John C. Nugent

“The publisher’s website is the least expenseive place to buy a hard copy. https://wipfandstock.com/endangered-gospel.html. They always offer a 20% discount online. A few times a year they also have special sales of 40-50% off. For an electronic copy, you can acquire a kindle version for only $9.99 on Amazon.com.”

“See the ‘Resources’ tab of this website”

“The approach advocated in Endangered Gospel has several important implications for creation care or environmental concern. Four basic truths are immediately relevant:
(1) Nowhere in the New Testament are Christians in particular called to fix nonhuman creation.
(2) It is clear in Genesis 1-2 that all humans everywhere must be responsible stewards of whatever nonhuman creation they inhabit or interact with. It’s part of what it means to bear God’s image and exercise dominion within creation.
(3) Just like God called Israel to be good stewards of their land and animals in the Old Testament in order to show the nations what proper creation care looks like, so Christians must continue to relate to nonhuman creation in exemplary ways. Nothing in the New Testament leads us to believe otherwise.
(4) The powers and principalities in particular have been given jurisdiction over large portions of nonhuman creation and are responsible to God for overseeing it well.

These four truths were relevant in Old Testament times and continue to be relevant for Christians. Yet they do not fully reflect the newness that Christ brought. In the Old Testament, we see in several places that fallen humanity has a negative impact on nonhuman creation. The soil cries out, for instance, when Cain defiles it with Abel’s blood. Several prophets highlight the negative impact that human sin makes on the land and animals (e.g., Joel). In multiple places we see creation groaning under the burden of human sin.

Something changes, however, in the New Testament. Romans 8 depicts creation not only as mourning its fallen condition, but also as eagerly awaiting the revelation of the children of God. It’s as if creation is aware that the coming of Christ and the beginning of God’s kingdom has created a kingdom people that has begun to experience the kingdom already. It is aware, further, that this experience is not universal. It is the experience of God’s people and it is not fully complete. It will only find completion when Christ returns. Yet only after Christ returns will creation itself be swept up in that full restoration. I explain this in chapter 3 of Endangered Gospel.

All of this is to say that only when the children of God live as first fruits of God’s kingdom does nonhuman creation experience the new creation made possible by Christ. Until Christ returns, God’s people are as close to the kingdom as nonhuman creation can get. So just as the created order reels under the violence, greed, hatred, and discrimination of fallen humanity, it may also thrive and enjoy the peace, generosity, love, and equality that is embraced, displayed, and proclaimed by God’s set apart people.

Christians may therefore bless nonhuman creation not merely by being good stewards and advocates for it, but also—and perhaps more importantly—by living out the new creation in the midst of nonhuman creation. So let us fill creation with multiple churches in every city and town. Let us dance upon and alongside nonhuman creation with love, peace, justice, and harmony with our common Creator. If creation does not experience this through us, then it will not experience it at all.

Creation is better off when any person of goodwill—Christian or not—does something that impacts the environment positively. This is good work that we should applaud and encourage wherever it happens. We shouldn’t hesitate to be a part of it, so long as it doesn’t draw us into practices and narratives that stand in fundamental tension with God’s kingdom. But we should not equate this with God’s kingdom work. It is unlikely that creation will either. For it is most eager, according to Romans 8:19, when it encounters God’s children carrying out their specific mission by living in new creation ways that only those who possess the first fruits of God’s Spirit can (Romans 8:23).”

“This is a great question and one that I am asked quite often. I offer a brief answer to it on p. 95. But it deserves more space than I could give it in the book. Before digging in, I offer some context for the question.

The thesis of Endangered Gospel is that God has not called us “to make” this world a better place, but “to be” the better place God has already made in this world through Christ. Part one sets forth this thesis, part two shows how it follows from the full scope of the Bible story, and part three tests this thesis against specific case studies. This question grows out of part two, ch. 11, where I show that it is the church’s responsibility to display God’s kingdom in our life together. On p. 90, I make a claim that is NOT original to me. Citing a New Testament scholar, Gerhard Lohfink, I observe that one of the best kept secrets in NT studies is that when the NT talks about love for humans it almost always refers to love for fellow believers. I then quote verbatim 30 such instances. This is a nearly comprehensive list that leaves out only two instances: the passage about enemy love and the parable of the Good Samaritan. I save these for last because they appear to be exceptions to the rule (see pp. 96-97 for my discussion of enemy love).

Before I focus on the Good Samaritan, I want to note that if these two instances are in fact exceptions, then they would compromise the claim that the NT never tells us to love unbelievers. That is not a claim I need to make or one that my thesis depends upon. The claim I make in ch. 11 is that the NT clearly teaches that Christian witness centers on believers displaying God’s kingdom by loving one another. This is encapsulated in Jesus’s claim that everyone will know we are disciples by our “love for one another” (John 13:34-35). The Apostle Peter underscores this claim in 1 Peter 2:17 when he instructs us to “Honor everyone. Love the family of believers. Fear God. Honor the Emperor.” Peter’s point—also in the context of witness (v. 12)—is that God uniquely receives our fear, fellow believers uniquely receive our love, but everyone (including the emperor) receives our honor.

If the primary calling of the church was to make this world a better place, then this overwhelming emphasis on love for one another—to the near exclusion of passages about loving unbelievers—makes little sense. If the primary calling is to be God’s better place and it is through our display of God’s better place (in our life together) that unbelievers will come to faith, then this lopsided emphasis on in-house love makes perfect sense. So, if I can prove that the biblical portrait of love is highly lopsided, which even a 30:2 ratio would demonstrate, then I’ve accomplished my goal in that chapter. But I get a little greedy anyway and go after the two possible exceptions: enemy love and Samaritan love. My claim is not that these passages teach us NOT to love outsiders to the faith, but that it is not as clear as most people assume that these passages are about love of outsiders.

Now to the Good Samaritan. The most important point to make is that the Samaritan is a Samaritan and not a Gentile. Gentiles were true outsiders to Israel. Jesus makes explicit that he was not sent to Gentiles but to the lost sheep of Israel (Matt 15:24). New Testament scholars agree that the mission to the Gentiles does not begin until the conversion of Cornelius’s household in Acts 10 (even though there are earlier hints that Gentiles were capable of faith and would soon be discipled). In Acts 10, however, the Apostle Peter is surprised by God’s special favor upon the Gentiles. For up until this point, in his experience, they were truly outsiders. But this was NOT the case with Samaritans. Jesus initiates the conversion of a Samaritan woman and her whole village in John 4. And the mission to Samaritans in Acts, which Peter is part of, begins in chapter 8, before the Gentile conversions. For some reason—to Jesus, Luke, and Peter—Samaritans and Gentiles were not the same.

There was certainly a significant difference between Samaritans and other Jews, but they had enough in common that they were more like estranged siblings. They both shared the land of Palestine and they both claimed to worship the God of Israel (though on different mountains). From Jesus’ perspective, it seemed as if the Samaritans were part of Israel’s lost sheep – even if they strayed farther from the fold than all other Jews. In Luke’s Gospel, they are treated like Jewish prostitutes and tax collectors. Mainstream Jews had written them off, but Jesus was unwilling to abandon them altogether. He embraces them as part of his mission if gathering Israel’s lost sheep. They were definitely not the center of his mission, but he draws them in from the periphery.

The message of the parable of the Good Samaritan, then, is that if God’s people are truly to love one another the way God has called them, then they are going to have to love not only the easy-to-love who are at the center of the faith community, but also the hard-to-love who are at the periphery of the community. The message does not appear to be that Jesus is making all people everywhere the object of Christian love. If this were the case, it appears that none of the apostolic authors caught on. For all NT letters, without exception, speak about human love in terms of love for fellow believers.

This whole point may seem a bit less scandalous when one considers how first century believers likely defined love. Today we think of love rather lightly. It is about being nice to people, helping them out in times of need, and wanting what’s best for them. If that is what we mean by love, then there is ample evidence in the NT that we ought to love unbelievers. There are passages that instruct us to honor, do good to, be kind to, pray for, and witness to unbelievers. If we fail to do this, we have failed at our calling with relation to unbelievers. So I am not suggesting that anyone start neglecting and ignoring unbelievers or to abandon all efforts to serve them or seek the good. When the church ceases to exist for unbelievers, it ceases to exist as God’s missionary people.

Rather, in the OT and NT, love has a stronger meaning than that. It has to do with prioritizing. Likewise, its opposite, hate, has a weaker meaning that we often assign to it. It has to do with de-prioritizing. The ones we love get the lion’s share of our time, energy, and resources. The ones we hate are relegated to second place—not first. We don’t go out of our way to harm them! This makes sense of passages about God loving Jacob and hating Esau, Jacob loving Rachel and not Leah, and Jesus telling us to love God and hate our families. In Scripture, love is about placing some above others. To place our family before God is not an option, but it doesn’t mean treating them disrespectfully or not honoring them.

What Christians have to grasp is that God does want all people to be saved and he wants the church to participate. But his strategy is to fill this world with communities that showcase his kingdom by how they love one another. Since this is God’s strategy, it must be the best strategy. We might think we would be more effective evangelists if we were to prioritize unbelievers before believers and, in so doing, “to love them into the kingdom.” But that is hubris. Do we really know more than God what is best? If we really care about unbelievers, we must follow the directives of the all-knowing, all-wise God. All throughout the OT, God’s people resisted his strategy for them in this world. Whenever they improvised or tweaked God’s plan, their efforts failed. I wrote this book because I want to see us succeed, precisely for the sake of unbelievers.”

“The ideas in Endangered Gospel are not original. What makes them seem fresh today, I suspect, is the context in which we live. Over the past few decades, scholars and popular level writers have done a commendable job of convincing Christians that the gospel has profound social implications. It’s not just about saving souls for the hereafter; it also entails transformed life in community in the present.

Yet Christians today have such a strong allegiance to western culture and such a weak view of the church that it seldom dawns upon them that this transformed way of life in community is supposed to be about the shared life of God’s set apart people: the church. They assume that the gospel empowers them to make the world a better place and not to be the better place God has already begun to make in this world through Christ.

Christians have enjoyed a majority presence in the western world for so long that the logic of a minority movement with a distinct way of life is alien to us. Western culture has seen so much scientific, technological, and social progress that it is nearly impossible to regard it, like Scripture does, as the old order that is passing away. How could an ancient religious sect that is rapidly losing cultural clout bear the meaning and direction of world history?

Everyone likes to be on the winning team, and all signs seem to indicate that the western church is losing. Yet western culture offers no hope for eternal life, so demoralized Christians don’t want to forfeit their spiritual stakes altogether. Instead, like good investors, they diversify their lifestyle portfolio. They invest deeply enough in western cultural goods to reap their immediate benefits, and they invest just enough in spiritual goods to secure a postmortem return.

Only, now more than ever Christians have come to equate spiritual investment with good deeds of world betterment. It has become second nature to read the Bible as supporting this agenda, and the gospel itself has been conformed to it. Churches have done little to counteract these trends. Leaders often accept the reality that they must settle for their parishioners’ leftover energies. So when congregants are passionate about anything and want to pursue it together with the church, far be it for them to get in the way. World betterment projects are thus quickly assimilated into church programming and added to the missions budget. Bible folk attend studies, anxious people join support groups, parents enroll their kids in youth group, and social activists participate in protests. There’s something for everyone.

So the short answers is: No, the ideas in Endangered Gospel aren’t new. They only seem new in our current cultural climate. Scholars like John Howard Yoder (Mennonite), Gerhard Lohfink (Roman Catholic), and Stanley Hauerwas (Methodist/Anglican) have been saying such things for a long time. Yoder’s Revolutionary Christian Citizenship (esp. chs. 1 & 6) spells out the specific place of God’s people in God’s mission in an engaging and easy to read way. Lohfink is a bit more difficult to read, but he sets forth the NT foundations for a similar view in Jesus and Community. Stanley Hauerwas and William Willimon provocatively spell out the specific posture of God’s people in this world and warn us against making the world’s most noble agendas our agenda in Resident Aliens. More recently, Scot McKnight says similar things in Kingdom Conspiracy.

The contribution of Endangered Gospel is to locate the church’s precise role in the full Bible story. As far as I can tell, no one else brings together the Old and New Testament pieces in as brief and accessible a manner. I also expose the lack of biblical support for the notion that God has commissioned his people to make the world a better place.”

“This is a great question that requires an extended answer. For those who have not yet read Endangered Gospel, four chapters relate directly to this question: “God Uses the Powers” (ch. 6), “Vocation” (ch. 20), “Missions” (ch. 21), and “Answers to Practical Questions” (appendix).

This is an interesting and complicated question because it presupposes something that intuitively feels right, namely, that “bringing Christ into wider social justice work” is something Christians are supposed to do. We know for certain that the church is supposed to be a people whose life together embodies God’s social justice regarding race, economics, and all other aspects of life. So it goes without saying that believers ought to live out God’s justice as congregations of disciples in their cities and neighborhoods. Local churches should be living demonstration plots of God’s kingdom that the world may see and from which the world might learn.

It is less certain that believers are responsible for “bringing” Christ into wider nonprofit sectors. This is not because Christ is not relevant to such sectors; he surely is. Rather, it is because Christ is already an integral part of those sectors before and independent of us. At least, that is how the Apostle Paul envisioned it:

“He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation; for in him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers—all things have been created through him and for him. He himself is before all things, and in him all things hold together.” (Col. 1:15-17)

As I discuss in chapter 6, God is at work in Christ through the powers and principalities creating and sustaining order and justice throughout the entire world, especially among those who do not submit to Christ and seek first his kingdom. But Scripture also teaches that the order God creates and sustains through the powers—though vital and necessary for human flourishing—is fading away and destined to be replaced by the new order of God’s kingdom that Christ inaugurated, which currently takes form in the church. Whereas the powers have been appointed by God to champion the old order that is passing away, the church has been commissioned by God to champion the new order of his kingdom that will never end.

God’s will for all Christians is to seek first this new order. God’s kingdom is not something we bring or build. The new world God has begun in Christ is entirely God’s work. We receive it as a gift and serve as ambassadors and witnesses to it (2 Cor 5). We offer it to others as a gift that they too may accept or reject. This should be the believer’s driving passion and central vocation. Everything else is subordinate to it. God’s new kingdom order is the treasure and pearl that Jesus speaks about. Upon truly grasping it, the only proper response is to divest ourselves of all previous priorities and build our lives around it. Indeed, whatever we build our lives around is the kingdom we serve.

This framework, puts our question into proper perspective. Nonprofit organizations where Christians work alongside various powers to promote social justice are not where we “bring” Christ to the world, regardless of how much good they do for the world. Kingdom driven churches are where and how we have been commissioned to represent Christ’s kingdom to the world. Nonetheless, nonprofit work can be very important work in which God in Christ is already present. God wants it to go well and it is worth a believer devoting a 40-hour work week to it—more worthwhile than many other occupations we may choose.

As we do such work, we will act as Christians. We will implement gospel insights into how we carry out whatever tasks it may entail. We will treat all co-laborers with dignity by paying no respect to age, race, position, gender, and likability. Each person is made in God’s image and worthy of our honor. We will accord the same honor to all those whom we serve. We will fight for their dignity in ways consistent with the gospel. If we would not use violence or deceit to advance God’s ultimate agenda for our lives, we will certainly not use it to advance subordinate agendas.

Our commitment to honoring all people and carrying out all tasks with excellence guided by wisdom and experience gained through participation in God’s kingdom work in the church is central to our witness outside the church. The church’s practices, teachings, and life rhythms shape us into people who are well equipped to serve excellently among powers who are committed to healthy forms of social justice. Corrupt powers will find us less helpful since we won’t join them in their corruption.

Those powers who want what is best and are open to learning from believers what that might entail (as we have learned it from Christ) will find us to be excellent co-workers. Should they acknowledge our excellent service, we must be eager to testify to God’s kingdom, its king, and its people as the source of our strength, insight, and skill. Only in this sense do we “bring” Christ to our occupations in a way that he isn’t already there.

Such work among the powers can be exhilarating. The powers and principalities often achieve tangible results that impact more people in less time than Christians often experience among God’s people. It seems so much more efficient and successful. So it is tempting to allow the penultimate ends achieved by the powers to become ultimate in our lives and to demand more of our time, energy, and resources than is due them. This is to render unto Caesar what belongs to Caesar as well as what belongs to God. Succumbing to such a temptation is idolatry. The most common form of idolatry in contemporary western society is to prioritize the world that is fading above the new creation that will last forever. It is more common than other forms because it is more respectable—both to the world and to many fellow believers.

How do we keep this from happening? First, we need clear and consistent teaching in the church. People often see no problem with spending the lion’s share of their energies on noble worldly agendas because the church praises such labors rather than admonish them. They see no grounds for admonishment because they have a weak understanding of the gospel and thus a weak sense of what it means to seek first God’s kingdom. Clearly conveying this needs to be a priority for church leaders and should permeate church curriculum and life rhythm.

Even if one’s church is not all on the same page about this, there is much that a member of the body can do to be an example and positive influence on the rest of the body. They can limit their work to forty hours. They can do whatever is in their power to make sure those hours don’t interfere with church life. They can refuse to take their work home with them and instead be fully present to their church and biological families. In doing such things, they are likely limiting how upwardly mobile they may become in their occupations. Management that requires overtime, all the time, may not be a good position for a kingdom-first believer.

Lastly, if one does not want to get sucked into the idolatry of misplaced priorities, one needs to truly devote time, energy, resources (i.e., love) to the family of God. Find creative, even demanding ways to be a witness and a positive force for justice as a church family. Do the kind of work together as a body—keeping Christ’s kingdom at the center—that requires the empowerment of God’s Spirit and thus truly satisfies our desire to live meaningful lives. Don’t expect quick results. Expect it to grow in the slow and strange ways Jesus talks about the kingdom growing. But know, in faith, that God has called kingdom-centered Christian communities to bear the meaning and direction of world history.”

“You raise an important question about serving as a police officer. In chapter 20, I provide a much needed wider framework for answering it, but I will assume you have read that and simply want me to apply it to the specific vocation of policing. I don’t think there is a one-size-fits-all answer to the police officer question. That is because “being a police officer” means different things to different people in different positions in different times and places. I suspect there are certain police roles that a Christian would have a difficult time occupying, but perhaps other roles wouldn’t be as compromising.

I spent some time in Jordan a while back. Every young adult there must serve in the military/police after graduating high school. It’s mandatory. But there are a variety of functions available to them. Some serve as tourist police. They accompany groups from other countries and keep them safe throughout their stay. Others are traffic guards or are stationed at public places, like museums, to frisk people as they walk in. All of them represent the state, but they don’t all do the same sort of things. Many are simply peace keepers.

In the States, things are different. If someone felt they were being called to serve in that way and had not yet begun any sort of preparation, I would encourage them to do extensive research – asking the following sorts of questions:

* Why do you feel called?
* What makes you think God is calling you?
* Are the things you might be doing on the job, day in and day out, the sort of things Christians should be doing?
* Can you be fully Christian, in terms of exemplifying the way of Christ and bearing witness to his kingdom, while fulfilling this occupation?
* Are there components of your training that Christians should avoid participating in?
* Are the oaths and commitments you are required to make compatible with your allegiance to Christ?
* Will serving in this way shape you as a person in such a way that draws you away from Christlikeness?
* Will the time commitments of this job leave you ample time to seek first God’s kingdom with your life and not just your leftovers?
* Will participation in this work interfere with robust involvement in church life?
* Will performance of this work leave you with enough physical, mental, and emotional energy to seek first God’s kingdom?

These questions would not be different for any other occupation.

The situation is slightly different for someone who is already in an occupation. In 1 Corinthians 7, Paul calls Christians to remain where they were when they were called, even when that is a situation they may not have originally chosen had they known back then what they know now. I don’t believe he is issuing a blank check, such that he would encourage people to remain a cult prostitute or hitman. But Paul seems to think there is a way to remain a vibrant witness while living in a non-ideal situation (e.g., enslaved or married to an unbeliever).

In this regard, it is interesting to note that Jesus did not ask Zacchaeus to quit his job, and Zacchaeus found a way to submit his vocation to his new faith calling. One wonders whether Cornelius (a Roman Centurion) and the Philippian jailer were able to do the same. They certainly participated in police-like functions. We simply don’t know what these men had to repent of in the course of their conversion. Perhaps they quit, perhaps they transformed their service and were fired as a result.

Either way, it seems there might be a way to stay the course, while subsuming one’s occupation completely under the lordship of Christ. That may be the harder way. There may be persecution, public shaming, and painful termination. It may be easier to pursue a different path that appreciates and makes better use of one’s acquired skillset. Perhaps there are positions that strive to maintain or seek peace among conflicting parties, which would require mediators with tough skin and state training. In any event, the questions above would still be relevant in discerning what paths would best serve the church’s witness to God’s kingdom.

Finally, you express concern that working among the police is working with the power that is “against Christ.” I am not sure I would put it that way. The powers are not inherently “against Christ.” They were created in and for Christ. So they still serve him, albeit in fallen and corrupt ways. They serve the old order that is passing away and will eventually be replaced altogether by the new order of Christ. But, in maintaining that order God uses them to keep relative stability in this world, which makes it easier for God’s people to represent and promote God’s kingdom. So while state structures represent an alternative order to that of Christ, it overstates the case to say they are against Christ.”