He Sounds (sorta) Like a Mennonite

Last weekend, when I was in Seattle visiting friend BK, I went to his church, Mars Hill. Radically different, in many respects, to the church environment I’ve grown up in, it was nevertheless a spiritually uplifting experience.

This is a large church, made up of many different types of people. Instead of retreating into (or continuing in) a sort of Christian subculture, as so many churches have, a goal of this church from its genesis was to actively engage the culture. This results in a somewhat different atmosphere than you’d find in most evangelical circles, one that embraces art and “culture”, yet one that stands uncompromising in core Christian doctrine and obedience to Scripture as they see it.

They have a periodic magazine/newsletter called Vox Pop (you can download a copy from their website–please do). A couple of articles caught my eye, one in particular that I want us to think about (if you’ve read the article in the issue of Vox Pop by now because you’ve downloaded it, that’d be good).

Now, googling “Donald Miller morality” leads to more than one review of his book, Searching For God Knows What, and also a fascinating article from the Oregonian of all newspapers. In this article he is implicitly identified with the Christian left, but don’t let that scare you (or maybe you should).

In that Oregonian article, he has pretty harsh words for Jerry Falwell, Bob Jones III, and James Dobson, casting them in a pharisaical light. In his “Morality” article (download it!), he argues that trying to declare a “war” on the evil in our culture is harmful to the Gospel and antithetical to Christ’s teachings. Jesus preached love, not war, and a morality that results from the Gospel, not morality alone.

Perhaps he articulates, in his article (download it!), why I can’t shut up about this idea of Christianity, the conservative right, and how so many Mennonites seem to buy unquestioningly anything that is presented in the form of conservative political dogma.

At the very least, it (the article–download it!) presents a strong case for a different sort of strategy than that employed by many evangelicals and implicitly applauded by many Mennonites.

Not to say that there aren’t possibly strong arguments for a Moral Majority sort of mission, but … not so much. I think Mennonites (theoretically at least) have it right: forget about politics, focus on transforming the world with the Gospel. Miller makes the point in the Oregonian article that if you’re going to “not fight back”, as was Christ’s example, you’re not going to get to the top. Christ didn’t. Him and most of his disciples died (praise God only his disciples – not Him – “ended up” dead!).

Trying to make the world moral, it just seems like misplaced effort.