Moneygami

This is cool as crap.

Prosperity?

Scot McKnight links to an article by Peter Berger on the prosperity gospel. Berger goes against the consensus that the prosperity gospel is bad. It's an interesting read.

I'll be honest: I think the prosperity gospel (God wants you to be rich) is a bunch of bullshit. God doesn't want you to be hungry. That doesn't mean he's interested in giving you a BMW and a mansion (at least, not yet). I'm very mindful of Chesterton's quote that we can have a very interesting discussion about whether or not Jesus believed in fairies, but we cannot have a debate about whether or not Jesus thought rich people were in big trouble. There's simply too much evidence that he did.

Still and all, it's important to listen to people who disagree with you. And Berger does have some good points, such as the power of teaching optimism (You can do it!) and a good work ethic (see: Proverbs) to impoverished people used to discouragement, and the way Pentecostal-ish churches tend to do racial reconciliation and integration better than anyone else. It is humbling to watch someone like Joel Osteen and see how diverse his church is compared to my own, which is mostly made up of white middle-class people with (or getting) graduate degrees, aged 18-35, or as Tim calls us, "the educated poor".

But this guy still has it coming:

The Death of Art and Film

There's absolutely no reason for this.

Gospel

One of my favorite things Scot McKnight does on Jesus Creed is simply list all Biblical references to a topic and briefly address what is being said. He did it with the word "Heaven", tracing its use throughout the Hebrew Scriptures and the New Testament. He's doing it now with "gospel" or "good news". Check it out.

I asked the question there and I'll ask it here too: Do we have to announce any bad news before we announce the good news of Jesus? Most traditional evangelical evangelism (yeah, I couldn't think of a better way to phrase that) focuses on first convincing people that there is bad news, that they are a sinner in need of salvation.

But is that necessary? We have plenty of bad news in the world. Economic collapse brought on by greed, war, violence, sexual irresponsibility, the oppression of the poor by the rich, lack of reconciliation between racial and ethnic groups, lack of value for human life...people know, for the most part, what's wrong with the world. Probably, if pressed, they would chalk up many of the world's problems to evil or immorality (or, to use an old word, sin). Most people in our culture are not aware of any existential debt to God as a result of their own sin. Would evangelism be more effective (not to mention more faithful to the gospel) if we skipped over, for the moment, convincing people that they personally need Jesus, and simply announced the coming good rule of God redeeming all creation?

If we announced that God is bringing peace where there is war, reconciliation where there is racial bitterness, justice where there is oppression, life and health where there is sickness and death, AND mercy where there is guilt, and that He's doing it all through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, and that Jesus is inviting all people to fulfill who they were meant to be by joining Him in that redemption...

Well, many would surely still be unconvinced. But at least we'd be answering the problems and concerns the world knows it's facing, instead of focusing on a karmic debt it doesn't know it has.

The Great Emergence

I came across this article by Phyllis Tickle that explains, better and more succinctly than most things I've read, what it means to be part of the emerging church movement, particularly as it relates to how we view authority and ecclesiology. It's excellent. And it got me thinking (as I tend to do) about my upbringing, and how I've grown as a Christian both because of, and in strong reaction to, the faith I was raised in.

When I was young, growing up in (a conservative, evangelical, Southern Baptist) church I never really could explain why the church existed. Oh, if you were a Christian, you went to church. It says so in the Bible. And you do what the Bible says. So you go to church. 3 times a week, unless there was a revival. Or VBS. Then you were there every day.

Anyway, one time a friend said to me (giving his reason for not going to church as much as I thought he should, I suppose) that you could be a perfectly good Christian without going to church. You could read the Bible on your own, and pray on your own, and not have sex and that kind of thing. And I rebutted with the verse from Hebrews about not forsaking gathering together. You came to church because it's in the rules. You came to church because you were being obedient.

Now, obedience is better than nothing. We shouldn't forsake gathering together. And I'm glad it's laid down as a pretty firm command, because sometimes you need those. But I really, utterly, completely missed the point. I accepted as valid my friend's assertion that you didn't need to go to church. Because I took it as assumed that my salvation was as an individual only. Jesus died for me on the cross, I independently accepted his offer of salvation, and now it was my job to read the Bible and pray (in my own personal quiet time), not sin (thought of in terms of personal morality), and wait around to die so I could go to heaven. Oh, and evangelize others so they could also have their personal relationship with Jesus.

Now here's the deal: I strongly believe all these things still. I should pray to God on my own, read the Bible on my own, and introduce others to Jesus. But the context for these activities shouldn't be "just me and God". It's me as part of God's church, which I desperately need, and which desperately needs me, if it's going to be what God has called it to be. This isn't to say we're like cogs in a machine, interchangeable and of little worth. It's more like being (hey, what do you know?) parts of a body.

Of course, the only reason I know that bit about the parts of the body is because of the church I was raised in. So I don't intend to knock it too hard. They practiced the truth about community, even if they didn't teach it (or to be more fair, even if I never learned it there). And the truth is that we learn our faith communally. We are communal creatures--it's how God made us. We are not simply individuals. We are part of a family.

Life

A few posts back I told the story of Charles Dickerson. He murdered Brenda Fox. Today the jury unanimously chose life imprisonment for Charles rather than death. 

Hallelujah.

When the jury read the sentence, Charles burst into tears, turned to the victim's family, and said, "I am so, so, so sorry." 

Jason Fox, whose mother was killed by this man, replied, "I forgive you."

Hallelujah.

Ridiculous

This really shouldn't exist.


















You can read all about it here.