Welcome back to Monday Matters, the weekly email digest from Circle City Fellows. On Mondays, we set aside a little time to read about and discuss the intersections of faith and work. 

Here in Indianapolis, we’re one month into our 2023-2024 fellowship, and our fellows are exploring the story and mission of God–laying a theological foundation upon which the rest of the fellowship will build. 

This week, we turn to the work of N.T. Wright, one of the world’s foremost New Testament scholars. In his book The Challenge of Jesus, Wright says this:

“If we believe in any sense that Jesus is the light of the world, how do we move from looking at Jesus and seeing the challenge he posed to his contemporaries, to shedding the light of this same Jesus on our own world? How do we come to terms with the challenge that faces us, that of relating the true Jesus to our own tasks, not least but not only in the academic and professional spheres – and equally that of facing today’s world 

…Some have so emphasized the discontinuity between the present world and our work in it on the one hand and the future world that God will make on the other that they suppose God will simply throw the present world in the trash can and leave us in a totally different sphere altogether. There is then really no point in attempting to reshape the present world by the light of Jesus Christ. Armageddon is coming, so who cares about acid rain or third-world debt? That is the way of dualism; it is a radically anti-creation viewpoint and hence is challenged head on by (among many other things) John’s emphasis on Easter as the first day of the new week, the start of God’s new creation.

On the other hand, some have so emphasized the continuity between the present world and the coming new world that they have imagined we can actually build the kingdom of God by our own hard work. I am thinking not just of the old so-called liberal social gospel but also of some aspects of the Calvinist heritage, which in its reaction against perceived dualisms of one sort or another has sometimes played down the radical discontinuity between this world and the next. This is sorely mistaken. When God does what God intends to do, this will be an act of fresh grace, of radical newness. At one level it will be quite unexpected, like a surprise party with guests we never thought we would meet and delicious food we never thought we would taste. But at the same time there will be a rightness about it, a rich continuity with what has gone before so that in the midst of our surprise and delight we will say, “Of course! This is how it had to be, even though we’d never imagined it.”

Stop and consider:

1. In what ways do you fall prey to dualistic thinking, and are you someone who tends to focus on the present world or the future world? How is God inviting you to think in a more nuanced way?

2. Who do you know who brings the “light of Christ” into the workplace? What about in your city or neighborhood?