Today is election day and there’s a lot of talk about what will happen if certain candidates are elected—disaster is all but assured, ruin will inevitably befall the Republic. In each campaign ad, we’re asked to imagine another world, one in which a particular candidate loses. Occasionally, a politician will run on an optimistic message, asking us to imagine not a worse world if his opponent is elected, but a better world if he himself is elected. This platform is more rare because it’s more difficult. In a decadent culture such as ours, it’s easier to imagine more of the same—decay—rather than it’s alien feeling opposite—revitalization.
It’s certainly not wrong for Christians to imagine a worse world—to do so might just be what our fathers would call “prudence.” A missionary—and if you’re a Christian, you’re a missionary—who doesn’t recognize the dangers, weaknesses, and sin in a culture is as useless as a doctor who refuses to diagnose his patients. Yet, God gave us two eyes for a reason: we mustn’t stop at seeing the brokenness in our culture, we must also acknowledge its beauty. The same hands that build bombs can also build shelters, which is another way of saying that the same hands the build swords can bend them into plowshares.
I’m not sure anyone showed us how to dream with a prophetic, missionary zeal more than the great pastor, theologian, and missiologist of the last century, J.H. Bavinck. Bavinck (nephew to Herman) spent much of his life as a missionary to Indonesia. He wrote profusely about the people he was trying to reach with the gospel. He saw their idols and evils the way only an outsider could. Yet, he always wrote about them with compassion, affection, and, indeed, love.
As I read the aspirational words below, I felt the need to repent. In this political moment, I’ve used the imagination God gave me perversely. I’ve imagined a world where the only force at work is sociological, political, and natural. But there is indeed a metaphysical, spiritual, supernatural force at play that, if reckoned with, can infuse our imagination with an apocalyptic, missionological, prophetic hopefulness. Listen in as Bavinck dreams about what his culture, Asian, could become:
“When a living, blossoming church will certainly arise in the world of Asia, Christ will accomplish amazing things there. Asia has gifts and abilities that will then render its people exceedingly suited to understanding the meaning of the gospel. From childhood, they are more strongly convinced than we of the all-encompassing religious nature of everything pertaining to daily life, so they will then be well positioned to see the hand of Christ in all of life. They are not as far removed from the miraculous as we are, and for that reason Christ will do amazing things among them. They also listen better that we do, and they are capable of waiting more quietly for the voice of God and depending on God more submissively.
Above all, they are less attached to externals like money and material things, like honor and making a name for themselves. They know better than we that the things of this age are fleeting. The gospel of Christ will thus also enable them to see more fully that we may not despise this world, since it is God’s handiwork and is the context in which he will realize his external counsel. The same gospel will also guide them to look upward and to expect the everlasting kingdom that will one day appear and for whose coming we all yearn with great longing.
Thus, we can expect great things with regard to the faith. We stand at a point of terrible crisis, of struggle and confusion. Our modern world bears guilt of every kind; no one can tell where all of this will lead.
But blessed is the person who believes, waits, and knows that in Christ Jesus the power to accomplish great things in this amazing world has come. May we simply learn to expect those great things from him.”
America still stands “at a point of terrible crisis, of struggle and confusion.” Instead of taking this cultural moment to be pundits, may we be prophets. Yes, we can debate, but first lets dream. Lets imagine what America might be, what strengths and beauties she has that might be redeemed. And lets wait in expectant hope as we ask the God who is able to accomplish great things.
