Some Questions about Unity and Evangelism

I've been reading through Ephesians in my quiet times this past week. It's an incredible book for anyone who loves the Church (with a capital 'C': not just the building down the road, but the incredibly huge family of God's people all over the world). And if you don't love the Church, it'll tell you why you should! What makes it even better is that one of the big themes is Christian unity, and if you know me, you'll know that unity is something I've got a huge soft spot for.

Back in the day when the Holy Spirit inspired Paul to write the book, one of the big fault lines in the Church was between Jews and Gentiles. Read Ephesians 2:14-18 to show what Jesus did to bring these two groups together:

"For Christ himself has brought peace to us. He united Jews and Gentiles into one people when, in his own body on the cross, he broke down the wall of hostility that separated us. He did this by ending the system of law with its commandments and regulations. He made peace between Jews and Gentiles by creating in himself one new people from the two groups. Together as one body, Christ reconciled both groups to God by means of his death on the cross, and our hostility toward each other was put to death." (NLT)

Jesus smashed the walls that separated these two types of believers, so that we could be one people from the two groups. But as I was reading this, question number one popped into my head:

If Jesus broke down walls between his people, why are we constantly rebuilding them? Why do we separate ourselves from other believers based on race, class, denomination, doctrinal position, worship style, you name it?

Then this morning I read Ephesians 4:1-16. This is one of the most incredible passages on unity there is, and I have to study it a whole lot more. For instance, many of us know this part:

"For there is one body and one Spirit, just as you have been called to one glorious hope for the future. There is one Lord, one faith, one baptism, and one God and Father, who is over all and in all and living through all." (Ephesians 4:4-6, NLT)

It's heady stuff. We share the same body, the same Holy Spirit is in us, we have the same hope, the same Lord, the same faith, the same baptism, the same God and Father, yet we manage to split off from each other at every opportunity. And it gets better. God helped me see these verses in a whole new light today:

"Now these are the gifts Christ gave to the church: the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, and the pastors and teachers. Their responsibility is to equip God’s people to do his work and build up the church, the body of Christ. This will continue until we all come to such unity in our faith and knowledge of God’s Son that we will be mature in the Lord, measuring up to the full and complete standard of Christ." (Ephesians 4:11-13, NLT)

I'm no expert on the gifts of the Spirit, but what I do know is that we usually talk about them in the context of one particular congregation. We have apostles and prophets and evangelists and pastors and teachers who can work together as a radical team to build up what? Our local congregation, right? Wrong! They're there for the complete body of Christ, the whole body that Paul was talking about just a few verses earlier! This leads me to question number two:

Why do so many of our gifted Church leaders often think of themselves as 'church leaders', with their role stopping at only one congregation or denomination? And why do so few seem to be leading us to greater unity, as the Scriptures say will be one of the major consequences of our maturing in the faith?

Then to change tack quite dramatically, some things I've observed have left me with a couple of questions about evangelism. I've been trying hard to talk about Christ to a dear friend of mine, and praying for the Spirit to give me words every step of the way (although, admittedly, many times I fail to listen).

Now over the years, I've noticed two schools of thought about what to tell people about Christ: one is the "Do you know what's going to happen when you die?" approach, and the other is the "Your life will be better with Jesus" approach.

The "Do you know what's going to happen when you die?" approach has much to recommend it: after all, isn't the biggest benefit of our salvation the assurance that we will go to heaven one day when we die? Or is it? Whatever the case may be, this approach is completely lost on my friend. He usually doesn't even think about what will happen tomorrow. Trying to think about what happens after death is just way out for him. And even if it did work, would I just be selling him 'fire insurance', leading him to Christ out of fear, rather than showing him to respond to Christ's love?

On the other hand, the "Your life will be better with Jesus" approach isn't always true. In fact, in many parts of the world where persecution happens, your life is guaranteed to become materially worse once you make Christ your Lord. Last night I read a tragic example of how this approach can go wrong.

An article called The Power of Speech tells the story of Daniel Everett, who came to a missionary to the tiny Pirahã tribe in the Amazon basin in the 1970s. Everett learned the tribe's language and wrote a paper about it in which he challenged Noam Chomsky's theories about linguistic universals. As a linguist, I know that's an incredible achievement. However, in spending time with the tribe, Everett also lost his faith. This was the reasoning he gave:

"What should the empirical evidence for religion be? It should produce peaceful, strong, secure people who are right with God and right with the world. I don't see that evidence very often. So then I find myself with the Pirahã. They have all these qualities that I am trying to tell them they could have. They are the ones who are living life the way I'm saying it ought to be lived, they just don't fear heaven and hell."

Obviously I don't know enough about the man to make anything like an accurate diagnosis of what went wrong with his faith, but to me, it sounds like he is suggesting that the proof for Christianity should be well-adjusted Christians here in this world. Now of course, when we walk with God we start to show the fruits of the Spirit, which include peace and build our strength. But if I think of Christ, if I think of the apostles and other heroes of the faith, I don't think of people who were "right with the world". In fact, the very opposite. These were people who had thrown the world away, who battled with it and with their own human inclinations day and night. Without heaven to set their eyes on, they'd be the most miserable people on earth (1 Corinthians 15:19). Maybe being a Christian is not about living a good life, however one may define it; it's about knowing and loving a good God.

So where does that leave us as witnesses? Which approach do we take: the "Do you know what's going to happen when you die?" approach, or the "Your life will be better with Jesus" approach? Or neither? I think the answer might just lie in what I said in the last sentence above. Maybe Christianity's best selling point is not having a great time here on earth or anywhere else. Maybe it's a relationship with the One who loves us most.

That leaves me with one more question:
How do we, as witnesses, sell a relationship with God?