 | Curing the Atomizing Process |
Fri, 27 Dec 1996
Clergy/Leaders' Mail-list No. 341
Lesslie Newbigin is one of my favorite authors. His Gospel in a
Pluralist Society is, I think, a classic (which led me to summarize it
for myself in about 20 pages: a good exercise). Pardon the sexist
language (he writes from the literary - but not necessarily
missiological - stance of a previous generation)...
Shalom! Rowland Croucher
Director, John Mark Ministries - resources for pastors/leaders.
(Bookroom, library, and worldwide F.W.Boreham Trading Post)
Home Page: http://www.pastornet.net.au/jmm
CURING THE ATOMIZING PROCESS
Western European civilization has witnessed a sort of atomizing
process, in which the individual is more and more set free from his
natural setting in family and neighborhood, and becomes a sort of
replaceable unit in the social machine, His nearest neighbors may not
even know his name. He is free to move from place to place, from job
to job, from acquaintance to acquaintance, and -- if he has attained a
high degree of emancipation -- from wife to wife. He is in every
context a more and more anonymous and replaceable part, the perfect
incarnation of the rationalist conception of man.
Wherever western civilization has spread in the past one hundred years,
it has carried this atomizing process with it. Its characteristic
product in Calcutta, Shanghai, or Johannesburg, is the modern city into
which myriads of human beings, loosened from their old ties in village
or tribe or caste, like grains of sand fretted by water from an ancient
block of sandstone, are ceaselessly churned around in the whirlpool of
the city -- anonymous, identical, replaceable units. In such a
situation, it is natural that men should long for some sort of real
community, for men cannot be human without it.
It is especially natural that Christians should reach out after that
part of Christian doctrine which speaks of the true, God-given
community, the Church of Jesus Christ. We have witnessed the appalling
results of trying to go back to some sort of primitive collectivity
based on the total control of the individual, down to the depths of his
spirit, by an all-powerful group. Yet we know that we cannot condemn
this solution to the problem of man's loneliness if we have no other to
offer.
It is natural that men should ask with a greater eagerness than
ever before, such questions as these: "Is there in truth a family of
God on earth to which I can belong, a place where all men can be truly
at home? If so, where is it to be found, what are its marks, and how
is it related to, and distinguished from, the known communities of
family, nation, and culture? What are its boundaries, its structure,
its terms of membership? And how comes it that those who claim to be
the spokesmen of that one holy fellowship are themselves at war with
one another as to the fundamentals of its nature, and unable to agree
to live together in unity and concord?"
The breakdown of Christendom has forced such questions as these to the
front. I think that there is no more urgent theological task than to
try to give them plain and credible answers.
- Lesslie Newbigin,
The Household of God
"For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power
of God unto salvation to every one that believeth..." Romans 1:16
________________________________
CQOD Compilation Copyright, 1996,
Robert McAnally Adams, Curator
E-mail: curator@gospelcom.net
CQOD Archive: http://www.gospelcom.net/cqod
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