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The Church or the Church in Reaction?

I heard a lecture recently where the speaker was talking to Alan Hirsch about his banging of the missiology drum almost to the exclusion of everything else. Hirsch’s response was that the rest of the church is going one way so much, that he is seeking to strike a balance by going the other way.

In class today, I was presented with a similar situation. Our Hebrew class was talking about Psalms such as 139, which speak about the vengeful murder. Some of the men in the class were arguing that it is fair to focus on such texts because much of the church has forgotten that God is Just.
I argued that God is just, that he will make everything right and that our focus must be the expansion of grace, and in light of that fact we don’t want to swing the pendulum to one extreme because others have fallen on the other side.

Maybe this is one of those things that reveals my youthful optimism, and maybe I am just too young to see it this way, but it seems fair to say that many of the Christianity’s biggest problems are found when one group is swinging against the extremes of another group.

Wouldn’t it be better if the church was the church in every situation, constant and moving forward, rather than swaying from right to left depending on the decade or the issue. Maybe we should simply be balanced and trust that God is in control and that he will balance those groups that are on the extremes. I want to be balanced not the balancer.

I hope that every church that I am a part of will be a church of fasting and feasting, of contemplation and emotion, of joy and lamentation, of grace and justice. Never sacrificing one thing for the other.