Yesterday I received the Spring 2008 "Willow" periodical and quickly began to read while waiting for my son to finish his Youth Worship service. One of the articles was a quick review of the book Pagan Christianity? entitled "What Happened To The Church?" I found the article simply fascinating. Most of my worship comrades that read this blog will probably begin to laugh at how slow I am but - I am what I am! This particular statement; "As Christians, we are taught by our leaders to believe certain ideas and behave in certain ways. We are also encouraged to read our Bibles, yes. But we are conditioned to read the Bible with the lens handed to us by the Christian tradition to which we belong. We are taught to obey our denomination (or movement) and never to challenge what it teaches." This is a fairly frank statement - but, from my perspective, pretty accurate! I like to be challenged, well not always - but it is a good statement. Have you read this?
4 comments:
George Barna has a way of getting under the skin of religiosity with his candor and well-researched, well-spoken and well-thought commentary on modern Christianity. He will never tell you what you what you want to hear. :O) I haven't read it, but it will be an excellent read.
The quote itself is painfully true. As much as I firmly believe I'm walking in the truth, I'm willing to admit God is bigger than my understanding. I'd love to hear where this book goes... are you planning a book review?
I'm down with the book review too Eric. And what about that Applebees America? Is it interesting to you?
I wonder if the author is referring to himself, his fellow Christians, or is he making a blanket statement about Christians worldwide? Did he do a study or survey to come to this conclusion?
I personally feel that when he says, "We are taught to obey our denomination (or movement) and never to challenge what it teaches," he is wrong. I was taught to challenge everything; to never just take a preacher at his word, but to dig deep into what is said and make sure is it Biblical, in context, and true. We are not all taught to be blind. And I think that Christ-followers should be the people who have our eyes open to all that is going on around us, and not be simply blind followers to the newest preacher on the block. I think that most of my friends feel this way also; as a younger generation, we heatedly discuss politics, global issues, trends, and religion. We refuse to be blind, told what is what, and merely believe without any evidence to support "facts".
All this to say, blanket statements are annoying, because they're usually not all that true.
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I went to Amazon to get a synopsis of this book because it looks interesting. Mostly I was interested in what this phrase “emergent church” is all about. The book had some interesting, if controversial, reviews so I read them.
This led me to the blogs and websites of others who want to weigh in on the topic. The movement is being widely discussed and even satirized. (Check out guttenbergdoor.com). Though this content is not for the prudish or faint of heart, clearly anything controversial about the post-modern church can be found here. Take it with a grain of…well…..rock salt.
There’s plenty of content on youtube.com regarding Rob Bell’s “heretical teachings” (not my words) and those of Mr. McLaren. I watched a few of them.
The very solid teacher (in my opinion) John MacArthur has a book out on it too, which I plan to order. The Baptist Press doesn’t think too much of the movement, that’s for sure.
This morning though, I started to ponder this a little more.
Any time a topic like this comes up that everyone feels they need to weigh in on it gets me thinking.
Yes, apologetics and defending the face and standing publicly firm on the foundational principles of scripture is vitally important.
But I want to make sure I ask myself before I delve in if these issues are being adamantly opposed and widely discussed because they are really important to the integrity of the church or are they providing us with nothing more than a diversion from our real call as the body of Christ?
I think of the Screwtape Letters and how what we learn from C.S. Lewis here is that satan, our enemy in the spirit realm, hardly ever comes to us in the way we’d expect. He comes using trickery and scheming in order to gain a foothold and keep us from looking to and leaning on God our Father, who bought us with a price.
I think the question deserves full consideration before we spend months enlightening ourselves on yet another “hot button” that could conceivably keep us all wrapped up in its tentacles for months into the future.
God grant us wisdom.
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