Threads from Henry's Web

Tag: Christianity

  • On a Soterian Gospel

    “Some folks have reshaped the Bible and the gospel so that it is driven by the plan for personal salvation. The Greek word for salvation is soteria so it is accurate to refer to such thinkers as soterians and their gospel as the soterian gospel.” Thus Scot McKnight begins his discussion of salvation and judgment and the focus on personal salvation.

    I agree with him on the nature of the salvation described in the Bible, and the way it has been twisted, especially in American Christianity. We have created a gospel that is well designed to  mesh with our self-centeredness. The gospel becomes so personal that we don’t really care what happens to others, as long as we can be sure we’re “saved.”

    I suspect this is one of the reasons that we find so many American churches proclaiming a theology that would seem to imply missions, but at the same time not really being involved personally or financially with missions. In mainline denominations, such as my own, I think we’re much more susceptible to a complacency because we look at the judgment scenes and we decide that we’re not so bad. Both of these views fail because the concern is solely with ourselves. If we’re doing OK, even if we measure how ‘OK’ we are by our activities in service to those less fortunate, then we tend to neglect the Gospel Commission.

    And that leads to one text McKnight cites in the post I linked that I think may be easily misconstrued, Matthew 25:31-46. We frequently take this as a parable intended to answer the question “What happens at the judgment?”. I think it is actually a parable against complacency. Notice that nobody is actually right about their standing with God in this parable. All are surprised. I’d tie it most closely with Matthew 7:21-23. Just because you proclaim, just because you think you have it nailed down, doesn’t mean that you’re right with God. That is something God gets to judge.

    Now on first glance, one might think this points more to “social gospel” people, who think they’re doing what they should, when actually neglecting so much. A little bit of charity goes a long ways in salving one’s conscience, but God’s call is not to a little bit of charity. God’s call is to being a different type of person, the type of person who is focused on helping those in need, both spiritual and physical. And there’s no reason to neglect either. A church spending 5% of its budget on missions and outreach might be able to pat itself on its collective back and note that it’s doing better than other mainline denominations. But will that meet the standard?

    And to those whose focus is on theological correctness as the standard for salvation, where’s the difference? There are works of the hands and works of the intellect. The way I hear salvation described by some, one would think that it’s based on one’s intellectual understanding of complex doctrines. If you don’t understand imputation, let’s say, you might not be saved.

    But the sheep and the goats points against us finding ways to guarantee our own, separate salvation, and calls us to look to community. That says that the real question is whether God has worked and is working in us, and not whether we have correctly understood or carried out some program.

     

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  • Review: Learning God’s Story of Grace

    I have posted a review of this little book on my Participatory Bible Study Blog.

  • Atheist Holiday Ads and Christian Freedom

    The Christian Post reports that the American Humanist Association has some holiday ads out. These ads have messages such as “Bias against atheists is naughty, not nice.” Such a message seems pretty straightforward to me.

    But the Christian Post writer chose to quote Matthew D. Staver:

    Mathew D. Staver, founder and chairman of the Liberty Counsel, said that the campaign was a crass attempt at restricting the religious freedom of Christians passionate about Christmas. As the birthdate of Christianity, he said no other holiday deserved more public worship.

    Now as a Christian, I’m fully in tune with the idea of being passionate about Christmas and in worshiping on this holiday. That is my choice as a Christian. In addition, there are a number of things I like to do about Christmas to make it more a matter of worship and less a matter of commercialism. This includes paying close attention to the advent season and the worship involved, and in also following the season, always noting that Christmas, as a liturgical season, begins and does not end on Christmas day.

    But all of that is my choice. I can be passionate about what I want to do. Nobody else can prevent me from worshiping during the Christmas season. Nobody can prevent me from being passionate about the incarnation during this season.

    But the incarnation does suggest something else to me. It suggests that I shouldn’t want to try to exclude others. The incarnation represents the greatest inclusion, or gap crossing, in religious thought. Infinite God reaches across the gulf to the finite, us, and draws us in.

    So should we, as does Mr. Staver, complain that our freedom is being limited or that these ads prevent us from passionately celebrating our own holiday? Or perhaps we should see this as an opportunity to treat people in a respectful way ourselves.

    They aren’t hurting Christians in any way by disagreeing with us. That’s their choice. Complaining about it just suggests that in this country we have a majority (Christians) who are so thin skinned that they can’t tolerate a very small minority asking for a little respect.

    And that’s pathetic.

     

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  • Loving C. S. Lewis and Hating Rob Bell?

    Michael Patton, who often steps into controversial issues (which I do not mean as a criticism), asks why people love C. S. Lewis, but hate Rob Bell. His conclusion is that this is because Bell’s ideas that push the boundaries characterize his ministry, unlike those of C. S. Lewis.

    I must admit that I’ve read only a few lines of Rob Bell, while I’ve read just about everything related to Christianity that C. S. Lewis ever wrote. In addition, I’m not a universalist, though I don’t automatically call universalists heretics.

    But I ‘m going to suggest a different reason why people perceive these two men so differently. Rob Bell is contemporary. He may say many things other than what he said in his most recent book, but he has managed to become the poster boy for certain controversies. I’m not sure that his ministry is characterized by this one topic; it’s the publicity about him that bears that character.

    C. S. Lewis got started defending Christianity, and that certainly did make it easier for him to get accepted regarding other ideas. But he gets a pass on many doctrines that in others are regarded as heretical. In my view, other thinkers should get similarly gracious treatment.

    (Note: I ignore here issues of writing quality. In the little bit I’ve read, I’ve come to doubt I could tolerate reading an entire book by Rob Bell, whereas I really enjoy Lewis’s prose. But I haven’t read enough of Bell to make that a firm opinion of his writing.)

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  • Christian Carnival Posted

    . . . at Codex: Biblical Studies Blogspot.

  • O’Reilly vs Dawkins and Mocking God

    The video below is a short exchange between Richard Dawkins and Bill O’Reilly. I’ve come to expect nonsense from O’Reilly, and I have a fairly low opinion of what Dawkins writes regarding theology, while considering his science writing second to none.

    Watch the latest video at video.foxnews.com

    What caught my attention here was the accusation that Dawkins is mocking God. More and more, I see this accusation used against anyone who doesn’t accept someone’s religious beliefs and has the audacity to challenge them. I’ve expressed a certain disdain for what Dawkins writes about theology, but I believe he has the right to say that.

    Is what he says “mocking God”? Well, he’s an atheist. He doesn’t believe in God. What exactly do you expect him to say?

    Thus I can be regarded as blaspheming Islam because I don’t believe that Mohammed was a prophet. In turn, a Christian might think a Muslim was blaspheming Jesus because he doesn’t believe Jesus is divine. If you believe something isn’t true, well, you believe it isn’t true!

    Dawkins is bound to think the core story of Christianity is myth (understood in the derogatory sense), because he doesn’t believe it’s true, either as history, or as a good, effective myth (seen in the more positive sense). I may disagree. I may dislike what he has to say. I may even think his language is intemperate from time to time, but that fact still remains.

    But expressing it in a children’s book? Again, I have the right to produce a children’s book based on my theological beliefs, entwining them in the story. Is this not also acceptable when done by someone else with different beliefs?

    Just because faith is involved shouldn’t mean that it’s unacceptable for each person to express their point of view, and defend it, even vigorously.

  • Hired Staff Won’t Solve Church Problems

    Yesterday I posted one of my short stories over on my Jevlir blog. For those who don’t read that blog (its readership is quite low), I wanted to write a couple of notes here.

    Many churches think they’ll find the solution to the problem of declining membership or financial problems by hiring just the right staff. But in most churches, the problems are much deeper than who is on the staff. In most declinining churches, I would suggest there is a need to change the church culture. You can’t hire a “Minister of Evangelism” and expect that to make the church grow. A “stewardship consultant” is only going to be able to go as far as the church’s commitment will take it.

    The solution to declining membership, in my view, is discipleship. If you can’t get the church to commit to being disciples in all ways, then no number of paid staff is going to solve your problem. In order to change the culture of the church, you may have to lose even more members. Let the folks who don’t want to be disciples and who don’t want to be ministers (every member should be!) move on.

    I don’t mean by this to sit in judgment on their discipleship. What I mean is to allow the self selection. If the church determines to be Christ in their community and to take this commitment seriously, then those who don’t want to go along will get annoyed and leave. Too frequently, our response to this is, “Oh no! We’re losing more members!” So we keep the problem alive by sacrificing discipleship to numbers.

    I don’t have a problem with church staff when the purpose of that staff is to facilitate the ministry of the members. But in an overwhelming number of cases, the paid staff is expected to do the ministry, and the stewardship problem is to get the members to cough up enough money to pay the staff to do the things that they, the members, should be doing themselves.

    The gospel fulfilled in discipleship is the only answer … not more paid staff to replace the ministry of the whole body.

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  • The Only Worshiper Who Got It

    At today’s church service there was something I wish I had caught on camera. I’m not really quick, even though I have a reasonably good camera in my cell phone.

    Our pastor, Geoffrey Lentz, was preaching the final sermon of his Summer in the Psalms series, this time from Psalm 150. He talked about exuberant praise, and suggested that if we could really get a vision of God’s grace we would doubtless be ready to sing and dance ourselves. He’s been using musical styles with his sermon, and today’s style was jazz.

    As is our custom, the offering comes immediately after the sermon. The offertory was jazz, with quite a catching rhythm. I was sitting near the back and looking across a congregation sitting quietly in their seats while the band rocked the house; well, would have rocked it had it been movable. And no, this is not about me. I was sitting in my seat like the rest.

    But a few rows ahead of me, close to the center of the sanctuary, there was a little girl, perhaps two years old. She was quite noticeable in a bright red dress. She was standing on her chair, dancing, waving her hands above her head, and clapping (mostly) to the music.

    I think she was the only one who got it!

     

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  • A Bone to Pick with Scholars and Experts

    When I first started attending a United Methodist church, and the leadership figured out what my background was, I was soon invited to teach various classes around the church. I was fairly pleased with this, as I love to talkteach, and it gave me plenty of opportunities.

    My approach was to search for ever newer things to talk about. I wanted to work from my most recent reading and find something that nobody had ever heard of before. Above all, I didn’t want people to feel bored because I was covering topics that were too simple or basic.

    I would note here that due to my detour from the church following graduate school, this was my first extensive experience teaching the folks in the pews, and not dealing with folks in the halls of academia. In academic circles, one often brings up a topic only to be informed that the listener has read an article in some scholarly journal on that topic, or to be asked if one has read something even more recent. That’s all well and good in scholarly circles. It saves time. If you’ve both read the same article you can go on with the discussion on that basis.

    A very nice education director called me aside one day and pointed out that I was really missing telling people the things that they needed to know. I thought I was keeping their interest. They were impressed with my intelligence and breadth of knowledge, she told me, but they weren’t really getting what I was trying to teach. Her suggestion was that I keep things basic—from my point of view—and they would be at about the right level from hers, and that of the listeners.

    I don’t know that I always follow that advice. I occasionally find myself rambling off into strange territory, and I’ll suddenly ask a class if I’m saying anything of interest. Some honest soul will tell me that I’ve gone off the deep end.

    I’ve noticed this with some scholars of my acquaintance. First, there are many more scholars who believe they speak clearly to common people than actually do. By common people here I don’t mean stupid people or ignorant people; I mean people who are not scholars in the area of a particular scholar’s expertise.

    Second, there’s the “we’ve already covered this” syndrome. This covers hundreds of topics. I’ve recently heard it with regard to a range of controversies. The method here is to refer one to a prior magazine or journal article, or a book written a few years ago and then shrug and say that nothing more needs to be said on that topic.

    It doesn’t look that way where I live. I don’t live in academia. Yes, I have an MA degree, but that was my last academic experience. The rest of my life has been outside of academia. Nonetheless, both through my reading, and now through my publishing, I encounter scholars on a regular basis. I also encounter the comments of intelligent and informed readers who are not scholars. They often tell me that the scholars aren’t being nearly as clear as they think they are.

    There are many fields of study where it is appropriate for one to spend a lifetime communicating only with other scholars. One can think of various scientific fields, or even of some of the more technical branches of biblical studies, such as textual criticism. But ultimately when dealing with faith, what doesn’t get out to the broader community is, in my view, largely wasted.

    We need more scholars who will spend their time learning to communicate their views to the public. In order to learn to do this, they will need to listen to what people are saying with regard to their writing and speaking. Are people hearing, or are they not.

    I’m not going to name names, because I don’t want to single out people of my acquaintance, but I’d like to give an example. One speaker of my acquaintance was invited to speak at a church for the weekend. This was not a church in the same religious tradition as his. At a Friday night meeting he felt he had not communicated. He listened to what people said after the meeting. He talked to me. He talked to the pastor. He spent much of the night in prayer. When he returned to speak Saturday morning, things were completely different. He had listened to the people and to the Holy Spirit. By the time he preached his Sunday morning message there was a bond between him and the congregation.

    We need more scholars and experts who can follow that example.

     

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  • What if Church Was Like

    … This!

    This is Discipling from The Foursquare Church on Vimeo.

    (HT: Dave Black Online)