Society: What is my responsibility to others?
[Work and Civic Engagement]
“But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the
praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.” –1 Peter 2:9
I. 1 Peter and Volf
a. Walk through 1 Peter 2-5. What does Peter say about our responsibility to others from a
Christian perspective in a world that is marred by the Fall?
i.
II. Love without a reason.
a. How would you interpret Mt. 5.38-42? What does it mean to “turn the other cheek?”
i. Two interpretations, usually: we’re a doormat or we are to turn the other cheek,
but not too many times.
ii. Why/How do we love people, let alone our enemies? Simple answer: without a
reason.
b. What happens to our love for another (another way of saying our responsibility to
others) when it is based on whether they are good to us or bad to us? It becomes
conditional.
i. GKC, Orthodoxy, “The Flag of this World” and the Cosmic Patriot.
1. Read section on Pimlico and Rome (GKC, 72-3)
2. Refer to how we love children and partners…
3. Unconditional love is the only way to TRULY love someone else. Any other
reality becomes self-serving and/or creates entitlement (I helped you, so
you help me….)
c. Why is it so hard to love other people? Asking a question that we assumed the answer for
above…
i. Can hurt us, take advantage of us, people are terrible sometimes, etc.
ii. Miroslav Volf, Exclusion and Embrace: Embrace looks like “the will to give ourselves
to others and ‘welcome’ them, to readjust our identities to make space for them, is prior to
any judgment about others, except that of identifying them in their humanity (imago dei).
The ‘will to embrace’ precedes any ‘truth’ about others and any construction of their
‘justice.’ This will is absolutely indiscriminate and strictly immutable; it transcends the
moral mapping of the social world into ‘good’ and ‘evil.’”1
iii.Loving others doesn’t preclude the possibility of evil, biblically is almost certainly
guarantees it….if we don’t choose to love and serve others because of that, then
our comfort and identity become idols for us that we put OVER the image of God
in others.
d. The reality of the Imago Dei allows us to protect individual dignity.
i. This is why Tinder culture is so harmful and bullying is so atrocious. It strips
people of their humanity/imago dei, and makes them feel less than human/made
in the image of God.
1
Volf, Exclusion and Embrace, 29
e. Through Scripture and a theology of vocation, we receive the idea that work exists for the
benefit of individuals and the community, while at the same time affirming God’s moral
order and the dignity of all persons through social justice.
i. In other words, part of our job as those who have the imago dei is to uphold that
image in everyone else, both in our individual lives AND our work.
ii. In other OTHER words, my responsibility to others is to uphold that unique
image of God within them by any means necessary, even at the cost of
personal sacrifice….Volf comments that this is “divine self-giving.”
III. What role does the church play in society?
a. When we take what we’ve said through this lesson about work and civic duty, then we
find that serving others in fidelity to Christ assumes a posture of leadership in the
world.
b. “World” biblically has a positive and negative meaning. World is fallen (Jas 4.4), but we
also see an optimism that the world can be renewed (Jn 3.16,12.47)...but there is a uniquely
Christian belief that this is all done through what Matthew calls the Kingdom of God.
Jesus’ reign on earth through his “upside down” kingdom.
c. Knowing there should be a moral–spiritual separation between those of faith and those
without, how ought the church as the people of God interact with society?
i. Against: opposition; i.e. Rejection of society and all it entails
ii. For: loyalty to Christ and Culture; Christ OF Culture; some call it assimilation
iii. Transforming: Culture is under the judgment and sovereignty of God; Affirms the
good and seeks transformation of the bad.
iv. Synthesis: Both Christ and Culture; God USES culture in His own ways
v. In Paradox: Law/Grace, Wrath/Mercy, Luther’s view; Christian lives between two
magnetic poles
d. Resident Aliens gives another view (Hauerwas and Willimon) in the church as activist,
conversionist, or confessing.
i. “The confessing church is not a synthesis of the other two approaches, a helpful middle
ground. Rather, it is a radical alternative. Rejecting both the individualism of the
conversionists and the secularism of the activists and the common equation of what
works with what is faithful, the confessing church finds its main political task to lie, not in
the personal transformation of individual hearts or the modification of society, but rather
in the congregation’s determination to worship Christ in all things.”2
ii. This is the type of Church that Bonhoeffer found himself in within Nazi Germany.
e. Big question of this idea: What is the goal of the church in culture: To convert souls or to
worship Christ?
i. Depending on what you say, there is a movement for that view to engage with...
2
Hauerwas, Resident Aliens, ???
