The first two decades of the 21st century have witnessed a perceptible shift in the American psyche—a shift from American pragmatism to “do something about it” to a despair of “But what?” and “Why bother?” The Church of Christ needs a sure footing and strong voice, a “voice crying in the wilderness.” Lacking any saving capacity itself, the Church’s work and contribution can only witness to the power by which it has come into being, the grace of an active God.
The challenge, however, is not only a dispirited pessimism in America but distortions of the gospel. Ours is no longer a time when a Billy Graham or a Fulton Sheen might routinely receive favorable front-page coverage. When media cover Christianity now, it is often to showcase scandal. Could there be a more critical time for the Church to assert its identity and clear witness to Jesus Christ?
But we must ask, “What sort of witness is it?” Karl Barth may provide help. Barth understood being an evangelical as a particular relationship to the world that presupposed a public testimony to Jesus meant engagement with the world. It’s a relationship aptly described in 1 Corinthians 7:29-30: “I mean, brothers and sisters, the appointed time has grown short; from now on, let even those who have wives be as though they had none, and those who mourn as though they were not mourning, and those who rejoice as though they were not rejoicing, and those who buy as though they had no possessions.”
Barth writes about the kind of witness that leads to engagement: “Their existence as such is a small yet completely new factor characterizing and helping to determine the world situation post-Christum.”
He adds, “In rather more banal terms, what advantage is it to the world, to themselves and last and supremely to the God who acts and reveals Himself in Jesus Christ, that they are present as such?”
In other words, being a Christian is good for oneself and for the world. A central theological assertion in the Church Dogmatics is simply that “God cares about man.” Barth puts it directly: “God has a thing about man.” When Jesus said, “I say unto you, before Abraham was, I am,” it means the Incarnation was not an afterthought.
Therefore we, humanity, matter to the world, this good creation.
But what does that mean in today’s political context? We seem locked between two stale and aging perspectives embodied by the President of the United States and his predecessor: Donald Trump, who asserts that only he can fix it, and Joe Biden, who asserts an optimistic humanism with talk of the democratic experiment. The confidence of both has proven a dangerous illusion and has nurtured a false debate.
These two perspectives, which seem trapped in the last century much as Trump and Biden are well beyond retirement age, place trust in human ingenuity rather than an active God who, through his Spirit, works in this world. One might think of the gospel-informed work of Martin Luther King Jr. “Only God can save us” is not piety but fact.
This Barthian approach insists that our trust cannot be in a policy or program but to our being in time in Christ. Such a fixity in Christ does not come without anxiety and challenge. This is what Barth calls the “Christian in affliction.” Yet Barth reminds us, though we are bound, God is not.
We may, as Barth puts it, “sit with our hands in our lap twiddling our thumbs.” But God is always about his business, with or without us. Better still, Barth reminds us how we have been named in Christ and are therefore a people who have already won victory. We merely await the consummation and celebration of that victory.
Not once did Jesus in confronting human darkness fail to emerge victorious — acknowledged so by the cast out demon who declared “We know who you are, have you come to destroy us?” (Mark 1:24). The evil of this world has already lost, yet it remains for a time, in these “latter days.”
And in such days, we labor not in vain. Paul tells us as much, that we ought to be steadfast and immovable. In this way, and in small moments and large, in our victories and our failures, we testify to the active God, one who is for us, one of us, and promises us his kingdom without end.
The Rev. Dr. Walter Hartt is a Guest Writer. He is a former professor of theology at the General Theological Seminary and has two decades of experience in parish ministry.
