The Divine Conspiracy Continued: Fulfilling God’s Kingdom on Earth. Dallas Willard

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СКАЧАТЬ This wondrous new way of being and living was now available to all people. Whosoever will may come.

      Unfortunately this lesson of open access to a new creation is still to be learned (Gal. 6:14–15). We now know that the early Christian community did not fully escape its cultural and intellectual captivity to Judaism. But in time the captor changed from Judaism to Roman and then Christian sociopolitical systems. The Jews eventually became as despised as their gentile neighbors, and the early leadership of the church struggled with cross-cultural and cross-religious integration.

      WHERE IS AMERICAN CHRISTENDOM LEADING US?

      Although much progress and some regress have been made over the past two millennia, this summary roughly brings us to the central question for leaders in our day: What role are Christianity and its leaders to play in our contemporary society?

      The Divine Conspiracy discussed the hurdles American or Western forms of Christianity struggle to overcome. Together these adaptations fall under the umbrella of a single, daunting obstacle—the calcification of the message of Jesus into a form of nominal or civil religion. This has been a recurring phenomenon in the Western world from our earliest beginnings. In the contemporary context of the United States the resistance to the growing tide of nominalism sparked attempts by Christian leaders Jonathan Edwards, George Whitefield, and John Wesley, among others, to bring back to life (revive) the religion they saw dying around them. This resulted in what we now call the Great Awakenings. In the centuries before and since, Western civilization has labored to unshackle itself from a lukewarm brand of Christian religion that values profession of belief or outward acts of piety over transformed hearts, lives, and communities.

      It is here, in the gaps and shadows of these key issues, where the gospel of Jesus must be understood, interjected into the discussion, and eventually manifested in the lives of our servant leaders, professionals, spokespersons, and pastors today. This is precisely why this work follows on the heels of The Divine Conspiracy, which addresses the problems of how and why our Christian culture may have allowed the inertia of previous generations to marginalize or obfuscate the central message and objective of Jesus. This is the key proposal that lay behind the ideas of the gospels of the left (concern primarily for the elimination of social and structural evils) and the right (concern primarily for the forgiveness of the individual’s sins).⁹

      Since the publishing of The Divine Conspiracy, another gospel has arisen that is similar in effect, but different in cause. This third gospel can be termed the gospel of the church or “churchmanship.”¹⁰ Here the local church—or more specifically those with church membership, affiliation, or commitment to religious structures and priorities—is understood as the means through which the good life, or salvation, is attained. Although there are many wonderful and beneficial aspects to local church membership and commitment in their own right, Jesus’s gospel and the testimony of the entire New Testament oppose blind devotion to any religious tradition as a substitute for unbridled confidence in God as the way of achieving the truth for life and living (John 14:6).

      The church is a marvelous and beautiful living reality that Jesus can be trusted to build and bring to perfection. Yet the gospel is not the same as the church, nor is the church identical to the kingdom of God. As has been previously stated, the local church is for discipleship, and disciples are for the world.¹¹ Thus, here we want to focus on precisely why leaders, spokespersons, and professionals who are disciples of Jesus Christ can and must enter the world, fully empowered by the Holy Spirit, to take on the responsibilities and duties of representing and pursuing the public good by holding fiduciary relationships with all they encounter. Such representatives will intentionally act as worthy ambassadors in a kingdom characterized by a just, benevolent, empowering, and endlessly loving king, with whom their allegiance ultimately lies. Therefore, such persons will be able to consistently testify and demonstrate, to all concerned, precisely how and why the best way, the clearest truth, and the fullest life are achieved by applying a Christlike model to both private and public issues.

      The critical point to grasp in this discussion of servant leadership, as seen in the historical role of Israel and the ambassadorial role of Christlike disciples manifesting God’s kingdom ethos, is the duty of modeling that our leaders are to accept and perpetuate in and through all of our societal structures. Leaders serve us best when they model the knowledge and beneficial effects that proceed from the life they first experience and then uniformly profess as worthy and honorable through word and deed to others. Israel and later the first disciples of Christ were intended to act as examples, lights, and beacons of the good news and the way of life with God. When this is done well, when individuals work together in dedicated, loving, and sacrificial service to God and his kingdom, their efforts will shine in such a way that all will see their benefits; it will be impossible to hide the effects. When leaders exemplify the reality of God’s ways, everyone in society is well served. This is the sacred calling of servant leadership in the scriptures.

      THE DIVISION OF LABOR AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF LEADERSHIP

      The history of God’s use, direction, and purpose for leaders throughout the scriptures has brought us to a point where we can now consider, more precisely, the leadership function and why leaders are so integral and have such potential for either good or ill. Neither the Judeo-Christian perspective nor the theistic viewpoint, in either contemporary or historical terms, is alone in the pursuit of leading others to the good, peaceful, and just life. One example is found in Plato’s Republic. There he records a genuine search for a reasonable cause for pursuing justice rather than injustice. What may now seem strange to the postmodern ear is Plato’s presumption that injustice is the soul’s greatest evil and justice the soul’s greatest good.¹²

      For Plato the greater good is defined as justice. This is not a theoretical statement. He holds that justice should be shown and understood simply by the consequences of its presence. In order to illuminate the reality of the goodness inherent in justice, Plato creates an illustration of the kind of social justice required of the city in order to better see the smaller reality of justice playing out in the lives of individuals.

      At the beginning of this argument, Plato highlights Socrates’s crucial statement regarding the division of labor that is necessary for life in a city. A city begins because individual life is not self-sufficient. The rural farmer or herdsman must become a jack-of-all-trades and fulfill every need individually, which is time-consuming and requires multiple skills. Conversely, in urban life a natural division of labor and services developed that provided a means by which individuals could act together to share and trade their talents for the common welfare. Socrates suggests that a flourishing life is not possible if one is forced to focus entirely on individual needs. Instead, specialization of effort allows for greater effectiveness and efficiency, since, as individuals are “freed from other work to do the one thing [they are] naturally fit for at the right time, more work gets done easier and better.”¹³

      Once cities are formed, city-states follow. We can say that the “public” is composed of the communal group of individuals who are affected by the consequences of certain actions and events to the degree that it becomes necessary and good for the potential results of those actions and events to be tended, watched over, and cared for. Since it is often the case that those who are directly impacted by these actions and events are not those in close proximity to their origin, it becomes necessary for certain individuals to be designated or elected as representatives. These persons are specifically tasked to ensure, to the best of their ability, that the “public’s” interests are preserved and protected. Here the position of a “leading official” is a natural outcome of the division of labor, and one is specifically tasked to oversee the functions that concern the general prosperity and well-being of those they represent.

      Philosophers who probed the nature of the four basic human problems mentioned earlier, who contemplated their various СКАЧАТЬ