In my Baptisty days I did a fair amount of evangelistic activities. However, no one was interested, it felt like a chore, and it seemed like I was trying to persuade people whose world-view was, quite frankly, working for them and they did not need any change. Although one or two adults would get baptized a year, but the only one I that I remember came to Christ because his life was not working for him. I believed, and still do, that Christ is the hope of the world, but why then was this Good News not at all appealing? So appealing, in fact, that over 60% of children raised in the church leave! [1] You can hardly blame non-believers when a majority of believers’ children leave.

The Gospel I was familiar with is the standard conservative American-Protestant Gospel: all have sinned; the punishment for sin is Hell; but Jesus paid for our sin; if we accept his sacrifice we can be with him in Heaven eternally. Logically it sounds like good news: eternal life! heaven! Emotionally, however, there was no resonance. It did not feel like good news somehow.

This “Four Spiritual Laws” [2] gospel is literally correct, but has stripped out all the context and in so doing, stripped most of the goodness out, too. If we take Four Spiritual Laws Gospel to its logical conclusion, it turns out to be not very good news at all. “Sin” is defined to be breaking the God’s law. “Going to Hell” means being essentially tortured for eternity, and even worse, it turns out we’re all going there by default (since we’ve all broken God’s law, even if we just limit the punishable infractions to the Ten Commandments). It also turns out that there is a time limit: you have to do it before you die.

So the picture here is that God has a set of rules and he is apparently pretty strict about them: one infraction results in excruciating pain for eternity. Now, supposedly God loves us because Jesus died for us, but apparently God only loves us as long as we are living or we have “chosen him”, because if we die without choosing him, he hates us—how else would you describe someone who sends you to an eternity of essentially torture? Even more disturbingly, abusive humans with some of these characteristics often tell you they love you, too. So this message presents God as a draconian, authoritarian ruler, with a sort of loyalty test (me or eternal torture), and is uncomfortably similar to patterns seen in abusive humans. [3] If you explore the implications of the message, it turns out to be not very good news at all.

Unfortunately, the positive side of the message is not very good news, either. Obviously no one wants to spend eternity with someone like that, but even if we gloss over the negative implications and assume that God does actually love us, the message is not a lot better. Eternal life sounds nice, especially compared to the alternative, but eternal life of what? Everybody’s assumption (it was certainly mine) seems to be that Heaven is sort of an eternal church service, since the most notable descriptions of heaven is angels singing God’s praise. That feels … rather boring. Maybe there will be a Bible study, too, and we can have some “fellowship” and “community”. (Hopefully God is High Anglican, because at least the music will be really good! As long as you like classical music, anyway…)

There is an another, less obvious problem with this message: it has no relevance to now, especially if you are younger than retirement age. The message presents a hard sell for an abstract choice with consequences in the nebulous future. “If you died tonight, do you know where you would spend eternity?” Well, what could be more important than eternity? And what could be more disastrous than an eternity of torture? I might get hit by a bus on the way home, I need to choose now! But ignoring the hard-sales tactic, well, actually, right now, a good meal, a warm house, and loving friends and family are a lot more important than eternity, because if I do not have one of those for the next, say, twenty years, I am probably going to be prematurely experiencing that eternity.

There is also the aspect of, okay, I’m “saved”, now what? One of my pastors explicitly said that our purpose in life after being saved is to get other people saved. Nobody was any good at getting people saved, but the unstated message from the Evangelical community seemed to be that our purpose was live a holy life—that is, not break the rules. It was explicitly stated (and correctly) that we could not actually succeed in living a holy life, but at least there is “grace”. Well, that’s a bit hopeless, but you learn to get good at appropriating grace—Jesus died for that sin, too—which is a useful skill.

Nothing that I was naturally attracted to was held up as part of God’s kingdom. Software development, good fiction, hiking in beautiful places, music, scholarship, it was all, well, it was not a sin, but there did not seem to be a place for it in worshiping God. In fact, “the world” was usually seen as opposed to God; I have even heard a pastor say “there is nothing for you in this world”. [5] You could play in the worship band, which as a classical lover was not very appealing. And scholarship was limited to the Bible (and in retrospect, that was not actually scholarship, but at least there was an attempt).

Since this is the predominant message from American Christianity, it is not a surprise that God is not appealing to people. No one is looking for more rules, and people do not join an authoritarian group if they have other options. For that matter, I was so eager to get out of my parents’ house by the time I graduated college that you could not have paid me to stay, and I had pretty good parents. It is hard to see the pagans of the Roman Empire, the Germanic tribes, the Norsemen, and the Celts giving up their entire cultural worldview for this. Clearly we need a richer Gospel.

I am still in the process of searching, but the Anglican bishop turned seminary professor, N. T. Wright, offers one possibility [4]. In his understanding of the Bible, the garden of Eden represents a near-Eastern temple, but instead of the graven image of the god, the image in the temple is humanity. Just as a temple sits at the intersection of heaven and earth, so humanity in the garden is designed to be the image of God at the intersection of heaven and earth, at the intersection of the immaterial world that God inhabits and the material world of his creation. Our role is to be a royal priesthood: kings who steward and cultivate God’s creation, and priests who reflect the praise of creation back to God.

We chose to worship and serve the snake rather than God, however. As Paul describes in Romans 1, we failed to worship God, with the result that we are in bondage to sin. The problem in Paul’s view, is not the sin (the disobedience), the problem is the lack of worship. The sin and bondage is the consequence of not worshiping God. At any rate, now humanity is slave to sin and the death that results from it.

God promised Adam and Eve deliverance, and some time later he chooses Abraham as the start of that deliverance, promising him that he would be a blessing to all people. From Abraham came the nation of Israel, chosen to be a nation of priests (a priest mediates between God and man, so a nation of priests would mediate between the nations of the world and God). Just like Adam and Eve, the twelve tribes of Israel also did not worship God, and just like Adam and Eve, they were exiled from the Promised Land. By the time of Jesus, the Jews had returned to the land, but they were still in exile because the Presence of God had not returned to the Temple after it left in Ezekiel. It could not return, because their sin had not been forgiven, but without God’s Presence, how could the promises of deliverance to the world through thedescendants of Abraham be fulfilled?

The creeds say that Jesus fulfilled the Scripture. Jesus is the Presence of God, and so God did return to his people, and he did bring forgiveness, taking our sin as the representative of Israel and the world. The promises to Adam, Abraham, and the nation of Israel in Scripture have been fulfilled, although more broadly than expected. Not only has Israel’s sin been forgiven, but the sin of all nations, so that through Abraham’s seed (the Messiah, Jesus), every member of humanity can once more return to our role as a royal priesthood, reflecting worship to God and implementing his cultivation of the world. Indeed, God’s Presence has returned not merely to the Temple, but within every believer in the person of the Holy Spirit (who is also the means of transforming us into the image of Christ as he transforms our hearts of stone into hearts of flesh, as promised).

All this is a little hard to summarize into a simple, easy-to-use tract, nor does it create opportunities for concrete, countable “decisions”, but it certainly offers a lot of richness. In this understanding it is clearer how God’s loves us: he made us for a grand purpose, and despite our continued rebellion as a species to his purpose, he provided a way to bring us back on track. It highlights the positive aspect of the message (deep meaning, reunion with the God who loves us). It is not an abstract “sometime” concept, since the end state of humanity is not an abstract “heaven” but a bodily resurrection to a New Earth and New Jerusalem, so something very relatable, more like Narnia or tea in the Shire. The negative aspect is less clear, but if one chooses to partner with God’s adversary in rebellion and antagonism to his plan (for sin is a violation of the law of love [7]) then one can expect to receive the punishment prepared for God’s antagonist. At any rate, (habitual) sin is not just breaking some arbitrary laws by an authority you did not agree to, it is evidence of a rejection of our entire purpose of being.

This understanding also gives a clear purpose for our lives on earth. Do you love making beautiful music? Great, God values beauty and cultivating beauty is part our mission! Do you value the earth? Great, God created it, said it was good, and told us to cultivate it! Environmentalists have a purpose, it just needs to be redirected from serving one’s reason for being and into a service of love towards God. Do you value justice? Great, justice is one of the frequently mentioned jobs of a king in the Old Testament and we are part of God’s royal family! Now, biblical justice is very different than the neo-Marxist, redefined “Justice” based on historically oppressed groups flipping the script and oppressing the oppressors (in fact, a binary category of oppressor/oppressed is itself unjust). But the concern for justice and for the oppressed is central to God’s system of government. Pursuit of justice looks different in God’s Kingdom, but it is very present.

This deeper understanding more deeply rooted in Scripture. If the Four Spiritual Laws gospel is so central, why does Jesus rarely talk about salvation and frequently talk about “the Kingdom”? In fact, in Matthew, Jesus preaches “the gospel of the Kingdom” (Matt 4:23, 9:25, 24:14), and when he announces that salvation has come to Zaccheus’ house it is in response of him giving half his possessions to the poor and making restitution to anyone he may have taken too much tax from (Luke 19:8-9). Zaccheus received salvation because he made a decision to align with Kingdom values. Even the thief on the cross did not make a Four Spiritual Laws “decision”. He never asked Jesus for forgiveness for his sins, but rather asked to be included in Jesus’ Kingdom—trusting Jesus as Messiah, despite the visible evidence right then pointing to Jesus as a failed messiah.

This understanding also gives an obvious link to how Jesus is the fulfillment of the Scripture. Not merely a fulfillment of Messianic prophecies, but a fulfillment of all of Scripture. The Old Testament shows how Adam, the representative stand-in for man rejected God’s plan, and Israel rejected God’s plan, yet God fulfilled his promise to redeem humanity through Israel. Indeed, God ends Israel’s exile by dwelling with his Presence not merely in the temple in Jerusalem, but in all his people. Just as God amplifies his Presence, so does he amplify what Israel is: not just merely physical descendants of Abraham, but anyone who chooses to be part of the Kingdom (through the forgiveness released by the Messiah’s death) is a New Israel, and a fulfillment of God’s promise to solve the problem of sin by giving Israel a new heart of flesh.

The pagans did not convert because of a Four Spiritual Laws gospel. My current understanding of the gospel, expressed briefly here, is likely only the beginnings of the depth of the Gospel, but already it is better news than Americans are used to hearing. Likewise it provides purpose and responsibilities right now. Indeed, the early Christians transformed the Roman Empire by living out the values of the Kingdom. Among other things, they adopted and raised the abandoned babies (the Roman form of abortion), they remained in cities during the plagues to care for the sick (often at the cost of their lives), they bought slaves to free them, and the bishops were relentless in raising the concerns of the poor to the leaders of the cities. One of those bishops, St. Nicholas, known for giving gifts to the poor, is still remembered 1700 years later, transformed into the secular face of Christmas—Saint Nick, better known as Santa Claus. It is my hope that with a richer Gospel, our generation can transform our paganizing West just as the early Christians transformed pagan Rome.

[1] https://www.barna.com/research/resilient-disciples/

[2] Bright, Bill. The Four Spiritual Laws. Bill Bright Media Foundation and Campus Crusade for Christ, 2007. https://campusministry.org/docs/tools/FourSpiritualLaws.pdf (PDF)

[3] Some of this perspective is explored in the book Love Wins. I want to credit the author, but just mentioning his name is enough to cause some people to reflexively reject anything I am going to say, and I would like for people to at least give a good faith effort to consider what I am saying.

[4] Wright, N.T. The Day the Revolution Began: Reconsidering the Meaning of Jesus’ Crucifixion. HarperOne, 2018.

[5] The pastor meant that the world is not our home, which is something that Paul says, but the actual statement is simply incorrect. In fact, God said that the world is good after he made it. When the New Testament says “the world” they mean “the worldly system of Man” (especially the sociopolitical structures), which is hardly the same thing as saying “there is nothing for you in this world”. There are innumerable things that God made that we can enjoy, although God is where our worship and faith should be directed.

[6] Keller, Tim and Alsdorf, Katherine Leary. Every Good Endeavor: Connecting Your Work to God’s Work. Penguin Books, 2016.

[7] This is too long to work out here, but an all-loving society ceases to exist when people break the law of love. For instance, if everyone respects everyone else’s possession, you can leave your doors unlocked, as in small towns, or even in some, borrow a cup of sugar without needing to ask. However, it only takes one thief and you have to start self-protecting by locking your doors. Just one thief can destroy a wonderful culture of sharing. Additionally, acting unlovingly towards other people is, in fact, hurting them, and you can imagine that, as a parent, God is pretty opposed to his children being hurt.