Gospel Replacements

On Monday, pastor Laura Tarro posted here about preaching one big idea. I really like what she said. There is an old image, made indelible in an essay by Isaiah Berlin called “The Hedgehog and the Fox.” The thrust of the essay was that the fox has many things on its mind while the hedgehog has but one. Gospel hedgehogs have but one big idea: the gospel. Foxes chase many ideas and replace the gospel with the latest object in their chase.

In looking at my marked copy in Berlin’s essay collection, The Proper Study of Mankind, I was surprised at the essay’s length. More than sixty pages. That’s more of a booklet than an essay. I have turned to that essay a number of times, but he gives away his secret on the opening page, and here it is–in all its glorious, endless length. But do give it a read, as it is worth reading. If you get lost in his sentence lengths, skip ahead.

For there exists a great chasm between and those, on one side, who relate everything to a single central vision, one system, less or more coherent or articulate, in terms of which they understand, think and feel–a single, universal, organizing principle in terms of which alone all that they are and say has significance–and, on the other side, those who pursue many ends, often unrelated and even contradictory, connected, if at all, only in some de facto way, for some psychological or physiological cause, related to no moral or esthetic principle. These last lead lives, perform acts and entertain ideas that are centrifugal rather than centripetal; their thought is scattered or diffused, moving on many levels, seizing upon the essence of a vast variety of experiences and objects for what they are in themselves, without, consciously or unconsciously, seeking to fit them into, or exclude them from, any one unchanging, all-embracing, sometimes self-contradictory and incomplete, at times fanatical, unitary inner vision. The first kind of intellectual and artistic personality belongs to the hedgehogs, the second to the foxes.

Berlin goes on to list names for each assignment. Dante to the hedgehogs; Shakespeare to the foxes. And so on. His essay will delve into the Russian thinkers and novelists. That’s neither here nor there for today’s essay.

Having swallowed or choked on Berlin’s impossibly long sentence, I wish to say here only that preachers ought to be hedgehogs with but one topic: the gospel. The problem is that too many preachers are foxes and their listeners will not catch the centrality of the gospel. They will be entertained by the chases the preacher goes on weekly.

What does the hedgehog’s gospel look like? Before I get there, I want to expand on the fox-chasing gospels. They are the replacement gospels, distractions that prevent the congregation from hearing and seeing the gospel. These replacement gospels are not bad in themselves; they are bad in their capacity to ignore, replace, and silence the gospel itself.

The gospel is replaced by turning the gospel into its effects, what I have on occasion called its benefits. On most of those occasions I call this “benefit-itis,” the swelling of benefits into the gospel itself. I mention four effects that, like swollen tissues around a nerve, may well cause theological sciatica. The four are justice, justification, liberation, and reconciliation. When the gospel is turned into any of these glorious effects of the gospel, the gospel seems always to disappear under the effects. Drugs are given to diminish pain, but those very drugs can become, sadly and at times tragically, an addiction. This happens when preachers become intoxicated with the effects and silence the gospel itself. Again, these benefits are gloriously true, but they are not the gospel.

The gospel can be replaced by reshaping the gospel, fox-like, into the experience of the gospel. Preachers and congregants want to experience the gospel, but personal experience is not the gospel. Some are strangely warmed, some are lifted into the heights of heaven, some find themselves in ecstatic utterances, some are mesmerized by the worship songs, and some pursue regular mystical experiences in prayer and solitude and spiritual disciplines. The charismatic experience of the gospel, which is one stereotype of this reshaping of the gospel, is not the gospel. It is the pursuit of the gospel itself that generates the most authentic of experiences, and not all of those authentic experiences are ecstatic.

The gospel can be silenced by centering gospel giftedness. Think of those for whom a Sunday or weekend platform performance is for them not only their gift but the gift that overcomes the gospel itself. They live for the performance. Don’t kid yourself. Platformed performers are good at what they do; they love it; it’s intoxicating; it can replace the gospel they are supposed to be performing. I think then of worship bands, musicians, singers, preachers, and teachers. I think of those who find status in the church community, who find a sense of belonging, where status and belonging have replaced the gospel. How do we see this? When those same persons can’t join along when others “perform” or when they can’t know the gospel itself when they are home alone. They need the platform; they need the audience; they need to perform. This replacement of the gospel by gospel giftedness has created celebrities in the church, about which Katelyn Beaty has written so well.

The gospel can be swallowed up by gospel benefactions. This one turns from giftedness, which is a spiritual gift, to one’s more natural abilities, capacities, and benefactions. Here the gospel is replaced by what one can provide, materially, resourcefully, professionally, or socially to the church. I’m thinking of successful business people who have pockets overflowing with funds, which the platformed preachers and pastors know about and need and want and curry favor with such persons in order to get those benefactions. Mark my word. Those with such capacities see themselves as donors who may think of themselves also as owners. Think, too, of those with high levels of social skills, spiritual or not, of those with intellectual abilities about theology and Bible and church history and management and business, of those who are genuine professionals who bring their professionalism onto the Board and who think their profession ought to be running the affairs of the church. Churches have business in their workings, but churches are not businesses and professional skills too often obliterate genuine spiritual discernments.

Finally, the gospel can be silenced by power. Sometimes it is the pastor or the staff that exert their power over others. They demonstrate to those who are silenced by the power that the gospel has been replaced by the power leaders have. Think, too, of encircling the inner powers with community leaders, political leaders, and business leaders who exert their skills at using power. Before long the Boards are made up of powerful people to whom their power has become invisible because it is the only way they know how to act. The gospel preached from the platform may leak through but what is conveyed is the power of the person behind the pulpit and on the platform and in the board rooms.

What is the gospel? It’s simple because Paul defined it. It is the story about Jesus first and foremost, and only secondly do the benefits/effects of the gospel come into play. My motto: christology first, soteriology follows. The gospel preachers in Acts never once reshaped the message by using the effects or benefits as the fundamental message. The story about Jesus was the gospel, and the effects of the gospel flow out of the fundamental story. So, please read the following as the gospel itself:

1 Cor 15:3 For I handed on to you as of first importance what I in turn had received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures ⁴ and that he was buried and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures ⁵ and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. ⁶ Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers and sisters at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have died. ⁷ Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. ⁸ Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me.

2 Tim 2:8 Remember Jesus Christ, raised from the dead, a descendant of David—that is my gospel.

Acts 10:34 Then Peter began to speak to them: “I truly understand that God shows no partiality, ³⁵ but in every people anyone who fears him and practices righteousness is acceptable to him. ³⁶ You know the message he sent to the people of Israel, preaching peace by Jesus Christ—he is Lord of all. ³⁷ That message spread throughout Judea, beginning in Galilee after the baptism that John announced: ³⁸ how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power; how he went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him. ³⁹ We are witnesses to all that he did both in Judea and in Jerusalem. They put him to death by hanging him on a tree, ⁴⁰ but God raised him on the third day and allowed him to appear, ⁴¹ not to all the people but to us who were chosen by God as witnesses and who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead. ⁴² He commanded us to preach to the people and to testify that he is the one ordained by God as judge of the living and the dead. ⁴³ All the prophets testify about him that everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name.”

And, to add clarity to it all, each Gospel and each passage in each of the Gospels, is the gospel itself because each passage and each Gospel tells the story about Jesus. The gospel is Jesus. Jesus is the gospel. The gospel hedgehog knows no other gospel.