This is a very lightly-edited transcript from Philip Yancey's address at a Melbourne breakfast on 5 September. Thanks to Koorong for sharing Philip with EA. I'm going to present 4 scenarios, 4 puzzles, for you to think about, and then issue a challenge for you to take back to your churches and try to figure it out. I don't have the answer to these things; I just have the questions. The first scenario, the little puzzle I'm going to present you, comes from Jacques Ellul. Jacques EllulJacques Ellul was a brilliant French sociologist and evangelical Christian. He claimed that title. He made the observation that the societies that are most effected by the gospel eventually tend to be characterised in ways that are anti-gospel. If you go around the world and ask people, 'Name me some Christian countries', the US will be right up there. Some people would say, 'That's the most Christian country'. Surely in terms of church attendance it is right up there, along with Australia, and most of Western Europe would be characterised there, certainly by Muslims, whatever,... Well, I go around the world and I ask people, 'Ok, when I say the words 'United States', what comes to mind?' I've done this numerous times. If I was to say, 'Australia', they say, 'kangaroos, Nicole Kidman and the Sydney Olympics'. When I say, 'The US', people will say one of these three things: they'll say either, 'great wealth'-we have a good chunk of the world's gross national product-or 'great military power'-the budget of the military in the US, I read, is higher than the next 27 countries on the list combined: that includes Russia, China, Western Europe, all those countries. And they say, 'sexual decadence'-they watch the movies, they watch the TV shows that come from the US. (Neighbours-you are doing your own share here as well... I'll let you deal with that.) It is interesting, isn't it? Here is what people perceive worldwide as the most Christian country and yet it is characterised by non-Christian, anti-gospel things: wealth, power, sexual decadence: all things that Jesus would oppose vigorously. If we know the distinctions, we know that there are 'Christians' and then there are 'real Christians': there are nations with a Christian heritage, and there are those who heritage is not Christian. They look at us and say, 'Well, they have a Christian bomb'-the atomic bomb-because no Islamic country yet has that. Furthermore a lot of people think that the more 'Christian'-as they see it-you become-the more radically Christian you become, the more unappealing you are. So they look and we look at history and we think of Oliver Cromwell's England (well, there are some problems there), the Puritans in America (they were kind of control freaks), Calvin's Geneva (I don't know if I want to live under that society)... And if you read the European newspapers today, they would say the same thing about George Bush's American Right, the radical Right in America. So it's just an observation that Jacques Ellul made; that the more Christian a nation becomes, the more they tend to create characteristics that are anti-gospel. Isn't that interesting? My challenge-the challenge that I'll throw out to you as Evangelical leaders-is to penetrate the culture in such a way that the Gospel still sounds like good news. That's what the word means, and to me the challenge to us-the challenge to the church-is not to stop penetrating culture, indeed to keep penetrating culture, but to do it in such a way that does sound like good news, that has both grace and truth with the message. That's my first little puzzle for you to mull over and solve and email me if you figure out the answer. The second one is what I call the monastic cycle. I read an article once by a man who was studying the history of the Benedictine monks. He said that as he looked at them over the centuries, they went through this cycle, they came together because of their strong devotion and commitment. They took vows of chastity, poverty, obedience and they were going to come together because they are devoted, they want to serve God. And they would do it as a community-'Let's not do this alone'-they are all going to get together and change the world Benedictine monktogether. And when they got together in the community they realised, 'We have to have discipline, we have to have rules', and so the Benedictine rules, the rules of Benedict-he did these in the [6th Century] or so-are very rigorous. And any time you have strongly committed people who are living together in community, you've go to have rules. Some people like to stay up late at night, some people like to get up early in the morning, and you have to have rules,... So the Benedictines decided, 'Let's get up early in the morning', so they get up really early. Ok so you've got devoted people who form a community who then institute all this discipline and any time you have all of that happening-committed people, community, discipline-you are going to create prosperity. And sure enough the Benedictines would clear the forests and plant agriculture and make brandy, all sorts of things, and they prospered in what ever they did cause they had all these things going. And then, the article went on to say, every time they achieved that prosperity, it started to undermine everything else. And he we nt through about 4 cycles over the 1200 years history of the Benedictines where they were doing very well at prospering, and then they started to break apart and they started to divide and dissolve ultimately, and then someone would come along and remind them of their heritage and would crank it up again. Well, I started thinking about that and thought, 'Wow, that's an interesting cycle.' I've seen that in individual churches I've been involved in. There are some churches that really seem to be on the up curve. Since I've been down here I didn't get to go to church, but I've heard about Hillsong: they just bought a big plot in downtown Sydney, this church is really going places, it's prospering. And then I go to great cathedrals that were the Hillsongs of 100 years ago, and the only people I see are tourists with their cameras. Even on a Sunday morning there would be 30 grey-haired people like me and that's it. So you can see this cycle in individual churches, in denominations, and in whole nations. I worry about my own nation. Just read the story of the Old Testament: it's the monastic cycle all over again. Israel at times would have this religious fervour, they'd have a good leader, they'd follow the covenant, then after a while they started prospering and then they would marry off the king's daughter to the Pharaoh's son, and they'd start growing fat off the land and everything would fall apart. That would happen again and again, that cycle. And I worry about my own nation. We are often called the world's only superpower, and yet, brother, there are disturbing signs. A couple of weeks ago I went to Orlando, Florida. This was one of the strangest days of my life. I was filming-re-filming-a video series on The Jesus I Never Knew, and so they were looking for a place that offered sets that we could use as a backdrop for our film; and Orlando, Florida is the place where there are movie studios, so they rented some of them... and one day, the day started at 4.00am because they rented one of the streets on the Universal Studios lots. It was a street of New York... Well, we didn't want any tourists in the background so we had to get up early. They made it a night-time scene so I'm downing the coffee, trying to wake up so I can learn my lines and speak in complete sentences. There's a subway stop, a complete street of New York, you would swear you were in New York. There was a public library, the little deli, and a drycleaner. If you opened doors to a village, it was really the janitors' closet and things, but on the street,... and they paid $250 extra for these guys to come along and wet the street cause it looks good with the cameras! Then later we went to Ripley's Believe It or Not-we won't even get into that!-and we ended the day at The Holy Land Experience, a Christian theme park which re-creates the streets of Jerusalem. At 5:00am, I'm standing on a fake subway stop on a fake street of New York in front of the fake public library and then at 10.00pm I'm standing on a fake Pilate's porch in a fake Jerusalem in between 'crucifixions at 10.00am and 2:00pm'... then you go to the cafeteria and they have 'Goliath burgers'. In between we watched at the studios these overweight tourists slouching about in their shorts and t-shirts with their body piercings, grunge clothes and tattoos, and I'm looking. This is the world's only superpower and this is what we do. We go to fake New York and fake Jerusal em and we slouch around. How long is this going to last? In between we go to this school that teaches kids how to do computer animation. It's very impressive-incredible. Banks of computers, state of the art, and here are the brightest kids that you can imagine who are sitting around these computers creating these violent video games. They are not solving poverty in Africa, they are not working at the centre for disease control, they are designing video games of people killing and raping each other and things like that. It was such a bizarre day, and part of it I'm sure was getting up at 4:00am. At the end of the day, I was thinking, 'Wow, on the monastic cycle, where is the US? Where are we? How long can a culture like this hold together?' I'm not here to solve the problems of the world, I'm here to talk about the church. You see, we have our own challenge, we have a revolutionary message and because I get to travel overseas, I can go to places like Brazil, Philippines and China where indeed you can go and find that the gospel is radical, is revolutionary. You go to a place like India and Muslim countries: 'We've always done it this way; bride burning, slavery...' then the gospel comes and we don't do it any more, we set people free. We don't enslave them, we don't abuse women, we don't lock them in their houses, and you can see the effect, the revolutionary effect of the gospel. Then after a while that monastic cycle takes hold and to me the challenge of the church is to sustain the revolutionary flame of the gospel so that we don't need to keep having revivals, we can just have 'vivals'. How do we stop this cycle? Is it even possible? Janet and I started doing something in our hometown. We live in a little town of 7000 people or so spread in the mountains with 24 churches in the telephone book. And we decided, well, let's just go to all 24 of them, and so we did. We started going, and working our way through-several times we've shown up at the wrong time, because they don't change the phone book very often-but there is one question that has occurred to me in about half the churches we have gone to and that question is: 'Why would anyone get up in the morning and do this?' I mean, really, if you knew nothing about church, say you had a deep spiritual hunger and you wanted to meet God and you just chose one of these churches in the phone book and you are in Colorado and you walked into church and you think, 'Why are these people so sad? Why do they have frowns? Why would anyone do this?' It is a revolutionary thing, it's a fire, a flame, the good news... and that monastic cycle goes... And where are we? And how do we stop it? How do we keep that revolutionary flame going? How do we keep 'vivaling' instead of 'revivaling'? The third scene is from the nation of Sweden. I love going to Scandinavia because when I land there, things that bother me a lot about America just don't seem to apply. I don't find any slums, no beggars on the street asking for money. I think of honesty... When you buy something in Sweden, you don't have to count your change. Do you realise how many countries in the world where you have to count your change after you pay, but in Sweden, if you don't take your change, they'll chase you down the street, 'Oh, you forgot' and they'll give it to you. They are very clean places. They'll come and clean their streets, sidewalks and windows at night. They are very charitable, and on any list of world global causes Scandinavia is right at the top, way above my country, and way above yours too, I think. So I look at these: honesty, cleanliness, charity, good education... They all speak different languages, care for the environment, concern for the poor... These are good things, these are good qualities. These are not the first words that come to mind when I say, 'Vikings'. Do you realise that for 250 years in Europe every prayer ended with this saying: 'Lord, save us from the Vikings; Amen'? This is the same country that used to be known for raping, pillaging, burning villages and murdering and now they are known for being nice people and a great place to live. So what happened? The gospel happened in Sweden: it took some time, but gradually it penetrated and it changed the national character of the country. So they are not known for being these vicious fierce warriors, they are known for being nice people who take care of the poor and are concerned about global issues and give you the correct change. What a change, what an amazing change. I mentioned this to a group in Sweden. I've gotta say-strictly from a utilitarian viewpoint-societies that seem to work best, that are most appealing, tend to be societies that were recently Christian, so that they still have those Christian characteristics, but are not so offensive now. Western Europeans look at the US and they say, 'Well, it's got some good qualities, but it's got all these right-wingers and they are screaming and they are so divisive and they are trying to convert me. Sweden-now there's a nice place.' And I mentioned this to a group I was speaking to in Sweden, and I said, 'In a lot of ways you are living off the moral capital that was accumulated over centuries.' Why are they nice? They don't have to be nice. Well, they are nice because their parents were nice. Why were their parents nice rather than Vikings? Well, that's because the gospel had penetrated the culture. The parents maybe went to church so you knew why they were nice. The younger generations don't know why they are nice, but they have the habit, the moral counsel. Somebody raised their hand and said, 'What do you think our country will look like when we spend down that moral capital. Would people wake up, would they realise, we don't have to do this, we can pocket the change, we don t have to return it, we don't have to spend a couple per cent of our gross product helping Africa, we can keep it all for ourselves and drink more vodka, what will happen when we spend down that moral capital?' My answer was, 'What are you doing next week? I'm going to Russia...': and it was in the early 90s and things were just coming out of communism. I don't know what it's like now; I haven't been there recently. But when you go to Russia you don't think of things like honesty, cleanliness, friendliness and charity. You never do. There is rudeness in the s ubway, and the cashier growls at you instead of saying have a nice day, and it's a different place. There is no tradition of charity. For 74 years, the communists deliberately de-Christianised whatever the gospel had done to Sweden. They tried to take it out and they were quite successful. And now you go and the life expectancy for men is in the 50s and the alcoholism, suicide, AIDS rates are just soaring . Such a difference. Well, what happened? Well, Sweden is a nice place, I wouldn't mind living there, but it's also a vulnerable place because the folks may wake up one day and say, 'Well, we don't really have a reason to care for the environment, we don't really have a reason to be nice to people, we could just live for ourselves, growl instead of smiling.' That's the danger. So my challenge for you is to transform society in such a way that God's will truly will be done on earth as it is in heaven. We are asked to pray that every day, that God's will will be done on earth as it is in heaven. God's will. Why do we respond with honesty, why do we care about the environment, why do we care abut the poor. Well, I know why I care: because I believe that there is something of the image of God in every person on earth, the illiterate bum or an immoral person. And that's why Sweden used to care, and they may not have the reasons. They keep caring now but they don't have the reasons. I would like in this place-and in my own country-to have the gospel to transform in such a way that we realise that we are doing it because it's God's will being done on earth as it is in heaven. The fourth and last puzzle/scenario that I'm presenting to you comes from another French sociologist named René Girard. He was fascinating. He was French, so like most René GirardFrench people he was raised in a Catholic family, he went to church on Christmas and Easter maybe-never more-and studied history. He studied the great myths of history. One thing started to intrigue him. He wondered why it is that, in our time, if you can prove that you are marginalised in some way you are given moral stature. So, at the moment I know you are having all these cases going on at the moment with aborigines. If you prove that you are oppressed, abused and marginalised in some way then you get a leg up when you are in court. They say, 'We're sorry, we have to fix that, give you some sort of compensation'. Same thing with us, with slaves in America. And so he went through a list-now would be the people in Darfur or homosexuals, the whole gay lobby, African Americans, bikers' rights. If you can prove that you are discriminated against, marginalised, then we give you this moral stature. Because he's an historian, a sociologist, and he looks at history, he finds that he's never seen that happen before. There have always been winners and losers but the winners write the history and live the history and the losers lose. And then suddenly in the 20th century, for the first time in history, if you could prove that you are a left-handed Palestinian lesbian cyclist, you have a lot of moral stature, you are marginalised. He was fascinated by that, he's an historian. He's trying to figure it out. He went through the great myths of history: the Greek myths, Roman myths, way back long before that, even... The myths were written about heroes and victims. The heroes, they may have challenges like Ulysses etc, but they conquer, and the victims lose and nowhere he says are the victims heroes for being victims until Jesus. This secular sociologist is fascinated by it and finally he looks at the story of the cross. He goes back to the cross and he says that it's the first time that he can find any of the great myths of history, the stories, the meta-stories of history, it's the first time in which a victim became a hero by being victimised, by being crucified. Even today I walk down the street and see people wearing crosses around their neck. I see Jesus being celebrated for being a victim. And Girard eventually became a Christian and he has written some fascinating books. He says that the cross, if you look at the big picture of how God affects history, the cross set loose a stream of liberation, and it takes a long time. It took 1800 years for people to realise that the gospel had something to say abut slavery and then another 100 years for civil rights in my country. He said that the stream was set lose at the cross and its just going to keep cutting that channel and its just going to get wider and wider and wider because God is about liberating and God is about setting free. Jesus said you'll know the truth and the truth will set you free. And then Girard said 'sometimes the church is standing on the banks looking at the stream'. The church I grew up in at Atlanta Georgia during the days of the civil rights movement was not in the stream, we were on the wrong side of everything, every issue, every moral issue. But other churches did jump in the stream and in my country whenever there has been a great moral issue like slavery, civil rights, abortion, its been the church leaders who have been right at the front jumping in the stream, saying we've got to set free, we've got to make larger, not smaller. Then again, I know why I care about things like human trafficking, exploitation of children, and opposing bride-burning, the treatment of women, justice for the poor and the environment. I care because of that stream. A lot of people who are protesting in Sydney right now for those causes, if you ever pinned them down, they have a hard time telling you why. If they have a strictly evolutionist view of the world why should they care whether other species go extinct: it's 'survival of the fittest', not 'the fittest caring for the less fit'. Why should they care about these things? We've seen it throughout history. Politics: if you only care because of political concerns then you can get things-eugenics, mass murder in Russia and in Nazi Germany, Darfur, the Congo-going on right now. The gospel is the stream. There are so many great organisations around the world that started with Christian roots. They started because of that stream and they stray. I see some Salvation Army people... They are one of the few organisations that for well over 100 years have kept both their commitment to the marginalised and their Christian roots. There are so many others-like the Red Cross, YMCA, Oxfam-that started with strong Christian commitment. You know we go to the YMCA to work out and go swimming, we don't go to learn about the gospel, but the YMCA actually started to teach people about the gospel. It's hard to sustain. So my challenge to you is to join the stream of compassion and mercy and justice that was set loose at the cross and help people to see the origin of that stream. Australian Evangelical Alliance
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