#79 The Power of God in the 21st Century

Here is a section of a transcript from a report on CNN Anderson Cooper the other night in which Cooper is interviewing Fr. Gregory Boyle, founder of Homeboy Industries, and agency which helps gang member trying to create a better life through employment:

COOPER: You want to give gang members a second chance?

BOYLE: Who gave them their first, you know? And that's the truth.

COOPER (voice over): He's talking about people like Richard Moya, who grew up in a Hollenbeck housing project around a relative who abused drugs. At age four, he saw his father, a gang member, shot to death.

BOYLE: Try to wrap your mind around that. You know, you start to say, well, come on. What do you think that does to a kid?

And then this quote which I think says it best:

COOPER (on camera): Do you think you get taken advantage of?

BOYLE: I don't know what that means to be taken advantage of. I give my advantage everyday, so nobody has ever taken it from me.

What a great way to answer that question. I don’t know of a more Christ-like answer than that. To put it in phrasing Jesus might’ve used: You’ve heard it said to never let yourself be taken advantage of, but I say give your advantage away at every opportunity and count all advantage a loss compared to that which you can give others.

To me, this is what it means to evangelize. That is, to not only tell the good news, but to live the good news. The news being that Jesus is Lord and living as if putting that loyalty into practice. To me, this is the only way of preaching in the 21st century. Thanks to the likes of Feurbach, Darwin, and in our day Dawkins and Harris, the preaching tactic of Jonah, i.e. running around town spreading the word along with a dire warning, just won’t reach our generation. In fact, it disgusts them. Even in the last 30 years, there has become such a plurality of values and views that a hellfire and brimstone sermon will not have the same effect that it might’ve had in prior generations.

To that, I say, that’s ok. That is not an impediment for them, but rather a challenge for us. We can and should be all things to all men that we may lead some to the Jesus. That will mean more action and less rhetoric. That will mean abandoning a “you just gotta believe” (without seeing) type of gospel and engaging them in a serious conversation about why reasonably and historically you believe Paul’s claim that Jesus is Lord of the Universe. That will also mean abandoning the comfort zones where we thrive as Christians: the schools, the churches, the academies, the institutions, and diving head first into the zones where our fellow man does not thrive, but rather sinks.

This will mean developing a genuine love for the world in line with God’s love for the world a la the most quoted verse in the Bible. Once we have this, the only way to put it into practice is to get our hands dirty by becoming a part of culture. When I use the phrase becoming part of culture what I mean is to say to those outside our bubble, to those outside our covenant, that your world is our world, your violent neighborhood is our violent neighborhood, your crime is our crime, your drugs are our drugs, your suffering is our suffering, your children are our children, your war is our war, your poverty is our poverty, your hunger is our hunger, your tears are our tears.

This means to get along side them, not behind them prodding them, not in front of them with our backs turned leading the way, not above them merely setting a good example, not facing them explaining what they should be doing. It’s only at that point that we are alongside them in weakness and mourning that we have credibility to say, “Make a covenant with our god because he will wipe every tear from your eyes and mine.” This gospel is the power of God in the 21st century and power is made perfect in weakness.

#78 McKnight on Perseverance

The links below are a series of posts by Scot McKnight on his journey away from Calvinism. FYI, he explicitly states in another post that he does not consider
himself an Arminian, but an Anabaptist, and he makes glowing remarks about John
Piper. I’m posting these because the causes and catalysts of change for him were very similar to mine and it would be more helpful to link to his well articulated yet to-the-point examination of the Hebrew warning passages than to rehash them on my own. It’s really only fair to read each of these in order as they build on each other. It’s really a large point split into bite-sized munchies. So, without further adieu…

Post-Calvinism: Trinity Lectures
Post-Calvinism: Consequences
Post-Calvinism: Exhortation
Post-Calvinism: Sin
Post-Calvinism: Believers or Not?
Post-Calvinism: So What?

Those posts are a fuller treatment of my simpler thought process. McKnight then goes a little further with the topic in some follow-up posts. One is on the Christianity Today article that came out this past summer that you might remember as the one depicting a young person sporting a Jonathan Edwards t-shirt. That is here…

Why I Kissed Calvinism Goodbye

The rest are part of a series reviewing Roger Olson’s book Arminian
Theology This is very good reading, the posts I mean, as I haven’t
read the book. I offer this as a stark contrast to what divides Calvinists and Arminians. Here is what unites them.

Do Calvinists Understand Arminianism
Myth #1: Arminian theology is the
opposite of Calvinist/Reformed theology
Myth #2: A hybrid of Calvinism and
Arminianism is possible
Myth #3: Arminianism is neither
orthodox nor evangelical
Myth #4: The heart of Arminianism is
belief in free will
Myth #5: Arminian theology denies the
sovereignty of God
Myth #6: Arminian theology is a
human-centered theology with an optimistic anthropology
Myth #7: Arminianism is not a theology
of grace
Myth #8: Arminians do not believe in
predestination
Myth #9: Arminians deny justification
by faith alone through grace alone
Myth #10: Arminians adhere to the governmental
theory of atonement