Now and again Hauerwas is so engrossed in his conversation with Matthew, Bonhoeffer and Yoder, that his view of Christian discipleship, and of the Jesus who calls, is couched in the language of all three! Here’s a quotation where Yoder’s view of the non-violent Gospel precluding aggressive forms of evangelism, and Bonhoeffer’s portrayal of the self-emptying Word, and Matthew’s portrayal of discipleship as a radical unselfing of the self, coalesce in a theological restatement of Christian obedience.
Following Christ requires our recognising that the one I am tempted to judge is like me – a person who has received the forgiveness manifest in the cross. The recognition that the other person is like me – in need of forgiveness – prevents those who would follow Jesus from trying to force others to follow Jesus. We must, like Jesus, have the patience necessary to let those called deny that call. It means that the disciples are not called to make the world conform to the gospel, but rather the disciples are schooled to be non-violent – which means that the Gospel is not a "conquering idea" that neither knows nor respects resistance. Rather,[as Bonhoeffer comments] "the Word of God is so weak that it suffers to be despised and rejected by people. For the Word, there are such things as hardened hearts and locked doors. The Word accepts the resistance it encounters and bears it."
That paragraph is a needed antidote for the underlying triumphalism that informs much thinking about mission, church, christendom, evangelism. And I’m left wondering, because I’ve seldom been asked as bluntly to think about it, what a Christian existence might look like if we stopped thinking of the gospel as a "conquering idea"; if in Christian apologetics the underlying principles were forbearance, patience and respect for this other person, who needs God’s forgiveness which cannot be imposed by logic or compelled by argument, but perhaps which can be caught by the contagion of the Kingdom, the love that does not need acceptance to endure and persist. One of hauerwas’ magnificent overstated but necessary one liners, "The Father has refused to let our refusal determine our relationship to him….we are God’s enemies yet God would still love us – even coming to die for us."
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