LIVING AS THE PEOPLE OF GOD

The ancient Israelites were called to become the people of God or, in other words, to adopt a new identity, with new loyalties. They were to live under Yahweh’s rule. Their economy was to revolve around respect for the land and for the dignity of the poor rather than around greed, and their social order was to be based on equality rather than hierarchy. The distinctiveness of such a lifestyle would attract other nations to the true God (Deut 4:5-8; Isa 2:3). In the NT, Israel is reconstituted as the church, a transnational people under Jesus the Messiah.

The Church as the People of God

Today, the church constitutes the people of God, made up of those from many nations whom God has called (1 Pet 2:9). As a community of forgiven and forgiving sinners, we are to be loyal to Jesus the Messiah. We have been entrusted with the good news of hope and are to live a life that honours Jesus and demonstrates the revolutionary values of his kingdom.

The church proclaims by word and action that the crucified and risen Jesus is the one through whom God’s world is being freed from evil, reconciled and renewed. It points to the day when God will live among us and we will be his people (Isa 19:23-25; Rev 21:3). A church that is serious about this good news must seek to shape its life by that message. While calling the world to repentance and life, it must also ensure that all relationships and power structures within the church reveal the reality of the present, though hidden, reign of Jesus through the power of the Holy Spirit. Any contradiction between the church’s teaching and its life will undermine its message. So, for instance, our evangelistic methods must be judged not only by what we say but also by how we say it. Do we use methods that manipulate people, bribe them or exploit their weaknesses? Do we lie, exaggerate or encourage self-promotion? Do we use dishonest marketing techniques? None of these should be acceptable among the people of God.

One of the most striking features of Christianity is expressed in Galatians 3:28, which declares that the typical relationships of inequality and privilege (Jew/Greek; slave/ free; male/female) have no validity in Christ. Sharing in baptism and the Lord’s Supper or Communion signifies the equality and unity of all believers. The selfhumbling of Christ in letting go of his privileges and becoming human is the model that his disciples are called to imitate (Phil 2:3-8).

Paul compares the church to a living body (1 Cor 12). This image makes it clear that people’s different roles and gifts do not mean that they have different status or value. On the contrary, even the weakest members of the body are to be cherished and honoured (12:22-24).

This image also implies that all the members identify with one other. If one member suffers, all the others suffer too; if one member is honoured, all the others rejoice (12:26). Paul illustrates this principle at work when he asks the Gentile churches to help the poorer Jerusalem church (2 Cor 8–9). Their gift was a practical demonstration of the solidarity of Jews and non-Jews in the new family of God and ensured that no one was left needy (2 Cor 8:13- 14). Their fellowship required financial sharing and generosity so that one group did not have abundance while others were in need.

Jesus calls his disciples to imitate him in loving their enemies. They are to courageously confront and expose evil, while also winning over evildoers by doing good to them. This teaching is challenging for many Christians in South Asia. Some have been rejected by their families. Some have been savagely beaten and even killed by mobs. Christians who have dared to speak out about the sins of their own ethnic group have been stigmatised and threatened.

Nevertheless, we are called to continue to demonstrate the countercultural values that govern the people of God. The proclamation of the good news can transform cultures where the dominant religious world views justify inequality (the domination of some by others) or encourage passive resignation in the face of social evils and natural calamities. It can also remove the paralysing fear of demons and astral forces, and challenge the view that the material world is unimportant.

Living as the People of God in Our Communities

The fact that Christians are called to be distinctive does not mean that we have to be completely separate from our communities. In our pluralistic society, Christians interact and work with non-Christians on all kinds of projects – from those involving village councils to business ventures or government committees. We should welcome and rejoice in every sign of God’s grace at work in the lives of people, whatever their background. It is often through discussion of the common issues we face (climate change, school safety, garbage disposal, unemployment) that questions can be raised that take the discussion to a more searching, personal level, where the basic assumptions on which people conduct their lives are open to scrutiny and loving critique.

Christian witness thus always involves dialogue. We do not hide our differences, but we show respect for others, treating them as people made in the image of God and not primarily as followers of a particular religious path. Respecting people involves taking their beliefs, fears and aspirations seriously, and even being prepared to be disturbed and challenged by them ourselves.

Interaction with those who disagree with us is essential to our own faith journey. We do not know what we really believe, let alone how far our lives match our words, until we engage in dialogue with those who are profoundly different from us. Non-Christians often expose our blind spots. Gandhi, for instance, challenged British Christians to rediscover and practise the Sermon on the Mount. Sometimes the differences we discover through dialogue may be less important than we thought; at other times, the similarities we assumed to exist turn

out on closer inspection to be superficial. All witness, and thus all true dialogue, is risky. It leaves both parties in the conversation changed. That may be why many of us hesitate to befriend and engage with those who are different and much prefer the monologue of preaching at them from a distance. We would rather be busy with church programmes than with the costly business of building relationships across barriers of misunderstanding and mutual ignorance. But this is a betrayal of our calling in Christ. It is saying that we have nothing more to learn about him.

Furthermore, there are struggles for justice, peace and human dignity in which we can (and must) cooperate with those of other world views to achieve specific goals which conform to our vision of God’s kingdom. Obviously, we shall differ in our visions of the ultimate meaning and goals of our work and our motivations for struggling towards our vision. There will be points in our common journey with others where we shall discover that a parting of the ways is necessary. But such points of divergence are real opportunities for genuine dialogue and faithful witness.

Failing to Live as the People of God

Two major blind spots afflict the church in South Asia. The first is disunity. A divided church has no message for a divided society. Churches are divided on denominational, economic, ethnic and even caste lines. It is only in times of persecution that Christians come together. Christian leaders do not see the unity of the church as central to the good news itself (Eph 2:14-18). One reason for this state of affairs is that Christians have accepted Western and South Asian views of salvation that are basically individualistic. Symptoms of this ailment include our uncritical acceptance of pragmatic “church growth” and “people group” methodologies of mission; the possessiveness and authoritarian practices of some pastors who insist that members tithe their income to their churches alone; and the mushrooming of several, under-resourced theological colleges in the same city because Bible-believing Christians cannot share and study with each other.

The second blind spot is the pain of women in many churches. Society has done much to empower women and restore their equality (strides made possible through pioneering missionary efforts to provide education and health care for women). Yet many Christian women suffer not only emotional and physical abuse in the home but also exclusion from leadership in churches. It is men who are usually responsible for the collapse of families. Widowhood, marital breakdown and male migration (to the Gulf states and elsewhere) have resulted in a growing number of female-headed families in South Asia. Some Christian couples stay together more from a concern to avoid shame than from mutual love and honour.

Jesus never segregated men and women in his teaching, and the same standards of discipleship applied to both. We need to rethink many customs that we think are “cultural”, when the culture itself may be changing. In some situations, the culture may be ahead of the church in expressing biblical values; at other times, the church needs to be challenging the prevailing culture. Equal partnership between men and women should lead to new work arrangements in society, a rejection of the dowry system as currently practised, and the sharing of domestic work, childcare and care of the elderly within the family.

Finally, the primary way the church acts upon the world is through the actions of its members in their daily work. Congregations that train their members to obey Christ in the different areas of civic life into which they are called are often more effective in social transformation than those with huge social welfare projects or many church-planting teams.

Vinoth Ramachandra