The Whole Gospel...

I've realised that my thinking about the Kingdom has taken a dangerous turn recently...

Having grown up in a church-system that (if I'm honest) was about as toothless as the Stones' bearded hag... I find the image of a revolutionary social justice type Kingdom movement very exciting... I'm not quite up there toting a machine gun in his name in the way that some liberation theologians would suggest, but my feeling about how broken the world is and how much it needs fixing by a just God gets me pretty close...

Which is why I've been excited about the way that new visions of Jesus portray him as a political leader, heralding a political (as well as spiritual) revolution; a revolution in which turning the other cheek is a way of shaming the opposition rather than just taking the blows... and in which the Kingdom is not just 'pie in the sky when you die' but a reality that shakes the foundations of the world as we know it...

Now, I know that the emphasis on the political is, in some measure, probably a response to the limpness of a spiritual-only gospel... but it's one that certainly appeals, particularly as I already have a particular sensitivity to issues of inequality and injustice...

On New Year's day, however, I realised that there's a danger in too easily adopting a social gospel... 

Let me illustrate with a little story...

On New Year's day... we went to the beach... Caswell Bay to be precise, on the Gower... The Wife, Moo and me and the Wife's very pregnant sister (so much so, in fact, that she was in the delivery suite only a few hours later) and her husband.

Leaving the car park at Caswell, you get to the beach down some steps past a weather-beaten little shop that sells everything that makes the British seaside special... buckets and spades, chips, candy floss, cockles, frisbees, tea... and doughnuts. The smell of the doughnuts met us before we even crossed the road... rich, fatty... a short queue waited at a window at the end of the building as a pasty, sugared, dumpy Mr Doughnuts served up the pasty, sugared, dumpy deep-fried rings...  

We wandered around the beach with its rugby-ball kickers, dogs, children and barbecues, laughing at the surfers and their purple feet... then, taking the track up behind the shop, headed off up a path that takes you around the headland...

We returned to an argument between Mr Doughnuts who had emerged from his serving window, and the driver of an A6 who had cunningly noticed that there was no official reason to not park his A6 behind the doughnut shop along with the staff cars and had done so, escaping the exorbitant £1.10 council car park fee...  Mr Doughnuts, still wearing his apron, was clearly struggling to hold his own against a man who's accent and dress marked him out as 'anything not a doughnut seller'.

Mr Doughnut's point was pretty clear... 

"Look... the council car park's over the road... this is parking for staff only"

Clearly, however, Mr A6 wasn't interested. There was no sign... and so, in his eyes, no reason.

"There's no sign"
"I'd have thought it would be obvious..."
"Well, it's not... I think you need a sign"
"Do you want me to report you?"
"By all means... do you want my name and address?"
"Look... I'm not trying to be funny... could you just move your car?"
"No..."

And so it went on... we walked away... Mr Doughnuts was going to lose, and the aforementioned delivery suite was calling...

But the situation set me to thinking. What would my response have been?


Maybe I'd have moved my car and boxed in the A6, and then refused to move it...
... or let down his tyres...
... or poured doughnut grease over his windscreen and written rude words in it...

Or, if I wanted to be a super Christian... I might have given him a free bag of doughnuts, or buy him a parking ticket and attached it to his windscreen... to make him feel bad about being so rude...

Isn't that what my social Gospel Jesus would do... cos', frankly... although he was technically right... the A6 driver was acting like a pompous arse... and I (and so would Jesus, I was sure) would want to teach him a lesson - and score a point for the oppressed while I was at it.

Me and Jesus... hand in hand... fighting for the oppressed, like Batman and Robin...

Hoorah...


But then I realised that actually, I haven't got a clue what Jesus would have done... Because the last thing that he would have done is set about 'winning', or 'scoring a point', or 'making someone feel bad', or 'teaching them a lesson'... He would have responded with the whole gospel...

But what the 'whole gospel' in a situation like that..?

Bereft of easy-to-reach answers that have some tangible meaning in my little world... that's a question that's so far beyond my understanding that I don't even know where to begin.