In the last blog, I talked about contextualization in a general, introductory sense, utilizing the experiences that my wife and I had at Central Detroit Christian last summer to provide a context where these concepts could be understood and illustrated. Now, I will address some of the challenges associated with holding both of the key elements of contextualization in tension (as well as the pitfalls of not holding them in this tension). As Shai Linne states in his online blog (www.lyricaltheology.blogspot.com), we are to be conservative in our message, yet liberal in its expression. If these two elements are properly held in tension, we should encounter the same type of persecution as experienced by Jesus of Nazareth and Paul of Tarsus, as they communicated these truths in the societies of their day (see Matthew 12:1-8 and Acts 17:32-34 for examples).
Amazingly, resistance to this biblical approach to what is currently called “contextualization” in missionary circles comes from the same two schools of thought as it did back then: from liberal philosophers and conservative theologians. For the sake of continuity between the last blog and this one, we’ll label these two groups “modern-day Judaizers” and “cool kids,” much like the youth who we encountered during our time teaching at Central Detroit Christian, who were more influenced by secular social philosophy (communicated through the media of their day) than by strict religious norms.
If a picture helps, think of walking between the cold, mountainous crags of conservative ideologies on one hand and the hot, swampy bog of liberal ideologies on the other, as C.S. Lewis envisioned in his book, The Pilgrim’s Regress (1943). Much of Lewis’ opposition, too, came from religious conservatives on the one hand, who opposed his fanciful storytelling, and from literary liberals on the other, who resented the threads of “modernist” Christian dogma that he wove so skillfully into the fabric of an otherwise entertaining story.
If a story helps, there is a true story that I would like to share about the experiences that God gave my wife and I one Sunday less than a month ago. Pastor Chris spoke about the role of the local church in developing and sending missionaries, when we both received sudden news from our friends after church that we would be spending the remainder of the day serving in two different mission fields.
I was asked to accompany another missionary from my local church to a meeting in the suburbs where Hebrew Israelites would be teaching their doctrine to receptive Christians, while my wife and son went to a social event in the city where missionaries from Africa, members of Central Detroit Christian, and people from the neighborhood would be present. Ironically, my event was attended exclusively by black people, while Elizabeth and Abraham were two of the only black people in a mostly white event.
This was significant because the issues bubbling to the surface in both of these mission fields were related to race, class, and socio-cultural identity. As Elizabeth and I both had opportunities to place these issues in the light of the Gospel, and as we communicated much of the healing that we had received in these areas (see Acts 10:34-35 for an example), the door was opened for genuine reconciliation and healing, both between people and towards God. However, there was a distinction between the people in each of these settings, and it reflected the picture painted earlier by C.S. Lewis’ book.
In this divide, Elizabeth, the folks from Central Detroit Christian, and the hosts of the event in the city represented those who were struggling with the tensions of contextualizing the Gospel in this socio-cultural situation, while most of the others didn’t struggle with this tension, and expressed their racial and cultural insecurity through subtle power games. Likewise, in the meeting with the Hebrew Israelites, there was a distinction between the Hebrew Israelites, who had compromised the historic Christian Gospel to fit their personal reaction to painful racial and cultural power games, and those of us who recognized these realities, but chose to hold them and the Gospel of Jesus Christ in tension.
To complicate matters, the Hebrew Israelites represented religious conservatives (who opposed my claim that a relationship with God is not based on racial heritage and rule-following), whereas the new generation of hippies that Central Detroit Christian ministers among loved the multiracial and multicultural atmosphere of the event, but were mostly resistant to Elizabeth’s words when she discussed ways that the Gospel impacted these realities.
In our experiences in both of these fields, God used the example of our son Abraham to place the Gospel in the forefront of both our conversations with people there. The opportunity that God gave my wife was in the form of a conversation with another mother, who had adopted a black son and was dealing with related racial and social realities. Elizabeth communicated to her that, just as she had experienced with Abraham, her acceptance of the biblical responsibility of motherhood led her to dive into issues that she would have rather avoided, in ways that would ultimately point her child towards an individual relationship with God.
In my conversations, I struggled with the tension of affirming the realities that books like Eldridge Cleaver’s Soul on Ice (1968) and Frank Viola and George Barna’s Pagan Christianity? (2008) accurately portray, while showing through the Gospel and (hopefully) through my life that there is another way to interpret and respond to these realities. I also talked about the second reason that we named our son “Abraham,” and how this name expresses God’s heart for his people from all nations to know him intimately.
Through Abraham, God is teaching my wife and I that there is no “holy culture” under heaven (even in parenting); there are only opportunities to receive and communicate the heart and mind of God through our redeemed but earthen vessels. It’s a constant struggle for us. How do we, for instance, communicate truth through our cultural conditioning (or hear it for that matter)? How do we express God’s eternal love in the socially constructed world in which we live? The answers aren’t easy. It’s like being between a Rock, and a hard place (Romans 9:33).
Kwasi Agbottah
