Carolyn Carney
The Whole Gospel
Social Gospel? Personal Gospel? Whole Gospel.
The creation account in Genesis 1 describes humans as being made in the image of God. That is central to our identity. Building on that central truth we then add three essential relationships that every human throughout history experiences: male-female, parent-child, and neighbor. This concept of the three primary relationships was taught me by Dr. Gary Deddo.
There seem to be plenty of psychologists, counselors, theologians and therapists around who help us deal with the first two pairings – (male-female and parent-child). Self-help books by Dr. Phil, Oprah and many others capitalize on our desire to become better people.
But what about becoming a better neighbor? None other than Jesus himself calls us to such an effort in his Greatest Commandment: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” (Mark 12: 30) He emphasizes its importance by saying that if you were to summarize the message of the entire Law and the words of the Prophets it would read “Love God and love others.”
Some of us evangelicals get a little fidgety when people start emphasizing loving our neighbor. Loving our Neighbor sounds like seeking justice and transforming society – hardly bad things in their own right.
But many evangelicals argue that being involved in those things is what led to the spawning of the “liberal church.” And so what we get is the so-called liberals saying evangelicals are “so heavenly minded they’re no earthly good.” And evangelicals criticizing liberals for focusing too much on earth and not caring enough about heaven.
Does it have to be either/or? Can it not be both/and?
Bede the Venerable, an early Middle Ages monk, wrote about the connection of loving God and loving neighbor:
“Neither of these two kinds of love is expressed with full maturity without the other, because God cannot be loved apart from our neighbor, nor our neighbor apart from God. Hence as many times as Peter was asked by our Lord if he loved him, and attested his love, the Lord added at the end of each inquiry, “Feed my sheep,” or “feed my lambs,” as if he were clearly saying “There is one adequate confirmation of whole-hearted love of God—laboring steadily for the needy in your midst, exercising continuing care of them.”
(Quoted in Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture “New Testament II, Mark, InterVarsity Press, Thomas Oden, Christopher Hall, editors.)
Bede unquestionably links the two. You can not have one without the other. It seems to be both/and.
A number of years ago I got in on the ground floor of a small church plant in my community. I had just moved to the city and was interested in connecting my student work with the local church outreach to the community. It was exciting to be involved in this new venture, especially as new people kept coming. The arrival of a considerable number of families resulted in some change of the original focus of the church, but I still liked being a part and it was a place where I began to use my gifts. I had taken a couple of groups of students overseas on mission trips and was growing more and more interested in missions. A retired missionary couple in the church even mentored me a bit.
One night the pastor called a number of folks to meet with him to discuss highlighting missions on a monthly basis. It was decided that since I’d had the most recent experience, I would do the first one. I thought and prayed a long time about what to say.
What could I say in five minutes that would convey my convictions about and experience of missions? How could I motivate the congregation to be involved even if they never left the US? I had recently returned from my first experience in South Africa and that was very fresh on my mind. I prayed some more and then prepared.
On that Sunday I spoke about being a neighbor and that to be a neighbor means that we care about the situations our neighbors find themselves in. My illustrations came from my South African experience where I saw the effects of racism and exploitation by the apartheid regime. I spoke about the damage done by the church, but also some of the good things the church was doing to stand up to the government.
One of the ways I saw South Africans be neighborly was to speak out against laws that oppressed their countrymen and even to defy the law (civil disobedience) where it was unjust. By our public admittance that a person’s treatment is unjust we show that we see and care about a person’s situation. In my preparation I realized that this would not be the usual “Moment for Missions” but I wanted people to see something new. They didn’t. In fact, I think the only thing they saw was red.
The pastor called the next day and wanted to see me. I felt like I was being asked to come to the principal’s office. Except that we were friends, partners in the gospel. The pastor quickly told me a number of folks had been unhappy, particularly the retired missionary couple. He added, to my surprise, there had been some visitors, a white South African couple, who were shocked and denied the complicity of the Church in wrongdoing.
The tone of the conversation dropped down lower when he asked, “Carolyn, have you embraced the social gospel?” I’d never heard that term before so I was a little confused and asked him to explain. After listening, I thought for a moment and finally said,
“If by the social gospel you mean that the Kingdom of God includes the transformation and redemption of society to reflect God’s creational intent, then I’d say yes. But I can’t separate the gospel into personal and social. As I look at Jesus in the gospels, I don’t think he does either. The purpose of individuals being transformed is much greater than simply increasing the number of people who will occupy heaven. And society cannot be transformed unless persons are transformed. Doesn’t the prayer Jesus modeled for us ask God to bring his kingdom on earth as it is in heaven?”
We went back and forth for a few more minutes but it was pretty clear we were at an impasse.
One of the most helpful illustrations I’ve come across to explain the importance of keeping together the so-called social gospel with the personal gospel is from E. Stanley Jones, who served as a missionary for over fifty years. Jones said to embrace one without the other is “to be either a ghost or a corpse.” To embrace the individual gospel of personal holiness with no commitment to the social implications of the gospel is to be a “soul without a body”(a ghost). To embrace the social gospel of justice for the marginalized without individual redemption is to have “a body without a soul” (a corpse). The two are inextricably bound together. To segregate them is to diminish both; to bring them together is to have the whole gospel.
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