The Excluded Middle??

As I've noted before, Western thought loves dichotomies. We love to compartmentalize and to make things black and white. This tendency is reflected in what's called the "law of the excluded middle" - the logic of Aristotle that something either is, or it isn't, and that the two are self-eliminating. For example, one is either man or not a man. There is no middle ground. As with most philosophies, this one took off because there is some truth to it. There are aspects of life that are black and white. Much philosophical debate has surrounded what those elements are, but we instinctively know that Aristotle was on to something.

Yet as with any thought outside Scripture, there is imbalance to the law of the excluded middle. And generations of that imbalance has led to today's "two-story" view of facts and values. For many thinkers, there is a lower story of facts, and an upper story of values, and "never the twain should meet". This has infected religious scholarship, and so you will sometimes read authors who speak of the "realm of faith" and the "realm of facts" - as if the two are exclusive. Even the evangelical church is impacted when we speak of the "things of heaven" and the "things of earth". Our churches tend to focus either on heaven (evangelistic) or earth (social justice) - with few successfully balancing the two.

Paul Hiebert challenged this thinking in missiological circles with an article called "The FLAW of the excluded middle". Essentially, he said that while we see things in two tiers, most of the rest of the world sees the "excluded middle" where life is lived in a spiritual realm that intersects with earthly existence. In this middle world, people use charms against evil spirits, spit to avoid the "evil eye", don't name babies until they are a year old out of fear of a spirit overtaking the child, where virgins are raped because they are supposed to cure AIDS. It's the place where everyday needs meet spiritual realities. It's the middle world that has to be impacted for true development to happen, and it's the middle world that holds the most challenges for missionaries who are discipling new Christians.

Examples abound: Liberation theology in Latin America met the real need of people who felt economically disenfranchised - but it linked them to Marxism more than Christ. Communism flourished at the height of the industrial revolution when workers felt disenfranchised and taken advantage of, and evangelical churches were withdrawing from public engagement because of the rise of naturalistic teachings and a sharpening distinction of faith/facts spheres. In Islamic countries, "folk Islam" fills the void left by traditional Islam which emphasizes the 5 pillars but doesn't attempt to solve the problems of the people.

To truly impact this middle world we have to first grasp that our faith is a total life experience. The kingdom of God isn't ultimately about us getting to heaven - it's about His glory revealed in us and through us. And when we come into relationship with Him through Jesus, we reflect His glory to those around us as His kingdom reigns in us. Heaven is the culmination - the perfect experience of His kingdom - but we can have a measure of that experience in the here-and-now.

Once we grasp that, we then have to recognize that our proclamation of the Gospel must reflect a total life in Christ. That means that we care enough to do something. Our secular jobs take on new meaning in this view, as we see that God is using us to give a glimpse of His kingdom to those around us. Not merely in our actions and attitudes - but in the very work we do we can testify to His kingdom purposes. Finding a cure for cancer can be a part of advancing His kingdom if the researcher testifies to God's guiding hand in the process and makes the cure publicly available as a testimony to God's healing power.

On the mission field, we care about the people's lack of water and work hard to provide them good drinking water - all the time telling them about the Living Water. Missionaries function this way every day in "creative access countries" where their job is their reason for being there, and the evangelism comes along the way. But it's something we can all practice every day, for His kingdom can be at work in us and through us wherever we are.