Living the Safest Life Possible

Great stuff by Francis Chan

You Can Change

Just started on Tim Chester's book You Can Change. Here's a great quote from chapter 2"

"You will cleanse no sin from your life that you have not first recognized as being pardoned through the cross."

Gospel and Cultural Engagement

One of the big divisions in the young, restless, and reformed movement is over cultural engagement. Last week Thabiti Anyabwile addressed the issue at the Together for the Gospel Conference, which I was grateful to attend. It seems to me that a big part of this divide is the inability of both sides to hear the concerns and understand the language of the opposing side. I thought this critique of Thabiti's message by Joe Thorn to be fair and balanced.

Overall, I thought Thabiti made some good points. I appreciated his observation that we don't just shape culture, but culture also shapes us. However, I also thought his message was overly simplistic and reactionary. I don't know that I disagree with Thabiti, but sometimes I had the feeling that his message was more like "What is culture? How do we engage? What will engagement accomplish? We don't know any of these answers, so let's just stick to Jesus and stop talking about it." That is probably not a fair assessment of his message, but I, and I think quite a few others, had more questions than answers after he was done.

For a different take on this issue, check out his helpful article from Boundless.

Endangered Ethnicity

False Assumption #2: The Bad Is Out There

Everyone knows that there is something wrong with the world. That’s why when the lights go out, we instinctively lock our doors and listen for strange noises. It’s why our children wet their beds rather than face the valley of shadow and death lying between them and the bathroom. So where does all this badness come from? Most of us think we know that answer. It’s them. It’s those people out there. You know, those liberals, those right-wing radicals. It’s Hollywood and their gay-loving. It’s the terrorists, the druggies, the whites, the blacks, the hispanics. Christians are hardly an exception to this line of thinking. Ask the average mid-western church goer and they’ll tell you where the badness comes from. It’s the world.

Strategies for Badness. If the problem is those bad buys out there, then the solution is pretty simple. If you’re a democrat, then beat the Republicans. If you’re an American, then kill the terrorists. And if you’re a Christian, then tell the world how wrong they are, boycott their services, and most of all, just stay away.

The Bad Looks Familiar. What makes an Islamic terrorists strap explosives to a subway, wait for hundreds of people to clamor aboard, and then mercilessly send them to their grave? Ask them, and they will tell you. They are doing the work of God. They are carrying out his war against the bad people that are corrupting his world. The bad people are out there, they say, and their job is to beat them. Sound vaguely familiar? The terrorists aren’t bad because they have falsely identified who the real bad guys are. They are bad for the same reason we are. They have never stopped to consider whether they might be the bad guys too.

Same Old Problem. The danger of this assumption is that it always puts me on the side of the good guys. The bad may be terrorists, the rich, the young, the old, the church, the world, the politicians, the lawyers, ad nauseum. But whoever the bad guys are, there is always one constant. They are whoever I am not. There is a problem with the world, and it is always the same problem--them.

Salvation and the Bad. But the gospel says just the opposite. It says the problem with the world is that it is filled with people just like you. Yes, you have been abused, corrupted, victimized, and all of that was bad, unjust, and wicked. But it happened because the world is full of people like you, not unlike you. So salvation doesn’t lie, it can’t lie, in beating the bad guys. At least not in you beating the bad guys. Salvation is God dying for your badness, forgiving your badness, and transforming your badness into goodness. That is the way salvation always works. There are no people on God’s side until he puts them on his side. That is, until he brings them to repent of the their badness and trust in his goodness. If the bad is always out there, then it is never here. And if it is never here, then salvation has never come here either.

Legalism 101

From Resuregence.

Peter Hitchens

I already posted a video about Peter Hitchen's (Christopher Hitchens brother) new book The Rage Against God. However, this video, which better document's Peter's journey, I found both fascinating and insightful.

Peter Hitchens Author Interview--The Rage Against God from Gorilla Poet Productions on Vimeo.