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What is the “Good News”?

Tuesday, August 21, 2018

What’s the Big Deal about Honour-Shame?



About the time of my last post (many moons ago), I was talking with a pastor who was skeptical about the concept of honour-shame as a way of viewing the gospel. On the one hand, it seems he perceived it as a threat to the integrity of the gospel of Christ by some trying to be “relevant” to culture; on the other hand, at one point he said he just didn’t understand the big deal about honour and shame.
 
Fair enough. Up to this point in The Multifaceted Gospel blog I have been trying to clarify what we mean by “the Gospel”, so that we don’t cross over into something that is less than the Good News of Jesus Christ.[1] In fact, my goal here isn’t really about making the gospel relevant so much as making it comprehensible.[2] When we try to communicate, we need to speak the other person’s language (linguistic comprehensibility). We also need to connect our message to the thought patterns and worldview of the listener (cultural comprehensibility). This is not compromise; it is responsible communication. Otherwise, our listener will end up like M’pudi in The God’s Must Be Crazy when he said, “I understand the words, but the meaning?” or like Nicodemus when he said, “How can these things be?”[3] If our only concern is for linguistic meaning and we ignore cultural meaning, we may as well be speaking ancient Ugaritic.

Beyond honour-shame, what is the big deal about any of the various facets of the Gospel? I think it’s important for us to recognize at least three reasons for trying to understand the Good News of Jesus from different perspectives:

(1)    The Bible presents this Good News in a variety of ways. I’ve tried to show this in previous posts. The Bible is rich in imagery and descriptions of God’s character and His salvation.
(2)    People have different mindsets and ideas about what is important in life. If we consider how people learn, new concepts (and language) can only be grasped when they are connected to existing understanding. This is why mnemonics are so powerful in learning. However, while connections between new ways of thinking need to be connected to known concepts, responsible communication of the Gospel must also challenge the existing models. Wholesale adaptation to existing models almost inevitably leads to syncretism – a mixing of Gospel truth with incompatible ways of thinking and even idolatry. But before you jump to, “Ah-ha! I told you so!” you need to remember that this principle includes the traditional Western (guilt-innocence) model of sharing the Gospel, which can and sometimes does become reduced to a set of intellectual propositions to be affirmed, in contrast to a life to be lived.[4] And yes, the danger exists with an honour-shame perspective, a power-fear perspective, a purity-pollution perspective, a relational perspective, or any of the other perspectives we’ll be talking about.
(3)    Each facet of the biblically revealed Gospel shows us something that we can easily miss if we reduce the Gospel to our favourite perspective (whether it be honour-shame or guilt-innocence or any other facet). So, for example, an honour-shame perspective helps us to see our value in God’s eyes and how He longs to bring healing to our shame – whether it is a result of our sin or of rejection by sinful society. It also reminds us of the importance of God’s honour, and that our lives are to exalt Him as our King. A relational perspective reminds us that God calls us to know Him and has invited us into an relationship with Him that is incredibly intimate. It also highlights how much our relationship with Him and with others has been broken through our rejecting Him and His ways. We are called to walk with Him and to love Him with all our hearts, mind, souls and strength. And the more traditional guilt-innocence perspective reminds us of God’s goodness, that He cares about what is just and right, yet is merciful. The cross is still central to our faith. One of my purposes is to explore this richness in various facets in future posts.

A broader, biblically-based understanding of the Good News of Jesus is a big deal, because the Gospel is a bigger deal than we usually make it. Not that forgiveness of sins and being saved from eternal damnation is a small deal. As the Haggadah[5] puts it, “It would have been enough…”


[1] See especially “What is the Good News?”, “The Same Animal?” and “A Framework for the Gospel”.
[2] In Col. 4:3-4, Paul asks for prayer that he would “declare the mystery of Christ” clearly, as he ought. There actually is a place for adapting forms in order to not place unnecessary stumbling blocks in the way of seekers, though that isn’t what I’m writing about here. And I would suggest that there is a difference between finding where the gospel is relevant in our lives and changing the message in order to make it more palatable. There are gospel implications in every area of our lives.
[3] I believe Jesus was intentionally stretching Nicodemus’ categories. While we need to be responsible communicators, we also need to stretch listeners (and ourselves!) beyond their comfort zone.
[4] There are, of course, truths we need to affirm, but to reduce the Gospel to intellectual assent only is not true faith. See James 2:17-19, Rom. 6:1-2, Gal. 5:16. Note that I am not advocating salvation by works – it is by grace through faith. Nevertheless, as a person puts their trust in Christ, by the power of the Holy Spirit there is transformation in the believer’s life. The pervasive problem of much of the North American church is what Bonhoeffer calls “cheap grace” and an almost gnostic separation of justification and sanctification which is totally unbiblical.
[5] The Haggadah (the “telling”) is the text for the Passover Seder celebration. One portion, the Dayenu, declares that any one of HaShem’s acts of deliverance would have been enough for us to be grateful, but HaShem went far beyond what was necessary with superabundant salvation.