Thursday, March 01, 2007

I recently read this little essay by T.M Moore and thought about how important it was in teaching worldview to teach the beauty of Christianity. That is so easy to miss in our classrooms as we think about all the other content we have to get through. But it is the beauty of Christianity that draws so many people to it.

Jesus taught His followers to believe that they could change the world, that something in their lifestyle and the message they proclaimed would wield power to turn the world on its head, so to speak. Indeed, the first Christians did precisely that (Acts 17:1-9), as they challenged, sapped, and, finally, overthrew the false worldview of Roman emperor worship and brought to light the Kingdom of righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit.

How were they able to achieve such a revolution of worldviews? A second-century apology for the Christian movement, written by one Aristeides, and probably of Syrian origin, gives us some insight:

[The Christians] have the commandments of the Lord Jesus Christ himself engraven on their hearts, and these they observe. The commit neither adultery nor fornication; nor do they bear false witness, they do not deny a deposit, nor covet other men’s goods: they honour father and mother, and love their neighbours: they give right judgment; and they do not worship idols in the form of man. They do not unto other that which they would not have done unto themselves. The comfort such as wrong them, and make friends of them: they labour to do good to their enemies. They walk in all humility and kindness, and falsehood is not found among them, and they love one another. They despise not the widow, and grieve not the orphan. He that hath distributeth liberally to him that hath not. If they see a stranger, they bring him under their roof, and rejoice over him, as it were their own brother. And if there is among them a man that is poor and needy, and they have not an abundance of necessaries, they fast two or three days that they may supply the need with their necessary food. They keep Christ’s commandments faithfully, living righteous and holy lives, as the Lord commanded them, giving thanks every morning and every hour, for meat and drink and every blessing. And because they acknowledge the goodness of God towards them, lo! on account of them there flows forth the beauty that is in the world.

Did you catch that last line? “On account of them there flows forth the beauty that is in the world.” How was the Roman world – a world of gruesome and violent games, rampant sensuality, and the ugliness of slavery, exposure of children, decaying cities, and urban poverty, how was such an empire flooded with the beauty of the Lord? By the daily obedience and ordinary faithfulness of multiplied thousands of the followers of Christ.

In the divine economy influence flows from indwelling. Where the Lord is – where people are growing in His mind and character, nurturing relationships of selfless love, and serving by the humblest, everyday means – there beauty will flow to anoint and transform all that is ugly and dying with the newness of goodness, truth, and life.

Influence flows from indwelling. The more we grow in the Lord the greater will be the power for transformation that flows from us into all the relationships, roles, and responsibilities of our everyday lives. We will change the world one grain of salt, one photon of light, one gram of leaven at a time.

Back in 1974 Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn mused on what it would take for the Soviet megalith to come crashing down and his beloved mother Russia to be restored to freedom and beauty. A violent revolution? A fresh, well-oiled, potent political movement? Economic pressure from the West? What Solzhenitsyn prescribed is more like what really happened in the candlelight revolution of 1989. He wrote, in an essay entitled, “As Breathing and Consciousness Return,” that all that was needed for the restoration of mother Russia was for each faithful Russian “to take a moral step within his own power.”

Small steps, taken in concert with millions of Christ-minded brothers and sisters, quickly amount to tsunami proportions of influence.