Tools for Monday: What is Your Stance? (Part 2)
Tools for Monday: What Is Your Stance? (Part 2)
The Lenten season provides an ideal time for Christians to consider their stance. In our previous article, we refused to define a stance in terms of nailed-down doctrinal beliefs. One’s stance is not as concrete as unchangeable dogma or creed. A stance refers more to a Christian’s convictions that lead to action. It prompts you to do something with your faith. A stance is the place where faith connects with works. For instance, we take our stance when we say something like, “I will respond in this specific way because of my Christ-centered, biblically shaped faith.”
Robin Lovin, a Christian ethicist at SMU, identified four primary stances among Christians throughout history. Each stance has a biblical basis and is helpful for practicing our faith in Christ. Let’s take a quick examination of each stance, and you are encouraged to consider how one (or more!) may apply to your daily life.
Stance 1: Synergy
This stance highlights the necessity of Christian community. Simply put, individual Christians need one another if we are going to accomplish much in loving our neighbors. There are no lone-ranger Christians. A Thirteenth Century Christian named Thomas Aquinas is often given the credit for making this stance popular. Because of his keen emphasis on human free will, Aquinas taught that Christians should look for points of agreement on how to live well together, especially because we will often disagree on details.
This stance points to the necessity of the Body of Christ. The drawback, however, has to do with the fact that people can be quite unwilling to agree on much of anything. We have biases for our own social group and see them often as representative of what is absolutely true and rational. The synergy stance works, but only with great forgiveness, humility, and repentance.
Stance 2: Integrity
This stance highlights the necessity of a Christian’s unique witness in the world. Roger Olson offers that, “If Christianity is compatible with everything, then it is nothing.” Consequently, this stance advocates for Christians to stand apart from society, especially in the ways we solve conflicts. The society usually resorts to violence and coercion, but Christians can take a radically different path.
This stance points to the radical, prophetic ethics of Jesus—especially those taught in the Sermon on the Mount. Integrity definitely impacts our witness and detours much from how the world views relationships. The drawback of this stance has to do with its aloofness. We can become so focused on non-violent integrity that we withdraw from the world. In taking this stance, we should be careful that we are not making a situation worse by refusing to engage in rather complicated relational dynamics.
Stance 3: Realism
This stance highlights the fact that sin, human frailty, and self-interest will always play a role in human relationships. It warns us to take ourselves less seriously, since it is an impossibility for human beings to achieve any sort of final answers to ultimate questions. Reinhold Niebuhr asserted that this stance illustrates the “impossible possibility” of the Christian life. That is, we can understand and even envision the coming Kingdom of God on earth as it is in heaven, but our finitude prevents us from seeing the Kingdom in its fullness on this side of eternity.
This stance readily embraces human responsibility in the good, the bad, and the ugly. The biblical themes of the fall into sin and redemption only by grace through faith in Jesus Christ serve as the cornerstones to realism. We need to beware however that this stance can oftentimes teeter on the precipice of pessimism and resignation. We should not be content to say, “This is just the way it is.”
Stance 4: Liberation
This stance highlights the harsh conditions in which many poor and marginalized are made to suffer. It can be highly critical of systems that limit equality. Yet, marginalized people find a great advocate in Jesus, whose way of life empowers them to find meaning and liberation from the degradation they’ve suffered.
This stance focuses rightly on incarnational living—the act of Christians in “walking as Jesus walked” among the poor and oppressed in order to free them from injustices. The stance may fall short, however, in its tendency to limit sin to a certain people group or system without regarding the wider implications of the fall in the Garden.
Next week, we’ll look at some ways to apply these stances in everyday life.