During question time at a recent conference focusing on the Christian hope I was asked, "Am I sub-Christian to worry about my aging parents, or the possibility I might have a stroke or my fear of leaving my children behind without a father?"
It is issues such as these which dominate our thinking as we sit in the pews, but the very fact that questions are asked about this shows that we have more work to do in enabling congregations to be able to think independently about them.
A major reason for this inability to work out how to live in everyday situations comes from the way we unconsciously separate this world from the next. Many people think that Christianity is all about the world to come, with nothing to say in the here and now. Some Christians say that this world is corrupted, and so not worthy of our attention. Either way, God's revelation which we preach from our pulpits is interpreted as having nothing to contribute towards the issues which consume our thinking.
The Bible will not allow us to think that way; neither should our preaching. The little hymn in 1 Timothy 3:16 shows this. It is made up of three couplets and every couplet has a clear link between this world and the next:
He appeared in a body ... was vindicated by the Spirit,
was seen by angels ... was preached among the nations,
was believed on in the world ... was taken up in glory.
In this little ditty we have an affirmation of our current existence, but it is also clearly too small a canvas from which to understand reality as a whole. This is the argument of the following paragraph in 1 Tim 4:1-5. Rejection of this world is condemned, but the only right way to view this world is through the Word of God and from the position of a relationship with Him.
So what do we do in our preaching?
People learn in different ways. Some people understand a way of thinking by seeing lots of examples, from which they can grasp the abstract concept. For these people we need to examine the issues of life. We need to demonstrate that the way we understand and respond to them is shaped by the Bible, and especially the texts we expound week by week. Other people learn by grasping the concept, which they then apply to life situations. We will need to show how the concepts given by God apply to everyday life. For both these cases, what we are teaching is that the expansive mind of God, given in His Word sets the shape so Christians, and Christians alone can understand how to live in the here and now.
Before I finish, a word to us all and not just our preachers. The task of helping each other live in the reality of eternity, while also being here, is one for us all. Why not spend time before or after church, or whenever you gather, sharing how the reality of God's revelation has shaped the way you think and act?
