The Gospel Is Not Conservative

Fundamentalism and conservativism are intrinsically averse to change. They are tied with conserving a status quo or moving back to a former era.

They seek a safe place, a respite from change and transformation in the world around them. They are threatened by new ideas. They fear that the foundations on which they base their lives will be uprooted, causing their view of reality to fall apart.

Growth depends on change. Life requires change. Survival depends on responding to changes in our environment. It requires new ideas. It requires new answers to old questions, as well as new questions with even newer answers.

Jesus was by no means conservative.

Jesus challenged the status quo. He fought against the groundwork of much of the religious thought around him, as well as the structures erected to empower its values. He called out those who benefited from social, religious, and political power. He demonstrated God's love, forgiveness and grace to those deemed unacceptable and unworthy by the standards around him. Jesus was killed not for being conservative, but for being revolutionary. He was killed for upsetting the apple cart.

His message of God's love and healing of a man born blind enraged the conservatives of his day. His eating and drinking with persons deemed unworthy angered the religious conservatives around him. His healing on the Sabbath threatened the theology behind so the rules by which the conservatives around him lived. His teaching of God as a loving Father threatened accepted notions of God being angry at sin, being a wrathful and vengeful deity, being One to fear rather than One to trust. His call to minister freely to the needy attacked the conservative understanding that the poor suffered as God's punishment.

Jesus did not tie our well-being to the maintenance of organizations, power structures, capitalism, national security, racial purity, language, military might, culture, buildings, standards of modesty, clothing, diet, public rituals, or even family structures. He did not link God's Reign with any of those things.

Perhaps there was a more revolutionary and countercultural voice within Judea at his time, but I have heard of nothing such. Jesus did not seek a new empire with which to replace Rome. Jesus' economic teachings ripped the foundation out of standard concepts of private ownership of resources. Jesus politics put the well-being of the most vulnerable at the heart of decision-making. Jesus sense of justice granted forgiveness to people who did not even request it. Jesus looked upon no one as enemies, only as people to love. Jesus threw out social family norms, equating family with being those who joined together in doing God's will. Jesus defined leadership in terms of washing feet, feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, sheltering those in need, healing the sick, and allowing the excluded full participation and worth before God and others.

None of that is in any manner conservative. None of that seeks to protect religious, social, cultural, or political structures or icons. Instead of protecting a status quo, it seeks out those who are unable to benefit from the status quo and fully opens the door to them. It shifts all kinds of values.

Power becomes service.

Hate becomes love.

Hunger becomes nourished.

Thirst becomes hydrated.

Suffering becomes celebration.

Exclusion becomes empowered inclusion.

Wealth becomes generosity.

Comfort becomes discomfort.

Greed becomes selflessness.

We become radically revolutionary with the purpose of belonging to one another as a beloved community in which all are met with kindness, grace, belonging, and the Father's great love.

The gospel is not conservative.

— ©Copyright 2024, Christopher B. Harbin 

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