Being good for God's sake

Alan Hirsch has posted the following article about the revolutionary nature of Christianity. ...

My mates at onmovements.com have got a copy of Rodney Stark’s new book, Cities of God: The Real Story of How Christianity Became an Urban Movement and Conquered Rome. I have not read this book, but am very appreciative of Rodney Stark’s socio-historical insights on movements. In his The Rise of Christianity (which I have read), he describes how the marginal Jesus movement eventually became the dominant religious force and effectively ‘conquered’ Rome. In describing the history of the early church he inadvertently made an indirect but strong case for the need for compassionate engagement as a means to legitimize the proclamation of the Gospel–that social engagement by God’s people gives credibility to the claims of the Gospel. It seems that he has now produced a book that describes why that is the case. Here is a quote from his latest book (thanks to the guys at onmovements.com)

The power of Christianity lay not in its promise of otherworldly compensations for suffering in this life, as has so often been proposed. No, the crucial change that took place in the third century was the rapidly spreading awareness of a faith that delivered potent antidotes to life’s miseries here and now! The truly revolutionary aspect of Christianity lay in moral imperatives such as “Love one’s neighbor as oneself,” “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you,” “It is more blessed to give than to receive,” and “When you did it to the least of my brethren, you did it unto me.” These were not just slogans. Members did nurse the sick, even during epidemics; they did support orphans, widows, the elderly, and the poor; they did concern themselves with the lot of slaves. In short, Christians created “a miniature welfare state in an empire which for the most part lacked social services.” It was these responses to the long-standing misery of life in antiquity, not the onset of worse conditions, that were the ‘material’ changes that inspired Christian growth.

I am absolutely convinced that this is critical for the viability and success of mission-to-the-West in our time and place. That to get a viable hearing in a post-modern, post-Christian, post-Christendom context (a context thus effectively immunized against the claims of the Gospel) we have to recover the sheer transformational power of goodness. Goodness and compassion give what we say legitimacy and credibility.

Actually this was always the case. That this needs to be said shows how far we have separated things that belong inextricably together. God forgive us.

Article:
http://www.theforgottenways.org/blog/69