Evangelism in a World of Control and Aggression

According to German sociologist Hartmut Rosa, the formula for successful living in late modernity is quality via quantity. That is, the good life––or successful relating to the world––is determined by the sheer volume of options and resources available to us. We have undergone, as Holly Ordway puts it, a “Ptolemaic shift” in perspective––the world revolves around us and we seek to control it from that central vantage point. Bringing more of the world under our control is the technique for flourishing.

However, the consequence of such escalation, says Rosa, is a faulty mode of relating to the world, as well as to each other, to things, and to our own bodies. This faulty relation has become reinforced by the structures of society, leading to what Rosa calls the “structurally induced muting of the world”––the world we seek to master no longer speaks to us.

The symptoms of this muting—chronic stress, depression, anxiety, and burnout-related disorders—are now commonplace. This psychological crisis poses unique challenges for the church––God’s royal priesthood who are called to relate to the world as salt and light, proclaiming the redemptive excellencies of their God. In an age of distorted relation to the world and others, how is the church supposed to bear witness to the Creator of a muted creation?

In this context, evangelism must recover embodied practices that restore attentiveness to general revelation, allowing creation to expose our suppression of its Creator—a dissonance ripe for gospel proclamation.

Aggression, Resonance, & General Revelation

In our pursuit of successful living, we have left no stone unturned by our attempts to optimize and control:

Sleeping and waking, eating and drinking, sex and sports, creativity and relaxation, attractiveness and aggression––there is no longer any aspect of human life and the human body that cannot be measured and recorded, and thus improved, enhanced, or optimized by means of new biological, psychological, pharmaceutical, and computer technologies.

But, Rosa says, “expanding our share of the world” paradoxically leads to losing it. Such optimization situates us in a position of aggression toward the world and those in it. His solution is what he calls resonance––cultivating a state of being in tune with others and the world. Rosa likens resonance to the vibrations of a tuning fork. One fork’s vibrations cause another to vibrate. The two relate to one another, being affected by the other (and in some ways, transformed) while maintaining their distinctiveness.

However, our attempts to control the world put us in danger of losing the very “pathways” to such resonance! God’s world speaks, yet we have placed a finger over the mouth of creation as it pronounces the glory of God with hushed declarations.

This atrophied ability to resonate with the world threatens to thicken the immanent frame of a closed system—cut off from a transcendent story of salvation. Dutch theologian Herman Bavinck says that without general revelation, special revelation (the transcendent story of salvation) loses its connectedness with the whole cosmic existence and life. While general and special revelation are distinct, they are inseparable—both originating in God’s gracious self-disclosure: the Word as Creator in general revelation, the Word as Redeemer in special revelation. Special revelation alone has the divine capacity to convict and convert sinners. Yet it is given within the created order. Bavinck emphasizes that special revelation is built on the foundation of general revelation—general revelation is the “preamble of faith.”

General revelation, then, forms the lived and intelligible context in which special revelation is received. Psalm 19 beautifully displays how the law is given within the context of creation. It provides the tangible and temporal theatre in which the story of salvation unfolds—a theatre whose doors we have closed.

Because of our world-muting acceleration, our evangelistic efforts would be wise to reawaken attentiveness to the created order, through which God’s divine nature is disclosed and human suppression exposed—a suppression that only the grace of Christ, received through special revelation, can heal.

Evangelism in an Age of Aggression

Rosa identifies three axes along which resonant relationships can be mapped: 1) horizontal axes made up of social, familial, and romantic relationships, 2) diagonal axes of relating to objects in the world, and 3) vertical axes where one connects with religion, existence itself, or creation as a whole. We could summarize these as 1) relationships, 2) things, and 3) meaning, respectively.

Posture

However, before considering our relation to others, we must become resonant persons ourselves. Edwin Friedman applied systems theory to leadership through the concept of self-differentiation, which Mark Sayers later popularized as “non-anxious presence.” At base, this is the idea that someone can resonate within a system, rather than relate to it with aggression and alienation.

We can cultivate such a non-anxious presence, a posture of interiority––as Gordon Smith calls it––through practices that situate us along Rosa’s axes of resonance. Consider Smith’s four practices for interiority:

1. Morning and evening prayer

2. Spiritual direction and friendship

3. Sabbath observance

4. Embodiment (particularly the Lord’s Supper)

Smith’s practices map neatly onto Rosa’s axes of resonance: prayer situates us within religion and history; spiritual friendship cultivates horizontal resonance; certain Sabbath activities can restore attentiveness to nature and art; and embodied practices such as the Lord’s Supper recalibrate our relation to material reality. Thus, especially in an increasingly anxious and exhausted age, these practices are how we become a non-anxious presence, resonating with a peace beyond understanding that compels others.

Practices

Beyond our own interiority, our evangelism should include what Rosa calls “establishing axes of resonance”––ways to open our eyes and ears to the world––in the context of ongoing relationships:

The goal of such practices is, as Alan Noble says, an openness to the way creation and revelation pierce our buffered selves and interpret us. None of them are substitutes for clear gospel proclamation. They are simply practices that situate us along the axes of resonance where, in God’s created order, the human heart is confronted with realities it cannot fully mute. Each of these axes “vibrate” precisely because God has so ordered his creation and the human heart to resonate with one another along these points. Bavinck points out that the beauty of nature and art could not give a man any pleasure (i.e. resonate) unless he has a feeling for beauty in his bosom, placed there by God. Thus Rosa, though writing as a secular sociologist, is simply describing realities that Christians confess are features of a Creator-made world.

So rather than being an evangelistic cop-out (which some relational evangelism approaches can lean toward), done faithfully, these are merely evangelistic steps that require great intentionality. Rosa says cultivating these axes is inherently time-intensive. One cannot pick up a violin once or read only the blurb of a novel and expect a resonant experience. In the same way, this work cannot be relegated to an evening on the ministry calendar or checked off a daily to-do list––we must embody lives of resonant hospitality.

Priority

Our priority in relating to people along these axes of resonance must be connecting them to the deeper, divine subtext that is exposed. This not only requires significant time, but also requires relational skills of attention and inquiry. We are to be ready to give an answer for the resonant hope within us—a hope echoed in the world around us. We must become faithful story-tellers, able to connect resonant encounters with the divine truth “behind the curtain.” Hospitality thus provides the ongoing setting for reflective conversations after resonant practices:

• What was it about that particular painting that pulled you in?

• Why do you think that performance captured so much attention?

• You seemed drawn to that particular history exhibit. Why do you think that is?

Questions like these move from the external experience to the internal experience and serve to name the suppressed hunger that only special revelation answers. Resonance exposes suppression, but does not cure it. Rather, we pray the Lord uses his general revelation to reveal an uncomfortable dissonance––resonating with the beauty of creation while suppressing any meaningful account for it. It is into that tension that we proclaim the gospel cure. A life shaped by deep gospel interiority prepares us to show how the person and work of Jesus answer the heart’s longings for beauty, justice, and meaning.

It must be said, too, that while gospel proclamation remains our priority, hospitality is not merely a technique to that end. Technique is defined by efficiency. Whatever skill or giftedness we cultivate for hospitality and for drawing out others is aimed at serving another, not optimizing ourselves. Cultivating lives of interiority, inviting others into that life, and helping them connect resonance with revelation is therefore not technique but an application of gospel affection.

Non-competitive Hospitality

It is in this application of gospel affection, though, where we face a unique challenge. If we are to practice genuine hospitality in our aggressively performative age, we must suspend competition. This is becoming increasingly difficult as our relationships mirror more and more our online life. Performance (i.e. competition) is the name of the digital game; indeed, to cease posting is to cease existing—your last footprint buried under an endless feed. For souls made for glory, performing feels like the means to life.

However, if we are to have resonant encounters with others, we must cease relating to them in aggressively competitive ways. Rosa points out that every competition is fundamentally based on outperforming another and thus produces losers and leads to alienation. We will never show gospel affection and attentive care to those we are seeking to outperform––glory in competition is a zero sum game. Therefore, to resonate with another we must suspend competition.

Jesus gives us the model for such relating in John 13. While the disciples consistently bickered about who was the best, seeking to outperform one another for primacy with empty bravado, Jesus emptied himself. Rather than outperform his disciples, Jesus assumed the posture of a servant, washing their feet. It is in this lowly act of service that he set a precedent for anti-competitive hospitality: you also should do just as I have done to you (Jn. 13:15).

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For Rosa, to truly flourish we must recover a resonant connection with the world and its inhabitants. For the church to flourish in an age trained to mute creation, we must first restore attentiveness to general revelation. The heavens declare God’s glory, awakening resonance even amid human suppression. Into this created world, the Creating Word condescended as the Redeeming Word, manifesting God’s righteousness and turning alienation into peace through faith. We are called to shine the unveiled glory of God in Jesus Christ into every suppressed heart.