In Matthew 5.14-16 Jesus says, “You are the light of the world…… Let your light shine before men that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven.”

In this statement from the famous and foundational Sermon on the Mount, Jesus makes it clear that his true followers are the ‘light of the world’. What evangelicals find disconcerting is that, here at least, the nature of the light they are commanded to shine, and the thing that will draw men to God, is what Jesus simply and without hesitation calls ‘good deeds’. It has nothing at all to do with the salvation formulas of ‘coming to and believing in Christ’ as preached by later Christian evangelists.

The world is changing. Attitudes of governments and other religions towards traditional Christian ‘overseas’ missionary evangelist work are hardening. While it will take some years yet before most countries will be closed to overt missionary proselytising, the writing is on the wall. It is also very clear that while in western countries the numbers of people hungering for a real spirituality is growing rapidly, these same people are very resistant to attempts to ‘convert’ them into a religious box of any type, be that Christian, New Age or any group which claims that ‘we alone have the truth’.

This is, of course, causing major concern and heartburn among many evangelicals. Their great fear is that if these restrictions and resistances to Christian evangelism continue then, horror of horrors, they will be reduced to only being able to do ‘good works’! Such a fear lays bare one of the most deep-seated and long standing evangelical misunderstandings concerning what Jesus actually taught about how we live in right relationship with God and what constitutes the ‘good news’ he commanded us to take into all the world.

Most evangelicals view the growing resistance to traditional evangelistic efforts and theology as inspired by Satan, and yet another sure sign of the increasing sin of the ‘end times’. I want to propose what I firmly believe is a far more likely reason that the doors to this type of missionary endeavour are closing.

Note: What follows is a ‘thought provoker’ only. For a full discussion on this topic see our Inclusive Christianity article: The Broadness of Salvation

A Thought Provoker

Seriously consider the possibility that it is God, and not Satan, who is behind this relentless change! Could it be that this is one of his main means of not only getting the attention of the Christian church but of forcing it to radically re-examine traditional understandings in two crucial areas: what it is that lies at the heart of the ‘good news’, and what is the truest understanding of Jesus’ teaching on how a person lives in right relationship with God.

Throughout the two thousand years of its existence, Christianity has had an abysmal record of labelling as satanic what history has later clearly shown to have been God at work! I well remember how large sections of the evangelical church in the 1960s and 1970s initially at least declared the then fledgling charismatic movement to be the direct deceiving work of Satan and his demonic forces. It seems that every generation of Christians has had to fight some battle in which God’s ‘new thing’ is roundly denounced as ‘from Satan’ by at least a section of the Church. So why not now, and why not on this issue? At very least, this chronic propensity to mistake the ongoing renewing work of God for the devil’s handiwork should cause us all to be very slow to reject out of hand new thoughts on old issues. Remember the wise words of the Jewish Rabbi Gamaliel to those Jews opposed to the early Christian movement, “But if this is of God, you will not be able to stop [it]. You might even be found fighting against God.”

In Luke 10.25-37 Jesus unequivocally states that the keeping of the Great Commandment, ‘Love the Lord you God with all your heart, soul, strength and mind and your neighbour as yourself,’ would ensure that a person would inherit eternal life. “Do this and you will live,” are his exact words.

Such radical simplicity was immensely threatening to the established Jewish religious system of the day. Why? Because over the years the religious hierarchy had made the pathway to ‘salvation’ incredibly complex. The power of the temple and its vast array of detailed rules and regulations, plus the financially costly sacrificial system, all conspired to make sure that the Church of the day held the power of eternal life and death over people. Refuse to follow all the prescribed mind bogglingly complex rules, regulations and sacrificial requirements and the Jewish church assured you that you would live outside of God’s favour and spend eternity in hell. Sound familiar?