What's your Metaphor?

The world is so full of a number of things, I think we should all be as happy as kings

His name is actually Stuart Murray Williams but he uses his second name as his surname when he writes books like The Naked Anabaptist, Post-Christendom:Church and Mission in a Strange New World. He spoke at the Canadian Mennonite banquet in Rosthern Saturday night and with others, I was all ears as he talked about the consequences of Christianity moving from a majority to a minority standing in this age we’ve come to call post-Christendom.  

      His thesis centered around minority behaviour and the hope that we would not become belligerent, withdrawn or resigned as communities of faith, but that we would rather work at being creative, hopeful, prophetic, thoughtful risk-takers in a world that needs to be blessed by the radical Jesus-way option (my summary, not his).

      I was impressed with his analysis although—and he admitted this—his work speaks about the Europe experience, not Canada’s. A friend said to me after the speech that he couldn’t identify easily with the concept of his congregation finding itself to be a community minority and I had to agree. That the gospel is marginal to public consciousness these days can be easily demonstrated, but to be called a minority implies that we’re a group that finds itself over-against a majority—like the Hutterites or Canadian Sikhs, only not Hutterites or Canadian Sikhs. It also raises the question of whether particular Christian denominations are part of this minority, or have become back-slidden parts of the great unwashed. I think denominations exist that would lump other Christian denominations that way.

      In other words, choseness or a separate people concepts have always been problematic for me. Not that seeing oneself as a disciple of Christ doesn’t have the effect of setting one apart from mainstream thought and action, but that it handily provides a reason for a judgment that, by some Biblical standards, is only God’s to make. A who’s in-who’s out syndrome, if you will. I could be shown to be in error here, but I see Jesus—in his consorting with sinners and tax collectors—to be demonstrating that Christian enclaves are places into which we ought not settle. It’s too dangerous to the mission of being salt and light in the world, too much like drawing the blinds so that our light doesn’t leak out, theirs doesn’t leak in.

      Us and them.

      I prefer another metaphor for being Christian in the world. Imagine this: humanity is riding toward a calm harbour across a stormy sea. As ambassadors of Christ, we are crew members guiding the ship, serving its passengers, comforting them when the wind and waves threaten, describing for them the joys of the harbour and providing the hopeful image so badly needed. This metaphor has weaknesses, for sure, and those who decry the idea of universal salvation will no doubt jump on one of them.

      All metaphors have weaknesses when we place too large a burden on them, but majority/minority is also a kind of comparison, not necessarily an objective description. I fear that if we think of ourselves in that way, that is exactly what we’ll become.

      What’s your metaphor?