On faith, reason, and theology.

By Wesley Parker

I once heard a Chinese man tell me that in North America you have a saying that ‘the squeaky wheel gets the grease’ but in China we have a saying that says ‘the nail that sticks up gets hammered down.’  This second idiom is becoming more and more prevalent, even in a pluralistic society that prides itself on tolerance, and that has big implications in how we talk about our faith with others.  Many will point to Acts 17 and talk about how Paul contextualized his message to the Athenians, concluding that we also need to contextualize the Gospel to those we speak to today: and this is correct.  A problem arises however when ‘contextualizing’ the Gospel becomes changing the content to suit the audience; softening truths or even leaving out certain parts lest we offend.  The simple conclusion of this is that you are then no longer sharing the Gospel!  This results in what Matt Chandler rightly calls “inoculating people to Jesus”: they get just enough of Him to think they’re saved when in reality they have not been transformed by the Spirit of God.

We follow an exclusivist faith as Christians and the sooner we accept that the more winsome we’ll become in truly contextualizing the message of the Gospel and not just editing out the hard/embarrassing parts and calling it that.  We will most certainly get “hammered down” as we stand up and proclaim Jesus’ words, “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life, no one comes to the Father except though Me.”(Jn.14:6)[emphasis mine],  in this world that practices what D.A. Carson calls “the intolerance of tolerance”.  If you are sharing what you believe with others (and you should be as a believer in Christ) there will come that moment – even those moments – where you’ll be seen as the closed-minded, narrow, elitist who thinks they have the ‘corner on truth’ somehow.  But in those moments we dare not alter the message of the cross – which is an offence, a stumbling-block, foolishness to the darkened mind – to “fit in” or appear more inclusive.  Methods of delivering this message will vary and be as effective (or ineffective) as that style of communication is with your audience, but the message itself (as Paul clearly lays out in I Cor. 15) does not.

Think of it this way: if someone’s throat is swelling up from a bee sting and they say, ‘can’t I just take an aspirin or drink some water?  Why is an EPI pen the only way - that’s so narrow!’, it is not loving to tell them they can just take the aspirin.  Now how you get them to take that shot might vary from person to person, but the shot itself will save their life and, once given, it will do the work it is intended to do; it doesn’t need your help to work properly.  Same thing with the Gospel.