PART ONE
Warming Up: Why Discipleship Matters
1
THE ROLE OF THEOLOGY IN MAKING DISCIPLES
Some Important Preliminaries
Two very different films frame the concern of the present book.
The 2008 Pixar animated film Wall-E offers pointed social commentary. Like many science-fiction films, its story is set in the future, but what motivates it is a very present environmental concern.
The film depicts a traumatized earth and a future society of consumers who have so depleted the world of its resources and, in the process, created so much rubbish that it is not darkness that covers the earth but debrisâpiles and piles of it (in contrast to the robot-hero, Wall-E, who recycles). In fact, thereâs so much garbage on the earth that all of humanity has to take to space in search of a new place to live, a new world with new raw materials to consume. However, a good planet is hard to find, and old habits die hard, so, after seven hundred years of life on board their âExecutive Starliners,â where all tasks have become automated and there is no garden to keep, the humans have developed into full-time consumers who do nothing but eat and enjoy asocial media. They are too bloated even to get up off their deck chairs. One critic says that the film describes humankind as âobese, infantile consumers who spend their days immobile in hovering lounge chairs, staring at ads on computer screensâin other words, Americans.â1 Ironically, the human passengers aboard the Axiom are more robotic than Wall-E, for they passively allow themselves to be programmed by whatever program, or advertisement, they happen to be watching. They are sleeping with their eyes wide open, glued to their electronic devices. Sound familiar?
The second film, Cold Souls, is a âmetaphysical tragicomedyâ that also comes wrapped in science fiction. It appeared a year later and features Paul Giamatti as an anxious New York actor (a fictionalized version of himself) who has trouble disassociating himself from the characters he plays, a problem that takes a significant emotional toll. As he struggles with his current role, in Chekhovâs emotionally fraught play Uncle Vanya, whose protagonist is stuck in a melancholic funk, Paul decides to avail himself of a high-tech company that promises to deliver a life free of angst by extracting his soul and then putting it into deep-freeze storage. The idea is that, once divested of their souls, people can enjoy relief from all the emotional burdens and existential sorrows that afflict and weigh them down. Accordingly, he undergoes the procedure, piercing to the division of soul and body, only to discover that his soul resembles a puny chickpea. Being soulless helps neither his marriage nor his acting, however, so he returns to the company and leases a Russian poetâs soul to give more authenticity to his performance of Chekhovâs play. His acting improves, but his marriage doesnât. Eventually, Paul decides to get his own soul back, only to discover that it has been stolen by someone who thinks she can become a better actor by implanting Paulâs soul. The film depicts humans as tormented souls who move through life searching, unsuccessfully, for meaning.
These two films may not represent the state of the art in thinking about bodies and souls, but they do represent the state of contemporary social imaginings about what it is to be human and in what human flourishing consists. Elsewhere I have sounded the alarm about how the imaginations of many churchgoers are being held captive by secular pictures of human flourishing and the good life.2 It is an alarm worth sounding again, for what rules our imaginationsâthe pictures and stories that yield self-understanding and give coherence to everyday lifeâorients us to the world and directs our steps toward success. The time, energy, and money we spend during our roughly fourscore years on the worldâs stage is largely a function of the stories and images of human flourishing in which we believe and put our trust.
KINGDOM PICTURES ISRAEL LIVED BY
Consider the kings of Israel. Each of them had a certain picture of what he wanted his kingdom to be. No doubt many of these pictures were influenced by the many kingdoms that surrounded Israel. Where else would they get their pictures of âsuccessfulâ kings? Indeed, the Israelites got the very idea of having a king in the first place because everyone else seemed to be doing it. The elders of Israel approached Samuel with just this logic: âWe want a king over us. Then we will be like all the other nations, with a king to lead us and to go out before us and fight our battlesâ (1 Sam 8:19â20 NIV). Interestingly, some of Jesusâ disciples were in danger of making the same error when they thought the kingdom of heaven he came proclaiming would reinstate the kind of Davidic earthly monarchy marked by military might and political power (John 18:36). Even after his resurrection, his disciplesâ imaginations were still captive to certain stereotypes and misconceptions of the kingdom: âThey asked him, âLord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?â â (Acts 1:6). I wonder: how different are disciples today?
Back to Israelâs kings and concept of kingdom. As I was saying, the imaginations of most of the kings after David and Solomon, especially in the northern kingdom, were captive to secular pictures of what successful kingdoms were supposed to look like. The basic error of these Israelite kings was to trust in human resources (fighting men, chariots, silver, gold) instead of the word of the Lord. To place oneâs ultimate trust in anything but the Lord God is to commit idolatry, ascribing worth to the worthless (mute and impotent images made of wood and stone). What is of particular significance is how the misleading royal/social imagination led to the wrong kind of walking. This description of Jehoram is typical: âAnd he walked in the way of the kings of Israel.⌠And he did what was evil in the sight of the Lordâ (2 Kgs 8:18). Or again: âBut Jehu was not careful to walk in the law of the LORD, the God of Israel, with all his heartâ (2 Kgs 10:31). It gets worse: âHe [Ahaz] did not do what was right in the eyes of the LORD his God ⌠but he walked in the way of the kings of Israel. He even burned his son as an offering, according to the despicable practices of the nationsâ (2 Kgs 16:2â3). A false picture of kingship held them captive, though they were of course personally responsible for their idolatry.
Not all the kings were evil. Josiah, for example, discovered the words of the covenant with the LORD God, and this fueled his imagination enough to work important reforms (2 Kgs 23). In reminding Israelâs kings of Godâs word, the prophets were purveyors of what Walter Brueggemann calls a âcounter-reality,â a different way of thinking about and socially embodying power, success, and justice.3
In the end, however, it was not enough simply to listen to the word God spoke through the prophets. The hearing fell on hearts hardened by a false picture of what a successful nation looked like. What counted was what Israel did, and the kings, representing the whole nation, did not walk in the way of the LORD. In an event of poetic justice, Israel eventually got a king like the other nationsâthe king of Assyria, who captured the capital, Samaria, and took all the Israelites from the northern kingdom away. The Bible is clear about the cause-and-effect relationship: âAnd this [exile] occurred because the people of Israel had sinned against the LORD their God ⌠and had feared other gods and walked in the customs of the nationsâ (2 Kgs 17:7â8). The holy nation had defiled itself.
THE CHURCH AS HOLY NATION
The church, like Israel, is called to be a âholy nationâ (1 Pet 2:9). Peter also calls the church a âchosen raceâ and a âroyal priesthood.â The church is not only an assembly of individuals but also a social realityâbut of what kind? Church history is full of suggestions: everything from âHoly Roman Empireâ to âcounterculture.â In this book, I want to focus on the striking biblical image of the church as the corporate body of Jesus Christ, composed of many embodied persons. What body image rules how we think about the church? Many may be tempted to think of the church as only another earthly institution whose dynamics can be studied, explained, and improved on by psychologists, sociologists, or those with PhDs in institutional management.
The apostle Paul, for his part, is more interested in bodybuilding. And so, he thinks, is the Lord Jesus Christ: âHe gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christâ (Eph 4:11â12). Church leaders do this partly by building up the individuals that are its members. What disciples do with their bodies contributes to the building up of the body of Christ. Moreover, contra popular opinion, our bodies are not our own, to be used anyway we like. They are rather temples of the Holy Spirit, constructed on the basis of Jesusâ pouring out his own body for our sake: âYou are not your own, for you were bought with a priceâ (1 Cor 6:19â20). Pastors are to engage in bodybuilding to Godâs glory by awakening disciples to the reality that their bodies are members and instruments of Christâs: âSo glorify God in your bodyâ (1 Cor 6:20).
Making disciples, then, involves more than converting souls. It involves bodybuilding, that is, edifying the church. We build the church by building up the body one member at a time. However, it is not yet clear what pictures and which images we ought to have in mind to guide us in thinking of building up the body. How exactly do we glorify God in our bodies? Who can tell us what to do with our bodies?
There is probably no more damaging picture distorting our present-day lives, and our understanding of the God of the gospel, than âlove.â Love is often depicted as a desire to be fulfilled (romanticism) or as accepting people for who they are (inclusivism) or as loyalty to oneâs own people group (tribalism). The love stories produced by Hollywood suggest that fulfilling loveâs desire is an unadulterated goodâeven if it may involve adultery, if the marriage is stale and unfulfilling. Love is presented as an intrinsically good emotion, never mind the sexes, genders, and increasingly, numbers of people involved. Some believe that love must be âfreeâ of all obligations, especially the social bondage of monogamous marriage. Given this romanticized, sentimentalized, and politicized image, it should be no surprise that many view the Bibleâs portrait of God as a jealous judge to be past its sell-by date.
As weâll see in chapter 2, there are plenty of other imagesâparticularly of wellness, health, and fitnessâin secular culture. Our pictures of human flourishing are as ancient as their contemporaries. Salus was the Roman goddess of welfare, health, and prosperity. Salus is also the Latin term for âsalvation.â Should citizens of the church, a holy nation, be disciples of Salus and worship at her shrine with her other devotees? Christians today must take care not to repeat ancient Israelâs mistake, adopting idolatrous practices out of a desire to be like the other nations. The church today may not be in danger of worshiping idols made of wood and stone, but it is in danger of trusting the wrong thingsâprograms, techniques, ideologies, even theologiesâinstead of fearing the Lord, walking according to his word, and pursuing salus in Christ.
TRANSFORMING THE SOCIAL IMAGINARY âIN ACCORDANCE WITH THE SCRIPTURESâ
One of the key prophetic tasks of theology is to free the church, a holy nation, from idols. This includes false ideologies and metaphors and stories that guide and govern a peopleâs way of life. Thatâs the negative task of theology: to call out false beliefs and false practices and the false ways of imagining the world that fund them. Pastor-theologians therefore need to have at least a basic understanding not only of the Scriptures but also of the context disciples inhabit. The cultural context deeply influences the way people experience, interpret, think about, and seek to live out the gospel. To Socratesâ adage âKnow thyselfâ we must add, âKnow thy culture.â
The philosopher Charles Taylor, in his book A Secular Age, helpfully draws attention to the importance of the social imaginary for understanding our present cultural context. A social imaginary is the picture that frames our everyday beliefs and practices, in particular the âways people imagine their social existence.â4 The social imaginary is that nest of background assumptions, often implicit, that lead people to feel things as right or wrong, correct or incorrect. It is another name for the root metaphor (or root narrative) that shapes a personâs perception of the world, undergirds oneâs worldview, and funds oneâs plausibility structure.5 For example, the root metaphor of âworld as machineâ generates a very different picture than âworld as organism.â To âknow thy culture,â then, we have to become more specific: âKnow thy worldview, and the root metaphor that generates and governs it.â
Sociologist Peter Berger first called attention to how the modern and postmodern world pictures made religious traditions and the idea of the sacred seem less plausible.6 The emphasis here is on âsocialâ rather than âintellectualâ: a social imaginary is not a theoryâthe creation of intellectualsâbut a storied way of thinking. It is the taken-for-granted story of the world assumed and passed on by a societyâs characteristic language, pictures, and practices. A social imaginary is not taught in universities but by cultures, insofar as it is âcarried in images, stories, and legends.â7 People become secular not by taking classes in Secularity 101 but simply by participating in a society that no longer refers to God the way it used to. âGodâ makes only rare appearances in contemporary literature, art, and television.
Social imaginaries, then, are the metaphors and stories by which we live, the images and narratives that indirectly indoctrinate us. Yes, we have all been indoctrinated: filled with doctrine or teaching. The doctrines we hold, be they philosophical, political, or theological, feel right or wrong, plausible or implausible, based largely on how well they accord with the prevailing social imaginary or world picture. What I have called above the ânegative taskâ of theology is to critically reflect on the way in which the church embodies the prevailing social imaginaries of the day rather than the biblical imaginaryâthe true story of what the Triune God is doing in the world. Pastor-theologians do not fight against flesh and blood, but against social powers and ideological principalities.
One important way theology helps church leaders to make disciples is by better enabling them to critically examine the images and stories by which Christians live in light of the biblical images and stories by which they ought to live. Chief among these is, of course, the story of Jesus Christ, the climax of the story begun in the Old Testament concerning Adam, Abraham, and Israel.
The apostle Paul is worth imitating in this regard, for he clearly saw how the story of Jesusâ lordship differed from, and subverted, the prevailing Roman story of Caesarâs lordship, going so far a...