Followers of Jesus are called to be salt and light to the world, proclaiming the excellencies of his salvation to the nations. But how are we to speak this message to an accelerated world that’s moving too fast to hear anything?
German sociologist Hartmut Rosa laments how the force of increasing technological and societal advances pushes us downward at every moment. The result, Rosa says, is that we must run ever faster upward to maintain our relative place.
The consequence of such acceleration is a faulty mode of relating to the world. We’ve adopted a posture of aggression toward creation, attempting to expand our share of it. This is only reinforced by society’s structures, 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. 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?
Our evangelism must help people recover attentiveness to God’s world, where creation still witnesses to its Creator and exposes our alienation from him.
Resonance and Revelation
Rosa’s proposed solution to our misguided relation to the world is what he calls resonance—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.
Our evangelism must help people recover attentiveness to God’s world, where creation still witnesses to its Creator and exposes our alienation from him.
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’ve placed a finger over creation’s mouth as it pronounces the glory of God with hushed declarations.
This atrophied ability to resonate with the world threatens to further cut us off from a transcendent story of salvation. Herman Bavinck argues that without general revelation (God speaking via his creation), special revelation (the transcendent story of salvation) loses its connectedness with the whole cosmic existence and life.
General and special revelation are distinct but inseparable, both originating in God’s gracious self-disclosure: the Word as Creator in general revelation, the Word as Redeemer in special revelation. While special revelation alone has the divine capacity to convict and convert sinners, it’s 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, provides the lived and intelligible context in which special revelation is received. Psalm 19 beautifully displays the essential interplay between these two “books”: the book of nature and the book of Scripture. General revelation builds the tangible theatre in which the story of salvation unfolds—a story in which we’re moving too fast to notice.
In the rush of world-muting acceleration, our evangelistic efforts must seek to cultivate a resonant attentiveness to the created order in those who not only speed past it but suppress its truth. We must invite them to slow down and enter the theatre.
Pathways for Evangelism
Practically, our evangelism should reflect what Rosa calls “establishing axes of resonance”––pathways where we increase the likelihood of resonant encounters. Rosa identifies three axes for resonating with the world and others which can provide helpful insights for our evangelistic practices.
The first axis is horizontal and concerns our relationships. Obviously, to resonate with others, we must be with others. However, we must learn how to actually be present. Rosa says nothing severs a resonant pathway quite like looking past someone to a clock or looking down at a phone. We must recover the art of holy presence.
The second axis is vertical and relates to meaning. Shared encounters around art or history––whether visiting a museum or historical site or seeing a film or reading poetry together––widen our perspective to stories beyond ourselves. We’re confronted with themes of courage, sacrifice, justice, and reconciliation, which pave the way for deeper conversation.
The third axis is diagonal and deals with objects. We should expose ourselves to the tangibility of the world with others. Taking a walk through the woods together or cooking a meal brings us into contact with the givenness of creation. The sights, scents, and sounds of created things oppose our obsession with control, especially in a digital age.
No actions taken along these axes are substitutes for clear gospel proclamation. Rather, they’re simply practices that situate us in contexts where, in God’s created order, the human heart is confronted with realities it cannot fully mute.
Each of these axes “vibrates” precisely because God has so ordered his creation and the human heart to resonate along these points of relationship, objects, and meaning. Bavinck points out that the beauty of nature could not give people pleasure (i.e., resonate) unless they have a feeling for beauty in their bosom, placed there by God. Rosa is describing realities that Christians confess are features of a Creator-made world.
Rosa is describing realities that Christians confess are features of a Creator-made world.
Resonant Lord
Rather than being an evangelistic cop-out, done creatively these axes can become evangelistic starting points that require great intentionality. Rosa says cultivating these axes is inherently time-intensive. For the Christian, 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.
But again, these are just starting points. Our priority in relating to people along these axes of resonance must be connecting them to the deeper, divine subtext exposed. This requires not only significant time but also relational skills of attention and inquiry. We must be ready to give an answer for the resonant hope within us (1 Pet. 3:15)—a hope echoed in the world around us, and one answered in the person and work of Jesus Christ.
Jesus answers Rosa’s axes of resonance. John’s Gospel opens with a vision of Jesus as the resonant Lord. On the axis of relationships, Jesus the Word came to make a relationship with God possible by grace through faith, welcoming us into God’s family as children (1:12). On the axis of meaning, Jesus is the Word of God (v. 1). John uses the Greek logos, meaning “reason” or “word.” Jesus entered the world as meaning itself. And on the axis of objects, Jesus is the Word made flesh (v. 14). He became incarnate, taking on tangible flesh, sharing meals with friends and giving his physical body for us.
Hospitality, then, provides the setting for discovering these axes in community.
Noncompetitive Hospitality
However, if we’re to have resonant encounters with others, we must cease relating to them in aggressively competitive ways––which, in the digital age, has become the default. Rosa points out that competition is fundamentally based on outperforming another and thus produces losers and leads to alienation. We’ll never show gospel affection and attentive care to those we’re seeking to outperform––glory in competition is a zero-sum game. To resonate with another, we must suspend competition.
It must be said, too, that while gospel proclamation remains our priority, hospitality isn’t 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. Inviting others into our lives and helping them connect resonance with revelation is therefore not technique but an application of gospel affection.
We’ll never show gospel affection and attentive care to those we’re seeking to outperform.
Jesus gives us the model for such affection in John 13. While the disciples consistently bickered about who was the best, seeking primacy with empty bravado, Jesus emptied himself. Rather than outperforming his disciples, Jesus assumed the posture of a servant, washing their feet. In this lowly act of service, he set a precedent for noncompetitive, anti-optimized hospitality: “You also should do just as I have done to you” (v. 15).
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; they’re an invitation to divine resonance. Christians are called to join creation in this declaration, pointing to the excellencies of the creating Word who has come as the redeeming Word.
