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Heard this in a Tim Keller sermon. It sounds like Bruce Waltke’s version of what I call “relational polarity” in this context seeing it in the revelation of Old Testament wisdom literature: the difference between just and unjust, righteous and unrighteous”
“In the Bible the just are those who are willing to disadvantage themselves in order to advantage the community. The unjust are willing to disadvantage the community to advantage themselves.”
Tim Keller “Hope for your Work” minute 9:13
A key difference between the Age of Decay and the Age to Come are their relational polarities. CS Lewis in Mere Christianity talks about how God brings us into his very own life. It’s hard to figure out what that means but this is one way into one aspect of it. By relational polarity I mean the direction in which we face, towards which we expend ourselves, for which we live.
The relational polarity of the Age of Decay is “my life at your expense”
The relational polarity of the life of God, how he is in the Trinity towards himself and therefore expressing his glory through creation is “your life at my expense”. Jesus therefore is the ultimate revelation of God because he expends himself for the welfare of others.
The most common response I receive when I teach on a lot of Jesus’ teaching, much of which is lauded by people, teaching such as “turn the other cheek”, “love those who persecute you”, etc. is that “this is unrealistic in the REAL world” and they are right. Turning the other cheek usually means getting both cheeks smacked, but note, Jesus never said it wouldn’t. If you live the relational polarity of God in the context of the Age of Decay you will get exactly what you know the Age of Decay dishes out which is exactly what Jesus got. Jesus got a Roman cross, naked and proclaimed by the powers of Rome and Jerusalem that their proficiency of the relational polarity in the Age of Decay was unmatched in their time. Jesus, however, does not stay dead. He is vindicated by God and as proclaimed vindicates the relational polarity of God. God’s relational polarity trumps Caesar’s, Herod’s, the religious leaders of Jerusalem and our own.
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A friend sent me this link to a website that promotes what looks to be a wonderful project. http://www.girleffect.org/video. It’s worth watching.
The video has a lot of great ideas that ring true from my experience as a missionary in the developing world. Women are often the key in raising the standard of living for a community. This program certainly has it right. What disturbed me was the pitch: help a girl, save the world.
God’s concern for the poor and the powerless is crystal clear in the Old and New Testaments. The end of the age of decay announced by Jesus in Luke 4 bring hope to the hopeless, sight to the blind, release to the captives. Christians are given the privilege of bearing witness to this release and participating in it.
What I kvetch about is the portrayal that the world is saved if every girl gets to have what Paris Hilton has. Poverty is a symptom of our communal lostness but better development doesn’t equal the undoing of the age of decay.
Think about the most wealthy, the most affluent community you have intimate personal knowledge of. Has the kingdom arrived there? The affluence there may well be just as much a symptom of lostness as the poverty in the worst slum. No one preaching social transformation through community development will usually disagree with that yet the carrot they dangle and the promises they make can’t point to any community that has arrived.
In the US I think more girls graduate from college than boys. That’s great. Has the kingdom of God already arrived here?
Any world saving effort motivated by a swelled sense of our capacity to save ourselves will always result in disappointment. We should give money to educate girls (and boys) and do good community development, but turning a slum into a suburb won’t satisfy our heart’s yearning for complete transformation. The affluent commit suicide at rates far higher than the developing world’s poor.
Let’s work and share and give but let’s not fool ourselves about what we can accomplish. Let’s seek nothing less than the end of the age of decay proclaimed in word and deeds to girls.
