« Vote-o-Matic | Back to main page | Vote-o-Matic II »
15.11.06
The ABC of the kingdom of God
(I'm publishing this entry a few days later due to our internet connection having been down).
In his blog, Peter Aschoff asks the question (using an interesting quotation) whether God and the church have become unnecessary for most people.
The question is whether it is really true (and can be proven) that "the people" used to be rather interested in God and that this is not the case anymore today. Obviously, fewer and fewer people attend churches (at least in Germany), but to me that doesn't mean that faith in God has lost its relevance as a whole. It is more probably the way we are communicating this faith that is not relevant to people anymore.
I think the most important step towards possible solutions is to realize that we have lost common ground with the rest of the world. I still see a lot of forced attempts to witness to people based on the flawed assumption that people just need to be told that they need a saviour and that this is enough to make them open towards the Gospel.
I experienced this today with a new member's welcome post in the openBC forum Wirtschaft und Spiritualität (Business and Spirituality): When joining a group that seriously and busily discusses all different kinds of esoterics and spirituality, you're not going to win yourself friends by saying: "Here am I, Jesus is the answer (no matter what), you just don't know (yet)".
Unfortunately, many Christians seem to be surprised by this. And they conclude that many people are not interested in spirituality or faith at all. The opposite is true! But I think people today need to be convinced both on an emotional and intellectual level. And while doing this, I cannot assume knowledge and acceptance of basic Christian axioms anymore.
Jesus had a similar problem: His (jewish) contemporaries wished for a Messiah that will free them from the oppressive Roman government. A messiah that bears the sin of the whole world (inclusive of the Romans) probably was not wished for by most. What did Jesus do? Adjusting his mission to the desires of his contemporaries was out of the question. In the same way, (luckily) we cannot change the Gospel. However, he still succeeded to explain the kingdom of God to people in a relevant language and way. Because he had a completely different idea of the plans of God, he went to spell out the basics of the kingdom of God for them. And this is our task, too.
But, before we are able to spell out the kingdom of God for others, we probably need to get up to speed again first ourselves...
Posted by crenz, 15.11.06 15:06
Trackback-Pings
TrackBack-URL zu diesem Eintrag:
http://christian.web42.com/mt/mt-tb.cgi/120
