Chris Wright on faith in the marketplace
Last week, Dr. Chris Wright was in town for a couple of events, one of which was a gathering put together by the Surge Network, where he spoke on the topic, “Saints in the Marketplace: The Mission of God in the Public Arena.” Wright is the international director of Langham Partnership, an organization started by the late John Stott, which serves churches and pastors all over the world.
In his talk he began by defining “marketplace” in broad terms, suggesting that it basically means all that happens in society. It could also simply be called the public square, or, to use Old Testament language, “the gate.” His fundamental premise, which he made clear from the start, is that God is interested in what happens in the marketplace. This seems obvious, but too many Christians seem to live with a suspicion that the things we need to spend most of our time doing are things that don’t really matter to God. That belief is dead wrong.
He gave his talk in three sections, at least according to my notes. First, he spoke on why the marketplace matters to God. Second, how Christians are called to act in the marketplace. And third, the church’s dual task in relationship to it. Since it was all such wonderful stuff, I thought I’d more or less reproduce the talk here, to the best of my memory, with little commentary by me. I’ve included Scripture references (a lot of them), and when possible, great questions Wright left with us on the basis of these principles.
THE MARKETPLACE MATTERS TO GOD
1. God created work (Genesis 1, 2). The Fall corrupted it, but it’s still something God made good. We need to understand that work is not some necessary evil; rather, it’s a means of glorifying God. For the pastors and teachers among us, do we teach the importance of work the way the Bible does?
2. God audits it (Psalm 33:13-15; Amos 5:12-15, 8:4-7; Jeremiah 7:9-11; I Samuel 12:1-5). God is the auditor of the marketplace, at both a personal and a corporate level. According to Scripture, God requires justice in the public square just as much as he requires worship in the Temple (or, in our case, the church). He hears what’s said and sees what’s done in the marketplace, and he even examines the attitudes in our hearts. He is the independent scrutineer of all that happens in the marketplace. How and when do you submit to God’s audit of your daily work? How does accountability to God affect the way you work?
3. God governs it (Joseph in Genesis 50:19-20; Isaiah 19:1-15; Daniel 4). We tend to speak of the marketplace as if it is autonomous, but the truth is that events are the product of human actions, and we’re therefore responsible for what we do. But God is sovereign, and his sovereignty doesn’t stop short of the marketplace. How and where do you discern the governance of God in the marketplace? What does it mean to “seek first the kingdom and his justice” Monday through Friday?
4. God redeems it (Isaiah 65:17-25; Colossians 1:16-20; Romans 8:19-21; II Peter 3:13; Revelation 21:24-27). Our eschatology and our understanding of the story of the Bible affect how we view the marketplace. If we believe everything in the world is all going to be zapped someday, why would we care what happens in the marketplace? The truth is that God loves everything he’s made; it’s all twisted and we’re all twisted, but the Bible teaches that God will redeem creation, not obliterate it. God will create a new heaven and a new earth. All things are created by Christ, sustained by Christ, and redeemed by Christ. Because of the resurrection of Christ, all we do under the sun is not vanity! We don’t know precisely how everything will turn out, but we believe in the resurrection. How is our daily work transformed by the knowledge that it contributes to the new creation, redeemed by God?
WE’RE CALLED TO ENGAGEMENT AND DISTINCTIVENESS
1. Engagement. This can happen through serving the state (i.e., Joseph & Daniel); through prayer and “seeking the welfare of the city” - not just Jerusalem, but Babylon too (Jeremiah 29:7; I Timothy 2:1-4; Erastus in Acts 19:22; Romans 16:23); through ordinary, honest daily work - it’s instructive to look up the number of times in the New Testament Paul refers to doing good (I Thessalonians 4:11-12, 5:14; II Thessalonians 3:6-13); through encouraging fellow Christians in the true value of the marketplace.
2. Distinctiveness. We’re called to be saints who are holy, different, salt and light (Matthew 5:13-16; Daniel 6:3; I Chronicles 29:17; Genesis 18:19; Colossians 3:22-23). If Christians are to be salt and light, the assumption is that there are dull and dark places in the world, and we’re to actually change things in those places - like salt, we get rubbed into the meat; like light, we break the darkness. Whatever we do, we are to do it as unto the Lord - in other words, as if the other person is Christ himself. Worldview distinctiveness - we live by a different story (biblical narrative rather than British imperialism or the American Dream, for example). When we follow Christ, we enter the biblical story, and we’re to build that story into our lives. As we do so, it’ll challenge ourselves and others - it cuts through all peoples and cultures.
THE CHURCH’S PROPHETIC AND PASTORAL TASK
1. The prophetic task. Pastors and Christian leaders must speak out in the midst of a synchetized and idolatrous culture with a voice of evaluation and critique. It requires, at times, speaking truth to power. We can’t just bless everything society does, or bless church members who willingly go along with corruptions of God’s good design for the marketplace. The prophetic task can be costly, a rough road to travel, as all the biblical prophets knew.
2. The pastoral task. Pastors and Christian leaders must support those who work in the marketplace, meaning those who participate in all spheres of society every week. God didn’t create the church to support the clergy; rather, the pastor comes every Sunday to support the church as it then goes out into the world to be salt and light in the marketplace, knowing that their work matters to God.
As you can tell, he gave us plenty to chew on. If we were to summarize his main points, though, we could say this: The marketplace matters to God. It can go terribly wrong, but work was created by God, is audited and governed by him, and will ultimately be redeemed by him. Christians are called to engage in the marketplace with distinctiveness. And, finally, the church is to challenge distortions in the marketplace as well as to equip its members to help it flourish as it should.
If you’d like to see and hear Dr. Wright for yourself, here he is in the five-minute video speaking on the importance of confronting idols and making disciples - which in fact has everything to do with faithfulness in the marketplace (thanks to Jake Belder for sharing it).
Confronting Idols & Making Disciples from Medri Kinnon Productions on Vimeo.
What are your reactions to this basis for Christian engagement in the marketplace? How does it challenge your understanding of the relationship between faith and work?
Repaso: MLK’s “kitchen encounter”, multi-ethnic transformation, U2 paradox, evangelical powerbrokering, nuns at the Super Bowl
1. MLK’s God-with-us world
Skye Jethani, author of With: Reimagining the Way You Relate to God (which I reviewed here), on King’s “kitchen encounter” as a turning point in the Civil Rights Movement.
2. Mission on our Doorsteps
If you’re in the Chicago area, you may want to check out this event on March 16 & 17, put together by World Relief. Here’s the mission statement:
Through a movement of prayer & collaborative mission, the body of Jesus Christ in and beyond Chicagoland will emerge multi-ethnic, united and Christ-centered and become an instrument for transforming our churches and neighborhoods.
3. The U2 paradox
Eric Hynes makes an interesting argument that “never has a band been more mockable, never has a band been more successful” than U2. After analyzing every album in the U2 catalog, Hynes concludes:
The problem is how ultimately these records lack everything that makes rock roll, that makes pop crackle, that makes soul. It’s not about coolness—it’s about desire. I can’t get no, you can’t always get, I can’t quit you, I put a spell on you, I still haven’t found, please, please me, why don’t we do it, wouldn’t it be nice, I saw her standing, how could you just leave me standing, burning, desire. At its best, U2 doesn’t merely satisfy our desires, but takes us somewhere, marching into the shadows, exploring spaces within and without, risking failure and greatness, and giving us something worth confessing in the end.
4. The danger of being evangelical powerbrokers
Christianity Today’s editor-in-chief David Neff has a critical take on the meeting that took place last weekend in Texas with 150 evangelical leaders to pick a presidential candidate to support:
I believe that Christians have an urgent duty to engage the social, economic, and moral threats to a healthy society. That requires a wide variety of political action. However, one thing it doesn't call for is playing kingmaker and powerbroker. By conspiring to throw their weight behind a single evangelical-friendly candidate, they fed the widespread perception that evangelicalism's main identifying feature is right-wing political activism focused on abortion and homosexuality. In truth, it is hard to imagine the Religious Left in 2008 doing something similar: holding a conclave to decide whether they would throw their collective weight behind either Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama, unwilling to leave the Democratic primary results to the voters.
5. Nuns fighting trafficking at the Super Bowl
With the Super Bowl coming up in Indianapolis on February 5, a group of nuns is working hard to fight human trafficking and prostitution, which generally happens during large sporting events like this.
"The hotels are going to be busy and we want them to be able to do what they have to do," Sister Ann Oestreich told the Catholic News Service. "The Super Bowl is a celebration, but we don't want exploitation to be part of it."
Repaso is intended as a thought-provoking compilation of news and commentary from the past week related to the intersections of faith, development, justice and peace. As always, I welcome your thoughts on any of the links and ideas in this roundup!
“He Shines in All That’s Fair”
I read it way back in November and it made the cut as one of my favorite books of the year, but until now I haven’t blogged about Richard Mouw’s He Shines in All That’s Fair: Culture and Common Grace (Eerdmans). Honestly, I just had to let it sit for a while, to settle.
It came highly recommended by someone in the know as a good introduction to common grace theology, a theme I decided I’d do well to actually study a bit, rather than just carrying around in my head various muddled thoughts about what I took it to mean. It’s a small, 101-page book, and as an introduction to such an enormous topic, it’s a delight to read, and it really packs a punch.
Mouw sets the stage by describing two distinct Christian camps: those who tend to emphasize what Christians and non-Christians have in common, and those who tend to emphasize all the differences. It’s right to acknowledge the legitimacy of both commonness and difference, he says. This book has more to do with the latter, but with an important condition: “Our search for the grounds of commonness must be motivated by a faith that cuts against the grain of much of contemporary life and thought.”
To suggest, as common grace theologians do, that God is up to more in the world than just saving souls, may be controversial in some circles. But I agree with Mouw that according to the Bible, God's redemptive purposes are cosmic in scope. Still, Mouw acknowledges that there’s mystery involved, especially when it comes down to the specifics. “Properly understood,” he writes, “common grace theology is an attempt to preserve an area of mystery regarding God’s dealings with humankind.”
While most of us would find it reasonable to affirm that God delights in the beauty of his creation – “glowing sunsets and ocean waves breaking on a rocky coastline and a cherry tree in bloom and the speed of a leopard on the chase” – could it also be true that God “takes a positive interest in how unbelievers use God-given talents to produce works of beauty and goodness” or that he takes an active role in restraining sin and evil, even among those who have not accepted him as Lord? Mouw writes:
The underlying view I am endorsing here posits multiple divine purposes in the world. To state it plainly: I am insisting that as God unfolds his plan for his creation, he is interested in more than one thing. Alongside of God’s clear concern about the eternal destiny of individuals are his designs for the larger creation...
It is important for us in these difficult days to cultivate... modesty and humility in our efforts at cultural faithfulness. But we cannot give up on the important task – which the theologians of common grace have correctly urged upon us – of actively working to discern God’s complex designs in the midst of our deeply wounded world.
Learning discernment, as we all know, is messy business, but it’s essential not just in common grace theology but in all of life. Thankfully, we’re not left to figure it out on our own: we’re given the Holy Spirit and we’re given a local church, “that community where the Spirit is openly at work, regenerating sinners and sanctifying their inner selves.”
There’s so much more I could say about this little book and this very big theme, but I’ll leave it at that for now. I'll revisit common grace theology again before too long, and Richard Mouw too, for that matter.
How do you understand the doctrine of common grace? Do you agree with Mouw’s assertion that God has “multiple divine purposes in the world”? If so, how does that impact how we live?
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