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The Disease of Conceit. Conceit is a community killer. It is an ever present danger in our lives.

In the book of Romans, Paul presents in extended fashion his understanding of the Gospel of Jesus Christ (Romans 1-11). The book moves explicitly to exhortation in Romans 12. Paul calls the Christians in Rome to present their bodies corporately as a living sacrifice (Romans 12:1-2). Transformation begins with the individual but always involves the community as a whole. God created us to live in authentic community with one another (Genesis 1:26-31). When we experience the salvation that God has offered to us in Jesus Christ, God calls us to be part of the body formed by followers of Jesus Christ. Corporately, we become a “living sacrifice” to God. We are called to no longer be conformed to the patterns of the world, but rather be transformed. The life transformation occurs in community.

It is striking therefore that the first specific direction about the community is a warning:

NIV Romans 12:3 For by the grace given me I say to every one of you: Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the measure of faith God has given you. 4 Just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, 5 so in Christ we who are many form one body, and each member belongs to all the others.

1) Paul writes not as a person with positional authority. He writes as a person who has experienced the grace of God. Paul could have written: I am an Apostle and this is what I say, or I saw Jesus Christ personally on the road to Damascus or I have been a student of Scripture for all of my life. But he doesn’t. He writes as one who has received grace. Isn’t this the position of us all? None of us can stand on our own merits. As we begin to think about community, this is the starting point. The community of followers of Jesus Christ is a community who owes its existence to the grace and mercy of God.

Paul reminds us of this elsewhere in 1 Corinthians 1:26-31

1:26 Brothers, think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth. 27 But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. 28 He chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things– and the things that are not– to nullify the things that are, 29 so that no one may boast before him. 30 It is because of him that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God– that is, our righteousness, holiness and redemption. 31 Therefore, as it is written: “Let him who boasts boast in the Lord.”

2) Don’t be self-centered. Paul’s admonition is so basic, but so profound. Too many of us are infected with the disease of conceit. Conceit robs us of our ability to function as healthy members of the body of Christ. If we are puffed up, we will limit our ability to serve. If we happen to be leaders, we will model conceit to our communities and create (unintentionally) centers of narcissism rather than the centers of outreach and evangelism. We need constantly to remember the words of Jesus, “For the son of man did not come to be served but to serve and to give his life a ransom for many.”

3) Conceit is a community killer. Our world is plagued by division: racial, economic, geographic, sex, age, and so on. From early childhood, human beings form insular groups and cliques. The new community created in Jesus Christ, however, is called to be radically different. There is a profound unity in Jesus:

Gal 3:28 There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.

Nothing kills the community that God created us to embody more than conceit. The Church that God dreams about is an oasis in which everyone is welcome to receive God’s grace and find his or her place in the only institution that exists for something greater than itself.

4) Conceit throttles mission. If we don’t value others and privilege our own self-interests, we will never be able to reach out beyond ourselves. All our talk about missional church, missional reading, and radical outreach will prove to be vacuous if our communities are filled with conceit.

How do we move forward as a community?

Value the diverse gifts of the community. Although this is obvious, it is not so easy to practice. It is not merely a matter of mouthing the acceptance of various gifts and talents which persons possess; we must actually invite and unleash each member to deploy his or her gifts fully. We must therefore put away “cookie cutter” and/or “fill in the blank” ways of filling out ministry teams. Instead, we need to ask ourselves constantly, “How does our community need to change in order to utilize fully each member’s gifts?” Leaders need to focus on mobilizing and training.

Recognize that we need one another. In healthy communities of faith, the whole is always greater than the sum of its parts. Too many communities of faith never experience this reality. Too many pastors function as the paid servants of the whole. Yet pastors need every single member more than any single member needs the pastor. We need one another. Consider the words of Bonhoeffer:

Let him who is not in community beware of being alone. Into the community you were called, the call was not meant for you alone; in the community of the called you bear your cross, you struggle, you pray. You are not alone, even in death, and on the Last Day you will be only one member of the great congregation of Jesus Christ. If you scorn the fellowship of the brethren, you reject the call of Jesus Christ and thus your solitude can only be hurtful to you. (Life Together, 77)

Recognize and show gratitude for the contributions of each member. As leaders we need to model gratitude and show value to each person. The cure for conceit is the creation of a culture of gratitude. Saying “Thank you” acknowledges the presence, value, and contribution of another member and pushes the one who shows gratitude further and further away from a self-centered life governed by conceit.

Practice a gift-based ministry. We must learn to encourage, equip, and empower each individual in our communities to unleash his or her gifts. This is a more difficult leadership challenge than merely trying to fill-in the blanks on some pre-packaged leadership structure, but in the long run, it will yield much more fruit. You will gain a maximum benefit from each member. This is the heart of Paul’s exhortation in Romans 12:6-8 –

We have different gifts, according to the grace given us. If a man’s gift is prophesying, let him use it in proportion to his faith. If it is serving, let him serve; if it is teaching, let him teach; if it is encouraging, let him encourage; if it is contributing to the needs of others, let him give generously; if it is leadership, let him govern diligently; if it is showing mercy, let him do it cheerfully.

What do you think?

Bob Dylan has a killer song titled “The Disease of Conceit”. Read the lyrics. Listen to an audio sample.

Here is a poignant and understated cover of Dylan’s The Disease of Conceit

© 2006 Brian D. Russell (Revised 10/2010)

Genesis 1-2 root the biblical narrative in God’s original creational intentions rather than in the world as it is today. This is crucial. Genesis 3 onwards focuses on the current fallenness of creation, but the Bible opens in a setting that is very good and one in which rest and relationship are valued over work and wealth. A missional hermeneutic takes seriously the Biblical message of Creation.

Readers are introduced to a powerful Creator who crafts a world of wonder and delight. This creator God is not aligned with any particular people but exists and reigns as the King of all Creation. But Israel’s God is not the typical ancient Near Eastern despot. Israel’s God works for the good of all Creation by moving it toward very goodness. Our present world is not a very good world that is moving toward chaos. But the world in which we find ourselves began as a very good world that became broken and fractured due to the choices of humanity, but remains one in which the Creator God now works to deliver both Creation and humanity from effects of human sinfulness.

The Bible insists that the God who saves us through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus is the same God who created the universe. The Bible will consistently insist on such a monotheistic view of reality. Monotheism has been the long term presupposition of Western culture, but as we find ourselves in the early decades of the 21st century, monotheism is loosing traction. In part through increased interactions with the world’s religions through global migratory patterns as well as through the “world is flat” phenomenon rooted in the reach of the Internet and global commerce, the nature of God is up for grabs. There are again a plethora of gods available to follow. Some are named “gods” such as Vishnu or Allah; others are the political ideologies of the left or right and still others lifestyles such as consumerism or hedonism. Religious and intellectual relativism is the order of the day. In other words, as modern readers of the Bible, we find ourselves more and more each day to be living in a world more similar than we may care to imagine to the world that gave rise to the Bible. Savvy readers of Scripture recognize this as a fresh opportunity to introduce the Gospel anew to the world.

What do you think?

© 2010 Brian D. Russell

Allen Yeh wrote a great post on evangelism yesterday:

Despite the fact that I am a missiologist (missions = evangelism + social justice in a cross-cultural setting), I find that some of the toughest people to reach with the Gospel are right here in my own context: postmodern Western atheists. Let me offer the way that I often approach them—with the disclaimer that every person is different in terms of their resistance and personal situations, and ultimately it is God that does the work in their heart. No program or strategy will be effective unless the Holy Spirit is behind it. So, prayer is of the essence.

I find that the three biggest assumptions/obstacles that postmodern Western atheists have are universalism, relativism, and tolerance. Before anything else, you have to address these three issues otherwise they cannot move on to other thoughts.

Regarding universalism, I point out that it is an untenable position to hold that all religions are the same. There is a reason that interreligious worship services never work: they appeal to no one. No Muslim or Buddhist or Christian or Jew will say that their religion is the same as the others; if there is anything they can all agree on, it’s that each religion is not the same as, and cannot be blurred with, the others. Maybe Hinduism can say this, as they have 100 million gods, but all other religions argue for exclusivity as one of their characteristics.

As for relativism (really, universalism is just a subset of relativism), that does not hold water either, because everyone (even postmodernists!) operates on standards of absolute truths, otherwise you cannot do science or logic. We cannot even be having this conversation if there is not an assumption of absolute truth, otherwise we would not even make sense to one another, because language is predicated on mutual assent of what words mean. And the statement “All truth is relative” is in and of itself an absolute statement, so it undermines itself by its own force.

Finally, the issue of tolerance is not a bad one if it is balanced by free speech. In Western democracies, we believe in both, and they seem to go together if tolerance means “I will accept your right to believe as you wish.” However, tolerance has become twisted to mean, “Everyone should leave everyone else alone—you can do whatever you want to do, as long as it doesn’t infringe on me in the least.” This is absurd thinking; a society is based on social relationships, and it is impossible for people to not be affected by anybody else. Unless one were to go into a cave and become a hermit, our ideas will affect each other—but that is for the better. We are not a totalitarian society where nobody is allowed to say anything that anybody else disagrees with. Rather, the tension is between “I have the right to try to convince you of my position,” and “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”* It is my right to tell you what I think; and it is your right to hold whatever position you think. This is how free speech and tolerance go hand in hand. Jim Wallis has a great quote: “Faith is always personal but never private.” He highlights a distinction that is often missed by many atheists and liberals. Religion has always been public and corporate. The solution is not to remove religion from the public sphere, but to respect each other’s rights to express our faith openly, so long as the ones who profess faith do not use force or undue coercion to achieve their ends (and it goes without saying that those who do not profess faith should not use force or undue coercion against those who do!). So, if you will allow me to speak my mind, and indeed to tell you that you are wrong (and to give plausible reasons why), I will also promise to listen to your side equally, and to leave you alone when you feel enough is enough.

Read the rest

My former OT teacher and now colleague, Lawson Stone, has written an insightful blog on his reflections on Daniel 1.

I have been pondering the biblical character of Daniel all day, probably because I’m teaching a Sunday School class on the OT books that center around the Babylonian exile. The last survivors of Israel, i.e. the tribe of Judah, finally succumbed in 586 B.C. to the Babylonians, who destroyed Jerusalem, destroyed the temple of Solomon, ravaged the countryside and left smoking villages and a devastated economy in their wake, deporting thousands of Judahites to Babylon where they were forcibly settled in ghetto-like communities doing force-labor for the Babylonian King, the infamous Nebuchadrezzar.

But I wonder. Daniel might not have been such a comfortable guy to know if you were a devout Judean.


Read the rest.

An excellent video on preaching the Gospel in our time.

Tim Keller Feb’09: Preaching the Gospel from Newfrontiers on Vimeo.

Main points:
Preaching in Western culture should be:

1) Gospel centered
2) Christ centered
3) Life Changing on the Spot
4) Culturally transforming

One of my students sent me a link to this video.

“Sunday’s Coming” Movie Trailer from North Point Media on Vimeo.

How on target is the satire? What are the lessons? How is the video being unfair?