Willard's World 2 - A Tale of Two Gospels

Gospel 1 -
My story, along with most who grew up in Baptist circles, is heavily influenced by what Willard calls, “The Gospel on the right.” He defines this as the idea that, “Jesus died to pay for our sins, and that if we will only believe he did this we will go to heaven when we die.” Willard tells of seeing a bumper sticker reading, “Christians aren’t perfect – Just forgiven.” He questions whether this forgiveness transaction to clear our debt to god, while being true, is all the Good News entails.

He points to Abraham in Genesis 15:6 where God calls him righteous. This righteousness was not for someday in heaven but rather that, “Abraham’s sins and failures would not cut him off from God in the present moment and in their ongoing relationship in life together.” Forgiveness is involved but it is to mend relationship now not at some time in the future once we are dead. What is sad is that the mending of relationship with God now isn’t required for most because we don’t have a daily communication with God. We don’t miss the proper relationship with him because we have never known it. IN our selfish human nature we figure that reconciliation with God is only needed once we die and are forced to have a conversation with him.

Gospel 2 –
As opposed to those who view the Gospel as a system of merit and demerit leading to heaven someday once we die, are those for whom social justice and correctness have become the Good News. Willard notes that in many instances this view has ceased being a, “theology or a view of God,” but has become, “a social ethic that one could share with people who had no reliance on a present God or a living Christ at all.” Those subscribing to this Gospel have sacrificed the personal, living, interactive natures of God in order to maintain a rigorous scientific understanding of the world.

A leading proponent of this theology, John Robinson, summed the view up by saying, “The Christian is the man who believes in that love [Jesus’ kind] as the last word for his life.” This sounds pretty good to me and I am sure I’ve said very similar things in the last few years. Willard points out though that divorced from the person of Christ alive today this ideal becomes a version of the American dream where desire, opportunity and freedom are sacred.

I remember reading Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman in twelfth grade and being so frustrated with the central character Willy. Despite working hard he couldn’t get his life together and succeed. It’s taken me until now to realize what the play screamed so loudly; perhaps it wasn’t the character that was flawed but rather the idea that desire, opportunity and freedom equated success and these values are paramount. The Gospel must be about more than helping people “succeed”.

Good News -
So if the good news is not solely about either my sin / forgiveness transactions with God, or a quest to love everybody, with what are we left? Willard presents the teacher character of God as the solution. He doubts whether subscribers to either of the previous Gospels ever take God seriously as there teacher. He wonders that because we can’t take him seriously as a teacher, how are we to devote time or study to becoming his students? The obvious extrapolation begs the question, how are we to align our kingdom’s with his if we don’t learn from him? Jesus was the bridge between the divine kingdom and our individual ones. If we are to align our kingdoms with God’s, then Christ, the only human to do even a decent job of aligning his kingdom with the heavenly one should be a pretty good teacher to study under. To learn from him though requires that he is alive (he is), and that he cares about my interactions with other kingdoms (he does). Like Martha’s sister Mary, taking Jesus seriously as our interested and living teacher is where our fullness of the Good News is to begin.