Sunday February 22, 1998

Dear Dale, brother

I just want to tell you how much I am pleased to see your article, “The Heart of Faith,” appearing in Sojourners Magazine. I read the article just a week or so ago, because I had let my subscription renewal notice lapse too far behind to get the issue under normal post schedule. Anyway, you are so right to point out the central aspects of the Christian revelation, “What God has done for us, and what God asks of us.” If these two central tenets are not epistemologically held together, things go awry. You are so right to remind us that “the good news focused most of all on God’s revelation of his redeeming love in the coming, the dying, and the rising of Jesus of Nazareth,” and this because of the intrinsic problem of human sin that first of all is a problem personal to each one of us and only derivitately a systemic social evil. Before we as individuals and corporately as the church reach out in service to the great needs of the world, we must get the priority straight that each one of us is a sinner desperately in need of deliverance, forgiveness, reconciliation, and a reborn heart, mind, and direction. That One who can provide that transformation in any of us is that One who so deeply loves us that He placed Himself in our stead to break the cursed hold of sin over our lives —Jesus!!! As Athanasius wrote many hundreds of years ago, "If Jesus Christ were not God, he would not reveal God to us for only through God may we know God; and if he were not man, he would not be our Savior for only as one with us would God be savingly at work within our actual human existence."

Your article illuminates, I think, the crucial challenge for the “peace and justice movement”, (a matter which you covered in “The BPF Newsletter” several months ago as well). If the works of justice and peace become the priority, the center of our hearts and minds, indeed our faith, then we will go into error, and even more grievous, we will go into our efforts without the anointing of the Living God, without His Spirit, and perhaps, without His salvation. Too often I find myself in contact with or listening to or reading about this or that great social injustice and the efforts being made to address it. But where is the center, that is, where is Christ and Him crucified, buried, risen, and in charge as Lord of all our endeavors? Radical action is so needed today, but it critically must be rooted in radical discipleship and absolute obedience to the One who is Lord, Jesus Christ!!! Otherwise, we set ourselves up to be saviors, which is pretentious, idolatrous, and doomed to failure.

Even as I too often feel despair over what seems self-serving and ingrown pietism within the evangelicals whose company I frequent and with whom in many ways I identify, so too I often depair at some of the peace and justice movement that seems to overlook the sinful human condition that is in each one of us and that needs to be repented of by each one of us. Without the center defined by Christ, we have muddled sexual ethics, a hesitation toward evangelism (say to the muslim world), an inordinate hope for the state and politics to solve problems, and a preoccupation with personal rights rather than a call to self-abnegation.

From your letters, Dale, I can see that you have caught afresh the wind of God’s Spirit ministering to you in a personal, cleansinng, intimate, and life-giving way. Recently, through the ministry of our exchange student from Thailand, our sons, and some friends, I, too, have been brought to refocus on the central matter of my faith and my existence—the worship of God with all heart, mind, and strength. Not that I do this well. But I know once again that to worship God, to dwell in His presence (whether as an individual or with others with me), to know Him as Father and me as son, to know His Son as my brother, and to be refreshed and indwelt by God as Spirit, to commune with Him, is so wonderfully life-giving! And so healing, recharging, and finally, so anointing to the outreach work and ministry to others and into the world as God calls me.

Dale, again, thank you so much for your article in Sojourners. (I got the next issue the other day and read the critical letter to the editor, but disagree that it is written in a too difficult a style!). I hope and pray that the message you proclaim in your article is heeded by all of us. In the Summer / Autumn issue of The Plough magazine is a short article titled, “Whither the Anabaptist Vision?” Perhaps you read it. The author discusses a conference that analyzed the response of Mennonite and other anabaptists to a challenge by Harold Bender in 1944 for anabaptists to leave their secure cloisters to outreach in service to the sufferings in the world. The response was dramatic, and much positive impact has been made. But at what cost, for in many instances the Center, Jesus Christ, has been lost. The periphery was rightly addressed, but then the Center was forgotten. To quote from the article, “The unfortunate consequence of this approach to teaching the Anabaptist vision was that it resulted in generations of students and church leaders learning some of the behavioral aspects of the Christian faith without learning equally well that discipleship is only meaningful and possible because it is an answer to who God is and what God is doing in the world, and without necessarily experiencing what it means to have a vital and life-changing personal friendship with the crucified and risen Jesus.”

It seems to me that in this above quote lies a major if not the major problem within the Church of the Brethren as it exists today. It may, in some cases, be a major problem with certain para-church justice/peace organizations and movements as well. The task before us, finally, and always, is to get back to our roots, indeed to Christ. Thanks, Dale, for your article that states this truth so powerfully! May good fruits come from it, to the glory of God.

We continue to lift you up in prayer for God’s mercy, grace, healing, anointing, and above all, for His presence and communion His Heart with your heart. Peace also to Ruth.

In Jesus

Allen Johnson