Hunter and Idealism

Today I was talking with a friend about a lady that came up to me after a sermon that I preached. The sermon was about God’s radical grace and how we cannot earn salvation based on our own merit. The lady asked me if she could make a suggestion and I told her that I would like to hear it. She said, “In James it says that faith without works is dead,” and she felt that I failed to emphasize that “works” part. I could sense that this radical unmerited grace that I had talked about had rubbed her the wrong way. After I had finished telling my friend this story he told me that in Chinese culture, even in churches, there is still a very strong Confucian and Buddhist influence that focuses on a person’s merit. My friend told me that Confucianism and Buddhism were still cultural forces at work even in the church.

This rather lengthy intro brings me to Hunter’s book. Hunter (#Hunter) argues that Christian’s basically believe that culture changes when people change and that this perspective is almost entirely flawed (p.16). Hunter expands his argument for the failure of the common Christian view and goes on to argue that the real problem originates in the Western concept of “idealism.” He defines idealism as, “a principle and tradition in metaphysics that maintain that something “ideal” or nonphysical is the primary reality. It isn’t as though nature or the material world doesn’t exist or isn’t important, but what has greater ontological significance and is certainly prior to nature and the physical, are ideas – in short, the “mind.” We know this, say advocates, in part because material reality cannot be known independent of the conscious and knowing self. In the basic … formulation, physical objects are just pale imitations of the ideas and ideals that represent them” (p24-25). Hunter goes on to critique this view of culture that is shaped through idealism by pointing out that “the image this perspective offers is of culture, somehow, free-floating in the ether of consciousness” (26). The heart of the matter is that “Idealism underplays the importance of history and historical forces and its interaction with culture as it is lived and experience. Further, idealism ignores the way culture is generated, coordinated, and organized. Thus, it underrates how difficult it is to penetrate culture and influence its direction” (26).

Now going back to my story with the Chinese lady and the comment my friend made – the church in Hong Kong has heard and received the Gospel of salvation by grace through faith alone. However, as the story shows that does not mean that broader historical forces are not at work within the church. In fact it has become clear that the historical forces in Chinese culture still shape the everyday lives of Christians and their faith. (At this point I want to point out that in Europe and the US people struggle with appropriating this same Gospel truth.) If we want to lead a church (or even larger scale cultural changes) we need to become aware of the historical forces that impact our present ministry context and develop a more nuance view of how change happens. #dmingml