Christianity Rediscovered: The Golden Nuggets of the Gospel
Culture is all-encompassing, and it is only when we understand and acknowledge a culture that we can interpret the meaning of Scripture into it. Rediscovering Christianity by Vincent J. Donovan is a diary of the deconstruction and cognitive dissonance of a missionary as he learned of God among the Masai of Tanzania. On one hand, Donavan’s journey catapults him into a world of discovery, uncovering the essential nature of the gospel, Christianity, and our Lion God, providing new spectacles through which to see Christianity. On the other hand, the reader experiences Donovan’s effort to look through his new glasses and reconcile the discord and inconsistency he sees with his faith tradition and the unhelpful baggage that comes with his faith. As Donavan journeys among the Masai, he becomes aware of the universal insights of the gospel in all cultures.
Through his life among the Masai, Donavan explores the essential message of Christianity. Where does one start searching for the core message of Christianity? With man? Sin? Human need? With God? Love? What exactly is the gospel? These questions have dogged Christianity for centuries. The have caused division, separation, denominational schisms, elitism, as well as systemic injustice and evil, all perpetuated and encased in the name of Jesus and the gospel. Try Googling “essential nature of gospel” or “what is the gospel” and a plethora of theories (many ensconced in propositions) provide no clear consensus. Donavan’s mission was to deculture the gospel by intentionally laying down all “preconceived ideas about God, salvation, Christ, the meaning of being a Christian, …. or anything traditionally associated with Christianity.”
I made a list of Donavan’s insights regarding God, Church, and faith that express the essential nature of the gospel and the life it offers:
Christianity starts with God and is propelled by love. “The High God is God of all, not only of the one tribe, one people, one way of life, and loves them all equally.” God loving all people equally changes how we look at others and act towards them. The primary thrust of the gospel is the universality of the good news. I believe this profoundly impacts the presentation and embodiment of the gospel, be it in North America or overseas. I find this particularly potent in the current social climate of racial reckoning, political divide, and evangelical polarization that has become increasingly hostile and divided in the United States.
Donavan concludes that there is “no need to preach sin or guilt, but only forgiveness.” When someone experiences the love of God and their belovedness, then, one has the capacity to bring their sin and guilt into the light of Love and experience true forgiveness. I have seen this among the addicts I have worked with; their sin and guilt are ever before them. They do not need their wrongdoing preached to them. They are seeking forgiveness—from God, others, and themselves.
What about those that don’t see their own sin? Dallas Willard helped to understand this group of people. He believed that the two primary objectives of transformation are enthralling the mind with God and acquiring habits of goodness. When a person mind is enthralled with God, with Love, it is then the Holy Spirit will convince and convict of sin. Is a way that is restorative and not shaming. Often, I have experienced the gospel through the lens of Genesis 3 and “original sin and shame,” rather than Genesis 1 and the Creator bestowing “original blessing” on all of creation.
God is always moving and active whether anyone sees it or not. God was already present and at work among the Masai before Donavan ever showed up. The ritual of worship is really a pattern of practices that are needed to remake community and shape society.
The gospel is a message that can be accepted—or rejected.
Western society’s love affair with individualism was directly challenged as the importance of thinking communally and believing that a community could respond to the Gospel as a whole was witnessed. Donavan realized that responding to the gospel as an individual is not the only way. Reading the story surrounding Acts 16:33 how even though the hour was late, the jailer washed Paul and Silas’s wounds. Then the jailer and all his family were baptized. The jailer’s family responded to the gospel together. This presses hard against Western individualism yet is a vital component to understanding the nature of the gospel.
As I find myself serving, ministering, and loving people from vastly different cultures than myself, these questions have become a critical component of my journey.
Donavan’s universal insights of the unlimited availability of the gospel, focus on love and belonging, the ever-present presence of God, man’s free will, and the communal nature of the gospel have value not only for my work across different cultures but also for the Church in North America. The gospel and the hope that it offers has been buried and seemingly forgotten expressed in the polarizing and divisiveness of Christianity in North America. Maybe remembering and recalling the gospel at its core will aid the Church in faithfully engaging in God’s mission of redemption, restoration, and recreation in a way that advances health and vitality to the Church and God’s Kingdom. Donavan aids both those who realize that there is a problem and those who don’t realize they have forgotten what the gospel truly is by reminding us all of the spaciousness, generosity, and abundant nature of the gospel.
One of my favorite stories from this book is about a Masai elder who contrasts the life of faith to a hunter shooting an animal from afar to a lion wrapping its limbs and claws around its prey. I have experienced some people, particularly white evangelicals, standing at a distance and trying to control the life of faith with the correct theology or orthodox doctrine. The Masai elder says that we think we should become more like a lion in our striving to believe. A lion who going after his prey has all its senses on high alert. His nose and eyes and ears pick up the prey. His legs give him the speed to catch it. All the power of the lion’s body is involved in the terrible death leap and single blow to the neck with the front paw, the blow that actually kills. And as the animal goes down the lion envelops it in front legs, pulls it to himself, and makes it part of himself. This is the way a lion kills its prey. Often this is the way a man believes faith is that we should become like a lion in our striving to believe. In the story the Masai elder continues and tells Donavan how "we did not even want you to come to us. You searched us out. You followed us away from your house into the bush, into the plains, into the steppes where our cattle are, into the hills where we take our cattle for water, into our villages, into our homes. You told us of the High God, how we must search for him, even leave our land and our people to find him. But we have not done this. We have not left our land. We have not searched for [God]. [God] has searched for us. [God] has searched us out and found us. All the time we think we are the lion. In the end, the lion is God." This has been my experience. I think I am the one that is pursuing God when in reality God is pursuing me. I highly recommend this book for anyone wrestling with the essential nature of Christianity, who God is, and how God moves and acts in the world.
