Thread by @mikeleake

I’m wondering if my decision to focus on the YRR movement will cause a much larger point to be missed. Just in case…a thread.

https://twitter.com/mikeleake/status/1374399388991197187

The YRR movement (Reformed evangelicalism) has fractured into something now unrecognizable. I think a major reason for this can be found in some of Bonhoeffer’s words in Life Together. 2/

Bonhoeffer argued:
1. Christ’s community is founded upon our shared relationship with Jesus
2. Because of this we can NEVER have direct fellowship with one another. It is ALWAYS mediated by Christ. 3/

3. But human love “seeks direct contact with the other person; it loves him not as a free person but as one whom it binds to itself.” (24) 4/

4. When human love drives fellowship we will never be able to “meet the other person with the clear Word of God and be ready to leave him alone with this Word for a long time…” (26) 5/

5. If we cannot “leave [people] freedom to be Christ’s” then all we will ever produce are hothouse flowers fully dependent upon us to nurture them. 6/

Out of this principle flows so much of the celebrity culture we created, the calls for church discipline which border on blood-lust, the angry discernment blogging, all of it. 7/

If we cannot trust Jesus with His church, we’ll destroy it with our own hands. And it’ll become something that doesn’t resemble Christ. It’ll bear the name church still but now only have our DNA. 8/

We’ll bruise people in the name of Jesus, long after He has departed. And we’ll call it “protecting the sheep” but in actuality it’s us protecting OUR own flock and not His. 9/

I tried making some of these points about the YRR but in reality, this is all over the place. We aren’t very good about entrusting others to Jesus. And it’s killing us. 10/

There is hope, though. Jesus is bigger than our ignorance. As our self-built communities collapse, Jesus still shines. Some of the pain we are feeling at all this fracturing is actually stripping away things which bear the name of Jesus but do not have his fingerprints. 11/

We’re in a great place to see Jesus. As movements fall, Christ remains. This is good. /end