REALITY!

Last week at a national gathering of evangelical theologians, I attended a session where a group of panelists were discussing each other’s work. Theologians, I have learnt, can get picky easily. These panelists were no different. They demonstrated their ire with choice words and snide comments, befitting evangelicals, of course! “Not altogether clear,” one said of the other. “I cannot explain to anyone else, much less myself,” how his theory works. Another declared: “Betrays a lack of methodological humility.” And: “Seeks to discredit others with pejorative language that tends to prejudice the reader.” Others’ theories are “museum-pieces.” They are all “naïve.” Ouch!

Another one, recognizing the sniping said, “It’s a war zone out there; the jihadist [I suppose he meant his fellow evangelical colleagues?] you will always have with you.” Boy, I was sure glad I wasn’t one of those panelists! We theologians not only have sensitive skins, but also acid tongues!

One of the more telling, trenchant critiques went like this: He “seems to have spent modest [an evangelically-appropriate way of saying “zero”] time teaching, preaching, and leading in the church.” His work, the critic alleged, would have been different “if he … had been a pastor or even an interim preacher for an extended period.” And later, “A stint in the church might also remind him” of the value of rubbing shoulders with reality. Out of touch!

That’s a lesson for all of us. Ivory towers benefit nothing and nobody. Many believers—evangelical theologians and seminary profs included—live in functional isolation in hermitages, monasteries, asylums, cocoons of self-interest, foxholes of seclusion, sanctuaries of privacy. Refusing to get involved with the real lives of real people in the real world. Often it is the church, itself, that is completely out of touch with reality, living in a world of its own. No recognition of where culture is, no acknowledgement of the needs of the world, no realization that time has moved on all around it. Out of touch with reality!

It is not for aught that the church is planted right smack in the middle of the world, literally, like St. Andrew’s Cathedral in Sydney, one of the strongholds of evangelicalism in Australia, in the middle of downtown. I suppose God could have taken us all straight to heaven when we became believers, trusting Christ for salvation. He could have, but He didn’t. He kept us here. In the world.

In Jesus’ prayer for His followers, He says:

“I am no longer in the world;
and yet they themselves
are in the world ….”
John 17:11

But we are not of the world.

“… they are not of the world,
even as I am not of the world.
I do not ask You
to take them out of the world ….”
John 17:14–15

But the fact remains: we are in the world. The church is in the world. And as individuals we’re to be in contact with the realities of the world. For a reason:

… so that you will prove yourselves
to be blameless and innocent,
children of God above reproach
in the midst of a crooked
and perverse generation,
among whom you appear
as lights in the world.
Philippians 2:15

Indeed, like our Lord, we, too, are to be shining lights … in the world.

“You are the light of the world.”
Matthew 5:14

Unlike that panelist out of touch with reality (as alleged), let us never forget we are in the world, entrenched in reality, in touch with one another, and with the world around us, caring, sharing, shining, loving.