Back in the blessed year of our Lord Twenty-twenty, when the orange man led the mutiny against leftism one tweet at a time, life was quite tolerable for Christians who gave a dram about ethical currency. Back then, I wrote:
“If we cannot get our act together during COVID under a relatively pro-liberty, pro-church president, how many jumping jacks will we be willing to do under a Biden presidency if the next tempest rises? How much longer will we be willing to keep our churches closed? How much more will we be willing to subscribe to government mailing lists? How much more will we be willing to spread fear as a virtue? How much more will we be willing to concede?”
As Yoda would say, “Concede we have.” But we have conceded ground quicker than even I expected and evangelical Christians are so eager to taste the Kool-Aid of concession that they drank it straight. And drinking anything straight is quite a challenge for the Charles Finney generation.
So, as we move on we must get the house in order. And by house, I mean the literal oikos, and not some metaphysical one, which we will touch on in a later post. But for now, let’s begin our focus on the living room rules that should guide our revolution:
If Jesus is Lord, then the coffee table is under his domain. I have talked so much about hospitality over the years that if you poke me I’d bleed mash potatoes. That is because the entire endeavor has eternal consequences and hospitable people will one day rule the world. But my point is a bit more nuanced, if I may.
Hospitality is one entire piece of the pie, but the coffee table has another purpose as well beyond the purveyor of brewed coffee beans, and that purpose is the intentional meeting place for strategies and blueprinting.
Bonhoeffer once led a clandestine seminary where they sang, prayed, ate together, and found creative ways to think about world domination. Now, these were Lutherans, which is almost always synonymous with ecclesiastical introverts. There is such a time for this introversion, but I am arguing we need to embody the Bonhofferian vision like postmil fanatics. The coffee table can be the sacred space for weather-talk or it can be the sacred space for changing the weather altogether. And not to pile metaphors, but the entire process should be a hot one.
We need to restore the coffee table to a place of honor in the house. We need to begin the conversations about the future like grown-ups. I already said we have conceded on too many grounds, but I dare say the ground is still ours (Rom. 4:13). This is the time for complacent dad to get away from his garage just for a few minutes and drink his coffee like a man.
Dad and mom are going to have to decide–in consultation with priests and prophets–what their limitations are and how far they should go and where the middle ground is. The time for silence ended somewhere between days one and three of Jesus’ proclamation of the Gospel to the captives in Sheol. We are far removed from that event, but we are not far removed from resurrection which is ever before us. And this means that we lay the grounds for resurrection power in our homes (more of this in future posts).
I told my congregation recently that Jesus’ ministry is one of rejection and our ministry to the world is also one of rejection. But it’s not the rejection we receive for being repulsive; it’s the natural rejection for being compulsive in our yearning for the triumph of the good. Too many of us need to take more rejection to feel the weight and heaviness of Christendom.
I am arguing in a very caffeinated manner that the coffee tables should be strategy places for determining our commitment to being rejected. Therefore, the coffee table is a good place for gatherings with children to sing imprecation and to savor the elation of those who treasure the kingdom of heaven.
My simple encouragement is to get your coffee mugs and gather the troops and the faithful churchmen around you and begin to talk about the latest edition of kingdom magazine. We have, ladies and gentlemen, conceded too much. It’s time to take our coffee tables back from neutrality and pagans and use that square or circle furniture piece to make plans to make the Christian currency great again.
