The Christian Discipline of Service: An Alternate History of “What If?”

 Alternate history is a fascinating literary genre. It is historical fiction with a twist.

The TV series “Man in the High Castle,” taken from the novel by Philip Dick, is set in post-war America, but in a different reality in which the Axis powers prevailed. The East Coast, along with most of the Midwest, is governed by Nazi Germany. The West Coast is governed by the victorious Japanese. In between is what’s left of the US government, which wages a kind of guerilla warfare on the invaders.

Another alternate history novel, American Front, by Harry Turtledove, re-imagines the First World War, with a twist. A few decades earlier, thanks to intervention by European powers, the South had won the Civil War, and the southern states successfully established their own nation. So as hostilities later heat up in Europe, there are now two nations in what used to be US territory – the United States and the Confederacy. Thanks to their differing European alliances, the two nations find themselves again at war: the “American front” of WWI. 

WHAT IF…

What if there were an alternate history of Christian service, one in which Christ-followers committed themselves to serving others, as our Lord did? What if the greater pattern of Christian behavior – especially the behavior of Christians in positions of privilege and authority – was that Christians used their privilege and advantage to serve the people over whom they had power, just as Jesus taught?

What if white Christians had refused to go along with the slave trade? What if the abolitionist movement had not been a small, vocal minority but an overwhelming majority of Christian leaders who preached and taught that it was altogether unacceptable for Christians to participate in a system which so dehumanized people of color?

How might that one change have changed the entire trajectory of American history?

What if throughout the history of the church Christian husbands had consistently given themselves to serve their wives sacrificially, to “love their wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself for her” (Eph 5:25)? Christ gave up his life for his bride; what if the great majority of Christian husbands had made it a habit to give up their convenience for their wives? What if there were in Christian homes everywhere a culture of mutual support and encouragement that begins at the top, with the husband and father?

How would the pattern of Christian husbands leading by serving change the dynamics of Christian families throughout the nation?

And what if those families – with that kind of gospel-shaped family culture – made it a habit to invite others into their homes so that the grace and beauty of the gospel could be on display to neighbors and co-workers? What if the great majority of ordinary Christian families took it upon themselves to serve their neighbors, to get to know them and help them when they could? What if the well-known, well-earned reputation of Christian families was not that they are just nice people who go to church but that they are great neighbors who take an active interest in helping the families around them?

How would that pattern of neighborliness in Christian families change the impact of Christian families in our society?

MY SERVANTHOOD EPIPHANY

I remember once when my family was visiting relatives in Texas, I had a kind of epiphany about what it means to serve. We were spending the week with my parents in Dallas, and while we were there we all had gone out for few days to visit with my father’s kinfolk in east Texas. It is only a three-hour trip from his hometown back to Dallas, but after the return trip we were all tired, and everyone went in to take an afternoon nap.

Everyone except me, that is. For some reason, I thought someone ought to bring in all the luggage right away, and since everyone was napping, I resentfully concluded that the task had fallen to me. As I made the multiple trips to bring in the luggage, I began to fret and simmer. I thought about how selfish it was for everyone to rest while I toiled.

I know, it was totally irrational, me thinking ill of my loved ones that way, assuming they all knew they were being selfish by not helping me carry their luggage. But isn’t that often the shape that resentment takes, attributing bad motives to people who are not even aware of their “offense”?

But as I fumed under the weight of the luggage in the Texas heat, I realized something: if I had been the family servant, I wouldn’t have thought a thing about working while everyone else napped. I would have seen that task as my proper role in service to the family. I might even take pleasure in serving them.

As slight as that mental shift was, it gave me an entirely different perspective on my task. Taking on the mindset of the servant made that small job a joy instead of burden. Here I was, carrying out a small chore to serve people whom I loved – my wife, my children, my parents. Where moments before I had been fuming with resentment, now I suddenly could see that momentary toil as a joy and a privilege.

THE UNDERAPPRECIATED DISCIPLINE

Service may be one of the most underappreciated of the spiritual disciplines. There’s nothing sexy or glamorous about service. Sure, there are times when service has its own built-in rewards. There’s something satisfying about teaching a children’s Sunday school class or being a church musician. But so much of service is behind the scenes, where affirmation is scant: setting up tables and chairs or cleaning up the kitchen after a church event, changing the diapers in the nursery, weeding the beds on the church property.

No, service can be tedious at best, even humiliating.

Jesus’s washing the feet of the disciples was, on one level, an outrage. In that culture, foot washing was the work of the lowliest slave in the household – a task on the level of unclogging the toilet in our culture. And yet Jesus, the teacher and the master, humbled himself to wash the feet of his men.

Jesus said it well, and it could well be a suitable motto for his followers: “I did not come to be served, but to serve” (Mark 10:45). That sentence would never work as a slogan in a marketing campaign in our consumeristic culture. But that is exactly what Jesus came to do, what he did, and what he calls us to do: serve rather than be served.

PAYING IT FORWARD

It is right and proper that we should acknowledge that our spiritual forebears failed to use their privilege ethically, and it is even more appropriate for us to acknowledge that we ourselves have not used our own privilege well.

But so long as we still live and breathe, we can use the resources God has put at our disposal to serve and bless those around us.

Let’s “pay forward” the grace God has shown us in Christ by serving one another and in his name serving our neighbors well.