Shane Claiborne does indeed have some good things to say (and while I’ll base the rebuttal mainly on the article Zach posted, I want it to be known that I have read his book Irresistible Revolution, so I think I’m allowed to give an opinion on what he has to say without being accused of “not understanding”, or “taking him out of context”). For instance: it’s true that true Christians are sometimes hypocritical and overly judgmental, and even more true that many who call themselves Christians, and even many of those who regularly attend church, display hate and sin and ridiculousness that the world mocks and that God hates. And more significantly (because everyone can see that first point), he points out that there is more to the Gospel than a get-out-of-hell-free-card/ticket-to-heaven. That is a crucial thing to realized, because such a mindset seems to be the prevalent view in both the world and the church as to what Gospel is all about. However, his alternative/response to this false gospel–that “God is love”–is equally misleading and dangerous. I fear that in his eagerness to counter the idea of a vengeful, angry God, he runs the risk of falling into a social gospel (which is not Gospel at all), and perhaps even worse a universalist view of God which demeans His holiness and justice and de-emphasizes the sinfulness and depravity of man, thus taking away from the power and scandal and beauty of the Cross. Because the fundamental point of the Gospel, and the reason why it is such great news, is that we are broken, wicked, and justly damned creatures with no hope of communion with God (which is the only true good we can have), but that through the bloody death of the Son of God, our sin is atoned for and our relationship with the Holy God is restored, so that we can experience Eternal Life (which is to know Him). This is why any Gospel which is not centered on the cross is a false gospel, or at least an incomplete gospel. Whether it falls on the side of hellfire and brimstone or love and unity doesn’t matter–if the focus is not the blood of Christ, we’re missing the whole point.
So here is my rebuttal, in the form of an article titled “What If Jesus Meant All That Stuff”. Rather, this is my edited version of Shane’s article.
To all my non-believing, sort-of-believing, and used-to-be-believing friends: I feel like I should begin with a confession. I am sorry that so often the biggest obstacle to God has been Christians. Christians who have done so much trying to preach the Gospel without words that we have forgotten to ever tell anyone what the Gospel is all about, and have forgotten the Cross of Christ, and the Life and Salvation that He bought for us with His blood.
Forgive us. Forgive us for leading you on to think that being a Christian is about being a good person and not doing bad stuff.
All over Christian television and radio and bookstores, you find people preaching that message. And if you talk to the average American church-goer, you’d probably find a similar perspective. It comes in many different forms, ranging from fundamentalism to mainstream megachurch-ism to hip Christian/New Age combinations, but the message is basically the same. “If you do this, good things will happen for you in this life and in the life to come. If you don’t do bad things, bad things won’t happen to you in this life or the life to come. Here are some simple, easy ways that you can make your life better.”
And while a large portion of America seems to be buying into it, most people can see right through it. They realize that there is no real power there–that that feel-good religion cannot really bring life, or explain the suffering and pain that happens despite all the promises of happiness as a reward for a good life. And so some reject it with bitterness, and spend their lives mocking and insulting Christianity as a whole. Others simply say “well, we can’t ever really know for sure”, and just give up on ever finding truth. Others just laugh and poke fun at everyone who is ‘so weak that they need religion to make themselves feel good about themselves.’ Personally, it breaks my heart that people confuse this watered down and adapted form of New Age spirituality for the Gospel, and occasionally I just want to stand up in the classrooms of my school and the street corners of my city and cry out: “No, that’s not what it’s all about! God is not Santa-Claus!”. Maybe one day I will. But as for now, I just have to take every opportunity that I can create to preach the true Gospel to the people I interact with on a daily basis.
Because more I have read the Bible and studied the life of Jesus and the teaching of the apostles, the more I have become convinced that Christianity spreads best not through an “unspoken witness” but through bold and unashamed declaration of the beauty and scandal of the Gospel. But over the past few decades our Christianity, at least here in the United States, has become less and less Cross-centered. We have given the atheists less and less to disbelieve. And the gospel many of us have seen on TV and heard on the radio looks less and less like life-giving “good news” and more and more like an banal, lifeless religion that offers only good feelings and inspirational speeches.
Comedian/filmmaker Penn Jillette once said “How much do you have to hate someone to NOT proselytize? How much do you have to hate someone to believe that everlasting life is possible, and not tell them that? I mean, if I believed, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that a truck was coming at you, and you didn’t believe it, and that truck was bearing down on you, there’s a certain point where I tackle you.” But it would seem that most Christians today are too meek to “tackle” people with the hard truths of the Gospel–that man is sinful and thus rightly damned by a just and holy God–and too shy to declare to people that a rescue is possible–that Eternal Life exists, and is possible for us to attain by the blood of Christ. We have been content to listen to the demands of the ignorant, blind man about to be hit by a truck that we leave him alone and keep our ridiculous beliefs to ourselves, and thus have brought on ourselves a crisis of message–we don’t even know any more what Christianity is all about. And it’s ugly stuff, because to some degree the blood of the man that gets run over because we wanted to avoid the social awkwardness is on our hands. And that’s why I begin by saying that I’m sorry.
Now for the good news.
I want to invite you to consider that maybe the televangelists and your “privately Christian” friends are wrong — and that the Gospel really is a matter of life and death. That being a Christian is about being saved from God’s wrath and then given a new heart so that you can love and exult in things that are good for you–namely fellowship with God–instead of ruining your life in pursuit of the fleeting and empty pleasures of sin, and not just about being nice to people and staying away from the taboo fun stuff so that one day when you die you can get a robe and a harp and wings. (If there is anything I have learned from prosperity-gospel preachers and PC-police, it’s that you can seem like you’re really nice to people and preach a very pleasant-sounding message, and yet not be doing what is best for them in the long run… and that true (agape) love a lot of times has to hurt.)
The Bible that I read says that Jesus did not come into the world to bring not peace but division… to separate the light from darkness and reveal the salvation that He brought for all men. The Bible I read says that the Cross is offensive to both religious people and heathens, because to the former it is an affront to self-righteousness and to the latter it seems like sheer folly, but to those who are saved by it, the Cross is the most glorious and powerful and scandalous and beautiful thing. That is the Gospel I know, and I long for others to know. I did not choose to devote my life to Jesus because I wanted an enhanced life, or a pick-me-up, or some kind of vague spiritual “comfort”… but because He is the only hope I have for salvation from myself. For those of you who want to believe the Bible but stumble over the seeming emptiness and just-like-every-other-religion-ness of American Christianity, I hope that you do not reject Christ because you misunderstand who Jesus really is and what He really accomplished for you. At the core of our Gospel is the message that Jesus came “not [for] the healthy… but the sick”–that you must realize your dire need before your can embrace your Savior. So if you choose Jesus, may it not be simply because of a fear of hell or hope for mansions in heaven, and may it not be simply to make yourself feel better or be more successful, but rather because you understand that you need Him.
Don’t get me wrong, I still believe that Jesus does save from Hell and get you into Heaven and give you true joy, but too often all churches have done is promise the world small rewards for “converting”, and have neglected to tell people the real good news–that you can know God!. I am convinced that the Gospel has as much to do with this life as the next, and that the message of that Gospel is not just about going up when we die but that God came down to us. And Jesus never promised a better life to believers: in fact, he promised trials and self-sacrifice and even persecution. So it’s not about a better life now, it’s about Eternal Life now.
One of Jesus’ most scandalous stories is the story of the Good Samaritan. As sentimental as we may have made it, the original story was about a man who gets beat up and left on the side of the road. A priest passes by. A scribe, the quintessential religious guy, also passes by on the other side (perhaps late for a meeting at church). And then comes the Samaritan… you can almost imagine a snicker in the Jewish crowd. Jews did not talk to Samaritans, or even walk through Samaria. But the Samaritan stops and takes care of the guy in the ditch and is lifted up as the hero of the story. I’m sure some of the listeners were ticked. According to the religious elite, Samaritans did not keep the right rules, and they did not have sound doctrine… but Jesus shows that true faith has to work itself out in a way that is Good News to the most bruised and broken person lying in the ditch. But contrary to popular opinion, this parable is not just about being a good person–it is a Messianic prophecy by the Messiah himself about what He did for us. We are the bruised and broken and dying person lying in a ditch. The priest and the scribe represent the world’s approach to how we can be saved–through man’s efforts to get to God by being generally good and not doing bad stuff. And Jesus turns everything upside down. He is despised and/or hated by the religious and secular folks alike (just as Samaritans were hated by both Jews and Gentiles), including the bruised and broken and dying man in the ditch (who was a Jew as well), and yet out of His goodness and love He came and rescued us.
Shane Claiborne has a friend in the UK who talks about “dirty theology” — that we have a God who is always using dirt to bring life and healing and redemption, a God who shows up in the most unlikely and scandalous ways. After all, the whole story begins with God reaching down from heaven, picking up some dirt, and breathing life into it. At one point, Jesus takes some mud, spits in it, and wipes it on a blind man’s eyes to heal him.
In fact, the entire story of Jesus is about a God who did not just stay “out there” but who moves into the neighborhood, a neighborhood where folks said, “Nothing good could come.” It is this Jesus who was accused of being a glutton and drunkard and rabble-rouser for hanging out with all of society’s rejects, and who died on the imperial cross of Rome reserved for bandits and failed messiahs. The religious folks and the heathens alike didn’t like Jesus’ claims that He was the only Way to the Father, both because they thought that they could get to God just fine on their own. But the first step to salvation is to give up and simply pray, as Martin Luther learned to: “Save me: I am Yours”.
It is this Jesus who was born in a stank manger in the middle of a genocide. That is the God that we are just as likely to find in the streets as in the sanctuary, who can redeem revolutionaries and tax collectors, the oppressed and the oppressors… a God who is saving some of us from the ghettos of poverty, and some of us from the ghettos of wealth.
In closing, to those who have closed the door on religion — I was recently asked by a non-Christian friend how I could have the right to tell someone who doesn’t believe in the Bible and lives in downright rebellion that they weren’t a Christian, if they claimed to be. And I responded with something like this: “It would seem like the ‘loving’ and ‘nice’ thing to do to let people believe what they like, and not discount their religious beliefs. But it would in reality be something much more like hate, because to leave them alone is to let them just go to hell because I don’t love them enough to tell them the hard truths.” True love picks up the dying man out the ditch even as he curses me for causing him discomfort. True love applies the salve and oil to clean his wounds even as he screams for me to stop. True love takes the man to a place where he can be cared for even as he spits in my face. And the True Lover did that for me. And He did it for You. I pray that if you reject Christ you will stop and consider the true meaning of the Gospel. Accept the bad news that you are in dire straits, and then run to the One who provided the escape, and let Him breath Eternal Life into your soul.
Your brother,
Trey
March 2nd, 2010 at 9:34 pm
[...] “What If Jesus Meant All That Stuff”–A Rebuttal Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)It’s finally overMere Reflections [...]
March 3rd, 2010 at 12:18 am
I thought for a moment that I should respond to this in detail, but decided that we basically agree, and we’d probably be arguing past each other.
It did pain me a bit to see you write that “God is love” is a dangerous and misleading statement. I think I understand what you mean (contra hippie Jesus), but that one statement captures the entire reason I came back to Christ. I know where the extremities lie, but I also cannot help how beautiful – how true – those three words are to my ears.
even worse a universalist view of God which demeans His holiness and justice and de-emphasizes the sinfulness and depravity of man, thus taking away from the power and scandal and beauty of the Cross.
I want to argue against this, but I don’t want to sound like a universalist. Any universalists out there want to take the first swing?
March 3rd, 2010 at 9:07 am
I understand the universalist sentiment, and I don’t have any issue with the position of “I wish universalism could be true” (in the sense of wishing that everyone would eventually be saved).
What I have an issue with is the extreme unitarian/universalist view that either God is too good to damn people or man is not bad enough to deserve damnation. To hold that as a doctrine is a gross error, in my opinion.
But I would be glad to hear your take on it. I promise, I won’t judge you for sounding like a universalist. I mean, even my main man CS Lewis and his main man George MacDonald were almost univeralists.
March 3rd, 2010 at 10:41 am
Of course, I will start off like Andrew did saying that I agree with everything you said.
I thought that Shane’s post was very nice. Maybe I’m just a little optimistic, but I don’t think that it’s fair to say that Claiborne doesn’t understand or value the Cross. Not trying to say that you said that explicitly, but you did imply it. But that’s just the nice, defensive part of me talking
.
I also agree with Andrew – I don’t quite understand what’s so bad about saying “God is love”. I am more and more convinced that that’s what people need to know. “Love is all that man might need to know”, as my good friends in Caedmon’s Call have said. I have learned so much more about the love of God this year… and I’m telling you, it has changed my life. I think that pretty much all the problems and indifference in Christianity today could be cured if we got revelation of His love. When you understand more of the depths of His love and really feel Him lavishing it on you, when you realize how much He loves you in spite of your sin and brokenness, it will change you forever. If you really know His love and hunger for him, you simply won’t think anything else is important. You’ll want to seek Him every day and get to know Him, because He loves you and wants to have a relationship with you. It’s satisfying, yet at the same time it always leaves you hungry and wanting more. But this is why we were put on the earth. As Ps. 93 says, His love is better than life.
Disclaimer: by saying this I’m not saying that you don’t agree with that, and whenever I say “you” in that paragraph I mean the universal “you”. I guess this is just my own little side-comment/addendum.
Other than that, I say, “well-written”.
March 3rd, 2010 at 12:59 pm
Amen, Molly!
March 3rd, 2010 at 2:10 pm
Well, I guess I’ll bite.
I don’t think universalism necessarily demeans God’s holiness or justice. I don’t think it would diminish His holiness any more than communing with fishermen diminished Christ’s holiness.
As for justice, when we talk about justice, we usually mean revenge or reciprocity, and it is fundamentally opposed to grace. The best definitions we have for justice (there is no “good” definition for justice, just less-bad ones) always come down along the same lines as “fairness” or “appropriate response to an action,” when grace is opposite that. In God I don’t see that contradiction existing, or at least I don’t see how it could. To put it better, instead of saying God is sometimes merciful and sometimes just, I would say God is always merciful and He is always just, or that He is just because He is merciful (or vice versa).
If God chose to save the entire world, wouldn’t that make the scandal of the cross that much greater? If God decided not to balance the scales, but to obliterate them, would He not be that much more powerful?
I would never teach universalism, because the evidence for it is pretty scant, but I would never teach against it on the grounds that it somehow demeans God.
March 3rd, 2010 at 2:50 pm
@Molly:
I guess I didn’t make myself clear enough. I don’t disagree with much of what Claiborne said. There were a few things I though were dead wrong, but I didn’t even really address those things here.
I said this to Zach in conversation, but here’s what I feel like is happening with Claiborne. He sees the far extreme of the spectrum, where you have lifeless, legalistic, hateful religion, and he rightly despises that. However, in his attempt to correct the error, he has swung the pendulum to the opposite extreme, which is equally dangerous. Both a lack of real love and a lack of sound doctrine will kill true faith.
What I tried to do with the article is twofold: first, I wanted to bring the pendulum back to rest in the center by bringing the focus to where it should always be–Christ, and specifically the Cross. Second, I wanted to hijack his article to respond to the opposite end the the spectrum from his original target.
Please hear me: I don’t have a problem with him saying “God is love”. This is totally true (it’s from the Bible), and I agree that many people need to hear it. But here’s the issue I have with Claiborne, and this is based on his book too, not just this article. He never says anything about the need for conversion from darkness to light. A lost person who reads this article or Irresistible Revolution would likely come away thinking that what the Gospel is all about is helping people. AND IT’S SO MUCH GREATER THAN THAT!! THE GOSPEL IS ABOUT SINFUL, UNDESERVING REBELS WHO WERE REDEEMED BY A PERFECT HOLY GOD COMING DOWN AND DYING TO SAVE US FROM OUR SIN!! Yes, God is Love, and yes, His love is all we need–BUT WE CAN’T HAVE THAT LOVE APART FROM CONVERSION!! Before conversion, when we are still lost in our sin, we are damned to separation from God and His love. Only the blood of Christ is enough to restore us to God so that He can lavish His love on us. But Claiborne never mentions this. He is too busy bashing the church (which is a whole ‘nother rant) and the false gospel of cold religion, and then too caught up with preaching “love” to ever say anything about the only thing worth telling people about: That God loved the world in THIS way–the cross.
Anyone who talks about “God is Love” has no right to do so outside the context of the blood of Christ shed for us. And Shane Claiborne, who always seems to be talking about “love”, never seems to talk about the Cross. So THAT is my beef.
March 3rd, 2010 at 2:54 pm
@Andrew: I see what you’re saying, and I think I agree. I guess my real beef is not with universalism itself, but rather with the other teachings that often come with it, like believing that God cannot be good and damn people, or that for God to save anyone He must save everyone, or other heresies of the like. I apologize for using the wrong classification.
March 3rd, 2010 at 10:19 pm
I know you prefaced this whole thing by saying you’ve read Claiborne’s book, so you aren’t taking him out of context, but I think that you are.
I understand your beef with him. It makes sense. He obviously does not make it his top priority to tell everyone about the awesome testimony of Jesus’ death on the cross, and I agree that he doesn’t reference it very much.
The problem is, I don’t think I’ve really read any of his stuff where his main purpose is to convert people. I think his main purpose is to try to get Christians to realize that the Church is turning into something that it wasn’t meant to be in many cases. I think he is trying to tell people, who have heard all their lives what will happen if you don’t go to church or become a christian, that God loves them more than they can even imagine, and that the church is wrong in saying (or just implying) that you have to be perfect before you become a Christian or that God isn’t completely ready to meet you where you are and to start from there.
Even though I don’t think that his main purpose is to convert people, I do think he wants to see people come to Christ. I think you’re approaching Claiborne as an evangelist specifically, and maybe he is, but I think even if that is his main purpose, he isn’t trying to reach people who are full of themselves and need to be slapped in the face by the gospel. He is trying to reach people who have been slapped in the face and knocked to the ground by the world. People who need to know that they are loved by the perfect God of the universe and that He doesn’t expect them to be perfect, He just expects them to be content in His all-encompassing love.
I don’t think his lack of emphasis on the cross is necessarily a “lack of sound doctrine.” Also, why can’t his burden for what he sees as the mislead Church be out of love for it? Why do you assume that it is out of hate? (or at least that seems to be what you are implying, Trey.)
I realize that I have slightly said exactly what you said you didn’t want to hear, but why can’t we preach the Gospel from different angles? I think different parts of the Gospel are the most unbelievable and likely to bring about conversion for different people.
Also, I think this is kind of a redundant comment, so sorry about that… :\
March 3rd, 2010 at 11:10 pm
“Christians who have done so much trying to preach the Gospel without words that we have forgotten to ever tell anyone what the Gospel is all about, and have forgotten the Cross of Christ, and the Life and Salvation that He bought for us with His blood.”
I see this EVERYWHERE and it breaks my heart. I think so often Christians quote “let your light shine before men so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven” (Matthew 5:16), focusing on living a good life, expecting their works to point others to Christ. What they don’t understand, however, is that unless we come right out and say that Jesus is the reason for our actions, that His sacrifice and redeeming love has transformed our lives (virtually, we need to “connect the dots” for people), then people are just going to see our deeds and attribute it to our goodness. Actions may speak LOUDER than words, but they allow a lot of room for interpretation, and in a matter of eternal life and eternal damnation, we cannot afford to let others misinterpret the gospel.
March 4th, 2010 at 2:48 pm
Trey: I agree with everything you are saying; I think that we are just reacting to two different ideas.
Personally, I’m coming from this in a Christian context. Let me explain what I mean: if Christians really understood His love (that He pours out on us through the blood of Jesus in spite of our sin – I figured that that would be implied in me saying that, but apparently I need to elaborate on what I mean by “God loves you” every time that I say it), then we’d act differently. One of the ways His love is best illuminated is when we see and feel the darkness of our sin and depravity.
I think that THAT is where a lot of us don’t get it. We don’t think that we are bad people, and so we therefore don’t understand His love.
His love is so much more powerful; it seems like it’s easy and natural to love really good, moral people who go to church. But it doesn’t seem easy or natural to love someone who does all those things but then commits sin after sin in their hearts, covets, hates, holds themselves up to be better than everyone else, and judges every person they see.
That’s what happened to me, at least.
When I realized His love in the context of my depravity, it changed me forever.
But a lot of us in the Christian culture HAVEN’T been changed my His love. We know a lot ABOUT Him, and know the right things to say, but we aren’t spending time with Jesus and doing simple things like sharing the Gospel and sitting with people who are sitting by themselves in the cafeteria. (And this is not a hit on any of you guys – I say this generically, and more out of conviction in my own heart.)
That’s where I’M coming from. People who have received deeper revelation of His love won’t go around just telling people God loves them and that they go to church, and you should go to church too (which is what I’m assuming you are referring to in a sense). When we understand the love of God, we make disciples. We share the Gospel. We point people to the Word. We help people pursue holiness with us. We CHANGE and see people changed. ALL for the purpose of, firstly, Knowing Him, and secondly to Make Him Known.
March 4th, 2010 at 11:46 pm
Zach:
I was right with you until you wrote:
I don’t think his lack of emphasis on the cross is necessarily a “lack of sound doctrine.”
Although i haven’t read Clairborne (and so maybe im taking your quote completely out of context) I have to agree that He can’t preach love unless he highlights what Jesus did on the cross for us. “but God shows His love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”(Romans 5:8) Many other religions talk about a loving God, but the fact that Jesus came to die in our stead sets Christianity apart. Without addressing the redeeming and sacrificial love that Jesus displayed on the cross, then how can he (Clairborne) expect to impact others with love? You talked about how Christians need to be aware of how God loves people “where they are” –what better example than how Jesus died for us WHILE we were sinners? I don’t think any other biblical reference or parable better underlines love than the truth that Jesus died on the cross so that the sinful, the condemned, the broken could experience God’s love. I think it is very dangerous to proclaim any doctrine without heavily emphasizing Jesus’ death (and resurrection, of course!)
March 5th, 2010 at 3:57 pm
Hey Ryan:
I completely agree with you, the greatest love God has given us has come through the cross.
It was wrong of me to say that Claiborne doesn’t emphasize the cross. He may not have broken down the gospel for everyone in his article that I posted, but his entire point in apologizing for the Church is that Christians so often don’t look like Christ, i.e. showing God’s love to other people. He is trying to dispel the myth that God is about works; that you can earn God’s love like we Christians make it seem so often. He says, “The Bible that I read says that God did not send Jesus to condemn the world but to save it… it was because ‘God so loved the world.’” Though he does not mention here the way (death on the cross) that Jesus saved the world, this is the exception, in my experience.
On the website for The Simple Way, a halfway house type community that Claiborne is a part of says in their “foundations” section, “We believe that people are created in the image of God. We believe people are created to love and to be loved. We also believe that humanity is fallen, and Jesus died and rose in order to save humanity. Humans are incapable of holiness and perfect love without the sacrifice of Jesus.” So there’s the cross. (I highly recommend going and reading some of the stuff on The Simple Way’s website (www.thesimpleway.org), it’s really interesting.
Isn’t what we mean by “God’s love” the fact that He was willing to die for our sacrifices, though?
March 5th, 2010 at 4:01 pm
Also, to Trey:
I came across this while rereading some of The Irresistible Revolution; “So many of the circles we are in are packed with young visionaries who could use some good eldership. So to the young ‘uns: we have too remind ourselves to stay anchored in the church, for we need roots and wisdom.”
March 5th, 2010 at 5:30 pm
@Molly: I never had any disagreement with you, or you with me. But I thought you were defending Claiborne’s article, which you weren’t.
@Ryan: that’s exactly what I was trying to say. Thanks for saying it better and nicer.
@Zach: I apologize for my rant. I had tried to be calm in my actual post, and then let my passion get the best of me in my following comment and made some overly harsh accusations, based on my very faulty memory. I’m very happy to hear those things from Claiborne, that he hasn’t defenstrated the church, or conversion. But my impression from his book and this article were that those things were the case. The general thing I took away from his book was this: this guy has some good points about the fact that we are often so caught up in our middle-class American bubble that we overlook the poor and hurting among us and overseas; BUT, he’s got some major doctrinal issues. What I was trying to do with my edited article was show how some of those doctrinal issues could be corrected. On second consideration, I may have done a little too much editing, though.
I’d like to sit down and talk about this in more detail, but I don’t want to argue about it over a comment thread, because then other people might think we’re mad at each other, and then misunderstand the differences we have, and then things will just get muddy fast.
But I will say this, in closing (everyone else can feel free to keep going, but this is the last thing I’m going to say): There are a lot of areas where in order to keep balance someone has to go to the extreme. That is often appropriate. But in matters of doctrine, that is not the case at all. When the waves of new doctrine sweep a huge group of people (mainstream conservative evangelicals?) to a far end of the doctrinal spectrum and into error, the way to correct it is not to swing to the complete opposite side. This will only result in leading a (probably younger) and fresh group of people astray, into the opposite error. No, the way to correct bad doctrine is simply to unashamedly and incessantly preach sound (also translated “healthy”) doctrine (see 1 and 2 Timothy). When people get judgmental and legalistic and cold in their religion, what they need to hear is the cross preached. When people hear prosperity gospel or social gospel and get too feel good and earth-bound in their religion, what they need to hear is the cross preached. Because at the center of a healthy Christian walk is sound doctrine, and at the center of healthy doctrine is the Cross. Forever and always, from the Gospels to the epistles to the early church to the Reformation to now: the Cross is central.
March 5th, 2010 at 5:42 pm
There’s something we can all agree on.
(ps: I certainly hope no one thinks that we are mad at each other in comments in this blog, and I hope that no one gets mad at each other over comments/posts in this blog.)
July 13th, 2010 at 5:02 pm
As much of this thread seems to go in the direction of universalism (or some such thing), I would recommend the book by Hans Urs von Balthasar, entitled “Dare We Hope That All Men Be Saved?” Here’s the Amazon link: http://www.amazon.com/Dare-Hope-Saved-Short-Discourse/dp/0898702070
It’s a difficult book, but one worth reading — more than once.