Individual theology

I recently finished reading A God-Sized Vision: Stories of Revival that Stretch and Stir by Collin Hansen and John Woodbridge. I appreciated their scope of time and of different countries, including Korea, China, Uganda, Rwanda, India, etc. It enlightened me to how God has worked in many other countries. I know He is always at work—I just often do not see it or hear about it.

Before the 1991 genocide in Rwanda, there had been a history of revivals. In fact, it could have been called one of the most Christianized countries. If so, how did the genocide happen? We, in our finite minds, will never know. Yet, later church historians point out the following upon reflection:

* Following the revivals, a lack of discipleship and a lack of teaching people to study the Word for themselves;

* The church hierarchies grew wealthy and complacent;

* A strong emphasis on individual theology and morality that eclipsed social sins and social responsibility.

Hansen and Woodbridge include a quote from Roger Bowen, who served the Lord in Rwanda: “The Church in Rwanda has operated with a very privatized and inadequate view of sin. The challenge to repentance has usually focused on a fairly limited range of private morality—lying, stealing, adultery, drunkenness. However there is little awareness of the solidarities of sin that we are embedded in as members of a society…Ironically, the Revival doctrine of sin underestimates the power and depth of evil, and by focusing on personal/private morality is quite inadequate to tackle the hideous strength of structural evil and corporate sin manifested in an act of genocide.”1

It makes one think about the potential ramifications of an individualistic theology, which I think has been a predominant feature of our North American theology. Not to say there will ever be a genocide, but does our individualistic theology allow “the solidarities of sin that we are embedded in as members of a society” to go unheeded? What does it mean to be Christians in this society? How do we relate? How do we do church and theology communally, as a body of Christ? Are there “solidarities of sin” in our American church? Questions I am asking myself….

“You [plural] are the light of the world. A city on a hill cannot be hidden” (Mt. 5:14).

“Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it.” “If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it” (1 Cor. 12:27, 26).

“Besides everything else, I [Paul] face daily the pressure of my concern for all the churches” (2 Cor. 11:28).

NOTES

1 Roger Bowen, qtd. In Meg Guillebaud, Rwanda: The Land God Forgot? Revival, Genocide, and Hope, Grand Rapids, MI: Monarch, 2002, qtd. In Hansen and Woodbridge, p. 323.