A few days after I posted on Cain’s question to God here, I was reading Christopher Wright’s book Walking in the Ways of the Lord. I said in my earlier post that we are responsible for watching out for our brothers and sisters, but Wright says something a little different. His was a valuable insight, and it is causing me to rethink what I said earlier.
I was looking through the book of Genesis and reading Victor Hamilton’s commentary on it. I came to the point where Cain murders Abel, and Yahweh asks him, “Where is your brother?” Cain’s answer has become a modern cultural retort: “Am I my brother’s keeper?” Most of the time, when people say this (including me) the implied answer is “no.” But is that the correct answer?
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The third aspect of biblical Christianity - the third side of the triangle - is our relationship with one another. The significance of this third side is outlined well in Scot McKnight’s The Jesus Creed. He explains this as a development above and beyond traditional Judaism:
One can say, then, that the creed of Judaism is this: Love God by living the Torah…But Jesus revises the Shema in two ways: loving others is added to loving God, and loving God is understood as following Jesus.” (7, 11)
Therefore, the Jesus Creed - as found in Matthew 22:37-40 - elevates the significance of loving others, not only as a reflection of our love for God, but as a critical component of our love for God. Several passages in 1 John make this abundantly clear:
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If Triangular Christianity is the essence of Biblical Christianity, it is the second side of the Triangle - your relationship with God - that most often gets overlooked.
The first side of the triangle - my relationship with God - is pretty simple. In fact, this is something that most American Christians have absolutely no problem understanding and nurturing. It is also easy to understand the third side of the triangle - our relationship to one another. I think the reason these two are so easy to understand is because they both involve “me”! But what about the side that has nothing to do with me? Am I to be concerned with your relationship with God? Absolutely.
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Triangular Christianity suggests that the essence of Biblical Christianity revolves around three equally important relationships: 1) my relationship with God, 2) your relationship with God, and 3) our relationship with one another. It is this first relationship - my relationship with God - that has been overemphasized by many modern evangelicals and risks being underemphasized by emerging evangelicals.
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The phrase “Triangular Christianity” is an attempt to describe the essence of biblical Christianity as we understand it. This should not be read to imply that previous attempts at describing the essence of biblical Christianity have failed or that we have suddenly found the secret message of Jesus. In fact, it will be abundantly clear that we are dependent upon multitudes of others, most recently Scot McKnight and his excellent book The Jesus Creed. Triangular Christianity is simply a phrase that resonates with me and helps me understand Christianity. The phrase itself was taken from a brief description in Gary Burge’s commentary on 1 John in the NIV Application Commentary series.
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