In the mid-seventies, I read a fascinating book by William Stringfellow entitled An Ethic for Christians and Other Aliens in a Strange Land. The emphasis, as the title might indicate, was that real biblical faith calls real Christians to live lives that are always in some sort of tension with the world around them. To live, in fact, as aliens and strangers in a foreign land.
I’ve been privileged over the years to have developed relationships with believers from all over the world. One thing that baffles so many is the degree to which American Christians in particular, and Western Christians in general, have come become accustomed to a position of privilege in society. They may not be members of a privileged class economically, but for the most part they do live lives which are more or less free from the threat of persecution. But this privilege comes with a price. Silence. In exchange for the freedom to worship relatively unhindered, Western Christians have tacitly agreed to play by certain rules and allow certain socio-religious assumptions to go unchallenged. Faith is a private matter. At best, outside the four walls of the church building, it serves to make nice neighbors, good honest workers, and peaceful obedient citizens who pay their taxes and don’t rock the boat too much. In recent years, the faith community has seen its national influence wax and wane in relation to certain domestic policy issues, but almost always to the degree that that influence has been linked to broader political and social alliances. Power politics.
New Testament Christianity was something wholly other. Here was an emerging community that lived and functioned by a different set of rules. And the very life and understanding of that community as an outpost of God’s Kingdom in the world served as a constant prophetic countersign to the values and agendas of that world. They saw themselves differently. Their identity was as citizens of the Kingdom, living by specific Kingdom standards, and serving ONE authority. Their life on earth was as aliens, strangers in a strange land.
We’ve lost our prophetic edge in America. We’ve given it away in trade for a bowl of stew. And until we make it our priority to articulate and embrace distinctly biblical values and agendas rather than simply American values and agendas, we will never be what we are called to be as Christians in the twenty-first century. Are the god of America and the God of the bible one and the same? How safe are we in assuming that the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob is on our side? When living in the city, working in the marketplace, or standing in the public square, “what WOULD Jesus do…really?”
The prophet Amos confronted his hearers once, asking, “Do you REALLY want the day of the LORD? Do you honestly know what you’re asking for? Are you ready for what it takes when the very Presence of God actually shows up in the streets?” I think we need to take a hard look at what we so glibly claim to desire as Christians in the West. We need to regain the realization of who we truly are, and who our Lord and our God truly is. Then, as a community, maybe we can step forward and begin crying out “Where is the God of Elijah?”
