one. And God couldn’t just take back the rulership he had given Satan. That would be to go back on his word. That would be to deny God’s own trustworthy character.

But God had a plan.

God always finds a way to overcome evil with good.
God always knows how he will respond to every possible choice that angels or humans could make.

God planned to work through humans who would choose whom they would serve. In a way they would be voting for who their ruler should be—Satan, or God. 

In his wisdom, God knew that humans would not be able to resist the wiles of the devil without supernatural help. And they needed Someone who would show them what God’s will looks like on earth. Someone who is wise and good and loving. And Someone who would be willing to take the risk of being rejected by the very people he was trying to help. Since no one else in heaven was willing to take that risk, God himself had to make the choice to risk being betrayed and killed.

And sure enough, God the Son was the victim of violence. He was the Lamb who was slaughtered. But we are called to have faith in the God who has faith in himself. The Lamb was willing to be slain, from the foundation of the earth. Because he knew that God’s power is greater than death. He knew that death would not be able to hold onto him. And that was God’s peacemaking way of defeating the enemy. 

“And the God of peace — will soon crush Satan under YOUR feet.” Because he has brought us out of darkness into the Kingdom of his beloved Son.

Dearly beloved, If God so loved us, we ought to choose to love — one another.
We can choose to be a display window of what God’s will looks like — on earth.

Beth Snodderly is President of William Carey International University and holds the degree of Doctor of Literature and Philosophy in New Testament from the University of South Africa.

God has Given us the Means to Fight Cancer

By Beth Snodderly

HPV/LSIL On Pap Smear - Normal squamous cells on left; HPV-infected cells with mild dysplasia (LSIL) on right.

Ralph Winter’s call to the evangelical world to include fighting disease as an aspect of mission (Frontiers in Mission: page 180) echoes biblical themes that have their origin in Genesis 1:2. In this, Winter is also echoing Edwin Lewis who said in his book, The Creator and the Adversary, in 1948 (pages 149-50): "...a speaker who called upon the American people to cease believing in God because seventeen million persons now living would die of cancer would have made a much better and a much wiser use of his time had he called upon the American people to join with God in the fight against cancer [emphasis added] by the use of the very means which God is seeking to put into their hands for this purpose, because the only way in which God can use the means is through human minds and human hands. 'We are laborers together with God.'"