So Loved the World: Democracy and the Divine

By Daniel S. Ferguson and Lori S. Ferguson

God is a radical Democrat … but not the kind you think. Rather, God is committed to giving power away to people He loves. He is a revolutionary democratizer. Too often we hoard power and accumulate authority, but God has called us to live like He does—continually giving our power away to others in the beautiful mutual submission known as love.

So Loved the World examines how God does that throughout the world and considers how we can live in that spirit too. Authors Daniel S. Ferguson and Lori S. Ferguson provide real-life examples of democratization as a way of seeing what its core elements are. They then take a deep dive into the Scriptures to understand just how much God loves us and is committed to the democratization of His power. Finally, they address how everyone—especially Christians and churches—can give their power away in the same way God does, for the betterment of all.

This faith-filled study explores ways to give power away instead of hoarding it and proposes methods for winning back those who have left the church through mutual friendship and love.

• Language: English
• Publisher: WestBow Press
• Release date: Sep 30, 2020
• ISBN: 9781664202634

Daniel S. Ferguson

Lori and Daniel are a mother-son writing team with a God-given gusto for church. Lori has been a career minister for over 40 years and graduated from Bethel Seminary. Daniel obtained his Masters of Education (and most of his writing skills) from the University of Maryland. Lori and Daniel live next door to each other outside Pensacola, Florida.

Book preview

Copyright © 2020 Daniel S. Ferguson & Lori S. Ferguson.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

WestBow Press

A Division of Thomas Nelson & Zondervan

1663 Liberty Drive

Bloomington, IN 47403

www.westbowpress.com

844-714-3454

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Scripture taken from the Contemporary English Version © 1991, 1992, 1995 by American Bible Society. Used by Permission.

Scripture taken from the NEW AMERICAN STANDARD BIBLE®, Copyright © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. www.Lockman.org

Scripture quotations taken from The Holy Bible, New International Version® NIV® Copyright © 1973 1978 1984 2011 by Biblica, Inc. TM. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

ISBN: 978-1-6642-0264-1 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-6642-0265-8 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-6642-0263-4 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2020915878

WestBow Press rev. date: 09/28/2020

CONTENTS

Preface

Section 1: In Theory

Chapter 1 God Is … a Democrat?

Chapter 2 Democratization in Action

Chapter 3 The Elements of Democratization

Section 2: The Story of God’s Democratic Kingdom

Chapter 4 A Garden for the People

Chapter 5 Sky Full of Stars

Chapter 6 In the Name of Democracy

Chapter 7 A Holy Democratic Nation

Chapter 8 The Kingly Line

Chapter 9 The Upside-Down Kingdom

Chapter 10 Democratization in the Early Church

Chapter 11 Democracy Forever

Section 3: Becoming Democratized

Chapter 12 It Starts with You

Chapter 13 Democratic Hotspots

Chapter 14 Boundaries for Democracy

Afterword

Inspired in part by Bible Project, with thanks

to Dr. Tim Mackie and Jon Collins.

More of their resources at bibleproject.com

This work is a product of Leaning in Ministry.

More of our resources at leaninginministry.com

For George, who always believed in both of us.

PREFACE

God so loved the world that He gave …

Stated so simply, it seems like a no-brainer that we would choose to love Him back and follow Him. But if we were given the choice (which we all have been), it’s anything but easy. The power to choose itself has power. Because we have a mind to choose, to reason, we have the right and the freedom to determine what we want. Our track record is not so good. The church has gained a reputation that does not have us sharing and giving the love of Jesus to others, as much as it tells that story of what a mess we are.

The power to choose is given to all of us, and we all come to it through a multitude of different lenses and cultures, experiences and dynamics. Look at our own families. Children raised in the same home under similar conditions can come out into adult life with widely differing views and even translate the memories they shared differently. We are wonderfully complicated. Because we are such a mess, it takes work, loving motivation, and direction that God freely gives us. It is the giving that changes us. When we take what we have been given and share it, it can grow, it can flourish, and can be reciprocal. Not in a way that indulges us but one that transforms us.

Today we can hardly meet anyone who has spent any time in church who has not been disappointed, hurt, disillusioned, or turned away at some point. Pain abounds in the wall of Christendom. Whether it’s the plague of sexual abuse that has rocked the Catholic Church for decades, the wake of souls on the mad dash to be the first and biggest church, a pastor succumbing to lustful affairs or pornography, or a small-town Sunday school teacher berating a child for asking unsanctioned questions, ringing alongside the good news of the gospel is the discord of agony.

Many Christians have even formed alliances to increase their power and influence. Doesn’t sound so bad by itself, but what’s our motive? Who benefits from our power alliances? We were never meant to be a Moral Majority, but rather a Missional Minority, and our reputation is paying for our arrogance. We are seeing many leave the church, and we ask ourselves why. Many writers smarter than us have given us some good help with this, and we would like for you to consider how giving away can save your ministry, the church. We have so many self-inflicted wounds that it is hard to know where to begin to promote healing and help.

This book is about the way back. It’s about how to give power away instead of hoarding it and how to win back those who left the church, not by coercing them with guilt or even by a logical argument but by submitting to them at the deepest levels in mutual friendship and love. We believe that God calls us to nothing less and nothing else, for as we will explore, God does this very thing almost every time He acts in the Bible. We’ll start with some basic theory on this matter, then move onto showing biblical examples of this, and finally, we’ll discuss how this can be applied practically to our everyday lives and our church efforts. Finally, the end of each chapter has some core questions to think about and to discuss with your small group or church staff who can read this alongside you. We hope that you learn as much from reading this as we have from writing it.

Blessings,

Daniel and Lori

SECTION 1

In Theory

CHAPTER 1

God Is … a Democrat?

DEMOCRACY IN THE DARK

A political rival called a Pharisee, who also served on the Jewish ruling council, approached Jesus at night. You see, it wasn’t safe to do so during the day. Talking to Jesus under the sun would have meant acknowledging his authority, admitting to his way of thinking as one of Jerusalem’s religious elites; this was not an acceptable outcome. But still, Jesus, this Nazareth-born son of a day laborer, seemed like more than a backwoods street preacher. He had, that very day, charged into the temple courtyards and driven out the money changers and sacrificial salesmen, indicting them as criminals. When asked what his authority was to interrupt the daily worship of God, this Jesus—this no-name who consorted with fishermen and tax collectors and prostitutes—said they should destroy the temple, and he would raise it up again in just three days. Three days! Ludicrous.

But there was something about this Jesus, something not quite normal, something unsettling, that made the Pharisee named Nicodemus take him seriously. So, Nicodemus came to Jesus at night, perhaps looking for some sort of truce or another political motive, but he also came with a great deal of respect. No one could garner as much social power as Jesus without having some savvy, so Nicodemus approached him tactfully, even timidly, calling him Rabbi and saying, We know you are a teacher who has come from God, for no one could perform the signs you are doing if God were not with him (John 3:2).

Notice that word teacher there. Nicodemus was not only complimenting Jesus; he was elevating Jesus to his own status as a teacher of God’s Word. Remember that Nicodemus was a professional Bible instructor, a member of the ruling council in Jerusalem. He was la crème de la crème, and here he was trying to get Jesus to be on his side by putting Jesus on the same level as himself. This was a huge concession, and this was supposed to be the first part of Nicodemus’s negotiation with Jesus. This was how an elite would talk to an elite. This was how people consolidated power to keep it away from the masses and to gain it for themselves. Backroom politics. But this was not how Jesus interacted with people. Jesus did not seek power in traditional ways. Jesus was a democratizer.

‘Very truly I tell you,’ he said, ‘no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again’ (John 3:3). This must have come as a shock to Nicodemus because that’s not how he expected the conversation to go. Nicodemus was playing a power-consolidation game—I’ll give you some of my power if you give me some of yours—but Jesus was playing a democratic game. To do that, Jesus immediately shifted the conversation to rip Nicodemus’s power away from him.

Nicodemus, you see, was a religious aristocrat. He already had it all. He had power, prestige, and a great deal of social influence. He had religion on his side bolstering his privilege. The kingdom of God that Jesus was referring to already belonged to people like Nicodemus. But Jesus, right from the start, took that away from him and said, No. This isn’t yours. If you ever want to see this kingdom you think you own, you have to start over. You can’t possess a democratized kingdom. You can only participate in it.

But Nicodemus was having none of it. ‘How can someone be born when they are old?’ he asked [perhaps sarcastically]. ‘Surely they cannot enter a second time into their mother’s womb to be born!’ (John 3:4). In other words, Jesus, you’re a crazy person. This kingdom doesn’t belong to new blood but to the old. It belongs to the aristocracy and the elites. The power rested at the top with the elders, not at the bottom with children. The kingdom of God was ruled by kings like David or judges like Samuel, not those who were less than.

Yet Jesus answered, ‘Very truly I tell you, no one can enter the Kingdom of God unless they are born of water and the Spirit. Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit’ (John 3:5–6). Here’s where the light bulbs would start going off in Nicodemus’s brain. You see, this wasn’t the first time Nicodemus had heard these words. Remember that he was a Bible teacher; he had spent his whole life studying the Old Testament laws and prophets. He knew exactly what Jesus was referencing here. Jesus was bringing up Ezekiel 47. Nicodemus would have known this straight away. Ezekiel 47 is a vision of God’s temple in heaven, and Ezekiel sees that rushing forth from under the threshold of the temple is a whole river of water. Now the temple is where God’s spirit resides, so here we have this image of a spirit and water together, and what Jesus was saying started to make more sense to Nicodemus. Jesus was declaring that unless you come straight from there—straight from the source of God’s holiness—you can’t possibly enter God’s kingdom.

This was particularly offensive to Nicodemus, and it should be offensive to us. The standard Jesus set for entering God’s kingdom was impossibly high. It was no longer a matter of being righteous enough or following the Jewish law well enough; it was a matter of having already been born from the source of God’s perfect holiness. In other words, if you’re not already perfect, you can’t enter perfection.

This was a radical notion—one that would have totally scandalized Nicodemus. You see, he had been trying his whole life to deserve it, to earn his way into God’s kingdom, but Jesus was saying that there’s no way Nicodemus could even start that. Nicodemus’s elite religious and political status wasn’t enough. That would have been objectionable, and that’s precisely Jesus’s point—to offend this Pharisee’s internal notions that the kingdom of God belonged to him. Jesus was bringing down Nicodemus’s whole worldview of how power worked. Nicodemus had been an aristocrat, but Jesus said that the kingdom of God is fundamentally democratic. It’s meant to be shared.

So, Nicodemus was lost. He had no category for this because Jesus wasn’t saying that Nicodemus could just gain more status, and he would be let in. That was what Nicodemus had been doing his whole life. No, Jesus was saying that everything up to this point in Nicodemus’s life had been a false start. He didn’t need another religious, political, or social additive. He needed a radical transformation to come from the very source, and that meant admitting that his whole understanding of power had to shift from a pyramid to an upside-down paradigm.

Nicodemus responded in absolute shock. ‘How can this be?’ he asked (John 3:9). That’s the same question many of us have asked too. If he couldn’t enter the kingdom of God on his own, who could? The church’s problem is that it stopped at this verse. It said you had to be born again, which meant that you had to be one of us, meaning you have to subscribe to our values, our way of thinking, and our methods of living. In other words, we grabbed the power. We took it away from the very people Jesus was trying to give it to. It is little wonder, then, why they’re leaving the church in droves. Jesus promised democratized access to the divine, but we have, over and over again, restricted it, hindered it, monetized it, and withheld it.

People walk around today in America proud to call themselves born-again Christians, but they have little understanding of the total transformation that requires. It’s not a country club. It’s not a group of elites. It’s not even just a bunch of people who all believe the same thing. The kingdom to which we claim to belong is radically democratic, which makes it messy, vocal, and inclusive. The continual message of Jesus throughout his ministry was that if you reject a person from his kingdom, you will, by that same standard, be rejected yourself. We are told, Do not judge, or you too will be judged (Matthew 7:1), not because it’s necessarily morally wrong to hold others accountable for their actions but rather because to judge others means to have authority over them, and in a truly democratized, upside-down kingdom, we don’t have that authority. We were not given power to lord it over others but to give it over to them.

So, let us move past verse 9. Let us include those who we would, could, and perhaps even should exclude. Let us become radically democratized. ‘You are Israel’s teacher,’ said Jesus, ‘and do you not understand these things? Very truly I tell you, we speak of what we know, and we testify to what we have seen, but still you people do not accept our testimony. I have spoken to you of earthly things and you do not believe; how then will you believe if I speak of heavenly things?’ (John 3:10–12).

Translation: this wasn’t just hypothetical. There were real things happening, amazing historical moments occurring right in front of Nicodemus, and he still wasn’t getting it. The poor got it. The hurting got it. The sick got it. The widows got it. The orphans got it. Even children got it. But Nicodemus and his fellow Pharisees didn’t. They were so trapped in their world of religiosity that they couldn’t see that they needed a savior too. They couldn’t see that they were infected with sin also. They thought they could just try hard enough, that they could follow the law to the T and earn their passage, but Jesus was saying that passage couldn’t be earned, that the price of a ticket to heaven was beyond their reach, and that divine power wasn’t theirs to own in the first place.

Then Jesus did something remarkable. He did two things, in fact. Take a look. No one has ever gone into heaven except the one who came from heaven—the Son of Man (v. 13). In other words, the only person who has the real power is Jesus. He has totally consolidated all divine power unto himself. It truly and completely belongs to him. Jesus even went one step further, saying, Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up (v. 14). Jesus, like the king he was, expected to be exalted, to be lifted up, to be bowed before as king.

At first, this sounds undemocratic, but then Jesus did the second thing. He gave his power away before that sentence even ended. That everyone who believes may have eternal life in him (v. 15). Everyone. Yes, even them. Yes, even the lowest of the low. Yes, even you. Jesus gives the power of heaven away absolutely for free to anyone who will have it. He doesn’t force it on people. He doesn’t require people to be part of the kingdom. He doesn’t conquer. He freely gives.

And that’s what leads us to the most famous verse in this passage, indeed in the whole Bible, and the motivation for this book. Jesus said, For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life (v. 16). So loved whom? The elite? The powerful? The aristocrats and rulers? Not only them, but the world. The whole world. Everyone.

The kingdom of God is democratized to its core. There is no escaping it. If we are going to participate in it, we can no longer act as if we are the ones in control. The kingdom of God doesn’t belong to us, and in the great irony of creation, it doesn’t even truly belong to the King. He has chosen to give it away to the poor and the persecuted and by doing so has become ever more exalted. We do not have a tyrant. We have, by His own free acts of grace, a democratically elected King who continues to gain power, not by taking it, but by giving it away.

DEFINING DEMOCRATIZATION

Democratize is one of those Greek-rooted words with parts that you recognize, but you may not yet know what it means. That’s okay. Just break it down by its roots. Demo means people, as in the word epidemic, which means a disease that affects the masses. Crat means rule, as in bureaucrat or autocrat. And Ize means to render, as in summarize, to render a summary. So, you know all the parts of this word, which means you largely understand what it means. Just put the parts together. Democratize = People + Rule + Render = to render under the rule of the people.

This word is so powerful in its ideas that it’s the root behind an entire major political party here in the United States—the Democrats—and whether you agree with their policies and positions or not, there is no ignoring how successful they have been at convincing people to follow them since Andrew Jackson first ran for president in 1824. Fifteen US presidents have been Democrats as of this writing, and even those who haven’t been Democrats have committed themselves vocally and ideologically behind the idea of democracy—that every person’s voice matters and that we are, as one Republican president once put it, a government of the people, by the people, for the people. That’s the influence of the word democracy. It’s infused deep within our marrow that all people should have access to enough power and resources to govern themselves and that we all get a voice.

While democracy has evolved and expanded a great deal since its inception, one thing that has not changed, and indeed has only gotten denser, is the deep-seated belief within all of us that the good of the people should take precedence. Think about it. Almost no one needs convincing that democracy is in the people’s best interests. It doesn’t take a deep dive into Western literature to see a common theme of oppressed masses overthrowing a tyrannical government. Many of the heroes in our stories are fundamentally democratic forces working to produce a freer world for the people they serve. Whether it’s Princess Leia from Star Wars, Ironman from The Avengers, or (our personal favorite) Malcolm Reynolds from Firefly, they all seek to undo the workings of oppression and bring about a new age of liberty for their worlds.

Why do we do that? Why do our musicians sing to us the epics of emancipation? Why do our storytellers submit to us movie after movie, book after book, and folk song after folk song about freedom fighters? Because we see ourselves in them. We’re not just an audience. Each time we watch, read, or listen, we’re participating in the grand celebration of choice, which inspires us to serve others, to care for the poor and needy, and to seek justice for those still oppressed. In this way, a free and democratic world reproduces itself if the conditions are right for it to continue.

But there are many detractors—many who would seek to chain those who are free. They all start out the same way, promising more resources to people in exchange for more power to a certain group, or even just a certain person. These would-be rulers all begin under the guise of chasing the will of the people, but they really seek power for themselves and those like them. They pledge to make things right for the masses by vilifying others instead of including them, by identifying a core group of people to whom rights should be denied in order for the masses to stay safe, and by assuring that once everything has blown over, they will give the power right back to the people—a promise almost universally broken. As Shakespeare’s Brutus reminds us, Th’ abuse of greatness is when it disjoins remorse from power (Julius Caesar, act 2, scene 1, lines 19–20).

History and literature have seen this cycle so many times that it’s hard even to count, but the lessons are the same. Democracy means giving power away, not keeping it, and by doing so, the human story has proven that there is more than enough power to go around. This world is almost infinitely abundant in that and many other resources. There’s no need