The Synthetic Gospel

For God so loved the world... pt. 1

Antithesis -> thesis -> synthesis.

That’s my cheat code. If I ever need to preach a sermon or present an argument with minimal preparation time, I break out this trusty formula and I get to work.

There have been at least two instances where I’ve preached in front of a congregation with less than an hour’s notice, and—each time—I’ve thought to myself “antithesis, thesis, synthesis” then tried to make something happen.

The thesis is the main idea. It’s the proposition around which the argument is built.

The antithesis is usually the negation of that proposition. It’s the foil to the argument you’re presenting.

The synthesis ought to reconcile the conflict or tension between your thesis and antithesis.

You might notice that I explained the terms in a different order than I introduced them in the two lists above. And that is because, even though the thesis usually precedes the antithesis in development, I’ll typically start presentations with the antithesis.

The antithesis serves as my introduction.

I don’t feel like I’m revealing any trade secrets here. Many people who’ve heard gospel presentations have straight up had people tell them:

“You can’t understand the Good News without the bad news.”

I should be clear: I think that’s nonsense.

If the mission of Jesus was (and is) indeed to preach good news to the poor, to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and to release the bound (as he seems to suggest in Luke 4:18), then people do not need to be presented with the bad news in order to understand the good news. They have experienced bad news. They live it. Bad news frames their reality. It is not a straw man constructed for the sole purpose of tossing an alley-oop to Jesus. The gospel is the message to and for those whose lives travel underneath a cloud of bad news.

Nevertheless, beginning a sermon with a negation of your main idea is a pretty foolproof plan in a pinch.

But it does not guarantee the soundness of your argument.

If you were to ask me to summarize the gospel in one verse of scripture, I’d probably point you toward John 3:16:

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.

What a gracious God! A God who would stop at absolutely nothing to show the depths of divine love!

That is the thesis I stand on.

That Good News is sufficient. It requires no negation. Those who have known heartbreak and the cruelty of a world that is short on love can begin to wrestle with the implications of such a remarkable love without being confronted with a rhetorical strategy designed to prime them for a sales pitch. But that hasn’t stopped some people from doing exactly that.

One relatively common framing of this good news begins with the idea that we do not deserve God’s love. Whether the language of “original sin” is explicit or implicit, there is this idea that we are so sinful—so woefully depraved—that we are unworthy recipients of God’s love.

On the surface, I can understand the appeal of such a line of thinking. Grace is an amazing concept. And a god who would spend so lavishly on people who do not deserve it does indeed sound like a remarkably generous god.

But there is a difference between earning something and deserving it.

My kids deserve a present father. There is nothing they can do (or should need to do) to earn my presence.

You deserve to live. There is nothing that you can do (or need to do) to earn the right to life.

It is true that there is nothing that we have done (nor is there anything we can do) to earn God’s love.

But that is entirely irrelevant to whether or not we deserve God’s love. That has nothing to do with whether or not we are worthy of God’s grace.

In an economy where things have value, that value is most often determined (directly or otherwise) by what someone is willing to pay for it.

A seller can set a price, but if no one is willing to pay it, then there is no agreement in value. It is—in essence—priceless. The seller is, of course, allowed to hold fast to that price. There remains the possibility that someone meets that price. In that case, the seller is vindicated. There is agreement in value after all. But value is merely conceptualized by the seller. Value is realized by the buyer.

To suggest that we are unworthy of the love of God is to call God a foolish customer. Even if we fail to provide accurate valuations of ourselves and each other, we should take note of what God thinks we are worth.

And God thinks we are worth a lot.

The problem with using our unworthiness as the antithesis for this Good News is that a good thesis with a bad antithesis will yield a bad synthesis.

We’ll want to make sure that we’re starting from a place that rightly points us to the truth. Our unworthiness is a product of bad fiction.

The problem that we must confront is not that we are unworthy.

The problem is that we do not know how worthy we are.

We do not get how valuable we are.

We do not understand how deeply God desires to see us whole and free.

We struggle to see how thoroughly it grieves God to see us violate one another.

The bad news that Jesus addresses has nothing to do with us being undeserving of God’s love.

The bad news is that, in failing to understand how much God values each and every one of us, we have failed to treat one another as we deserve.

We have lived into ways that dishonor the value that God ascribes to us by giving the one and only Son for us out of love.

If we settle for a bad antithesis and end up with a bad synthesis, we end up telling stories about a god whose grace barely glosses over the fact that God can’t stand us. And if we’re dealing with a God who can’t stand us, then—in a roundabout way—we are being godly when we are callous toward our neighbors.

You do not need to be the most informed citizen on the planet in order to see the fruit of such a synthesis. We live in a world that is largely shaped and defined by cruelty. I live in a nation that is currently led by an administration where cruelty is both the point and the policy. And a synthesis that reconciles the tension between a depraved humanity (that is only worthy of contempt, condemnation, and torture) and a loving, gracious God will leave plenty of room for us to be cruel to each other.

But a synthesis that reconciles the tension between people who’ve begun to believe lies about their own collective worth and a God who will stop at nothing to show them how loved they are will yield a people whose only commitment is to communicating and embodying that love at every opportunity.

The gospel remains unchanged.

But the way that we communicate the gospel is just as capable of further obscuring the gravity of the gospel as it is capable of drawing someone more fully into the story of a risen Savior.

The cross serves as an inkblot test. When you envision a humiliated Jesus hanging from the cross as he breathes his last, do you see someone who took on the punishment that you rightfully deserve? Do you see the satisfaction of God’s wrath and the fulfillment of God’s justice? Do you see a moment that brings joy to God?

Or are your eyes opened to the places a broken image of humanity can lead us? Do you see that a people who can find justice in the torture of fellow human beings will mutilate God at the first opportunity? Do you see a God that is so grief stricken that the earth quakes, the sun darkens, and the veil of the temple tears as this God watches a people shaped in the image of God destroy each other?

One of those views will leave us susceptible to the whims of people who behave monstrously.

The other can start us on the road to wholeness.

When it is all said and done, what we believe about God will tell the world more about ourselves than it well tell them about God.

Perhaps it is worth considering if we’ve been fair to God in how we frame the Good News.

I like playing with words. So that’s what I do. Whether it be with tweets, videos, essays, sermonic presentations, Bible studies, podcasts, or speaking engagements of other sorts, I’m always trying to figure out how to provoke an image in a seeker with some combination of words.

If you’ve enjoyed any of the words I have to offer, check out my book Theologizin’ Bigger: Homilies on Living Freely and Loving Wholly wherever books are sold!