Jesus in the Marketplace of Ideas

The Bible is not anti-intellectual, but it opposes mere human intellect as self-salvation. The Greek world made a lasting impression on modern thought. In fact, many of us have some basic interaction with Greek mythology as a literary and philosophical primer on the world. One of my favorite movies, “O Brother Where Art Thou?” is the Coen brothers’ twist on Homer’s The Odyssey. Christian thought was in competition with Greek philosophy in the 1^st Century Roman world. Greek was the trade language (lingua franca) of their contemporary Near Eastern society. 

Just as early Christians had to be able to understand and navigate their cultural context yet be clear about what they believed, part of our missionary assignment today is to continue to communicate salvation through Christ alone. The US is the 3^rd largest mission field in the world (because it is the third most populous country in the world and is rushing at breakneck speed toward secularism). Although you may not think of yourself as a missionary, God has called each of us to make Jesus known wherever we go. How do we do that?

1. Show up.  Be deliberate about your life having missionary direction. Be available to God. Like Isaiah said, “Here am I send me.” Jonah was a biblical missionary, but he wanted to choose his field on the basis of his prejudices. “I don’t like those people and I don’t want to go them.” A concern I have is that the divisiveness and polarization in our country causes us to view people as “us” and “them.” We stop seeing lost people as humans created in God’s image. We see them as political opponents and not as image bearers who need the Gospel. We stop seeing the Gospel as the transforming solution. There is only one solution for every person (Acts 4:12).

2. Lift up (Jesus). It is so easy to lose the priority of a Gospel-centered life. I know not everyone is a gifted evangelist, but everyone shares in the task of evangelism. The church’s mission historically has been to glorify God by revealing Christ in our worship and witness. People of a certain age joke about going into the other room and forgetting why they went there. But I think lots of Christians have forgotten why we are here. Our passion can get misplaced. Our resolve can get depleted. Instead, our lives need a predictably unwavering center: Christ.

3. Stand up. Even when we are willing to show up, it doesn’t mean we won't feel tempted to freeze up. When the Apostle Paul was in Athens he was made fun of and called “babbler and seed picker.” He went to the Areopagus and proclaimed Jesus and was accused of cobbling together a parasitic, phony religion. He went to the intellectual center of the known world and was called names. BUT HE WENT. Then in Corinth he was threatened so that God intervened with a comforting vision (Acts 18:9-10) to assure Paul that he would be protected there.

 4. Speak up. I had someone ask me questions about my life recently that I could only give Gospel answers to in response. I thought I did a bad job. I stumbled over my thoughts and probably sounded foolish, but I was able to talk about Jesus’ death, burial and resurrection, and how He turned my life around. “I believed and therefore I spoke.”

 5. Power up.  Changed lives are the demonstration of the Holy Spirit’s power. The clearest testimony to the world of the power of the Gospel is lives that have been redirected and animated by Jesus. And the way He transforms us humbles us and changes the way we see others. “Having seen self-giving power on display in Christ, it enables us to spot the abuse of power in our world" (Stephen Um). In Philippians chapter 2 we see Jesus' self-emptying love as the catalyst for Salvation. Where did we get the idea that the world could be rescued any other way today?

Conclusion – There will always be a marketplace of ideas that compete for priority with people. But if we are really Jesus people, our answer will keep on being "Jesus." We won’t be intimidated into silence. We won’t have to reinvent our fundamental beliefs. We won’t be shaken by competing belief systems. We will believe what we believe. We will believe and therefore we will speak. If we are serious about seeing our society transformed we will put Jesus out there, and we will live Spirit-shaped lives. Not perfect lives, certainly. But lives which bear the reflection of our Savior. We are His hands, feet, and voices. I know we think, “But I’m not a preacher.” The word in Scripture is (μάρτυς) witness, and we are all witnesses.