lifeasmission

I have been thinking recently about something I can only describe as the “defining majority.”  The defining majority is ta selection of people that is either large or potent enough to merit speaking of the whole based on their characteristics as a part.

For example, one might speak of a team as talented even though not all its players would fit that description.  Or, of a class of students as exceptionally unruly, although there may be a few students who are well-mannered.  I mean to speak here of more than the simple notion of speaking in generalities or stereotypes.  I mean to imply that in certain instances entire groups of people get dealt with based on the way in which they are defined by their majority.

I am bringing this up because there are often times that I speak of the Church in Western culture or the American Church and the things which I believe mark it.  Often, when I offer thoughts along these lines, usually in the form of critique, people feel compelled to respond by saying something like, “Well, not all churches are like that.”  Or, “That’s an over-generalization.”  To the first, I must admit that they are almost certainly right.  To the second, I am replying with this post.

Scripture is chalk-full with examples of the way in which God judges entire groups of people, more often than not his covenant people, based on what I am calling the defining majority.  Priests were called upon to intercede for the people as a group, despite individual differences.  Prophets were used of God to rectify the wrongs of entire communities, regardless of individual needs.  Nations were destroyed by God, though there would have certainly been “innocent” people among them.  If I am guilty of over-generalizations, so is God.  If it is unfair of me to pass judgment on groups of people based on the characteristics of that selection which dominates, then I find myself in good company. 

I have heard it said before that “the line in to heaven is single-file.”  Unhelpful as this understanding of heaven might be, the sentiment expressed is probably nonetheless true - that God is indeed personal and, as Paul says, “we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that each one may receive what is due him for the things done while in the body, whether good or bad.” (2 Cor. 5:10)  I do not mean to agrue that point here.  Instead, what I am trying to point out is that in the here and now God does not offer us the freedom of being addressed apart from the defining majority which characterizes the whole.

I think this highlights just how committed God is to the concept of community and mutual dependence and accountability.  I am not responsible for myself alone.  Rather, who I am is intimately bound up with the groups and communities I am associated with.  Likewise, far be it from any church community to excuse itself from the faithlessness of others simply because they think they are in good shape.  It just doesn’t work like that and to think it does is to have been duped by the lies of modern thinking. 

This is nowhere more clearly seen than in the person of Jesus.  Jesus, rather than seeking to be judged based on his own merits and character, chose to identify himself, first, with the people of Israel in being for the the world what they were to have been, a sacrificial community, and second, with humanity in general in taking the sins of the world upon himself that their relationship with God and others might be reconciled.  In divinely historic fashion, Jesus became the defining majority by which God finally judges the world.   Ours task then remains to labor with all intensity and pray with all fervency that the defining majority by which Christians are known and characterized is the same as that of Jesus.