The Church’s mission is summarised succinctly at Matthew 28:18, known as the “Great Commission”.

“All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” (ESV)

Much has been said about the decline of the Church in the West, including the interpretation that it is beginning or harbinger of the Great Apostasy mentioned in 2 Thessalonians 2 (which draws upon Matthew 24 – see Alan Kurshner’s table of parallels). The following factors are usually mentioned in these discussions:

• The Second Vatican Council
• WWI and WWII
• The influence of Marxism, Socialism, Post-modernism, Scientism, Empiricism, Existentialism, and Nihilism
• The fall of the British Empire
• The corruption of American politics
• The spread of psychologising tendencies within the Church
• Hypocrisy and scandals within the Church
• The influence of textual criticism and post-Enlightenment philosophy within first Protestantism and then Catholicism
• Globalism, including mass immigration
• The refusal of parts of the Church to engage with the Pentecostal and Charismatic movements
• Changes and lapses within the education systems of Europe, the UK, and the USA

There is probably some truth to each of these points. Assessments of the situation fall on a spectrum, the two poles being a denial that any of this is the Church’s fault and a hand-wringing capitulation that believes it is all the Church’s fault.

Neither of these extreme positions is particularly helpful. If we believe it is all our own fault, we will be tempted to think we can fix the situation entirely by just changing and putting all our efforts into those changes. This is unwise for several reasons.

1. It runs the risk of burn-out: people exhausting themselves thinking that the answer is entirely within their own control. This will lead to demoralisation and despair.
2. It overlooks free will. Calvinism is false. If we think we can manipulate people into the Kingdom, we cease treating them as people, we deny their inherent dignity, granted to them by God. Ultimately, it is each person’s choice whether he accepts the Gospel or not.
3. It opens the way to temptation, the temptation to abandon the truths of our faith in order to make it more palatable to outsiders. This is not only immoral, but also foolish. The failure of this policy in the Catholic Church, the Anglican Communion, and other Protestant denominations should furnish enough evidence to discourage such attempts.
4. It overlooks the role of God in the process of evangelism. The Great Commission is sandwiched between the declaration that all authority is vested in Christ and that Christ is with us. Evangelism and the survival of the Church do not stop with us: God is intimately involved in those aims.

Equally, the extreme of thinking that this is entirely and external problem is unwise.

1. It overlooks our duty to know the truth as best we can and to present the truth in the best way we can to outsiders who will listen to it. When we misrepresent the Gospel, albeit unintentionally, we do a disservice to outsiders; we run the risk of people rejecting the Gospel and doing so in a way that potentially could have been avoided.
2. We run the risk of our love growing cold. If all we have for unbelievers is contempt, anger that they are rebelling against God, then we are hypocrites. We were unbelievers once, and which of us is completely without sin now? If we are to persevere in evangelism, we must make an effort to understand why the Gospel has been largely rejected by our countrymen. If we love them, we will do everything we can to help them make an informed decision.
3. We run the risk of stagnation. Sometimes we need challenges, whether internal or external, to make us revisit our beliefs and practices. The Reformation was one such challenge. It successfully liberated common people from abuses carried out against them by certain sections of the clergy.

“Indifference” seems to be an apt description of the challenge the Church faces in the West. Persecution does play a part, but the conditions in the West are not identical to those that obtain in the East. There’s nothing we can do about that and we should not invite persecution. Persecution will naturally follow those who truly imitate Christ, but that is not the same thing as inviting it.

We can ask sincere questions (and treat the answers at face value) of people both inside and outside the Church. There is no guarantee that they will listen in turn to what we have to say, but questions are a starting point. We can pray: asking God for wisdom, for compassion, and for the strength to persevere. We can examine our own consciences and ask questions of ourselves. We must also be attentive: outsiders will generally not give us opportunities to share the Gospel (at least not at length).

During our service this morning, we had traditional Advent readings and a selection of carols. As I was listening to Matthew’s account of the angelic dreams Joseph experienced, a thought occurred to me.

Now the birth of Jesus Christ was on this wise: When as his mother Mary was espoused to Joseph, before they came together, she was found with child of the Holy Ghost. Then Joseph her husband, being a just man, and not willing to make her a public example, was minded to put her away privily. But while he thought on these things, behold, the angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a dream, saying, Joseph, thou son of David, fear not to take unto thee Mary thy wife: for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Ghost.  And she shall bring forth a son, and thou shalt call his name Jesus: for he shall save his people from their sins.

Matthew 1:18-21

The overarching narrative of the Bible is about the relationship between God and humans. God being perfect, and wanting good things for His creation, wants us to be free moral agents. However, being free, we are capable of making evil choices, and these choices have impacts, like ripples, across creation.

This structure leads to a tension between law and grace. Both are facets of goodness, and are interestingly manifested in the story of Joseph, the adoptive and legal father of Jesus of Nazareth.

Joseph was a good man in both senses of the word: he knew and reverenced the law, but he was also capable of great compassion. Remember, before the angel visited, he had no reason to believe that special circumstances applied to Mary. As far as he could tell from the available facts and the usual course of events, Mary had been unfaithful.

Unfaithfulness is morally wrong. If we do not recognise moral failings, then we deny justice and take a step further away from the ideal to which we aspire: a world in which people consistently make good choices.

However, we are also loving. If we punish moral failings, but do not show compassion, we create a world in which rights and duties matter, but the underlying reason for them is forgotten. In short, we create a world without joy.

Joseph was thus faced with a dilemma, and he opted for a compromise. To administer some element of justice, but to temper it with compassion. This was as far as he could go. He could not solve the problem of sin – Christ was born for that purpose.

The story is important as a reminder of our real-world lives. At times the events of the Bible seem very removed from our daily lives. Most of us are not kings like David or wandering prophets like Elijah or warriors like Samson. Most of us have not seen obvious miracles like the Parting of the Red Sea.

But we do all have interpersonal relationships. Marital breakdown in some form affects most of us: whether as spouses, children, relatives, friends, or workers. The Joseph story, in its own way, is a good nutshell for the Gospel message. Something to think about in the remaining days of Advent.

Dear Readers,

Sometimes I look at the statistical history of the beginning of this blog to the present. The Blog use to be extremely popular with an extremely large reach. The stats begin in 2012 and by 2013 had exploded. After 2013 the stats begin to decline steadily with 2015 and 2016 at a steady viewership. It was during 2016 that I began to participate in the discussion of the blog and at the time it was still graced with many authors: Chalcedon, Neo, Geoffrey, Scoop, Quia, Nicholas, Gareth, Bosco, and the return of the creator of the blog Jessica. A unique place of ecumenical discussion of theology that broke the echo chamber of those locked in their own faith’s groupthink.

Reviewing the statistics, after 2016, the blog began to decline more rapidly. I remember there began a lot of infighting between the participates of the blog that was getting personal in nature about not necessarily the theology of Christianity but the institutions and personal relationships to those institutions themselves. The outcome is that many left the blog and it has been a shadow of itself ever since.

I hope those that have left will return. In fact, part of me still blogs on here for that very reason. Our last author to leave was Nicholas. Nicholas, I believe came after me, a friendly fellow that should be thanked for keeping the blog alive as he was the most constant poster of the last year. My participation usually occurs during breaks of my classes, so it can become more sporadic at times. However, Nicholas was constant and I was sad to see him go. Scoop is perhaps the last man standing of the old gang. In fact, I think part of him still treads on in hopes of the return of those who have long left.

In 2019, The arrival and era of the atheist commenters have commenced. I’m familiar with most of them from other blogs and they have been frustrating at times; however, in some sense, I see them as valuable contributors to this blog, something that I may not have said in years past. However, they break us out of our echo-chamber to hear the skepticism of the age nonetheless. In fact, a lot of my previous work, I’ve adjusted and reviewed due to their contributions–even God’s grace continues to work despite their best efforts. What has their arrival produced? Since 2013 there has been a decline in views of the blog; however, at the end of 2019, this is the first year that the blog has seen a surplus in views, I cannot see the raw numbers, but I am sure that their presence has led to an uptick in numbers.

I am one of the newer participates of this blog, but due to the exodus after 2016, I have been made one of the old dogs. One of my hopes in this new year is that the blog can come away from a more pessimistic approach to Church current events–oftentimes with the Catholic Church and the pontificate of Pope Francis, and a return to the theological topics of the faith and its historic claims. My hope is such a renewal will lead to a return of the old and perhaps some new participates will arise to this platform.

Thank You for your participation at All Along the Watchtower. Please come and join us here.