I have to admit that I am becoming less and less happy to be thought of as an Evangelical. Not because I don’t believe the things Evangelicals do, but because of the social and political baggage which seems to go along with the term. Director of the Evangelical Alliance; Joel Edwards raises some of these issues in an excellent piece in the Times.
So I am a man with a mission. I believe in Christ as good news for a world that needs social and spiritual transformation. And I believe his message is love. I am determined that this is what being evangelical can be about again. We may still mention sex, but when we do I want us to put a bit of love in our talk about “lurv”. But more than talking about sex you will see us holding the Government to account on the Millennium Development Goals through our Micah Challenge campaign, or talking about respect and what it really means among our inner-city youth. Or you will see us defending the family, not because we are a bunch of Victorian fuddy-duddies, but because we believe good strong families are good news for healthy societies.
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“And I believe his message is love. I am determined that this is what being evangelical can be about again.”
What on earth does he mean? ‘His message is love.’ Well yes, we all think love is a good thing – like motherhood and apple pie. But Jesus’ message wasn’t about love in that generic sense. In fact, if he had a message that was that general, it was more about judgment than about love. You could more accurately say something like ‘Jesus’ message was about the coming of the Kingdom of God.’ But the most accurate way of describing it would be to say that Jesus’ message was about himself – about who he was, and why we need to believe in him.’
The trouble with ‘his message is love’ is that although it sounds so nice and warm and fuzzy, it doesn’t really say anything at all. And that’s the real problem with being an ‘evangelical’ today. We’ve lost the plot about what the Good News really is.
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