Mystery

“Are you travelling for work or pleasure?” The explosives check lady at the airport asked me this question. (Why do I get checked so often for explosives? Do I look suspicious? Or too ordinary to be genuine?) I was travelling to Sydney a few days ago to give an update to supporters of my work and also to visit family and friends. There is a lot of overlap between those two groups. I didn’t know which option to pick – work or pleasure – so I answered, “Both.” 

“Where are you from?”  A sweet old lady at the church I visited this morning in Sydney asked this seemingly simple question. Why was it so hard to answer? If I replied, “Melbourne,” I’d be betraying my NSW roots. If I replied, “The Blue Mountains,” I’d be stuck in the past, not acknowledging my current abode down south. If only I were overseas, I could just answer “Australia” though that is not the land of my birth nor of my ancestors beyond the past couple of generations.

“Are you healthy now?” Caring people I’ve not seen for several years ask this question, and I appreciate their concern. They want to hear the answer ‘yes’, and the answer is, more or less, ‘yes.’ But there are still ongoing annoying health issues somewhat related to the medical dramas of 2015. Nobody wants to hear about those, nor do I want to dwell on them. And they really are no big deal – they just need to be managed.

Dichotomies

In the general Australian culture with which I am most familiar, as in many other Western cultures, we like things to be black or white, right or wrong, this or that. It’s a well-documented cultural preference. I am inserting a chart below, taken from a classic text used in training on such matters. (Too bad about the page break……)

So what is the point of this blog post? It’s this: I am wondering how our Western dichotomistic cultural perspective impacts our understanding of the gospel. 

A mega mystery

Don’t worry … I’m not heading towards heresy. (Though please pull me up if you see me veering that way.) I’m an evangelical Christian though and through. Jesus’ death and resurrection is the only way we can be saved.

The gospel is mysterious. Look up the word ‘mystery’ in a concordance and you will find many references. Interestingly, the Greek word ‘μυστηρίου’ used the New Testament, pronounced ‘mustérion’, is the root of the English word ‘mystery’.  

Although super deep and wonderfully mysterious, God’s great salvation plan has actually been revealed to us. The apostle Paul put it like this: “the glorious riches of this mystery … is Christ in you, the hope of glory” (Colossians 1:27). Glorious riches … hope of glory … wow.

As Western evangelicals, I sense that we try to be black and white, cut and dried, in or out, when it comes to gospel presentations. “Pray the sinner’s prayer,” we urge. That’s good and helpful. But I wonder if Scripture portrays the process of coming to faith in such a straightforward way? Do we lose a sense of all that glory in Paul’s explanation quoted above (Colossians 1:27)?

Tricky Questions

Baptism is a public declaration of a process that has been building for a while. But as for defining the moment in which Christ’s spirit enjoins himself to ours, that is harder to determine. I can tell you when and where I prayed ‘the sinner’s prayer’, but I already had a faith that was growing and maturing as I grew and matured. And I’m so very grateful.  

There are other tricky questions related to our faith. The relationship between grace and works is one. Predestination and free choice has been debated for generations. God’s immanence (the way the divine pervades the material) and transcendence (the way the divine is distinct from creation) are both true and yet almost opposite. The reality of God’s kingdom here and now but not yet here is another tricky matter. And then there is my current theme of Mary and Martha.  Should we be contemplative like Mary or practical and busy like Martha … or, better yet, have a Mary mindset in our busy, practical lives.

Of great significance is the question of how we share the gospel to people of other cultures. How much of what I understand as ‘gospel truth’ is indeed gospel truth, and how much is coloured by my culture? Even this very question reveals my dichotomistic mindset. 

More study needed 

I don’t have any black and white answers to questions raised in this blog post. In any case, it would take a book written by an expert to address this matter adequately – not just a simple blog post of an ordinary Australian Christian woman. It’s probably already been done, actually. If you know of good resources on culture and the gospel, do send them my way.

There is room for a great deal more study on this topic. In the Old Testament, for example, how did non-Jews declare allegiance to the God of Israel? (It was a more obvious commitment for men … ouch.) In the New Testament, Jesus declared that the Kingdom of God was near, urging people to repent and believe the good news. But what, in practical terms, did it mean to ‘repent and believe’? How did his nearest and dearest declare allegiance to him? What of the thief on the cross who was promised paradise? What of early church believers? What about us? 

All I have done in this blog post is to raise questions rather than give answers … and that’s okay. In fact, it is the point of the post. The longer I live, the more I appreciate the mysteries of God.

One thing is clear

One thing is clear:  Jesus is the only way for us to be reconciled to God. There are wise and godly people I respect greatly who suggest otherwise, saying that God has revealed different aspects of himself to different cultures in different ways. Yet the Bible teaches very clearly that Jesus is the only way to God and I cannot accept otherwise.

Even when I explain the gospel in a simple way (who God is, who we are, the problem and solution), there are many matters not addressed, some of which are important to people of other cultures. There is the dimension of the spirit world, for instance – something very relevant to people from animistic backgrounds and which was central to Jesus’ ministry too. The same facts that I interpret as matters of ‘guilt’ and ‘innocence’ can also be expressed in terms of ‘shame’ and ‘honour’ or as ‘fear’ and ‘power’ without detracting from gospel truths. (Jackson Wu’s excellent book, The 3-D Gospel, explains this well.) And no doubt there is more that I’m not even aware of.

God has the big picture

It’s a little like when I’m asked, “Are you travelling for work or pleasure?”  Or asking a modern nomad of sorts, “Where are you from?”  Or the well-meaning person full of hope for a positive answer, asking “Are you all better now?”  The answers are kind of complicated. There is a backstory.

Thankfully, we serve a mysterious Lord who does have the big picture. And so I throw myself on his mercy, trusting in him for salvation. I am reassured by my Saviour’s intervention in history. In him, I have hope for eternity.

Confused?  Me too. But the one point I’m trying to make in this blog post – to myself as well as to anybody reading along – is that life isn’t black and white in the way our culture tries to force us into understanding it. And that’s okay. Our God is great and mysterious. He lives in those of us who belong to him.

Please don’t be unsettled by this blog post. Jesus is the only way for us to be reconciled to God. Not detracting from that one iota, I am thinking through matters relating to culture and the gospel. In all these uncertainties and philosophising, may we stay focused on Jesus, ‘the author and perfecter of our faith’ (Hebrews 12:2).