The Anabaptist Vision unmasked

[Bootstrap]

Suppose we want to take a Christian view of refugees, LGBTQ, race, or wealth and poverty. Wouldn't we start with the Bible instead of the latest political talking points? But even if we try to discuss what the Bible says on these things, it often seems to get sidetracked by the political talking points. Suppose we assumed that everything is about Jesus and the Kingdom of God, not that everything is somehow about Trump or the battle between political liberals and political conservatives.

Okay so with LGBTQ and Race, there is no difference in the calling to leave sin behind. While I support a struggling person to leave those things, I do not support someone embracing that ideology. The same is true for the black lives matter, blue lives matter. Both need to leave that sin behind and follow Jesus.

Clearly, everyone needs to leave their sin behind follow Jesus. And yet, in the Gospels Jesus always places the emphasis on following him and the Kingdom of God, not the particular sins of the individual. That always leaves the Pharisees grumbling - doesn't he know what kind of woman that is? why is he eating with sinners and tax collectors? why doesn't he give us fine religious folk our due? The Pharisees look at a sinner and see the sin, Jesus looks at a sinner and brings reconciliation. I wonder if that wasn't a big part of what Jesus was getting at in Matthew 23:

Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You shut the door of the kingdom of heaven in people’s faces. You yourselves do not enter, nor will you let those enter who are trying to.

How do we open the doors to the kingdom for sinners? How did Jesus do this? How was that different from what the Pharisees did?

I have no idea what you mean by leaving race behind. We all have our ethnic and cultural backgrounds, it's kind of hard to leave them behind, do you expect plain Mennonites to leave their ethnicity and culture behind?

It is a high calling for a transgender to abandon that and follow Jesus. The same calling to leave a life of sin is applied fairly although for some its harder then others to overcome. That is where our love rightly comes in. Love for the lost, but not love for the sin. We cannot welcome non-repentant sinners as they reject God by their own choices.

Our churches will not welcome those who are pro LGBTQ as how the world defines that. The same is true of race. The same should be true for wealth and this is a significant blind spot in the church.

Did Jesus accept sinners only after they had thoroughly repented? Did Peter in Acts 2? And what do you mean by saying "the same is true of race" - what about race would make someone unwelcome in your church? Would a black person who believes George Floyd was brutally murdered be welcome in your church?

[Josh]

“ do you expect plain Mennonites to leave their ethnicity and culture behind?”

In so far as they conflict with building the kingdom, yes.

Would someone who believed George Floyd was a heavy drug user using fentanyl amongst other drugs be welcome at your church?

[Wayne in Maine]

Suppose we want to take a Christian view of refugees, LGBTQ, race, or wealth and poverty. Wouldn't we start with the Bible instead of the latest political talking points? But even if we try to discuss what the Bible says on these things, it often seems to get sidetracked by the political talking points. Suppose we assumed that everything is about Jesus and the Kingdom of God, not that everything is somehow about Trump or the battle between political liberals and political conservatives.

Okay so with LGBTQ and Race, there is no difference in the calling to leave sin behind. While I support a struggling person to leave those things, I do not support someone embracing that ideology. The same is true for the black lives matter, blue lives matter. Both need to leave that sin behind and follow Jesus.

Clearly, everyone needs to leave their sin behind follow Jesus. And yet, in the Gospels Jesus always places the emphasis on following him and the Kingdom of God, not the particular sins of the individual. That always leaves the Pharisees grumbling - doesn't he know what kind of woman that is? why is he eating with sinners and tax collectors? why doesn't he give us fine religious folk our due? The Pharisees look at a sinner and see the sin, Jesus looks at a sinner and brings reconciliation. I wonder if that wasn't a big part of what Jesus was getting at in Matthew 23:

Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You shut the door of the kingdom of heaven in people’s faces. You yourselves do not enter, nor will you let those enter who are trying to.

How do we open the doors to the kingdom for sinners? How did Jesus do this? How was that different from what the Pharisees did?

I think this is the wrong question and it is they type of question that is a key to the difference between Protestantism and Anabaptism - or between mere religion and the message and mission of Jesus.

The door to the kingdom of God is open for sinners. We do not have to put rainbow flags in front of our meeting houses to make sinners more cozy. We do not have to join in political rallies against the latest fashionable injustice or post virtue signaling stickers on our car bumpers proclaiming our welcoming “tolerance”.

Some sinners realize the state they are in and hearing about the kingdom of God they are attracted to it and are willing to change their minds about their sin (repent) and commit themselves to following Jesus. But most people, including LGBTQ+ folks, feminists, QAnoners, Marxists, Republicans and Democrats are completely uninterested in the kingdom of God. They walk by a treasure in a field seeing it only as trash that they stumble on. Many have nothing but contempt for God, loving their own lifestyle and way of thinking – loves of themselves. If they hear the word of the kingdom it will be snatched away. If it sprouts it will have no depth of soil and it will wither. Jesus already has opened the door to the kingdom, it is our task to proclaim the same message of the kingdom of God and call those interested to repentance, welcoming them into our company as part of the kingdom.

I have no idea what you mean by leaving race behind. We all have our ethnic and cultural backgrounds, it's kind of hard to leave them behind, do you expect plain Mennonites to leave their ethnicity and culture behind?

It is a high calling for a transgender to abandon that and follow Jesus. The same calling to leave a life of sin is applied fairly although for some its harder then others to overcome. That is where our love rightly comes in. Love for the lost, but not love for the sin. We cannot welcome non-repentant sinners as they reject God by their own choices.

Our churches will not welcome those who are pro LGBTQ as how the world defines that. The same is true of race. The same should be true for wealth and this is a significant blind spot in the church.

Did Jesus accept sinners only after they had thoroughly repented? Did Peter in Acts 2? And what do you mean by saying "the same is true of race" - what about race would make someone unwelcome in your church? Would a black person who believes George Floyd was brutally murdered be welcome in your church?

What do you mean “thoroughly”? Peter called on the people to repent. He pleaded with them to save themselves "from this perverse generation". And those who accepted his message were baptized and added to the church.

Did Jesus accept into his circle of disciples people who advocate for sin? Did Peter baptize everyone who heard his message or only those who accepted it and repented? Repentance does not mean attaining perfection, but it does mean recognizing that something God calls a sin is a sin. The progressive “churches” (some of which call themselves Mennonite and Anabaptist) welcome not merely the repentant sinner (some churches shun the repentant sinner!), but sin itself in the name of its perverted progressive political and social causes. Progressive “Social Justice” is not “The Kingdom of God”.

[Josh]

Quite a few conservative right wing political types of people see conservative Anabaptism and think it will be sympathetic to what they believe.

They aren’t actually interested in the call to discipleship tho. They just are attracted to an outwardly conservative life.

Plain people don’t live the way they do out of a desire to support right wing political agendas.

[Bootstrap]

“ do you expect plain Mennonites to leave their ethnicity and culture behind?”

In so far as they conflict with building the kingdom, yes.

Would someone who believed George Floyd was a heavy drug user using fentanyl amongst other drugs be welcome at your church?

Of course such a person would be welcome at my church. I think you are reading things into what I wrote that are not there. A person who believed the police officer murdered George Floyd and had 22 prior complaints of excessive violence in his record would also be welcome. So would a person who believed none of these things.

Look at who the disciples were. A Zealot and a tax collector, in the same group of disciples? That's amazing!

Would the Samaritan woman at the well be welcome in your church? Would Paul, given his history persecuting the church?

[Bootstrap]

Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You shut the door of the kingdom of heaven in people’s faces. You yourselves do not enter, nor will you let those enter who are trying to.

How do we open the doors to the kingdom for sinners? How did Jesus do this? How was that different from what the Pharisees did?

I think this is the wrong question and it is they type of question that is a key to the difference between Protestantism and Anabaptism - or between mere religion and the message and mission of Jesus.

The door to the kingdom of God is open for sinners.

And yet, good religious people can slam that door shut with self-righteousness and contempt and all kinds of focuses that are just like the Pharisees. Good religious people today may still have a hard time with the people Jesus reached out to and the way Jesus reached out to them.

Too often, we reject the ministry of reconciliation and take on a ministry of contempt and mockery.

We do not have to put rainbow flags in front of our meeting houses to make sinners more cozy. We do not have to join in political rallies against the latest fashionable injustice or post virtue signaling stickers on our car bumpers proclaiming our welcoming “tolerance”.

Of course not. For the record, I have done none of those things. Neither do we need to embrace right-wing causes. But the most visible Christianity to many people is politicized Christianity. And to me, it often feels like that's the only framing and the only vocabulary people know how to speak anymore. We borrow talking points that the political factions feed us, believing we are thinking for ourselves and feeling so much smarter than "the other side", and leave the biblical world view sitting on the table. Jesus did not side with the Pharisees or the Sadducees or the Essenes or the Zealots or the Herodeans, he did not take on their causes, his Kingdom did not look like what they would have expected. We are not witnessing to the Kingdom of God that Jesus proclaimed, that's not what people see when they read MennoNet or listen to Christians swatting around political talking points.

What did Jesus do that got everyone's attention? What did the early church do? Is that what we are doing?

When there is obvious injustice, is it wrong to speak out as the prophets did? Shouldn't we advocate for the people our fine religious people are putting down just as Jesus did? Clearly not to promote sin, but to be the same ministry of reconciliation that Jesus was?

[Josh]

It’s wrong to speak out about “injustice” that is in complete alignment with a dominant political ideology.

[Josh]

“ do you expect plain Mennonites to leave their ethnicity and culture behind?”

In so far as they conflict with building the kingdom, yes.

Would someone who believed George Floyd was a heavy drug user using fentanyl amongst other drugs be welcome at your church?

Of course such a person would be welcome at my church. I think you are reading things into what I wrote that are not there. A person who believed the police officer murdered George Floyd and had 22 prior complaints of excessive violence in his record would also be welcome. So would a person who believed none of these things.

Look at who the disciples were. A Zealot and a tax collector, in the same group of disciples? That's amazing!

Would the Samaritan woman at the well be welcome in your church? Would Paul, given his history persecuting the church?

Are they welcome to be a member in good standing and to be in leadership?

Or does your church require specific beliefs about George Floyd to be a member in good standing and in leadership?

[Bootstrap]

OK, here's the thing to pay attention to: are responses and the ongoing discussion leading to more discussion of Jesus, how he related to sinners and various factions in his day, the Kingdom of God, and Two Kingdom theology ....

... or are they distracting from that by bringing in the same emotional political talking points and making that the focus? Are they making up vivid but false pictures of others?

I think that's a good way to measure whether we are working toward a better understanding of the Anabaptist Vision.

[Bootstrap]

Or does your church require specific beliefs about George Floyd to be a member in good standing and in leadership?

Look at the game you are playing here, Josh, making up vivid and obviously false images and suggesting that my church and I look like that. Even though you are responding to a post in which I actually answered your question.

I mean, does your church require specific beliefs about Donald Trump to be a member in good standing and in leadership? Have you stopped beating your wife?

Let's not play this game, please. Can we perhaps turn the focus back to thinking about how Jesus related to sinners in his time and how that would look to us now?