culture wars<\/a> because it\u2019s much easier than bearing witness. It\u2019s easier to find which of our neighbors are the \u201cbad people\u201d and to fear them than it is to actually speak to their consciences about atonement, grace, reconciliation, and newness of life.<\/p>\nIs it any wonder, then, that the world expects to hear from us not the words of the Bible and the announcement of the kingdom of God, but simply a more extreme version of the political warfare that\u2019s already invaded almost every aspect of our lives?<\/p>\n
The way we recover that lost vocabulary is not by finding new words, but by falling in love again with the old ones.<\/p>\n
The English literature scholar Michael Edwards, in writing of his own conversion, notes that what convinced him of the truth of the Bible was not proofs or arguments but the strangeness of the text itself\u2014a strangeness that spoke to his intuitions that there might be another way of knowing than merely that of reason and sense perception. \u201cWhat I needed in order to make a step forward was what I was looking for from the beginning, a different way of knowing, which I was powerless to bring about myself.\u201d<\/p>\n
Not long ago, I watched the film A Glitch in the Matrix<\/em>, about people who believe the world around us is illusory\u2014that perhaps we are in a hologram or even a video game being played by our descendants with avatars of their family tree.<\/p>\nAs you might expect, I did not find the arguments persuasive, especially since they are science-fiction versions of the old Gnosticism that the Apostle John warned us about. But the way I could actually understand their viewpoint was to \u201cget inside\u201d of it, to imagine what it would be like to see the world this way, to ask if it made sense of the questions we ask, if it could show us whether the questions are wrong.<\/p>\n
I believe the gospel story does indeed speak\u2014which is why a first-century Jewish sect of outcasts turned the world upside down. In telling that story, we invite people to consider a world in which Jesus announces, \u201cThe kingdom of God is among you\u201d and \u201cMy kingdom is not of this world,\u201d a story in which God rescued Israel from Egypt and raised Jesus of Nazareth from the dead. We can only do that if we ourselves come to the story\u2014to our vocabulary\u2014the way it intends us to do so: with astonishment and awe.<\/p>\n
At our event in Houston a couple weeks ago, Beth Moore played \u201chymnal trivia\u201d with me, reading the first lines from our shared childhood hymnbook, the Baptist Hymnal<\/em>. I was struck once again by how many of those hymns are about astonishment. \u201cAmazing Grace,\u201d \u201cI Stand Amazed in the Presence,\u201d \u201cAnd Can It Be.\u201d The same is true, in different ways, in virtually every strand of Christian worship.<\/p>\nWhen we are bored with that, we turn to ways of knowing that are out of step with the gospel. We reduce everything down to machines or information or\u2014even worse\u2014we reduce our neighbors down to their positions on whatever political controversies our leaders say should differentiate \u201cus\u201d from \u201cthem.\u201d<\/p>\n
Indeed, I realized while talking with this new fellow Christian how worn my own heart had become to the vocabulary of grace. I was struck by the reaction she received\u2014that summed up American Christianity as a political view on guns\u2014to the point that it took me a moment to be struck by what was really momentous: The woman sitting in front of me had encountered the Person in whom the entire cosmos holds together. Her sins\u2014and mine\u2014are forgiven, and we stand before a reality we cannot see, united to a crucified and resurrected Christ. Jesus loves us.<\/p>\n
It was as if I were standing in front of the Grand Canyon, complaining about the lack of adequate cell service to download a YouTube video.<\/p>\n
Maybe if more of us were struck by just how strange and astounding these truths are, we would find the world around us startled by them too. This wouldn\u2019t make people like us anymore\u2014that\u2019s not the point. The point is that people should hate us for the right reason<\/em>.<\/p>\nWhen we reclaim a vocabulary of wonder, perhaps more of our neighbors will gasp when people become Christians in order to say, \u201cCan any good thing come out of Nazareth?\u201d (John 1:46).<\/p>\n
And we will respond with what he taught us to say from the beginning: \u201cCome and see.\u201d<\/p>\n
Russell Moore is the editor in chief at Christianity Today<\/span> and leads its Public Theology Project.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n