Posted January 21, 2009 by Charles
I was strangely intrigued today by a long passage of a 150-page book I’ve been trying to read for a little over two years now (my interest level has been decidedly low up to this point…this is found on page 121-122), Don Everts’ God in the Flesh. The point is to examine the black letters of the Gospels, and see what we can learn from the way people acted around Jesus.
It appears that I’ve finally reached a concluding section, and while discussing an appropriate response to Jesus’ sacrifice, Everts shares this about his life:
In my own life two separate seasons have pegged my soul, more deeply than ever, to the solid work of Jesus on the cross.
The first season was a time of clarity about my own sin. How bad is my sin? I wondered. I began to ask deep, honest questions about what I really believed about sin (sin is being naughty, doing little things that are fun but are for some reason outlawed by God) and began to study what Jesus said about sin (it’s a dark land of deception, dizziness, slavery, spiritual suicide).
The more biblically I understood my own sin, the more brave my thanksgiving started to become. A clear theology of sin has been like water poured on the weak, dying plant of my thankfulness.
Posted August 28, 2008 by Charles
Finally a post that isn’t in the Politics category:
But liberal religion has a dogma and it views the contemporary world through the eyes of this dogma. The dogma is all the more potent in coloring opinion because it is not known as a dogma. The dogma is that the world is gradually growing better and that the inevitability of gradualness guarantees our salvation.
Reinhold Niebuhr, Christian Century, April 22, 1926
I’d say that the same applies to the dogma of “tolerance”. The ironies of this dogma are that (a) its advocacy typically involves a caustic intolerance for conservative ideas; and (b) it ignores the fact that tolerance requires some disagreement. It’s not really tolerance if I agree with you. It’s only tolerance if I disagree with you, but tolerate you (not necessarily your ideas). I hear a great deal about this “tolerance” from friends who identify with Emergent strains (yes, “strains” – like a virus) of the emerging church.
But this idea of tolerance falls right in with the mistaken notion of progress. It moves contrary to the gospel, and the command to contend earnestly for the faith.
Posted July 13, 2008 by Charles
I’m working my way through John Stott’s The Cross of Christ (quite slowly, I might add), and came to his chapter about the problem of forgiveness. I’ve seen quite a few different theories of atonement over the last couple of years, and since I’d never spent a lot of time thinking about it, it’s been pretty interesting to see what’s out there: from the vague atonement=Jesus=the Gospel equation from the Church of the Apostles “Theology Blog”, to the idea that Jesus’ martyr’s death was intended to move us emotionally to repentance.
In his chapter on the problem of forgiveness (Why did Jesus have to die? God could just forgive us if he wanted to.), Stott states succinctly something that I have tried to suggest to a number of people over the last few years, most of whom regarded the idea with disgust:
We can cry “Hallelujah” with authenticity only after we have first cried “Woe is me, for I am lost.” In Dale’s words [R. W. Dale in his book Atonement], “it is partly because sin does not provoke our own wrath, that we do not believe that sin provokes the wrath of God.”
I’ve said for quite some time, you can’t appreciate the Good News until you’ve gotten the bad news. Namely, that you’re a sinner, and you have no hope of saving yourself.
I worked for a long time in an environment that was focused on people’s “felt needs”. These generally took the form of fellowship, comfort, security, confidence, stability, counseling, etc. I always felt, and often said – occasionally with other people within earshot – that we needed to focus on the most important, and usually unfelt need, of forgiveness from God. Read more
Posted January 17, 2008 by Charles
I’m sure Brian McLaren is a very nice man. I just hate his theology. I don’t mean hate like, “I hate it when I leave something in the car at the post office and when I come back in the line’s twice as long,” kind of way. I have this internal, full-spirit aversion to his interpretation of the Word. I don’t know how else to describe it. Every time I read something he wrote my blood pressure and heart rate go up and I start muttering.
Anyway, Adam at pomomusings is having a little guest-blogger extravaganza in which each participant tries to define or describe the Kingdom of God. It’s a pretty good series so far. I don’t agree with much that I’ve read there, but it’s interesting and worth a read.
McLaren recently posted and the short-short version is that he believes the Gospel and the Kingdom are all about the here and now. Here’s his opening:
The good news of the Kingdom of God is, according to Matthew, Mark, and Luke, the Gospel. John would agree – although he translates the phrase “kingdom of God” to “life of the ages” or “life to the full.” (The common English translation of “zoien aionian” as “eternal life” is misleading.) A surprisingly large number of committed Christians still assume “kingdom of God” and “life of the ages” mean “life in heaven after you die.” This misbelief is one of the most tragic turns in the history of Christian theology, in my opinion. Read more
Posted January 7, 2008 by Charles
I was watching the Republican debate the other night…ok, I was watching the clips on YouTube last night, but it’s the same, right? Anyway Charlie Gibson went around the circle at one point pointing out that each candidate (except Ron Paul) was accused of changing their views to move into the mainstream of the party. My question is this, if these are the best the party has to offer, and none of them were “mainstream”, does the mainstream really matter? Does it even exist? Besides, with them all running to the party’s middle, how are they different? There is a rare exception here and there: McCain and campaign finance reform, Huckabee and the Fair Tax, Romney and that hairdo… But they mostly seemed to be arguing about who believed the “mainstream” thing first. Read more
