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An Evangelical Manifesto: Why I Signed
By Mark D. Roberts | Thursday, May 8, 2008
Part 1 of series: An Evangelical Manifesto: Why I Signed
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I am one of the “charter signatories” of An Evangelical Manifesto: The Washington Declaration of Evangelical Identity and Public Commitment. In this post I want to explain, briefly, why I signed.
Before I do, however, I want to make a couple of prefatory comments. First, before you evaluate this Manifesto, be sure to read it (PDF version, 20 pages ), or at least the Executive Summary (6 pages) of the Manifesto that was prepared by the authors. Whatever you do, don’t believe the descriptions and summaries provided by the mainstream media, who rarely “get” religious distinctions. For example, the MSNBC website posted a Reuters story with the headline: “Evangelical leaders urge step back from politics.” This headline utterly misrepresents the contents of the Manifesto, so much so that I wonder if the person who wrote the headline actually read the Manifesto itself.
Second, I want to say that it’s usually an odd thing to sign a statement like this. For me, the oddness is centered in the extent to which a statement written by others doesn’t say things quite the way I would. Or, in some cases, a statement I’m willing to sign for most of what it affirms might say things that I prefer not to say at all.
When it comes to An Evangelical Manifesto, I’m not currently aware of anything that I wish I could excise from the document. But I must admit to being less than fond of the word manifesto. It’s not a bad word, necessarily, (Marxist associations aside). It’s just not a word I would tend to use. For me, it’s just a little too bumptious.
I do rather like the use of the word An in An Evangelical Manifesto, however. An implies that this is not meant to be The Evangelical Manifesto, as if this is the only true representative statement for all evangelicals. In fact, the writers of this statement explicitly state that they “do not speak for all Evangelicals” (Executive Summary or ES, p. 6). The writers explains:
Evangelicals have no supreme leader or official spokesperson, so no one speaks for all Evangelicals, least of all those who claim to. We speak for ourselves, but as a representative group of Evangelicals in America. (EM, p. 2)
Well, I guess I have to give up my goal of becoming the supreme leader of Evangelicalism! Seriously, though, I appreciate this perspective. In fact, if the Manifesto had claimed to speak for all Evangelicals or to be the only Evangelical option, then I wouldn’t have signed it, even it represents where I stand on many issues. I’m quite sure there will be many Evangelicals to who exception to this Manifesto, or at least to certain parts of it. In fact, the statement explicitly rejects views held by some Evangelicals.
By the way, if you’re not familiar with the word “Evangelical,” you can find a helpful explanation in the Manifesto (pp. 4-11). A shorter definition comes in the Summary (p. 2). Here’s my even shorter version: Evangelicals are Christians who affirm the full divinity and humanity of Jesus as the only Savior; understand salvation as centered in the cross and received through faith alone; live in the power of the Spirit and guided by the fully trustworthy Bible; look for the future return of Christ; and believe it’s right to share these commitments with others so they might experience salvation. You’ll find Evangelicals who will want to quibble about this definition (which, for example, lacks mention of the resurrection or biblical inerrancy), but it surely gets close to the center of the target.
Okay, then, so why did I sign this statement? I signed because An Evangelical Manifesto expresses many of my concerns and convictions about the interplay of Christian faith and politics. (I have written about this elsewhere, including: Evangelical Christians and Social Activism; The Force of Freedom: The Political Theology of George W. Bush; The Church and Politics in America; The Presidential Election: A Christian Response.)
For example, according to the Manifesto Summary:
To be Evangelical is to be faithful to the freedom, justice, peace, and well-being that are at the heart of the good news of Jesus. Fundamentalism was world-denying and politically disengaged at its outset, but Evangelicals have made a distinguished contribution to politics . . . (ES, p. 3).
Evangelicals are often lumped in with Fundamentalists in the secular media. But these two movements, though sharing some things in common, differ widely on the extent to which Christians should be engaged with the world, politically, intellectually, and culturally. Fundamentalists tend to be separated from the world, while Evangelicals believe we are called to be “in but not of the world.”
To cite another example, the Manifesto authors “repudiate two equal and opposite errors into which many Christians have fallen.” (ES, p. 4, their emphasis). One is the error of privatizing faith, whereby it is irrelevant to social and political realities. The other error is politicizing faith, making faith essentially a means of supporting some political agenda, either right or left. So what does a non-privatized (public) and non-politicized faith look like?
Called to an allegiance higher than party, ideology, and nationality, we Evangelicals see it our duty to engage with politics, but our equal duty never to be completely equated with any party, partisan ideology, economic system, or nationality. (EM, p. 15).
This expresses well my own convictions. Throughout my adult life, I have been amazed by the extent to which some Christians believe that genuine faith aligns 100% with their political party. This has been true of folks on both right and left. Those who believe that a real Christian can only be a Democrat, or a Republican, or a Green, or whatever else, implicitly condemn the genuine faith of their political opponents, or at least their discernment. I know mature, biblically-founded Christians who are Republicans. And I know mature, biblically-founded Christians who are Democrats. And I know mature, biblically-founded Christians who aren’t allied with either major party. In fact, I had bunches of all of these in the church I pastored for sixteen years.
Once again, the Manifesto puts nicely what I believe to be true of our basic political identity as Christians:
Citizens of the City of God, we are resident aliens in the Earthly City. Called by Jesus to be “in”the world but not “of”the world, we are fully engaged in public affairs, but never completely equated with any party, partisan ideology, economic system, class, tribe, or national identity. (EM, p. 14)
As the New Testament puts it, we are first and foremost citizens of heaven (e.g. Phil 3:20). This primary citizenship does not necessarily diminish our loyalty to country or party. But it does give us a perspective from which to evaluate and critique the views and actions of both country and party. Our first loyalty is to God and his kingdom.
I have more to say about why I signed An Evangelical Manifesto. I’ll save it for tomorrow.
Topics: Evangelical Manifesto | 8 Comments »
Accountability: An Antidote to Pulpit Pride
By Mark D. Roberts | Wednesday, May 7, 2008
Part 3 of series: Pride and the Power of the Pulpit
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In my last post in this series I suggested that pride can lead preachers to be irresponsible in their communication. We who preach can easily get caught up in the emotional rush of having people look up to us (literally), hanging on our every word (not literally). This can lead us to say things in preaching that, truly, we ought not to say. Such prideful irresponsibility has been recently illustrated by the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. But preachers left, right, and in-between can get snared in the web of pulpit pride.
What will help us to remain free of this snare? In general, sinful pride disappears when we look truly at who we are and who God is. When we see ourselves as sinners saved by grace, when we regard our abilities and opportunities as gifts from God, when we own our personal limitations, and when we glimpse the wonder and majesty of God, it’s hard to be prideful. Humility before the Lord leads to humility before people, including ourselves. Any preacher too puffed up by pride needs, in my opinion, to come humbly before God.
But there’s more that can help a preacher whose pride leads to irresponsible sermonizing. I’m thinking of accountability. We preachers need to be held accountable for what we say (and don’t say). Curiously enough, on this basic point I agree with Jeremiah Wright. In his Q&A at the National Press Club, Rev. Wright actually used the word “accountable” with respect to pastors and their communication. Here’s what he said:
Politicians say what they say and do what they do based on electability, based on sound bites, based on polls — Huffington, whoever’s doing the polls. Preachers say what they say because they are pastors. They have a different person to whom they’re accountable. As I said, whether he [Obama] gets elected or not, I’m still going to have to be answerable to God, November 5th and January 21st. That’s what I mean. I do what pastors do. He does what politicians do. I am not running for office.
Rev. Wright is certainly correct in saying that preachers are “accountable” or “answerable” to God. (For what it’s worth, I’d prefer to vote for politicians who believed that they too were answerable to God for what they said and did in their political lives.)
Ultimately, we preachers won’t know how we measure up until we stand before the Lord. But, it the meanwhile, God has given the Christian community the responsibility for discerning the truthfulness and goodness of what Christians, including preachers, say. In one of Paul’s letters in the New Testament we read:
Do not stifle the Holy Spirit. Do not scoff at prophecies, but test everything that is said. Hold on to what is good. Stay away from every kind of evil. (1 Thes 5:19-22, NLT, 2nd ed)
Though this passage doesn’t mention preaching per se, it does speak of prophesying, which is fairly close to preaching. Both have to do with speaking God’s word to people. When one claims to speak on behalf of God, the congregation of gathered Christians is not expected merely to listen submissively. On the contrary, they are to “test everything that is said” (v. 21). If it’s good, they should hang onto it. If it’s evil, they should avoid it.
Even though our church context today is quite different from the small, house-church setting in early Christianity, the principle of accountability remains applicable. That which is spoken in church, even by prophets and preachers, should be tested by the community. If preachers know that their words will be weighed carefully by those to whom they preach, then they’ll tend to be more careful. Moreover, they may be kept from the pride that often accompanies a sense of invulnerable authority.
So how might this work in practice? Much will depend on the size of the church. A house church would have much more options than a megachurch. Can you imagine what it might be like if the American Idol judges weighed in after your pastor’s next sermon?
Randy: Look, dude, check it out. Ya know, that really worked for me, man. That sermon was outstanding. It was da bomb!
Paula: I’m so proud of you because you’re really being yourself with us. Plus, you look great today. I just love you and can’t say anything bad about you because I never say anything bad about anybody, except Simon.
Simon: I’ve got to be honest with you, pastor. I came to hear the word of God today. But what I got was more like the baby talk of demons. You just didn’t do your homework this week. Frankly, your sermon was a nightmare! If I were you, I’d pack my bags.
This sounds like fun, but I wouldn’t suggest it. Rather, I think the evaluation of a preacher’s truthfulness needs to be done by mature Christians who, by virtue of their theological depth and personal holiness, could be trusted to provide wise, godly counsel to a preacher. In many churches, this sort of input could come from elders. In other cases, preachers might be well-served by input from folks outside of their own congregation. I’ve often thought that preachers should be in accountability groups with other preachers, groups in which they evaluate one another’s preaching. But I must confess that I’ve never taken the step of forming such a group, though I’ve been in several pastoral accountability groups.
What I’m suggesting about holding preachers accountable does in fact happen in many churches. There were times during my ministry at Irvine Presbyterian Church when one of my elders would talk to me about something I had preached. In a respectful way, the elder wanted to be sure what I had said was consistent with Scripture. On a couple of occasions I realized that I hadn’t been sufficiently clear in my preaching, and I took a few moments the next week to clarify what I had said. If I began to preach something that was not supported in Scripture, or if my applications drifted too far into personal opinion, I’m quite sure my elders would have brought such things to my attention and expected me to correct them.
Please understand that I’m not suggesting that preachers get some sort of report card every week. Moreover, there are sure times when we preachers need to be forgiven for minor pecadillos. But if we preach things that are much in doubt and hardly based on Scripture, and especially if there’s a pattern of such communications, then we need to be held accountable.
I have no idea if anything like this ever happened in Trinity United Church of Christ, where Jeremiah Wright was Senior Pastor for 36 years. It’s hard for me to believe that all of his congregation, especially church leader, bought into some of the wilder things Rev. Wright preached. Perhaps some folks tried to hold him accountable. If so, it appears not to have had much of an impact.
What I’ve been saying in this post might raise questions or even trigger frustrations for some readers. I’ve said that leaders in a church ought to hold their preachers accountable to preach God’s truth accurately. But what if you’re not one of the key leaders in a church? What if your pastor preaches things that seem to you not to be true? What should you do? I’ll try to answer these questions in my next post in this series.
Topics: Pride and the Power of the Pulpit | 3 Comments »
Recommending Iron Man
By Mark D. Roberts | Tuesday, May 6, 2008
I’ll get back to my series on preaching tomorrow. But I wanted to recommend a movie today. Yesterday, my son and I, along with a couple of friends, went to see the film Iron Man. I’m happy to report that this is a delightful film. It has quite a few intense moments, along with considerable violence, so I wouldn’t recommend it to pre-teens. (For more details on what might be objectionable in Iron Man, check this Screenit! summary.)
What I liked about Iron Man was:
• a good story (in a comic book genre);
• engaging performances;
• delightful and believable special effects;
• some great shots of the Sierra Nevada mountains in California;
• not taking itself too seriously.
If you see this movie, be sure to stay to the very end of the credits. There’s a little surprise waiting for you.
For a more substantive review, see this one by Ben Witherington.
Just outside of the theater was a fantastic sculpture of the Incredible Hulk, meant, no doubt, to whet our appetite for the upcoming movie. The Incredible Hulk will be in theaters on June 13. It looks like a wild ride.
My son just couldn’t resist posing with the Hulk. Well, okay, okay, I urged him to do it. Definitely a resemblance.
Topics: Recommendations, Movies | 5 Comments »
The Pride of the Pulpit
By Mark D. Roberts | Monday, May 5, 2008
In my first post in this series, I talked about the power of the pulpit. The preacher who stands in the pulpit (or, as is increasingly common today, on the stage) has been given an extraordinary amount of power. There are few other places in contemporary where people will sit attentively and listen to someone speak without expecting to ask questions or raise objections. (Perhaps some classrooms and lecture halls have a similar dynamic. So do courtrooms.)
Since I am an occasional preacher, you may find it odd for me to talk about the power of the pulpit. Am I boasting? Am I puffed up with my own authority? I hope not. I’m talking this way not because I’m too big for my pastoral britches, but because I think both preachers and congregations would be better off by acknowledging the power of the pulpit. Only then will we be able to evaluate truly whether this power is being well-used or not.
Preachers, it seems to me, would do well to heed the advice that Uncle Ben gave to Peter Parker in the first Spider-Man film. Without realizing the full implications of what he was saying, since he didn’t know that his nephew had super powers, Uncle Ben said to Peter, “With great power comes great responsibility.” Here’s a line worth remembering for every preacher: “With great power comes great responsibility.” (Ironically, only thirteen seconds later, Uncle Ben added, “I don’t mean to lecture and I don’t mean to preach.”) (Photo: Cliff Robertson as Uncle Ben and Tobey Maguire as Peter Park in Spider-Man [2002])
But there are also risks in having power, and for preachers, one of these is pride. Getting up into a pulpit, looking down on a congregation, having people listen attentively without interrupting or questioning, being told “Nice sermon” again and again . . . all of this can go to the head of the preacher, greatly enlarging it. One can begin to think: Wow! I guess I really am something special. My ideas are pretty darn good. I’m pretty hot. Of course most preachers wouldn’t actually articulate such things since they are telltale signs of sinful pride. But thoughts like these can haunt a preacher’s consciousness, and they can lead to irresponsible preaching.
What do I mean by irresponsible? Several things, actually. A preacher is, first and foremost, responsible to pass on the truth of God faithfully and accurately. This requires lots of careful study of Scripture. But preachers who are overly impressed with themselves will tend to cut corners in their preparation.
Preachers are also responsible to speak authoritatively about that which is revealed in Scripture, but more hesitantly about applications and implications that are not clearly implied in Scripture. For example, as a preacher I could speak strongly in calling my congregation to love their neighbor, since this command is repeated several times throughout the Bible. Yet if I were to apply this command to a specific situation, say, loving the neighbor who abuses alcohol, I would need to be more tentative in my instructions. Sometimes love means confronting someone directly. Sometimes love requires patience in waiting for an opportune moment. Etc. etc. If I were applying the biblical call to love to the political arena, I would need to be similarly circumspect. Does love demand a tax-driven, government-run welfare state to care for the poor? Perhaps. Or does love point in the direction of economic development in a free enterprise model? Perhaps.
It’s at this point that preachers often let their pride overcome their good judgment. They get so caught up in the power they have as preachers that they overstep the rightful bounds of their authority. In my opinion, this is surely true of Rev. Jeremiah Wright, who, as a preacher, should not have been preaching that the U.S. Government invented HIV “as a means of genocide against people of color.” Even if he actually believes this theory, he should not have preached it as gospel truth.
But it’s not just Rev. Wright who let his pride run away with him. I’ve heard conservative Christian preachers on television speak with extraordinary boldness and certainty about how the United States should relate to the nation of Israel. I understand that they think they can derive this from Scripture, but they should at least realize they are drawing distant implications from the biblical text.
Pride can lead preachers to speak far beyond, not only biblical teaching, but also their own expertise. I’ve heard preachers, for example, bash psychology as unchristian. What they have said about psychology, however, reveals a very scanty and superficial understanding of the subject. Their concerns about certain kinds or practices of psychology may be on target. But their generalizations and blanket condemnations are, in my view, irresponsible. They really don’t know what they’re talking about, but they’re too puffed up to realize it.
The pride of the pulpit relates, I think, to the lack of accountability for preachers. For the most part, preachers can get away with saying almost anything in their churches. This, I think is a problem. I’ll have more to say about it in my next post in this series.
Topics: Pride and the Power of the Pulpit | 2 Comments »
Sunday Inspiration from The High Calling
By Mark D. Roberts | Sunday, May 4, 2008
God Intended It All for Good
“You intended to harm me, but God intended it all for good.
He brought me to this position so I could save the lives of many people.”
Genesis 50:20
Joseph’s brothers, fearing that he would mistreat them after their father’s death, begged Joseph to forgive them, perhaps even conjuring up a request from their deceased father. Yet such a contrivance was not necessary, because Joseph had no plans to punish his brothers for what they had done to him.
Not only had he experienced relational reconciliation with his brothers, but also Joseph had come to see their behavior and, indeed, his whole life, from a new perspective. The action of his brothers in selling him into slavery was wrong, and something they meant for ill. But behind their injustice was a larger justice. God, in his inscrutable sovereignty, had used the evil of Joseph’s brothers for the sake of good.
The question of how God works out his sovereign will through human beings is one of the trickiest of all. On the one hand, we are sufficiently free so that we are rightly held accountable for our sins. On the other hand, we can do nothing that God hasn’t determined to be part of his redemptive work in this world. The fact that God can intend our evil for good doesn’t excuse us. Nor does it give us a license to do wrong. But God’s ability to work all things together for good, even wrong things, gives us confidence and reassurance even when we suffer ill.
When bad things happen to us, we have every right to condemn that which is sinful and to cry out to God for help. But, at the same time, we are encouraged by the story of Joseph to trust that God will use our tragedies for ultimate good.
QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION: Have you ever experienced something like what Joseph describes, when evil led to a good result in your life? When bad things happen to you, what do you do? How do you think and feel about God in the midst of life’s struggles?
PRAYER: Sovereign Lord, Joseph proclaims a mystery that I believe, even though I can’t really understand it. Your ability to work in and through human beings is truly a wonder. Your ways are amazing, and they certainly aren’t my ways!
Thank you, dear Lord, for redeeming the bad things of my life, those actions of which I was a victim, and those actions of which I was the perpetrator. Your healing, redemptive power is more wonderful than I can find words to describe.
All praise be to you, Sovereign Lord, for the grandeur of your plan for restoring the whole world. All praise be to you, Sovereign Lord, for choosing to use us in your work, even when we do wrong. All praise be to you, Sovereign Lord, for your mercy, your wisdom, your power. Amen.
Daily Reflections from The High Calling.org
This devotional comes from The High Calling of Our Daily Work (www.thehighcalling.org). You can read my Daily Reflections there, or sign up to have them sent to your email inbox each day. This website contains lots of encouragement for people who are trying to live out their faith in the workplace.
Topics: Sunday Inspiration | No Comments »
You’re Gonna Need an Ocean, of Calamine Lotion
By Mark D. Roberts | Saturday, May 3, 2008
One of the running jokes in my family has to do with my peculiar fascination with poison oak. When we’d go hiking in the foothills of California, which are often covered with poison oak, I’d be shouting out warnings: “Poison oak to the right! Look out on your left!” My family members would laugh at my obsession. But, let it be known that they’d also avoid that which I had brought to their attention. (Photo: A patch of poison oak in Big Sur, California)
You might think my extreme fear of poison oak stems from my having once suffered with the itchy, oozing rash caused by direct exposure to the plant. In fact, however, I have never had poison oak, probably because I’ve been so committed to avoiding contact with it. The strength of my feelings about poison oak probably comes from having once seen the infected chest and back of my friend Jeff, who lived down the street from me in Glendale. He had hidden in a patch of poison oak, and was covered with a horrific rash. One look at Jeff and I resolved never, ever to come in contact with poison oak. Even though I spent countless hours hiking in the poison oak infested hills of California, I managed to avoid getting zinged by it.
I’m sorry to say that by moving to Texas I haven’t left poison oak behind. It grows in my new home state. But I’m even sorrier to say that I now have new sources of Urushiol (the oil in poison oak that causes the rash) to worry about. Far more common in the Texas Hill Country is poison ivy. Apparently we also have poison sumac and poison oak.
But poison ivy is all over the place here, including my yard! A month ago, Beth, a friend from California was visiting our family. She spied a plant in my yard that looked like a type of ivy and had three-leaf clusters. So she took a sample to the Cibolo Nature Center in town, where an expert confirmed that it was poison ivy. Since her discovery, I have spent several hours applying a chemical that is supposed to kill poison ivy to the dozens of small plants in the yard. I’m sure I won’t eradicate it completely, but at least I can try to keep it under control. I’m not so worried about direct exposure to poison ivy, since my Jeff-induced phobia remains. But I do fret that one of our pets might get into the plant and share secondhand Urushiol with me or my family.
If you’re looking for technical information about poison ivy and its cousins, check out the online Poison Ivy, Oak, & Sumac Information Center. This website is not sponsored by any medical institution, but is managed by Jim Dunphy, a man who wants to help people avoid the unpleasantness of an Urusiol rash. Who knows? Maybe Jim saw Jeff’s tortured torso when he was a kid.
Now that I have a new obsession – identifying poison ivy rather than poison oak – I’ve seen it all over the place. The photos to the right show poison ivy climbing a tree in Boerne. This tree, as you can see from the lower photo, is by the local Starbucks. So if you’re in my home town and get a latté, be sure to watch out. Otherwise,
You’re gonna need an ocean
Of calamine lotion
You’ll be scratching like a hound
the minute you start to mess around.
Poison ivy, poison ivy !
Well late at night when you’re sleeping
Poison ivy comes a creeping all around.
Topics: Pet Peeves | 8 Comments »
The Power of the Pulpit
By Mark D. Roberts | Friday, May 2, 2008
It seems like everybody’s talking about preaching these days. To be more specific, everybody’s talking about one particular preacher, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, whose fifteen minutes of fame derive both from his association with Barack Obama and from his tendency to make outlandish statements in the pulpit.
Most of the commentary on Rev. Wright has focused on the implications of his preaching for the presidential candidacy of Obama. At the moment, these implications are not happy ones for the Obama campaign. The front page of today’s New York Times features a survey that shows plummeting confidence in Obama and growing support for his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton. Much of this is attributed to the impact of the Jeremiah Wright controversy.
I don’t propose to weigh in on these issues because they are beyond my field of expertise. I don’t know all that much about presidential politics. But I do know something about preaching. Not only have I heard hundreds upon hundreds of sermons in my life, but also I have preached hundreds upon hundreds of sermons as a pastor for over twenty years. So I want to comment on some of the issues raised by Rev. Wright’s preaching. These issues can be summed up in the title “Pride and the Power of the Pulpit.”
As most of my blog readers know, last September I finished my sixteen-year-plus tenure as the Senior Pastor and primary preacher of Irvine Presbyterian Church in Southern California, where I preached well over six-hundred individual sermons (including repetition, that was more than eighteen-hundred sermons). I don’t do much preaching in my new role as the Senior Director and Scholar-in-Residence for Laity Lodge. Since September, I’ve spoken often to various groups (retreats, conferences, seminars), but I’ve only preached three sermons (six times in total, with repetitions).
Last weekend I preached for the first time in my new church, a church in which I am active along with my family, but not as a pastor. When I got up into the pulpit for the first time in that church, I was struck by how much higher I was than the people. I was peering down upon them as they were gazing up at me. By virtue of the sanctuary design, I was in a position of considerable implicit power. (Photo: The pulpit in Amy Hughes’ legendary “Lego Church.”)
As I preached, I was impressed by the fact that communication flowed in one direction. I talked; they listened. Of course that’s almost always the way it happens in preaching, but I used to take this for granted because I was so accustomed to it. Now, since I do more teaching of an interactive nature, when I was preaching I sensed the absence of feedback. (Ironically, given the recent prominence of Rev. Wright, the black church is one setting in which the congregation often speaks back to the preacher. Usually these are words of encouragement, though when I once preached in a black church, I heard one woman who kept on praying, “Help him, Jesus!”)
At the end of my sermon in my home church, there wasn’t a time for Q & A. I had the last word. There was no corporate conversation about anything I had said, no opportunity for people to ask questions or to challenge my assertions. I said it. They were to believe it. And that settled it. Or that’s the way it felt, at any rate. As I greeted people after the service, they had the opportunity to share their responses to my preaching. By tradition and politeness, these were mostly of the “Nice sermon, pastor” genre. If anybody was unhappy with what I had said, they had the decency to keep it to themselves.
Now what I’ve just described isn’t unusual. It’s the norm in the vast majority of churches throughout this country. Preachers preach and parishioners listen. That’s the way we do church. In this equation, the preacher is given unusual power, the power of physical elevation over the congregation, the power to have people listen with extraordinary attention, the power to say whatever the preacher wants without being challenged or questioned, the power to speak without having to listen to othersa. (Yes, yes, I know that good preaching actually requires several kinds of listening. But the preacher is not expected to listen to the congregation in the context of the typical worship service.)
You might think I’m leading up to a critique of this preaching power equation. Actually, I’m not, at least not necessarily. I believe that preaching with power can be one of the greatest things in the world. Indeed, it can be a way for a pastor to serve people, not to mention God. I also believe that preaching of God’s truth comes with God’s own power, the power of the Holy Spirit at work in both preacher and congregation. I think this is fantastic.
The point I’m making right now is simply that the preacher has been given a great deal of power by virtue of position, authority, tradition, and the willingness of the congregation to listen to a sermon. This power can be a wonderful thing. But it can easily be abused. One kind of abuse happens when the preacher gets caught up in the pride of preaching. I’ll talk about this in my next post in this series.
Topics: Pride and the Power of the Pulpit | 6 Comments »
Passionate Spirituality, Part 4
By Mark D. Roberts | Thursday, May 1, 2008
So far I’ve shown that Christian spirituality is, quite literally, Spirit-uality. It is life lived in the Spirit. When we live in the Spirit, we are transformed by the Spirit to be more like Christ. We are guided by the Spirit as we live each day. And we are empowered by the Spirit for ministry.
But what about passionate spirituality? How can we be excited about living out our faith? Where does this sort of passion come from?
Catching the Wave of the Spirit
This too, comes from the Holy Spirit. Remember, the fruit of the Spirit includes love and joy. The Holy Spirit moves our hearts, giving us a passion for that which enflames the heart of God. Similarly, the Spirit reawakens within us the joy we knew when we first put our faith in Christ.
In my experience, passionate spirituality comes when I experience the transforming presence and power of the Spirit. If I can see the Spirit at work in my life, I get excited about God. I remember an Easter morning a few years ago. I had just preached the second of four Easter services, and was greeting folks at the door. A woman from our church came up to me with tears in her eyes. “My eighty-five year old mother just became a Christian,” she said. “Though I’ve been bringing her to church every Easter for years, today something you said broke through, and she gave her life to Christ. I am so happy!” And so was I. Thrilled, in fact. When I had some moments to myself, I thanked the Lord for the sheer privilege of being used by him. And as I preached those next two Easter services, I don’t know if I ever felt more passionate about the gospel.
But this sort of experience is not just for preachers. It’s available to each and every one of us as we begin to follow the Spirit’s lead in our lives. Let the Spirit guide you. Step out in faith. Reach out with the love of Christ to others, and you’ll find new excitement in your Christian life.
Many of you know exactly what I’m talking about. You’ve experienced the power of the Spirit in your life, over and over again. Perhaps it happened when you were sharing your faith with a friend. She asked a tough question, and all of a sudden, as if out of nowhere, you had a great answer. You realized the Spirit of God was at work in you. Or maybe you were teaching Sunday School and facing a tricky discipline challenge. In a flash, you knew how to deal with the situation. That was the power of the Spirit in you.
Living in the Spirit is a little like bodysurfing. Now you’ll have to forgive a Californian illustration, but I haven’t been around here long enough to pick up some good Texas ones. They’ll come in time. Anyway, one of the things I liked to do in California was go bodysurfing at the beach. Have any of you every done this? You don’t need a surfboard or anything, because your body becomes the board. Basically, you go out into the surf, bobbing around as you wait for just the right wave. When you see it coming, you start swimming toward the shore as fast as you can. Soon, you feel the wave cresting around you. If you’re lucky and if you’ve timed everything right, then all of a sudden you feel the wave sweeping you along. You stop swimming and get caught up in the flow of the wave’s power. In the right conditions, you can ride along effortlessly for many yards. When the wave finally dies out, you feel pumped with excitement, and can’t wait to get back out there for the next wave. You might call that passionate bodysurfing.
And so it is in our Christian life. When we’re attentive to the Holy Spirit, when we’re in place that the Spirit wants us, when we’re available and ready to go, we get caught up in the flow of the Spirit’s power. We realize that God is at work within us, producing the fruit of the Spirit in our lives. And we see God at work through us, using us to minister to others by the Spirit’s power. Then we feel pumped with excitement, and can’t wait to get back out there for the next wave of the Holy Spirit. And that, sisters and brothers, is called passionate spirituality.
Note: This series on Passionate Spirituality was originally a sermon preached at St. Mark Presbyterian Church in Boerne, Texas. If you would like to read the whole sermon, click here.
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Passionate Spirituality, Part 3
By Mark D. Roberts | Wednesday, April 30, 2008
This is the third part of a short series on Passionate Spirituality. In yesterday’s post, I began looking at Galatians 5:16-25, a passage that identifies passionate spirituality as life in the Spirit of God. When we live in the Spirit, the fruit of the Spirit grows in our life: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control” (Gal 5:22-23).
How Do We Live in the Spirit?
This sounds great, doesn’t it? Which of us wouldn’t like to be more loving, more joyful, more peaceful, more patient, and so forth? This is spirituality we could be passionate about. So, then, how do we live and keep on living in the Spirit?
Paul gives us a couple of clues in Galatians 5. In verse 18 we read, “But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not subject to the law.” “If you are led by the Spirit . . . .” Here we see that the Spirit of God leads us, giving us directions for living, pointing us in God’s way.
In this sense, the Holy Spirit is a little like those newfangled GPS devices that are becoming so popular. How many of you have a GPS device? Maybe a Garmin or a Magellan or whatever came with your new car? When we went back to California last Christmas, a friend loaned me his car, and it had a GPS device. What a wonder! I could see exactly where I was located on a little map in a screen on the dashboard. If I wanted to go somewhere, I could enter the address and, voilà, the GPS device would guide me. It would even tell me in words where to go: “In one-quarter mile, turn right. Go straight for three miles.” I could touch a button and all the gas stations would miraculously appear on the little screen, or the McDonalds, or the Starbucks. (I don’t think they had a button for the Presbyterian churches, however. They have to work on that.)
I found it quite entertaining to have that GPS device in the car . . . but also quite dangerous. I kept wanting to watch the little screen rather than the road. And, no matter how sophisticated a GPS device is, it isn’t able to say, “Watch out! You’re about to hit that man 50 feet in front of you!” I don’t have my own GPS device yet, which is probably good news for those of you who live in Boerne.
When we become a Christian, we receive the gift of the Holy Spirit, who is a little like a GPS device. As we pay attention to the Spirit, we receive divine guidance for our actions. This happens in many ways. Maybe you read the Bible and are convicted to forgive somebody against whom you’ve held a grudge. Or you’re listening to a sermon on generosity and are led to help out a friend who’s struggling financially. Or perhaps you see somebody across the room at church and sense in your spirit that God wants you to reach out to that person. Or maybe the Holy Spirit puts a burden on your heart for starving children in Africa. Or . . . you name it.
Be Guided by the Spirit
Another verse in Galatians 5 gives us further insight into how we can live in the Spirit each day. Verse 25 reads, “If we live by the Spirit, let us also be guided by the Spirit.” The phrase “be guided by the Spirit” suggests something similar to what we’ve already seen about being led by the Spirit. The verb translated here as “be guided” is used elsewhere in Paul’s letters in the sense of “walking in the footsteps of” someone (Rom 4:12). The picture is of the Holy Spirit walking ahead of us, and our following close behind, imitating the Spirit’s steps.
Children do this sort of thing on the beach. You’ll see a dad walking across the sand, leaving large footprints as he walks. Then, several feet behind, a little boy will be following along, stretching his legs in order to put his feet in the footprints of his daddy. Similarly, we can be led by the Holy Spirit, who shows us where to step, helping us to walk in God’s ways each day.
If you want to experience this kind of genuine Spirituality, this life in the Spirit of God, you must begin by putting your faith in Jesus Christ. Trust Jesus as your Lord and Savior, and His Spirit comes to dwell within you.
Then, with the very Spirit of God resident in your heart, you can learn to attend to the Spirit’s voice. The Spirit speaks to us primarily through the Spirit-inspired Scripture. That’s why we study the Bible. That’s why we use Scripture as a basis for preaching, for teaching, and for directing our life as a church. The Spirit also speaks in the community of God’s people as we all use the gifts given to us by the Spirit. The Spirit also speaks in our hearts: urging, leading, prompting, challenging. Sometimes the Spirit’s guidance comes in the form of a thought. Sometimes it’s a powerful emotion, perhaps compassion for someone in pain or concern for a friend who’s facing difficult challenges at work.
So, then, Christian spirituality is life in the Holy Spirit. But how is this passionate spirituality? In answer this question in my next post.
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Passionate Spirituality, Part 2
By Mark D. Roberts | Tuesday, April 29, 2008
Yesterday I began a short series on Passionate Spirituality. This is actually a revised version of a sermon I preached at my new church in Boerne, Texas this past Sunday.
In yesterday’s post, I introduced the theme of passionate spirituality, asking what the phrase passionate spirituality suggests to you, and explaining what the Natural Church Development people, who invented the phrase passionate spirituality, mean by it. They understand passionate spirituality to be living out one’s faith with commitment and enthusiasm. So, I asked, why call this passionate spirituality? What does spirituality have to do with living out our faith?
Passionate Spirituality According to Galatians 5
There’s a good answer to this question. It comes to us from Paul’s letter to the Galatians. In this letter, Paul was fighting a version of what we call legalism. The young churches in Galatia – central Turkey in today’s world – had been hoodwinked by some theologically confused Christians who had taught them that faith in Jesus wasn’t enough. If you really want to experience God, they said, then you have to keep the whole Jewish law, especially the ceremonial parts. Legalism was their path to passionate spirituality.
Legalism continues to lure many Christians today. It’s a trap we easily fall into. People come to God through Christ, receiving his grace through faith. So far, so good. And they realize that God cares about what they do with their lives. That’s right on. But then they’re told that if they really want to have a relationship with God, they have to do all sorts of things to earn God’s favor. The Christian life becomes a long list of things to do, and especially things not to do. Soon, people who began their life in Christ with a passion for him and his mission become weighed down with endless dos and don’ts, and the life of Christ gets sucked out of them. That’s what was happening with the Galatians. (Photo: One of my favorite “don’t” signs from Hyde Park in London. Note the bottom: Do not allow your dogs to chase, worry or injure the wildlife.)
In response, Paul pointed to a new way of living, something he might well have called passionate spirituality. “Live by the Spirit,” he wrote in Galatians 5:16, “and do not gratify the desires of the flesh.” The NRSV translation here misses a couple of important nuances in the original Greek of Galatians 5:16. First, the imperative “live” (literally, “walk”) is actually a present imperative. It means, not just “live,” but “live and keep on living in the Spirit.” Paul is calling the Galatians to an ongoing experience of living in the Spirit of God.
Second, the part of the verse I read as “do not gratify the desires of the flesh,” is not an additional command, but a promise. Paul was saying this to the Galatians: “Keep on living by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh.” In other words, if you want to keep away from sin, don’t focus on the sin you wish to avoid, but on the Spirit of God who helps you to yearn for what is right and to shun what is wrong. Keeping on living in the Spirit and the sinful desires of the flesh will lose their grip on you.
Genuine Spirituality
These days, spirituality is in. People want to be spiritual, not religious. Spirituality can mean some sort of oozy transcendence, or mystical experience, or meaningful living. Spirituality can involve Eastern meditation, or happy self-talk, or wearing crystals, or burning incense, or whatever you’d like. Spirituality is rather like a Burger King Whopper: you can have it your way.
For the Christian, spirituality is much more specific than this. It is, quite literally, Spirit-uality. It is life lived in the Holy Spirit. It is living each day by the power of God’s Spirit who dwells within us. It is experiencing God, not in whichever way you choose, but in the God’s way through God’s own Spirit. Genuine spirituality is fellowship with the Holy Spirit. It happens as you read the Spirit-inspired Word, or as you join the Spirit-filled gatherifng of God’s people, or as you quiet yourself to hear the still, small voice of the Spirit. True spirituality is not merely some private, other-worldly experience. It is also a this-worldly encounter with the Spirit that we share with other believers. It includes, as Pastor John taught last week, ministering to others in the power of the Spirit.
Living in the Spirit is relying upon the Spirit. It is being open to the Spirit’s guidance. It is be available for the Spirit’s power. It is offering your whole self to God, so that you might be transformed by the Spirit into the very image of Christ. The more you live in the Spirit, the less you will engage in the so-called works of the flesh, including: “fornication, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions, envy, drunkenness, carousing” (vss. 19-21). (By the way, this seems to me a pretty apt description of college dorm life!)
On the contrary, as you live in the Spirit of God, you’ll find that your life is increasingly characterized by what Paul calls the “fruit of the Spirit”: “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control” (vss. 22-23). True spirituality, therefore, isn’t something hidden away in our souls. It impacts how we live in relationship with others: offering love, seeking peace, treating folks with patience, kindness, generosity and the like.
I expect most of us would like to have more love, joy, peace, etc. in our lives. So if this comes as a result of living in the Spirit, then we want to ask an obvious question: How can I live in the Spirit of God? I’ll begin to answer this question in tomorrow’s post.
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Passionate Spirituality, Part 1
By Mark D. Roberts | Monday, April 28, 2008
Yesterday I preached my first sermon in my new home church, St. Mark Presbyterian Church in Boerne, Texas. The topic had been assigned to me by the pastor, John Watson. It was sermon three in a series he’s doing on Natural Church Development, a biblically-based curriculum for healthy church growth. My job was to preach on “Passionate Spirituality.” (Photo: The chancel of St. Mark Presbyterian Church.)
Beginning with today’s post, I’m going to share that sermon with you. I believe it’s relevant, not only for my new church, but for all Christians who seek to live as disciples of Christ, and for all churches that seek that grow as healthy communities of Christ.
So, on to today’s sermon, beginning with my Scripture reading.
Scripture Reading: Galatians 5:16-25
Live by the Spirit, I say, and do not gratify the desires of the flesh. For what the flesh desires is opposed to the Spirit, and what the Spirit desires is opposed to the flesh; for these are opposed to each other, to prevent you from doing what you want. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not subject to the law. Now the works of the flesh are obvious: fornication, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions, envy, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these. I am warning you, as I warned you before: those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.
By contrast, the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against such things. And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live by the Spirit, let us also be guided by the Spirit.
Introduction
Pastor John is in the middle of a series on Natural Church Development. It’s a fine approach to church health and growth, and I’m glad to be able to preach one of the sermons in this series. The first sermon focused on “Empowering Leadership.” In healthy churches, the leaders encourage and empower the members to be ministers of Jesus Christ. John’s next sermon in the series explored “Gift-Oriented Ministry.” In this message last week, John explained that each of us received the gift of the Holy Spirit when we became Christians. The Spirit empowers us to do the ministry of Christ, not in our own strength, but in the power of God.
Today’s sermon is really an extension of last week’s message. It’s called “Passionate Spirituality.” A healthy, growing church will be characterized not only by “Empowering Leadership” and “Gift-Oriented Ministry,” but also by “Passionate Spirituality.”
Passionate Spirituality
What comes to mind when you hear the phrase passionate spirituality?
Perhaps you remember a time in your life when you were excited about being a Christian. Maybe it was when you were a new believer, when you just couldn’t get over the fact that God loves you, when you just couldn’t get enough Bible study.
Perhaps passionate spirituality makes you think of people you know who are still excited about their Christian faith. They’re always talking about it, even though they have been believers for years. (Maybe you secretly feel a little envious of those people. Or maybe they drive you crazy.)
Perhaps, for you, the phrase passionate spirituality seems like a contradiction in terms, an oxymoron, to use the technical term. Passionate spirituality may be like deafening silence, or working vacation, or jumbo shrimp. Maybe you think of spirituality as something quiet and mysterious, something peaceful you’d rarely associate with excitement. Passion, on the other hand, is getting fired up about something. It’s expressive and vibrant. It gets your blood pumping. You might think of passionate sexuality rather than passionate spirituality. Or, given that we’re in Texas, maybe you’d be inclined toward passionate football, or passionate hunting, or passionate cheering for the Spurs. So what are we to do with passionate spirituality?
Passionate Spirituality According to Natural Church Development
Pastor John was good enough to give me some of what the Natural Church Development folks have written about passionate spirituality. What they mean by this phrase has less to do with strong emotions and more to do with “the degree to which faith is actually lived out with commitment, passion, and enthusiasm.” When it comes to passionate spirituality, the Natural Church Development people ask: “Are the Christians in this church ‘on fire?’ Do they live committed lives and practice their faith with joy and enthusiasm?”
It certainly makes sense that if church members are living out their faith with commitment and passion, their church would be growing. Faithful discipleship is contagious. But I wonder why the Natural Church Development folks call this sort of thing passionate spirituality? Why not “daily discipleship” or “active commitment”? Why call enthusiastic living out of our faith passionate spirituality?
There is a good answer to this question. It comes to us from Paul’s letter to the Galatians. I’ll begin to offer this answer in tomorrow’s post.
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Sunday Inspiration from The High Calling.org
By Mark D. Roberts | Sunday, April 27, 2008
Reunion
Joseph prepared his chariot and traveled to Goshen to meet his father, Jacob. When Joseph arrived, he embraced his father and wept, holding him for a long time.
What a touching scene! After years and years of separation, Jacob was finally reunited with his beloved son, Joseph. It comes as no surprise, given what we have seen of Joseph’s strong emotions, that he wept profusely, holding his father for a long time. We’re not told how Jacob felt, only that he finally said to Joseph: “Now I am ready to die, since I have seen your face again and know you are still alive” (v. 30).
I can’t read this story without thinking of a similar one in the New Testament. Jesus told the story of a son who was separated from his father for a long time. In this case, the son had chosen the separation, much to his father’s pain and dishonor. When the son finally returned, he was reunited with his father. Here’s what happened:
“So he returned home to his father. And while he was still a long way off, his father saw him coming. Filled with love and compassion, he ran to his son, embraced him, and kissed him” (Luke 15:20).
Here we see an emotional reunion between father and son, complete with a passionate embrace. But there is a difference between this picture and the one in Genesis 46. There, the son hugged the father. Here, the father initiates relationship with the son, running to him and enfolding him with love. (Photo: Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, “Return of the Prodigal Son” 1667-70 AD)
Perhaps the most stunning part of this picture of a family reunion is its meaning according to Jesus. The running, embracing father reveals God’s own heart for us. When we return to the Lord, he runs to embrace us home. What a wonder!
QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION: How do you picture God and God’s relationship with you? Is God the apparently staid Father who, like Jacob, receives your love but doesn’t respond in kind? Or is God like the father in Jesus’ parable, who runs to you, embracing and kissing you?
PRAYER: Dear Heavenly Father, as a human father, this scene of Joseph’s reunion with Jacob touches my heart. But so much more am I moved by Jesus’ story of the father who runs to and embraces his son. When I consider that this image reveals your love for me, I am truly astounded. It’s hard to imagine that I mean that much to you. Yes, yes, I believe it theologically. But my heart lags behind.
Help me, dear Father, to live each moment as if you cherished me and delighted in my presence. Amen.
Daily Reflections from The High Calling.org
This devotional comes from The High Calling of Our Daily Work (www.thehighcalling.org). You can read my Daily Reflections there, or sign up to have them sent to your email inbox each day. This website contains lots of encouragement for people who are trying to live out their faith in the workplace.
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A Fascinating Interview
By Mark D. Roberts | Saturday, April 26, 2008
Marcus Goodyear, one of my friends and colleagues who works for The High Calling of Our Daily Work, (he’s also a fine blogger!) has completed a two-part interview with Micheal Flaherty, the president of Walden Media. (Note: Micheal is the right spelling.) This company is best known for producing (along with Disney) The Chronicles of Narnia films. The next installment in this series, Prince Caspian, comes out in just three weeks (May 16). You can view the trailer here. It will get your blood pumping! (Photo below: A scene from the trailer.)
Here’s an excerpt from Marcus’s interview:
In Philippians, Paul says to focus on whatever is true, noble . . . What do you do when you have a story that has moments of ugliness and things that aren’t noble? How do you make decisions about that?
Paul didn’t shy away from the fact that the human heart is capable of every darkness. To appreciate Paul, and to appreciate the wisdom in that saying, is to appreciate where he had been in his life. Paul would not be as interesting and compelling a character if we didn’t understand what got him to that point of wisdom. I think that in order to understand the true and the noble, you have to have glimpses of their counterparts. I think that it’s critical for all of us to recognize that nothing is beyond reconciliation and nothing is beyond redemption. So, even if we’ve gone to those dark places, or those places that are less than noble, or less than praiseworthy, we have that ability to be the creation. I think that’s one of the problems, so many people feel that’s beyond them. When you talk about things like praiseworthy and noble and good, what about the people who feel like they can’t reclaim that or recapture that, because they’ve experienced so much that’s counter to that and so much that’s opposite that? I think people need to know that the praiseworthy, the good, and the noble are always within our reach, regardless of where we’ve been. (Photo: Micheal Flaherty)
You can find the rest of the interview here: Part 1; Part 2.
Thanks, Marcus, for your great work.
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You Know You’re in a Small Town When . . . More from the Boerne Police Blotter
By Mark D. Roberts | Friday, April 25, 2008
April 5
100 block of Wollschlaeger Driver, 11:53 a.m., A caller reported that there was a pot-bellied pig on his property tearing up his yard. [MDR: That’s just about a mile from my house. The feral hogs in this part of Texas can do a lot of damage to one’s garden. Photo: An unretouched photo of a giant hog. See “Hogzilla” at Snopes.com for more info.]
April 15
28000 block of Ruffian Drive, 5:30 p.m., Police and volunteer firefighters were called to a house fire. A resident told investigators that his wife was making dinner when their dog ran away and she began chasing it. The man said his wife left a pan on the stove and it caught fire. The fire spread to the kitchen cabinets. [MDR: Oops.]
100 block of Crosspoint, 7:28 a.m., Police responded to a fire alarm but cancelled the fire department when they found that a resident had tried to cook oatmeal without using any water and set off the fire alarm. [MDR: April 15th must have been a special day for foolish cooking accidents.]
April 16
1300 block of S. Main Street, 4:46 p.m., A caller reported an elderly female who was walking around the parking lot and appeared to be disoriented. Police contacted the woman, who said she was looking for money on the ground so she could buy a light for her vehicle. The officer gave the woman $2 for the light. [MDR: Now that’s what I call a helpful police officer. They don’t do that in the big city.]
100 block of Turner, 6:31 p.m., A caller reported two men hitting golf balls from the bowling alley parking lot to the church parking lot. The men were gone when police arrived. [MDR: At least they weren’t hitting bowling balls in the direction of the church parking lot.]
200 block of High Street, Comfort, 8:46 a.m., A student called after finding a cat stuck in a rain gutter. The cat freed itself before deputies arrived. [MDR: High crimes and misdemeanors in the Hill Country!]
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Excellent Discussion on the Problem of Suffering
By Mark D. Roberts | Thursday, April 24, 2008
Beliefnet.com is hosting a fine “blogalogue” between Bart Ehrman and N. T. Wright on the problem of suffering. Ehrman, as you may know, has published the most recent installment in his series that might be called: “A Popular Scholar’s Attempt to Get People to Stop Being Christians.” This book is: God’s Problem: How the Bible Fails to Answer Our Most Important Question–Why We Suffer. I have not read this book yet, but, given what I’ve read of what Ehrman has said about it, it certainly doesn’t break any new ground. But Ehrman has the attention of the secular media (like NPR), and he’s an engaging writer (for a scholar). So God’s Problem will surely sell plenty of copies. (Photo: Bart Ehrman)
I can’t think of anyone I’d rather have “blogaloguing” with Erhman than N. T. Wright. In this conversation, Ehrman is way out of his league, theologicially. More importantly, however, Wright’s approach to suffering takes seriously the biblical narrative of salvation.
Here’s what we have so far in the “blogalogue”:
Ehrman: How the Problem of Pain Ruined My Faith
Wright: God’s Plan to Rescue Us
Topics: Recommendations, Theology | 20 Comments »