A Reductionist Gospel

Some random thoughts on the reductionist gospel...

The reductionist gospel is when we reduce the full measure of God's good news in Jesus Christ to good news ONLY as personal salvation, going to heaven, getting the bus ticket to glory land punched.

Our emergent friends have rightly critiqued this notion of evangelical thought as minimizing the full Gospel of Christ. They rightly contend that the Gospel also is about societal transformation, the defeat of unjust systems in the world, humanity living out its full potential as God intends and a host of other things. To reduce the good news, Jesus' life death and resurrection, to simply "getting to heaven" is to a disservice to all that Christ came to do. To believe that Jesus only came to be a religious exchanger of goods (namely- just to give you and me salvation) is about as wildly narcissistic as Twitter. ((or blogging!))

While this critique holds merit the key word above in the first paragraph is ONLY. Make no mistake that Jesus did come so that we might receive personal salvation and be made right with God. But that was not his ONLY reason for coming. He came to redeem the world including communities, creation, and unjust religious and political systems. The problem with many of those in the emergent camp is that they while they claim to be post-liberal and post everything else they have come in many ways to be a modern day repository of liberal theological interpretation. It is the same old thing with a new face. As much as evangelical thought has reduced the Gospel in the last thirty years to ONLY personal salvation those in the liberal/ emergent camp have reduced the Gospel to good deeds aligning with the policies and politics of the United Nations and the Democrat Party in the US.

This is the same old argument of do we save souls or save the world. I say avoid the tyranny of the "either/ or" and embrace the blessing of the "both/ and" (thanks Jim Collins). We do both as the church. That to me is the genius of Wesleyan thought- holiness of heart and life, personal holiness and social holiness. Wesley's thought continues to be relevant today.