Category Archives: Evangelicalism

Five Ways God Points Sinners to Christ

Posted by Dan C. on

I’ve been listening to John MacArthur’s sermon series on the book of Acts as my homework for leading a Sunday morning Bible study through the same book. Listening to all of the sermons and taking notes better prepares me for the task and provides me with some helpful ‘additions’ to the broader study material, also John MacArthur’s.

One of the sermons provided a short list of ways God points sinners to Christ that I found helpful. Listed below are the points presented in the sermon, for your thoughtful consideration, followed by some personal thoughts concerning their application in our evangelistic efforts.

1. Knowledge

The miracles, signs and wonders at the hands of Jesus and the Apostles were signs that they were from God. The Jews knew that they were seeing with their own eyes that which only God could do. Some did the math and believed, but many did not.

One man, who was blind from birth, even reminded the Jewish leaders that only God could have healed him and even asked those rulers if they too wanted to become a disciples of Jesus. Sadly, I think they thought he was just being sarcastic. (See John 9)

Today we don’t have Christ among us, but we are given the same knowledge through the written New Testament.

2. Guilt

In the days following the birth of the Church at Pentecost, Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, preached to the Jews gathered in Jerusalem, accusing them of being guilty of their own Messiah’s death. 3,000 hearers responded with "what shall we do?" to Pater’s first sermon.

3. Sorrow

"Godly sorrow brings repentance that leads to salvation and leaves no regret, but worldly sorrow brings death." – 2 Cor 7:10

The repentance of Peter for having denied Christ brought repentance and was ‘Godly’ sorrow. Judas’ sorrow for his betrayal was worldly sorrow that led to his suicide/hanging.

4. The goodness of God

"Or do you presume on the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that God’s kindness is meant to lead you to repentance?" – Rom 2:4

5. Judgment

"The times of ignorance God overlooked, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent, because he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed; and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead." – Acts 17:30-31

As I consider these points, several things come to mind concerning their use in evangelism:

First of all, only one of them, knowledge, seems to not be connected with the issue of our ‘sin’ problem. The miracles and signs performed by Jesus and the Apostles were signs that the both of their ministries were of God. Only God could heal the sick and raise the dead. In the same manner, we can ‘make known’ the God of the Bible and the mighty deeds of Jesus and the Apostles in the early church. The Bible is our ‘source’ of information.

The remaining four; guilt, sorrow, the goodness of God and judgment speak of repentance, or turning. There are, I think, two aspects of repentance in view here – turning from sin and turning toward God. While both ‘turnings’ should need no explanation, turning toward God might have had special significance to the religious leaders of Jesus’ day and the days of the early church. Those same religious leaders thought themselves already toward God, while Jesus told them they knew not the true God. Go back and review some of the hard things Jesus had to say to them concerning whom they really served.

That four out of five ways God points to Christ deal with man’s issue with sin should be hugely significant. As we share Christ with a lost world, if we don’t take the conversation to man’s biggest problem, we are failing in our mission. That doesn’t mean we ‘pound people over the head’ with it, but we have as a goal to ‘get to the bottom line’, as it were. We walk gently down that path, with great concern and much care. We can even encourage those to whom we share Christ to actually identify the problem themselves, with ‘creative’ dialogue and conversation!

We need to remember that salvation is a work of God, and we are only messengers. We also don’t know which of our five points God will use in any individual to bring him/her to Christ. We leave the ‘convicting’ of sin, righteousness and judgment to the Holy Spirit. However, we just need to be like the Apostle Paul, and ‘unashamed’ of the entirety of the gospel message we present.

Lastly (for now) we must always bathe our evangelistic efforts with prayer. We should pray daily that God will open hearts to receive the gospel message and seize the divine appointments God arranges for us. We should be praying as we share the gospel message, both for guidance in that sharing and for God’s revelation to the hearer. We should be continuously praying for those to whom we share the gospel as they grow in Christ whether or not we are part of that growth, since we know the enemy will try and destroy seed that was sown.

So much for my thoughts. I have a couple of questions. Of the five points we just discussed, which ones seem to be most prevalent in most of today’s evangelistic culture? Which ones, if any, are missing? What are we to do about it?

Brazilian ‘Evangelical’ Model Under Fire for Deciding to Appear on Playboy Cover

Posted by Dan C. on

By Jessica Martinez, Christian Post

The Brazilian edition of Playboy magazine recently announced that a model who claims to be evangelical will be on the cover of its September issue.

Aline Franzoi, who belongs to National Mission Evangelical Church in Brazil, was already under fire for being a ring girl for Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) competitions, which some consider to be a violent sport.  But now news of her upcoming Playboy cover adds additional oil to the heat she has received over her career choices.

According to her Facebook page, Franzoi responded in Portuguese yesterday to the recent backlash she has received over her decision to appear on Playboy.

"About the issue regarding my religion that came out in headlines saying I am ‘Evangelical,’ this will be the first and only time I will speak about it. I never wanted to link information about my religion and work since they are different areas," she wrote. "Journalists are the ones who link me with the title of ‘Evangelical, not Aline Franzoi’ but I’m sure everybody can differentiate it."

A Hispanic news site, Noticia Cristiana, reported that Franzoi told VIP, a Brazilian magazine, that she would not pose nude because she is evangelical. And prior to her most recent career controversy, Franzoi also told another Brazilian outlet, UOL, that she publicly displays her Christian faith in a bold manner.

"I’m evangelical and use my Facebook to tell how much God was and is powerful in my life. And, anyway, what’s wrong with being ring girl? It is very concerning to know what is right and wrong, but in my view, God looks at our heart and our intention."

But her recent Facebook statement makes it unclear whether she considers herself an evangelical or not, and whether her opinion of appearing nude has changed.

The founder of Actors, Models and Talent for Christ, a talent agency based in Georgia, finds Franzoi’s decision to appear in the men’s magazine disheartening.

"Because media covers our world, today’s Christian stars have an unprecedented opportunity to be positive role models. The Bible tells us to be imitators of Christ. We can’t be perfect, but if we’re truly following Jesus, He will perfect us," said Carey Lewis.

"I am saddened at the massive loss of innocence among our children, as well as the dramatic increase in human trafficking. Overt sexuality contributes to these tragedies. Actors, models and talent for Christ have a responsibility to set a better example," he added.

Although it is not clear whether Franzoi will pose nude or not for Playboy, her credibility as a Christian continues to be questioned.

"It’s difficult to be a model while practicing a legalistic religion like Evangelicals do. She should either leave her religion or leave her career," commented Artemio Degas, a reader on Noticia Cristiana.

"God does see your heart, he sees that it’s perverted," added another reader, Eliseo Flamenco.

____________________________________________

Sadly, I’ve run across professing Christians who would see nothing amiss here. Here’s a comment that reflects their mindset:

David danced before the Lord naked. Many prophets paraded around in loin clothes. We are all on our own personal journey to God. Who am I to question the mystery of God? Who knows but that her being in Playboy as a Christian witness will not reach a lost soul? No one can please everyone all of the time and the only one they need to focus on pleasing is God. She says she will not pose nude but even if she ends up being duped into it, I still believe that God can make all things work to the good for those who are called according to his purpose. My prayer is for Aline Franzoi to trust in the Lord with all her heart and to lean not upon her own understanding but in all her ways to acknowledge Him and He will direct her paths. In Jesus name, Amen.

The article itself is troubling enough, but above comment from someone named Karen, is too sad for words at the moment, although the young woman probably feels like she is somehow being ‘Christ like’ and loving. I cannot help but wonder from who/where she is receiving her teaching.

The Problem of Evangelical Biblical Illiteracy A View from the Classroom – David R. Nienhuis

Posted by Dan C. on

For well over twenty years now, Christian leaders have been lamenting the loss of general biblical literacy in America. No doubt you have read some of the same dire statistics that I have. Study after study demonstrates how nearly everyone in our land owns a Bible (more than one, in fact) but few ever take the time to read it, much less study it closely. Indeed, while the Exploring Religious America Survey of 2002 reports that over 84 percent of Americans consider the Bible to be "very" or "somewhat important" in helping them make decisions in life, recent Gallup polls tell us that only half can name even one of the four Gospels, only a third are able to identify the individual who delivered the Sermon on the Mount, and most aren’t even able to identify Genesis as the Bible’s opening text.

Upon hearing these figures (and many more are readily available), some among us may be tempted to seek odd solace in the recognition that our culture is increasingly post-Christian. Perhaps these general population studies are misplaced in holding secular people to Christian standards. Much to our embarrassment, however, it has become increasingly clear that the situation is really no better among confessing Christians, even those who claim to hold the Bible in high regard. Again, numerous studies are available for those seeking further reason to be depressed. In a 2004 Gallup study of over one thousand American teens, nearly 60 percent of those who self-identified as evangelical were not able to correctly identify Cain as the one who said, "Am I my brother’s keeper?" and over half could not identify either "Blessed are the poor in spirit" as a quote from the Sermon on the Mount or "the road to Damascus" as the place where Saul/Paul’s blinding vision occurred. In each of these questions, evangelical teens fared only slightly better than their non-evangelical counterparts.

These numbers serve to underscore the now widespread recognition that the Bible continues to hold pride of place as "America’s favorite unopened text" (to borrow David Gibson’s wonderful phrase), even among many Christians. As a professor of New Testament studies at Seattle Pacific University, I know this reality only too well. I often begin my survey of the Christian Scriptures course by asking students to take a short biblical literacy quiz, including questions of the sort mentioned above. The vast majority of my students–around 95 percent of them–are Christians, and half of them typically report that they currently attend nondenominational evangelical churches. Yet the class as a whole consistently averages a score of just over 50 percent, a failing grade. In the most recent survey, only half were able to identify which biblical book begins with the line, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." Barely more than half knew where to turn in the Bible to read about the first Passover. Most revealing in my mind is the fact that my students are generally unable to sequence major stories and events from the biblical metanarrative. Only 23 percent were able to order four key events from Israel’s history (Israelites enter the promised land; David is made king; Israel is divided in two; and the people of Judah go into exile), and only 32 percent were able to sequence four similarly important events from the New Testament (Jesus was baptized; Peter denies Jesus; the Spirit descends at Pentecost; and John has a vision on the island of Patmos). These students may know isolated Bible trivia (84 percent knew, for instance, that Jesus was born in Bethlehem), but their struggle to locate key stories, and their general inability to place those stories in the Bible’s larger plotline, betrays a serious lack of intimacy with the text–even though a full 86 percent of them identified the Bible as their primary source for knowledge about God and faith.

There are, no doubt, many reasons for the current predicament. In general we spend far less time reading anything at all in this culture, much less dense and demanding books like the Bible. Not long ago I met with a student who was struggling in one of my courses. When I asked her what she thought the trouble was, she replied, in a tone suggesting ever so slightly that the fault was mine, "Reading a lot is not a part of my learning style." She went on to inform me that students today learned more by "watching videos, listening to music, and talking to one another." She spoke of the great growth she experienced in youth group (where she no doubt spent a lot of time watching videos, listening to music, and talking with people), but her ignorance of the Bible clearly betrayed the fact that the Christian formation she experienced in her faith community afforded her little to no training in the actual reading of Scripture.

Indeed, a good bit of the blame for the existing crisis has to fall at the feet of historic American evangelicalism itself. In his book Religious Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know–and Doesn’t, Stephen Prothero has drawn our attention to various religious shifts that took place as a result of the evangelistic Second Great Awakening that shook American culture in the first half of the nineteenth century, key characteristics of which continue to typify contemporary evangelical attitudes. For instance, there was a shift from learning to feeling, as revivalists of the period emphasized a heartfelt and unmediated experience of Jesus himself over religious education. While this strategy resulted in increased conversions and the creation of numerous popular nondenominational voluntary associations, it also had the effect of requiring Christians to agree to disagree when it came to doctrinal matters. There was a corresponding shift from the Bible to Jesus, as more and more Christians came to believe that the key test of Christian faithfulness was not the affirmation of a creed or catechism, or knowledge of the biblical text, but the capacity to claim an emotional relationship with what Prothero calls "an astonishingly malleable Jesus–an American Jesus buffeted here and there by the shifting winds of the nation’s social and cultural preoccupations."

The most important shift, according to Prothero, was the shift from theology to morality. The nondenominationalist trend among Protestants tended to avoid doctrinal conflicts by searching for agreements in the moral realm. Christian socialists, such as Charles Sheldon, taught us to ask not "What does the Bible say?" but "What would Jesus do?" Advocates of the Social Gospel, such as Walter Rauschenbusch, taught that it was more important to care for the poor than to memorize the Apostles’ Creed.

Christians schooled in this rather anti-intellectual, common-denominator evangelistic approach to faith responded to the later twentieth-century decline in church attendance by looking not to more substantial catechesis but to business and consumer models to provide strategies for growth. By now we’re all familiar with the story: increasing attendance by means of niche marketing led church leaders to frame the content of their sermons and liturgies according to the self-reported perceived needs of potential "seekers" shaped by the logic of consumerism. Now many American consumer-congregants have come to expect their churches to function as communities of goods and services that provide care and comfort without the kind of challenge and discipline required for authentic Christian formation to take place.

Is it any wonder that Christian youth have had little option but to default to thin, pop-cultural platitudes in their attempts to make sense of their faith? In the largest study to date of the religious lives of American youth, the National Study of Youth and Religion, Christian Smith and Melinda Lundquist Denton found that though American teens are generally quite happy to follow the faith of their parents, the de facto religion they practice is best characterized as a kind of "Moralistic Therapeutic Deism" (MTD). In their book Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers, they describe MTD as a vaguely Christian set of convictions that result in a view of God as a divine butler-therapist figure. The majority of teens interviewed reflected the belief that God is primarily concerned with making people happy, bailing them out when they get in trouble, and providing them with the necessary goods to enjoy life. Apart from these activities, God is uninvolved in the world. In other words, God is basically a nice, permissive dad with a big wallet.

These same teens could be profoundly articulate about drinking, drugs, and sexually transmitted diseases, but were generally stumped when asked to talk about their faith. "Most U.S. teens have a difficult to impossible time explaining what they believe, what it means, and what the implications of their beliefs are for their lives," Smith and Denton report. There is more at stake here than a lack of basic biblical and theological knowledge, of course. The authors go on to say:

Philosophers like Charles Taylor argue that inarticulacy undermines the possibilities of reality. So, for instance, religious faith, practice, and commitment can be no more than vaguely real when people cannot talk much about them. Articulacy fosters reality. A major challenge for religious educators of youth, therefore, seems to be fostering articulation: helping teens practice talking about their faith, providing practice using vocabularies, grammar, stories, and key messages of faith. Especially to the extent that the language of faith in American culture is becoming a foreign language, educators, like real foreign language teachers, have that much more to work at helping their students learn to practice speaking that other language of faith.

Inarticulacy undermines the possibilities of reality. If Smith and Denton are correct in their analysis (and I think they are), then it means that even those teens who are able to answer isolated Bible knowledge questions will not automatically be enabled to make the biblical story a constitutive element of their daily existence. Knowing that Jesus was born in Bethlehem will not in and of itself empower them to speak the language of faith. Satan’s use of Scripture in tempting Jesus is clear indication that a merely cognitive level of biblical literacy does not automatically result in the formation of a Christian character.

To make a real difference in people’s lives, biblical literacy programs will have to do more than simply encourage believers to memorize a select set of Bible verses. They will have to teach people to speak the language of faith; and while this language is of course grounded in the grammar, vocabulary, and stories of the Bible, living languages are embedded in actual human communities that are constituted by particular habits, values, practices, stories, and exemplars. We don’t memorize languages; we use them and live through them. As Paulo Freire reminded us, literacy enables us to read both the word and the world. Language mediates our reality, expands our horizons, inspires our imagination, and empowers our actions. Literacy therefore isn’t simply about possessing a static ability to read and write; it is a dynamic reality, a never-ending life practice that involves putting those skills to work in reshaping our identity and transforming our world. Biblical literacy programs need to do more than produce informed quoters. They need to produce transformed readers.

This is part of what I find troubling about what appears to be the dominant model of biblical literacy employed among evangelicals in their attempts to raise children of faith. This approach emphasizes the memorization of discrete Bible verses and "facts," mostly in the service of evangelism and apologetics. By mastery of passages that are deemed doctrinally relevant and emotionally empowering, it is hoped that believing youth will be equipped to own their faith, share it with seekers, and defend it against detractors. Most of the students in my classes who consider themselves "familiar with the Bible" have been trained to approach Scripture in this fashion.

Before I go on, let me be clear that I have a deep respect for the venerable and immensely valuable tradition of memorizing Scripture. Indeed, it is a central component in learning the language of faith. The deliberate, disciplined, prayerful repetition of those texts the church has come to especially value has long been a strategy for inscribing the Word of God directly on the heart and mind of the believer (Jer. 31:31-34). My comments thus far, however, should make it plain that I do not see how a person trained to quote texts out of context can truly be called biblically literate.

I observe two common problems with students who have become "familiar with the Bible" in this way. First, many of them struggle to actually read the text as it is presented to them on the page. Just last week, several of my Bible survey students expressed their surprise and disappointment that "years of church attendance and AWANA Bible memory competitions" never trained them to engage the actual text of the Bible. They weren’t trained to be readers; they were trained to be quoters. One in particular noted that all these years she had relied on someone else to tell her what snippets of the Bible were significant enough for her to know. But whenever she was alone with the text, she felt swamped by its staggering depth and breadth; so if she read the Bible at all, her method typically involved skimming the Scriptures in search of the passages she already knew and loved. This method of "reading" (if it can be called that) is seriously limited, if not dangerous, because it reduces the Bible to a grab-bag repository of texts that reaffirms the reader’s prior commitments.

Second, this method leads students to uncritically assume that doctrinal reflection is exhausted by the capacity to quote a much-loved proof-text. In doing this they suppose not only that the passage they are quoting is entirely perspicuous as it stands (in complete isolation from its literary and historical context), but also that the cited text is capable of performing as a summary of the entire biblical witness on the matter at hand. In this they are sometimes led to uncritically conclude that Christians who believe differently from them are either incompetent or willfully disobedient. They are therefore often surprised (and occasionally profoundly demoralized) when they read the verse in its actual literary context and discover that the meaning they had come to invest in it is not completely commensurate with the plain sense of the text on the page. Those of my students who are quick to quote Ephesians 2:8-9 ("For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God– not the result of works, so that no one may boast") are sometimes shocked to read the subsequent verse 10 ("For we are what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life"). Those who have memorized Romans 10:9 ("If you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved") are often horrified to read Jesus’ words in Matthew 7:21 ("Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven"). In fact it requires both a far more substantive grasp of Scripture and a capacity for careful doctrinal reflection to know how to negotiate the rich plenitude of the biblical witness. Unfortunately my students’ encounter with the Bible’s depth and breadth often leaves those who have been raised to quote verses feeling very insecure in their faith.

So what then shall we do? What is biblical literacy? Coming to an agreed-upon definition is itself part of the problem. I think all would agree that, at base, it involves a more detailed understanding of the Bible’s actual content. This requires: (1) schooling in the substance of the entire biblical story in all its literary diversity (not just an assortment of those verses deemed doctrinally relevant); (2) training in the particular "orienteering" skills required to plot that narrative through the actual texts and canonical units of the Bible; and (3) instruction in the complex theological task of interpreting Scripture in light of the tradition of the church and the experience of the saints. The survey courses we teach at SPU seek to do these very things. But in the end we want to do more than fill believing heads with objective knowledge about the Bible; we want to empower our whole community–students, faculty, and staff–to buck the cultural trends and take up the spiritual discipline of reading Scripture. It is not enough for a Christian university to function as an outpost of the academy; it must also take up the task of serving the church by becoming an abbey for spiritual growth and an apostolate for cultural change. Through our newly established Center for Biblical and Theological Education, we are working to create a reading program–a lectionary of sorts–that will contribute to the formation of readers who come to cherish a relationship not with the "astonishingly malleable Jesus" of American culture, but with the particular God whose story is related in the Bible and celebrated in the Christian church. We want to create a community ethos of habitual, orderly, communal ingestion of the revelatory text. We do so in the hope that the Spirit of God will transform readers into hearers who know what it is to abide before the mirror of the Word long enough to become enscripturated doers; that is, people of faith who are adept at interpreting their individual stories and those of their culture through the grand story of God as it is made known in the Bible.

1  Stephen Prothero, Religious Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know–and Doesn’t (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2007), 111.
2  Christian Smith and Melinda Lundquist Denton, Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 268.

David R. Nienhuis (Ph.D., University of Aberdeen) is associate professor of New Testament Studies at Seattle Pacific University and interim director of SPU’s Center for Biblical and Theological Education. He is the author of Not by Paul Alone: The Formation of the Catholic Epistle Collection and the Christian Canon (Baylor University Press, 2007).

Issue: "Recovering Scripture" Jan./Feb. 2010 Vol. 19 No. 1 Page number(s): 10-13, 17

Permissions: You are permitted and encouraged to reproduce and distribute this material in any format provided that you do not alter the wording in any way, you do not charge a fee beyond the cost of reproduction, and you do not make more than 500 physical copies. For web posting, a link to this document on our website is preferred. Any exceptions to the above must be explicitly approved by Modern Reformation.

Young Earth Creationism, Faith, and a Few Random Thoughts

Posted by Dan C. on

The teaching of young earth creationism (YEC) to Christian kids in homeschooled environments causes many of them to doubt or lose their faith, especially if YEC is taught as being foundational to our faith. The blog posited that YEC was taught as a primary ‘salvation’ issue – that Heaven or Hell depends on it.

That was the major theme of a ‘Christian’ blog post I found recently. I actually joined the discussion. I learned some amazing things!

Part of the initial post discussed a research project in 1997 that was conducted by a half dozen PhDs of various sorts to study the age of the earth. It seems they were proponents of YEC and resourced other YEC proponents in their study. Because they didn’t use resources ‘outside’ the YEC camp, their work was just a lot of circular reasoning. That caused a young lady to begin to doubt her faith and she has never recovered.

There were other accounts in the comments section saying the same thing; that the teaching of YEC cause some to doubt/lose their faith, nearly all because of having been taught in a homeschooled environment that believing in YEC was a salvation/gospel issue, as if one could lose his/her faith if they didn’t believe in YEC. .

While I can understand why exposure to ‘Evolution as fact’ in school/college venues might cause some doubt (and it does), I couldn’t understand why exposure to YEC would cause anyone to doubt their faith. At the same time, I assumed that the subject of young people doubting/losing their faith might be an important one to address in response.

Therefore, I initially responded that I didn’t think that genuine faith would never tossed out the window, that one having doubts would not completely abandon their faith; because it was a gift from God and whom God saves He keeps by his power. That was considered off topic and one of those nasty Calvinism things.

I decided to bring it down a level and suggest that there might be an issue of not being solidly grounded in the faith once professed for these young people who doubt/abandon their faith. That lack of grounding. might come from a lack of individual Bible reading/study, or having sat under good Bible teaching. Well, That idea completely flabbergasted the site host, who thought the things I was suggesting as causes for doubting one’s faith were ‘works-based’ It took awhile to process that one! How else do we become stronger in our faith without being immersed in sound Biblically teaching?

After a couple more back-and-forth exchanges I think I finally got it – the prevailing ‘theology’ of the majority of this particular group of bloggers. They seem to be into the ‘just me and Jesus – don’t really need anything else’ demographic that is rather large these days. We just need our ‘personal relationship’ with Jesus and we can dispense with old dead guys/creeds/ and the foundational truths that we’ve been told are significant for our spiritual growth and maturity. Focusing on our ‘relationship’ is not works based like studying the Bible and therefore it’s the ‘relationship’ that’s ‘ real faith.

I never did get to the point of suggesting that I don’t know of any advocates of young earth creationism that would tell anyone that their very salvation depended on believing in a young earth, including the founders of Answers In Genesis and the Institute for Creation Research. What I did suggest, to no avail, was that the bigger issue at stake is the inerrancy and authority of scripture, and that the young v. old earth debate really points to that bigger issue. I did that while presenting the main issues that were addressed during the rise of the fundamentalist movement in America in the early 20th century, which had already been soundly bashed (fundamentalisms). That didn’t go well, maybe because believing in a young earth as essential for salvation wasn’t on the list.

So here I sit on a Sunday morning, still wondering just how far the ‘me and Jesus’ mantra has spread and just how badly young believers today have been deceived by other ‘Christians’ and are victims of very real ‘spiritual abuse’. How does any believer end up in the ‘me and Jesus is all we need’ camp? Maybe I’m just getting old, but for a lot of years now, my ‘relationship’ with my Savior has deepened through being immersed in His written word, and just believing it’s true going in. There are other things that have also helped deepen the relationship – studying church history and the creeds and thoughts of dead guys (and some living), but those are only secondary to being personally immersed in the written word.

“All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be competent, equipped for every good work.” – 2 Tim 3:16-17

If I don’t believe in the inspiration, inerrancy and authority of scripture, I might as well toss my faith out the door. Wasn’t the first lie that the serpent told Eve “Did God really say……?”

So much for Sunday morning thoughts. This was more for my own clarity than trying to actually teach anyone anything. I had to wade through over a hundred comments that were all over the map, but mostly bashing fundamentalism, homeschooling, John Calvin and anyone who says that that when and how God created our planet impacts our ‘salvation theology’ (although they wouldn’t use the word ‘theology’ – too many syllables and who needs it?)

Thanks for being patient in reading my ramblings. If you have any thoughts, please share. If you are reading and from the above referenced blog site, feel free to share, but not if you are just importing your ‘bashing’. Intelligent, thoughtful discussion is always welcome here.

The Berean Principle and/or The Voices in our Heads

Posted by Dan C. on

“Now these Jews were more noble than those in Thessalonica; they received the word with all eagerness, examining the Scriptures daily to see if these things were so.” – Acts 17:11(ESV)

In the above passage, a group of believing Jews in the town of Berea were commended for their practice of listening to the preaching of the Apostle Paul and them examining what he said under the light of the Scriptures they had available to them, to see if what Paul had spoken was true. In other words, for these Berean Jews the written scriptures were the final arbiter of what was true and what was not, when it came to listening to preaching.

What I don’t see anywhere in the New Testament is any instance of, or license to listen to little voices in our heads. We do however, hear some evangelical leaders tell us we can, and even need to recognize God’s still small voice when he speaks to us, because he still communicates to his people with whisperings and through the natural senses in ways unique to them individually.

This phenomena doesn’t come to us just from some of the ‘interesting’ folks on TBN and God TV, it also comes from some notable and popular evangelicals. It is not my intent here to get into ‘names’, but only to ask, "Why?"

I’m not asking however, why the ‘pseudo-prophets’, self proclaimed ‘Apostles’, and even the prominent evangelicals personally justify the practice of listening to little voices in our heads, I know their reasons, including the alleged scriptural support from passages of scripture taken out of the context of the Bible. What I am asking is "Why listen to and trust little voices in our heads, period.

OK, this is where I need to shift into the 1st personal singular so nobody ‘feels’ judged (I’m learning). Here goes.

How can I ever be absolutely, positively, 100% certain that that ‘still small voice’ IS God, even after I’ve followed all of the ‘training manuals’ from the Christian bookstores and/or CD’s and DVD’s I can buy from TBN and God TV? I don’t know about you, but I know I just can’t, and here’s why.

Although I am a blood bought, adopted into the family, child of God, there still remains in me a heart that can be very deceitful, sinful desires and passions, as well as ‘itching ears’. There’s scripture that tells me all of that, but I won’t quote them here, because someone might think I think I know it all or ‘feel’ judged. (1st personal singular – remember?)

So. . .because I can’t ever be absolutely, positively, 100% certain that that ‘still small voice’ IS God, I would still need to apply the Berean Principle and check it out in the Scriptures. And if I still need to do that, why not just forget about little voices in my head and take everything straight to the source?

But that’s just me and somewhat of a DUHHHHHHH moment indeed. If you have somehow reached a state of heart and mind that is somehow completely pure and immune to deception (you have perfect voice recognition software installed in your brain housing group, good on ya!

______________

Food for thought early on a Thursday morning (in Colorado that is). Have a great day and please don’t feel judged.

Neologisms for Neoevangelicals

Posted by Dan C. on

Neologisms for Neoevangelicals

NARCIGESIS [nahr- si -jee’ -sis]

[(From: narcissus; 1540–50; Latin from Greek nárkissos plant name, traditionally connected, by virtue of plant’s narcotic effects, with nárkç numbness, torpor; probably from a pre-Gk. Aegean word, but associated with Gk. narke "numbness" (see narcotic) because of the plant’s sedative effect.) (From: eisegesis; 1890–95; from Greek eisḗgesis, equivalent to eis- into + ( h ) çge- (stem of hçgeîsthai to lead) + -sis -sis {C19: from Greek eis into, in + -egesis, as in exegesis}.)]

ORIGINS:

Classical Mythology: a mythological youth (Narcissus) who fell in love with his own image reflected in a pool and wasted away from unsatisfied desire, whereupon he was transformed a plant bearing his name, commonly associated with an amaryllidaceous plant of the Eurasian genus Narcissus, esp N. poeticus, whose yellow, orange, or white flowers have a crown surrounded by spreading segments.

Classical Psychology: “Narcissists” are people completely absorbed in themselves. (See narcissism.) Inordinate fascination with oneself; excessive self-love; vanity.

noun

  1. The reading of one’s own life experiences and/or that of another’s life experience into the text of Scripture; the need to make the Bible all about themselves.
  2. An interpretation of Scripture based on the interpreter’s self-authority, particularly driven by self-esteem, self-actualization, mystical experiences and/or the interpreter’s “felt needs.” (See Sola Experientia.)
  3. A personal and/or mystical interpretation of Scripture based on the interpreter’s own ideas, biases, opinions, feelings, attitudes, beliefs, experiences, impressions, dreams, revelations, or the like, rather than based upon the plain meaning of the text.
  4. The reading of one’s own doctrinal theories into Scripture (as opposed to exegesis, which is a critical explanation or interpretation of a text or portion of biblical text), particularly as a result of personal experience. (See Sola Experientia.)
  5. Self-centered, self-defined and self-authenticating biblical interpretation, application and counsel.
  6. The reading of one’s own interpretation into Scripture based upon the egotistic belief that all things in Scripture are not alike plain in themselves, nor alike clear unto all; and that only the learned, the elect, or the leadership elite (of which the interpreter considers himself), may attain unto a sufficient understanding of them. (See Plura Scriptura.)
  7. The egotistical drive to invent new theologies, doctrines, revelations, applications and philosophies about Scripture, often manifested in self-aggrandizement activities such as book publishing, conferences, setting up organizations and websites, money-making schemes and publicity drives.

Oxymoron: Subjective exegesis.
adjectives: narcigetic, narcigetical

Online Source

What is the Future of Evangelicalism? – David Wells

Posted by Dan C. on

As the articles in this issue of Modern Reformation suggest, evangelicalism is experiencing a change in seasons: former evangelical statesmen are passing from the scene, new evangelicals don’t seem to rally around the same issues and ideas as their forefathers, and it’s increasingly difficult (if it was ever really possible) to identify clearly what an evangelical is. If you have any warm feelings at all about evangelicalism, you want some answers: Where is evangelicalism going? Who better to turn to for answers than the individuals whose lives and work helped create and shape evangelicalism. Modern Reformation is honored to include the reflections of these evangelical leaders, pastors, and scholars as we seek to understand our own time and the future of the evangelical expression of Christianity.

The Evangelical Manifesto, issued in May of this year and signed by many evangelical leaders, gives a diagnosis of the movement which is true, clear, pungent, and with which I wholeheartedly agree.

It speaks of evangelicalism’s internal “confusions” and of evangelicals as being “in dire need of reformation and renewal.” Why is this? It is because biblical truth has been replaced by “therapeutic techniques, worship by entertainment, discipleship with growth in human potential, church growth with business entrepreneurialism.” The result is a kind of culturally perverted Christianity in which “we ourselves are often atheists unawares, secularists in practice who live in a world without windows to the supernatural, and often carry on our Christian lives in a manner that has little operational need for God.” As if that were not enough, evangelicals, who loudly proclaim the doctrine of sin, are nevertheless turning a blind eye to their own sins and failings.

I applaud the honesty of this diagnosis. But may I ask an awkward question? During the last two decades, as I have been writing about this gathering storm, there have not been very many others who have expressed the same concerns. Where, I ask, have our leaders been?

Twenty or twenty-five years ago, the Manifesto‘s call for “reformation and renewal” might have made some sense and might have gained some traction. Today, though, it looks more like an earnest attempt to close the barn door long after the horse has disappeared.

By that I do not mean that nothing of worth remains in the evangelical world! Of course, there are churches that are flourishing in good and biblical ways, there are believers living authentic Christian lives, missionaries doing work in sometimes heroic ways, and a new wave of younger Christian believers is emerging, so to speak, who are really searching for the real thing and are disgusted by the very failures that the Manifesto describes. Unfortunately, though, much of what the Manifesto sees as wrong is now so thoroughly institutionalized, so much of it is a part of the warp and woof of evangelical believing, so much of it unashamedly practiced by the leaders, both pastoral and institutional, who should be about addressing what is wrong that no “business as usual” kinds of repentance are going to work. The truth is that there are now so many vested interests involved in preserving the failing evangelical status quo, there is so much cultural habit entailed, so many private ambitions at work, so much muddied thinking and emptied-out spirituality now fills its churches that any call to change these attitudes and habits without a matching call to address their causes behind them is bound to fall on deaf ears.

This story of postwar evangelicalism, however, is not at all unusual. Ebb and flow, expansion and decline, failure and renewal, have marked biblical believing in all ages and it is what we are seeing today. The early postwar years, the 1950s and early 1960s, saw the emergence of the movement that, despite undoubted mistakes and misjudgments, nevertheless built a sound biblical basis for the faith, undertook a massive publication effort in producing Bible translations and commentaries for this foundation, and began an energetic, evangelistic outreach. It is no small tribute, backhanded though it is, that half of American adults today claim to be born again. Being born again has won grudging cultural acceptance even as the culture itself has been given more than a grudging acceptance in the evangelical world!

It was in the 1970s and 1980s, however, that a different kind of leader emerged-no longer the pastoral/ theologians of the earlier period, but the CEO/entrepreneurs of the increasingly organizational and institutionalized period in the movement life that had grown out of these earlier years. The gathering strength in organization, wealth, and numbers that has continued to this day has, it turns out, been matched by a gathering decline in Christian authenticity-as Barna has been assiduously documenting-and by the evisceration of any serious meaning to the word evangelical. Who would have imagined, for example, that in 2008, according to the recent Pew study, 57% of evangelicals would say that eternal life can be found in many other religions? Had the biblical writers thought that, we would have no Bible today.

Evangelical is an honorable word with a history that at times has been magnificent. But today, it has been debauched by a mass of empty born-again professions, by fallen leaders, and by theological corruption. It is time, I believe, to respect what the word once meant by no longer using it of ourselves, at least for a generation. Let us put our own house in order before we think again of ourselves as being evangelicals.

Much of this mammoth world of believing, with its entrenched leaders, will resist reform to its dying day, but let the reform-minded, let those who really care about Christian truth, begin to network together, to work around the existing structures where necessary and with them where possible, to bring about a new day. A new day is possible and I am optimistic in thinking that we will yet see the current evangelical ebbing followed by a new reforming flow and our moment of failure by a fresh and invigorating renewal that may, in time, require new forms for its life and expression.

Dr. David F. Wells is Distinguished Research Professor at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in South Hamilton, Massachusetts.

This article originally appeared in the Nov./Dec. 2008 Vol. 17 edition of Modern Reformation and is reprinted with permission. For more information about Modern Reformation, visit http://www.modernreformation.org or call (800) 890-7556. All rights reserved.

Share

‘If I Were the Devil’ by Paul Harvey, 1965

Posted by Dan C. on

“If I were the devil … If I were the Prince of Darkness, I’d want to engulf the whole world in darkness. And I’d have a third of its real estate, and four-fifths of its population, but I wouldn’t be happy until I had seized the ripest apple on the tree — Thee. So I’d set about however necessary to take over the United States. I’d subvert the churches first — I’d begin with a campaign of whispers. With the wisdom of a serpent, I would whisper to you as I whispered to Eve: ‘Do as you please.’ “

“To the young, I would whisper that ‘The Bible is a myth.’ I would convince them that man created God instead of the other way around. I would confide that what’s bad is good, and what’s good is ‘square.’ And the old, I would teach to pray, after me, ‘Our Father, which art in Washington…’

“And then I’d get organized. I’d educate authors in how to make lurid literature exciting, so that anything else would appear dull and uninteresting. I’d threaten TV with dirtier movies and vice versa. I’d pedal narcotics to whom I could. I’d sell alcohol to ladies and gentlemen of distinction. I’d tranquilize the rest with pills.

“If I were the devil I’d soon have families that war with themselves, churches at war with themselves, and nations at war with themselves; until each in its turn was consumed. And with promises of higher ratings I’d have mesmerizing media fanning the flames. If I were the devil I would encourage schools to refine young intellects, but neglect to discipline emotions — just let those run wild, until before you knew it, you’d have to have drug sniffing dogs and metal detectors at every schoolhouse door.

“Within a decade I’d have prisons overflowing, I’d have judges promoting pornography — soon I could evict God from the courthouse, then from the schoolhouse, and then from the houses of Congress. And in His own churches I would substitute psychology for religion, and deify science. I would lure priests and pastors into misusing boys and girls, and church money. If I were the devil I’d make the symbols of Easter an egg and the symbol of Christmas a bottle.

“If I were the devil I’d take from those, and who have, and give to those wanted until I had killed the incentive of the ambitious. And what do you bet? I could get whole states to promote gambling as thee way to get rich? I would caution against extremes and hard work, in Patriotism, in moral conduct. I would convince the young that marriage is old-fashioned, that swinging is more fun, that what you see on the TV is the way to be. And thus I could undress you in public, and I could lure you into bed with diseases for which there is no cure. In other words, if I were the devil I’d just keep right on doing on what he’s doing.

– Paul Harvey, good day.”

 

A Sure & Certain Promise

Posted by Dan C. on

“If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you.” (John 15:18-19 ESV)

John 15 is probably best known as the chapter about Jesus as the true vine and his followers as the branches, with ‘abiding in the vine’ as its main theme. I Googled ‘abiding in the vine’ and received 995,000 results. I scanned 50 pages (10 entries per page) of results and it appeared that nearly every link pointed to John 15. 

However, near the end of the chapter we have the above verses, spoken to his closest disciples as He was preparing them for his departure and their subsequent mission of spreading the message of the gospel. I can’t remember the last time I heard a sermon built around the certain promise of persecution to the followers of Christ. If they did it would clash with the previous ones about the grand, wonderful purpose God has for each of us,  along with the promises of our best lives now.

Perhaps some think that the promise of persecution just pertained to the disciples about to be commissioned by Jesus to proclaim the gospel, but not followers today. That doesn’t hold much water however, since spreading the message of the gospel has been given to all believers for all time, and the character of the ‘world’ in our text has not changed.

With that in mind, let’s take a closer look at the text, break it into smaller pieces with an eye to application in today’s ‘world’.

“If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you.” (John 15:18-29 ESV)

“If the world hates you…”

At first glance, the presence of the hypothetical ‘if’ let’s us off the hook. An ‘if’ is not a certainty; therefore it’s not a certainty that the world will hate the genuine follower of Christ. Not yet. We’ll get to that in a bit.

What is meant by the ‘world’ (kosmos) in these verses? Literally, it means “orderly arrangement, that is, decoration; by implication the world (in a wide or narrow sense, including its inhabitants, literally or figuratively [morally]): – adorning, world.” (Strong’s G2889). Thayer’s Greek-English Lexicon expands inhabitants to specifically mean “the ungodly multitude; the whole mass of men alienated from God, and therefore hostile to the cause of Christ”.

That definition of world definitely fits the context of our passages. The inanimate world cannot hate, but its inhabitants can, as we are told in verse 18 that the ‘world’ in fact hated Christ. As further proof we have the accounts of certain ‘inhabitants’ of Jesus’ world who sought to capture and kill him. (See John 7 & 11).

“If you were of the world…”

Here again we have the big ‘if’ and a hypothetical that seems to let us off the hook. Here again we have the term ‘world’ meaning the fallen world system set against God and his Son, and the phrase ‘of the world’, or belonging to that world system. You could easily ask “Aren’t we all ‘of the world’ since we are born into it?” The answer would be yes, and as our passage tells us, as long as we are ‘of’ the world the world the world’s inhabitants will love us

Now for the BIG question.

Are we ‘of’ the world?

“…because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you.”

Not only did Jesus tell his disciples (and us) that they were not of the world, he told them why they were not of the world, that he had chosen them out of the world, or from among the world’s mass of fallen humanity. And because they were not of the world, the world hated them and it will hate all those who profess Christ and proclaim the gospel. The ‘world’ has not changed and neither has the message of the gospel. Yes, there were a couple of ‘ifs’ in our text, but there also was and is a certain and sure promise of persecution for all those who have been chosen out of the world for the cause of Christ.

What does it all mean?

First of all we can draw from our short text that the world hates Christ, and therefore it hates Christians, then and now. We also might have cause for concern if the ‘world’ loves us. What does that mean? How do we know if the ‘world’ loves us? For the answer to that, all we need do is consider verse 20 in the same Chapter of John:

“Remember the word that I said to you: ‘A servant is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you.” (John 15:20 ESV)

Just as Jesus was persecuted for just being himself (the Son of God), his followers will be persecuted because of whom they are as believers in Christ and messengers of the gospel. No obnoxiousness required – just be a faithful messenger of the gospel message and a lot of them will run away. They will either run away or avoid you like the plague because to them you are the fragrance of death, reminding them of God and judgment. (See 2 Cor 2:15-16)

A. W. Tozer summed up the situation and our responsibility as believers quite nicely:

“Those first believers turned to Christ with the full understanding that they were espousing an unpopular cause that could cost them everything. Shortly after Pentecost some were jailed, many lost all their earthly goods, a few were slain, hundreds were ‘scattered abroad.’ They could have escaped all this by the simple expedient of denying their faith and turning back to the world. This they steadfastly refused to do.

To make converts, we are tempted to play down the difficulties and play up the peace of mind and worldly success enjoyed by those who accept Christ. We will never be completely honest with our hearers until we tell them the blunt truth that, as members of a race of moral rebels, they are in a serious jam, and one they will not get out of easily. If they refuse to repent and believe on Christ, they will most surely perish. If they do turn to Him, the same enemies that crucified Him will try to crucify them”.

At the same time, there are those who will not run away or avoid you. They are those in whom God has begun a work of grace and to whom you are a fragrance of life. ”

“For we are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing, to one a fragrance from death to death, to the other a fragrance from life to life.” (2 Cor 2:15-16)

What are we to do?

First, don’t invite persecution from the ‘world’, but don’t try to avoid it either. It comes with the territory and it might in fact be a good and true testimony that you are being who you should be as a believer abiding in Christ.

Second and equally important, continue to be faithful in spreading the message of the gospel that includes the topic of sin and the need to ‘repent and believe’.

Finally, remember Paul’s words in the matter:

“For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong.” (2 Cor 12:10)

May God richly bless you as you as you labor for the cause of the Gospel!

Share

Sin, the Gospel, and Evangelistic Responsibility

Posted by Dan C. on

Comment addressed to me on a Christian blog today”

Ya know, Daniel, I do not need to talk to people about their sins.  I only want to talk to people about the Savior that loved me enough to come and assist me in living a successful life on this earth.
Once the people I talk with about my LORD and Savior and what He is to me and done in my life, it is then up to Him, through the power of His Holy Spirit to bring conviction for sin upon those whom He chooses.

Beating people down with all the sin I look for in their lives is really NOT my job.

My response:

Somebody needs to confront the person needing salvation with the sin issue, since it IS after all, the central issue that the message of the gospel addresses. I find nowhere in the Bible that says Jesus died to change your temporal life. If you do, let me know. You are free to tell (or NOT tell) people whatever you want, of course. Just don’t claim to be sharing a gospel message that has the ‘power to save’ when you fail to address the issue of sin. (Paul’s definition, after all).

The blog thread wasn’t really about evangelism, not even close, but we all know about ‘rabbit trails’. A ‘familiar atheist’ had once again complained about the ‘cruel God’ that commanded the slaying of groups of people in the OT (not the thread topic either), and the subject of ‘judgment’ had surfaced. To no one in particular I commented that:

Anyone who wakes up in Hell has only himself/herself to blame and everyone who wakes up in Heaven has only God to thank.

Somehow that prompted my friend to make his remarks about not needing to speak of sin and my subsequent response. Lest you think I was somehow unkind, this same man has told me the same thing over the last couple of years, even when I emphasized that I was only emphasizing the central issue the gospel message addresses being the issue of sin. For some reason even talking about sin is ‘looking’ for all the sin in their live and beating them over the head with it.

I’m not sure what causes this particular phenomena  to appear, but I see it often. I cannot claim innocence either, for there was a time when I felt the same way as my friend. I like to think I outgrew it with careful Bible study and learning that I had been duped by being told how we all have this marvelous ‘free will’ that by nature has the ability to come to Christ. I

I’ll stand by my conviction that ‘sin’ is the main issue that has to be gotten to (by somebody). At the same time I am convinced that we will meet many in heaven who think that their ‘natural free will’ got them there!

Be blessed!

Share