Orientationism
We must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person oriented society.
—Dr Martin Luther King Jr, April 1967
I posted this quote on Facebook last week, and a friend responded with this: ‘A noble step, but aren’t those both self-oriented? Wouldn’t an ideal-oriented or God-oriented society be better?’ Those are good questions, and they deserve good answers. Unfortunately, he is stuck with mine.
Let’s start with Jesus. As Christians, he is the one we are following. He is is the person that we are called be be like. It is his life in us that is working to transform us from the inside out to be like him.
Jesus is also our best picture of what God is like. The writer of Hebrews tells us that he is the exact representation of God. Jesus told his disciples, if you have seen me, you have seen the Father. To know what God is like, we look at Jesus.
How was Jesus’ life oriented? The obvious answer is that he was God-oriented. He said that he only did what he saw the Father doing.
What did he see the Father doing?
He saw that God loved the world so much that he gave his one and only son. That one and only son gave himself, both in his life and his death, to save people. God made a way through Jesus for people to be saved from the corruption that runs through all of creation, to begin becoming what God originally intended humans to be. And through Jesus he has given us the mandate to spread that saving life throughout his creation.
From the creation story to the end of time, the story of God is the story of God working with people. God is utterly, relentlessly people-oriented. For us to be God-oriented, we cannot be anything other than people-oriented. That is the major theme of the book of 1 John. (Quick, everyone, read it! It will only take you about 15 minutes.)
But can people-orientation be self-oriented? I suggest trying it for a day and then reporting back, if you are not too exhausted from giving yourself away! Being people-oriented is death to yourself.
So, yes, like Jesus we are are to be God-oriented – that is the only way to successfully be people oriented. But if our God-orientation does not cause us to look like Jesus giving his life away to save the world, we are looking at some idol rather than God.
What about being ideal-oriented?
There was once a group of people who were so desperate to live the way God wanted them to that they determined to do whatever it took to make their lives line up with what God wanted. They looked unflinchingly at every part of their lives and anything that did not conform to God’s commands, they changed. They were zealous, radical idealists for God. They felt that if their idealolgy could spread through their culture, then God’s kingdom would come on earth.
Those people were called Pharisees.
The opposed everything that Jesus did. The tried to shut him down. They plotted to and with the help of the rest of the religious establishment did kill Jesus.
Ideology always ends with killing. The ideals take over, and they come before God, and they come before people. Pick any ideology – pharisaism, crusaderism, inquistionism (I’m making some of these words up), nazism, communism, fascism, socialism, humanism, capitalism, islamism, neo-calvinism, missionalism – and take a look at what happens to the people who don’t fit or can’t embrace the ideology. They get killed. Dead. Maybe not literally dead, maybe ‘just’ marginalised or demonised or shut out. Whatever. It’s death.
Jesus didn’t do -isms. He refused to be made king of any cause. John tells us that he knew the kind of stuff that what in human hearts, so he did not entrust himself to any group of people. But he never stopped giving life to people and calling them to the kingdom of God.
People like ideologies. It makes life simpler. Adhering to an idea is not so messy as giving life to people. What if there was an ideology that could bring life to anyone? That would be nice for us.
How about this one: Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength; and love people just like you love yourself.
We could probably get away with an ideology like that.
6 March 2009 Jeff Gill
tags: humans,
kingdom of god
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