A Different Kind of Fundamentalist

James Alison—a British theologian and Catholic priest whom I may not always agree with—made an interesting comment on a podcast several years ago. 

 

I stumbled across it in the book Cross Purposes by Jonathan Rauch.

When asked to summarize in three sentences what Jesus was trying to teach us, Alison responded with three tenets:

"I think the first one would be ‘Do not be afraid.’ . . . The second one would be, ‘Imitate me.’ And the third one would be, ‘Forgive each other, because that’s how you’ll be forgiven.’ That’s it.”

That actually startled me.

First of all, if I were given the parameter of only three sentences, what would I have said?

With my evangelical/charismatic/Jesus Movement roots, my first response probably would have been, “You must be born again.” That has always seemed critical to me. However, the interviewer may have been asking more about behaviors than our status as broken humans—and it's worth noting, Jesus only used that specific phrase to a Pharisee and possible member of the Great Sanhedrin.

The reality is: Jesus only mentioned it once, while nearly ninety times he used the phrase, “Follow me.”

I don’t intend to belittle the “second birth.” I don’t know how we could avoid it while maintaining a holistic view of the scriptures. But Alison’s comments feel weighty to me, particularly, “Don’t be afraid.”

It seems as though the evangelical church in recent years often functions in a state of fear: fear of losing power, fear of diminishing influence, fear of losing religious freedoms, fear of the culture wars, fear of scarcity, and on and on.

Jesus invoked “don’t be afraid…do not fear…do not be dismayed” over a hundred times in the Gospels. And yet, that’s where the Church often seems to live.

Have we become “The Church of Fear”?

The most complete sermon from Jesus we have—one the Holy Spirit felt was critical enough to occupy three chapters of Matthew’s historical account of Jesus—focuses almost entirely on behaviors: “Here’s how you get along with me, and here’s how you get along with each other.”

Jesus ends that sermon by saying: “Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock.”

It’s the people who don’t just believe, but who do—that is, practice what Jesus said to do relationally—who apparently have an unshakable life formed by love, and unmoved by circumstances.

I’ve been following Jesus for over fifty years, and I still feel I’m regularly being brought back to the fundamentals: behaviors motivated by love, and nothing else.

It’s the famous Lombardi speech at the start of a new season to his highly qualified, rarified NFL players. In the prior season, they blew the lead in the fourth quarter of the championship game.

Lombardi held up a football and said, “Gentlemen, this is a football.” It was back to the fundamentals. Blocking. Tackling. Passing. Catching.

Do you believe the American Church is in need of practicing the fundamentals?

And perhaps it starts with, “Don’t be afraid.”

Dave Workman | The Elemental Group

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