Turning Darwinism Upside Down

 

Moore:

The kingdom of God changes the culture of the church by showing us a longer view of who’s important and who’s in charge. 

The kingdom of God turns the Darwinist narrative of the survival of the fittest upside down (Acts 17:6–7). When the church honors and cares for the vulnerable among us, we are not showing charity. We are simply recognizing the way the world really works, at least in the long run. The child with Down syndrome on the fifth row from the back in your church, he’s not a “ministry project.” He’s a future king of the universe. The immigrant woman who scrubs toilets every day on hands and knees, and can barely speak enough English to sing along with your praise choruses, she’s not a problem to be solved. She’s a future queen of the cosmos, a joint-heir with Christ. 

The most important cultural witness the church has is not to raise up Christian filmmakers and novelists and artists and business leaders and politicians, although we ought to work to disciple those in all sorts of callings, and encourage them. The most important cultural task we have is to crucify our incipient Darwinism, in which the leaders on the inside of the kingdom colony are the same as they would be on the outside, even if there were no God in the universe. The first step to cultural influence is not to contextualize to the present, but to contextualize to the future, and the future is awfully strange, even to us.

What would it mean if our leadership structures in the church weren’t as predictable as that of any other organization? What if the images in our publications and digital platforms weren’t always those who meet the same standards of physical attractiveness as the reigning culture, thus subtly reinforcing the message that the supermodels shall inherit the earth, but instead featured those the world might consider fat or ugly or awkward but who bear a mantle of spiritual maturity? What if our churches weren’t divided up by the same economic and racial and political and generational categories that would bind us together even if Jesus were not alive? What would it mean, in your church, if a minimum-wage janitor were mentoring the multimillionaire executive of the restaurant where he cleans toilets, because the janitor/mentor has the spiritual wisdom his boss/protégé needs? It would look awfully strange, but it would look no stranger than a crucified Nazarene governing the universe. The strangeness of that lived congregational reality can reshape consciences and transform us by the renewing of our minds (Rom. 12:2).