Man, the Community Dweller
by Dennis Peacocke
For far too many Christians, the question of how God wants man to live together in "just" communities and nations is of very little import. I personally know numbers of wonderful, godly people who take the line of "reasoning" that, because the New Testament does not take a great deal of time to explicitly deal with the "political issues," God is not that interested in man, the community-dweller, or in questions of justice and peace on earth until Jesus Himself returns to set up His eternal reign. Christians, therefore, should give themselves to the local congregation, holy living, and evangelism; the rest of their surrounding community or national affairs are of very little concern. Put another way, they would say Christians shouldn't be engaging in the conversation of their nation, in terms of the issues about which the "earth people" are talking. Why do we think that the earth people should stop talking about what interests them and only talk about what interests Christians?
This line of reasoning, of course, raises a number of very interesting questions. Among them are: 1) Does the Scripture address God's will for man's social order outside of the church, and does God really care about the 'justice issues"? 2) Is our future in heaven a non-society where individuals freely roam (fly) about and do nothing but sing and talk about their personal feelings, even to God, with no sense of the interrelationships that make up a true community? 3) What if Jesus doesn't return for another two or three hundred years, and if so, will fallen man create a living hell for everyone that remains? 4) Will Christians be scrambling too late to inject massive amounts of salt and light into the culture to try and preserve it and make it at least tolerable for the children, the old, and the weak? These and many other vital questions arise which tend to raise serious concerns about the love, care, and sincerity of Christians and their God. Obviously, these questions are some of what fuels deep cynicism and resentment against the Church and "conservative Christians."
To those of us who see a very different picture of Christ, who see the continuity and relationship between the social structuring of the Old Testament and the specific pattern for building the Church in the New Testament, these are the kinds of issues and questions about which we specifically want to talk. We not only want to talk with believers who profess these kinds of views, but with non-Christians. To us, they are the questions that are especially relevant in a collapsing, relativistic society with a Church all around us that either doesn't care or doesn't know what the Scripture really says about these things. God created man as both an individual, whose life is vital to Him, and as a community dweller, whose interrelationship between his brothers and sisters is equally precious to His concerns. That is the big picture of Scripture's content and message.
In writing this article, I appreciate that our "Bottom Line" readers care about such issues; believers like these are moving beyond self-centeredness and are rapidly multiplying around the globe. There is hope for man the individual and man the community-dweller. God cares vitally about both, and we're in the game to carry His passion to both dimensions, and that is...
the bottom line.
