prayeramedic.com » Engaging Culture

The Shack: Love it or Hate it?

Dan — Thu, 09 Sep 2010 21:55:38 +0000

I recently read The Shack by William Paul Young, a Christian fiction bestseller that everyone has been talking about for a few years now. A discussion about the book began in the comments on one of my posts, and I wanted to continue the discussion here. What do you think?

Have you read The Shack?
What did you think about it?
Do you think the book is theologically dangerous or is it just fiction?
Do you recommend the book to others?

Let’s chat….

Walk a mile in someone else’s shoes…

Dan — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 08:30:56 +0000

It’s become a common cliche to ask a person to try walking a mile in someone else’s shoes, but I think that’s really hard for most of us, if we’re honest. Last week I pointed out that every life has a story, and few of us take the time to learn others’ stories. Learning to walk a mile in someone else’s shoes is the next step: entering into another person’s story.

This means suffering alongside a friend when they are in pain, and rejoicing with them when life is going well. Both of these tasks are equally challenging for most of us, whether we realize it or not. Some of us avoid suffering at all costs, it’s too scary and we’re not sure we’ll be able to find our way out of it. Some of us have a hard time being thankful when others are doing well, sincerely offering our congratulations. Granted, we will never fully understand the depth of someone’s suffering or joy, but we can still share some of it with them. In doing so we “carry each other’s burdens, and in this way [we] will fulfill the law of Christ” (Galatians 6:2).

Here’s a profound example of a little girl who did this very thing:

This little girl entered into her brother’s suffering the best way she knew how, yet her action was very simple. Often walking a mile in someone else’s shoes doesn’t have to be radical, it can be as simple as finding common ground over a cup of coffee, or in this case, a haircut.

Jesus entered into our suffering by joining the human experience. God became a man and lived among us. Philippians 2:5-8 (NLT) reminds us:

You must have the same attitude that Christ Jesus had. Though he was God, he did not think of equality with God as something to cling to. Instead, he gave up his divine privileges; he took the humble position of a slave and was born as a human being. When he appeared in human form, he humbled himself in obedience to God and died a criminal’s death on a cross.

Because Jesus has experienced life as a human being, he can relate to us in our sufferings. Hebrews 4:15-16 (NIV) tells us:

For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet was without sin. Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.

How does Jesus’ life and example help you deal with your own suffering? How can you enter into someone else’s story this week? How has someone entered into yours? I’d love to hear what it is like walking in someone else’s shoes….

Anti-intellectualism

Dan — Mon, 05 Jul 2010 20:07:42 +0000

I received two comments in the last few days that have reeked of anti-intellectualism, a dangerous heresy that infiltrated fundamentalist Christianity, Pentecostalism, and now many mainstream evangelical churches. I posted a video recently encouraging Christians to think, and a post about how most Christians cannot explain their faith that precipitated a lot of this. This began as a comment reply, so let me post the original comments:

TMLutas writes:

…The article assumes that living a christian life is insufficient to transmit the faith. Reason is good. It provides another support for faith in the truth. But true faith lived out in real life is a powerful witness, much more so than any apologetics….

Allyn writes:

I am not much of a Josh McDowell fan. But as a former knuckle-dragger, I can tell you that when a non-believer challenges my faith or questions it, I almost always quote scripture. That is the basis of my faith, period. Without it, all is lies.

If the questioner does not believe the Bible is the Word Of God, then we have no basis from which to begin.
However, the more scripture I quote, the more I believe the HS will pierce their heart of unbelief.
1John 5:13 makes a great starting point.

If you over-intellectualize (is that a word?) God, I think you take the HS out of the mix.
AL

For the reader’s benefit, HS means “Holy Spirit.” And my reply, which has become a post:

Hey Allyn. The verse you mentioned, 1 John 5:13, says: “These things have I written unto you that believe on the name of the Son of God; that ye may know that ye have eternal life, and that ye may believe on the name of the Son of God.” Notice that it is very clear that “these things” were written for those who ALREADY “believe on the name of the Son of God,” so that they may have assurance of their eternal destiny.

For those who don’t believe that the Scriptures are true, it is important to help them understand why they are true. The evidence is overwhelming, but few Christians take the time to learn any of it. It is true that God will pierce a heart of unbelief using Scripture, for He promises: “So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it” (Isaiah 55:11).

But when someone doesn’t believe that God’s Word is true, we can help them overcome that obstacle. Ultimately, the Holy Spirit creates faith in people’s hearts, but we can help people see why God’s Word is true, which will give them cause to consider what it says. This is especially pertinent in a day and age where so many lies and so much disinformation is being spread about God’s Word. Paul continually combated false teachings and those that taught them, and his letters became a large part of our New Testament. The Church is still called to identify and denounce false teachings, including false teachings regarding the Word of God.

Go to your local bookstore and you will find a slew of books questioning whether Jesus was a real man who walked the earth and whether or not the New Testament is entirely fabricated by Paul or by later mystics. We know that it is lunacy to deny that Christ was a real man who walked the earth, and that anyone with even an ounce of historical know-how cannot deny His historical reality. But most people have no clue how to do research (including many college graduates) and most people will believe whatever they see on YouTube or on the History Channel (like the Zeitgeist film). Very few people will take the time to do any research for themselves.

To insist that basic apologetics is a waste of time and is mere “intellectualism” is merely showing one’s anti-intellectual bias. The emerging church, a prevalent postmodern heretical movement, has largely been able to prove its legitimacy by pointing out mainstream fundamental evangelicalism’s anti-intellectual bias. And so far they’ve succeeded in making many look foolish, which is unfortunate. It’s unfortunate because we have a large body of academic, scholarly research that has been conducted and compiled by Christians like Josh McDowell and Lee Strobel that demonstrate the trustworthiness of the Scriptures and many other things. To ignore this would be foolish.

This anti-intellectualism causes religious people of all faiths to give simplistic answers to serious, honest questions and this attitude has caused many people to leave the church. Josh McDowell recently asked a group of pastors why the Bible is true and a young pastor responded, “Because I believe it!”, to which he received a round of “Amens” and applause. This is ridiculous! A Jehovah’s Witness believes his bible and a Scientologist believes in the writings of L. Ron Hubbard, but that doesn’t make them true. The Bible isn’t true because I believe it, the Bible is true and that’s why I believe it. Using the circular logic of anti-intellectualism only further proves to the world that religious people don’t possess critical thinking skills.

Rick M. Nañez is an Assemblies of God missionary who wrote a book about anti-intellectual trends in the Pentecostal tradition. In an interview with Christianity Today, he says:

In my estimation, the battle against anti-intellectualism is an ongoing global battle. Whether it’s a secular society whose population says that the elite should think for them or a religious community who has fallen for old-fashioned pragmatism; whether it’s evangelicals who are so busy building their material kingdom that they say they don’t have time to study in order to share or defend their faith; or whether its Pentecostals who claim that the heart and head are enemies—it’s all anti-intellectualism.

….Both our nation as well as our nation’s homegrown movements tend to battle with the temptation to pit doing against thinking, and spirit against mind….

Anti-intellectualism keeps us from affecting our institutions and their various departments with solid Christian thinking. It hinders our ability to think in terms of worldview, that is, to understand the hundreds of otherwise fragmented areas of life in a coherent way. If we are suspicious of the intellect, we are hamstrung when it comes to providing well-thought-out answers to difficult questions from critics and skeptics. Anti-intellectualism can also lead to dangerous forms of mysticism and a type of superstitious faith.

I believe that anti-intellectualism tends to lead Christians into relatively superficial spiritual lives, at least, in comparison to the impact they could make if they engaged in “thinking on purpose” for the glory of God. Also, mediocrity in the “life of the mind” leads the Christian subculture to criticize, fear, and condemn the secular institutions that their anti-intellectual, evangelical, and Pentecostal parents and grandparents abandoned the generations before.

The greatest problem with it is this: It flies in the face of Scriptures, which challenge us to prepare our minds for action, to train ourselves to give good reasons for our faith, and to learn to love God with all of our mind.

As Nañez stated, anti-intellectualism is a dangerous attitude that creates a false dichotomy pitting doing against thinking, and spirit against mind, and this goes against what Scripture teaches.

Media Convergence

Dan — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 08:30:55 +0000

This makes you think…

No related posts.

Be Radical… Proclaim the Gospel

Dan — Thu, 27 May 2010 08:30:47 +0000

Are you wasting your life living out a Christian spin on the American dream, or are you living radically for Christ and His commission to spread the Gospel?

H/T: Truth Matters

Socialnomics

Dan — Mon, 17 May 2010 08:30:25 +0000

Social media isn’t just a fad, it’s a shift in how we communicate:

H/T: Cyberbrethren

3,000 in one day? That’s nothing!

Ungodliness

Dan — Tue, 11 May 2010 08:30:08 +0000

I’ve been reading Respectable Sins: Confronting the Sins We Tolerate by Jerry Bridges lately, and the first sin he discusses is that of ungodliness. Bridges begins by pointing out that pride is not the root of all sin, as is often taught. Pride may be the trunk from which all other branches of sin grow, but the root beneath that trunk is ungodliness. Bridges defines ungodliness as “living one’s everyday life with little or no thought of God, or of God’s will, or of God’s glory, or of one’s dependence on God.”

Bridges makes it clear that someone can appear to be a very good person, they can go to church every Sunday and live a morally upright life – and they can still be ungodly. I think this sin is a major epidemic in the Christian church, even in my own life. Bridges makes this point in a profound way by relating this to most Christians’ prayer lives. He points out that even for those who do pray (unfortunately many do not), most prayers are human-centered, not God-centered.

He goes on to share a story about a young man who waited over 16 hours outside a store for a new gaming system to be released. He questions how many Christians would be just as earnest to seek God’s face.

This begs us to ask the question, “How ungodly am I?” We need to be honest about the sin of ungodliness in our lives and admit that we do not place God at the center of our thoughts, words, and deeds as we should. We too often live our lives as if God is a part of our life, which is a problem. God cannot merely be a part of our lives, He must be our entire lives. He IS our life.

But take heart, for “You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly” (Romans 5:6). Jesus died for ungodly people like you and me. Let us walk forth in godliness, centering our every thought, word, and deed on Christ as we learn to walk in His Spirit.

The worst persecution you can possibly deal with…

Dan — Wed, 05 May 2010 08:30:28 +0000

I was reading Veith’s blog, and he posed a profound question:

… Even worse than living as a Christian in an anti-Christian culture is living in a culture where Christianity is tolerated…. [Here is] a quotation from Luther: “No persecution is the ultimate persecution.” Why is that so?

That’s a great question. Why is no persecution the worst kind of persecution you can undergo? Has this proven true in today’s society?

Reaching iGens

Dan — Mon, 03 May 2010 08:30:27 +0000

iGens are emerging adults, the 20-somethings that everyone seems to be talking about. I happen to be one of them. My good friend Dick Rockenbach sent me a great article entitled Storming the Castle by Scot McKnight. McKnight says that “Reaching ‘iGens’ means breaking through inflated self-esteems.” I couldn’t agree more. He points out,

… Most iGens reside behind a carapace of protection nothing short of a castle wall. Older models of evangelism aimed for people to receive God’s grace in Christ by making them aware of their profound and utter sinfulness—indeed, that they were themselves sinners by nature. But a different model might be in order to “reach” iGens. This generation may need to be wooed to the castle door, the way Paul wooed the Athenians on the Areopagus, before they will hear the gospel.

If we begin with an assault on a human’s worth, Mr. Rogers’ gospel of self-acceptance will come to their rescue. If we begin by claiming that all humans are depraved, Sesame Street’s gospel of universal acceptance will make its defense. If we question the self’s disposition, we will find that the gospel of self-esteem has created a bunker deep enough and a wall thick enough that deflection and absorption are instinctive responses. It might work to reach some iGens, but not most….

While McKnight to some extent advocates bypassing the Law and cutting straight to the Gospel, he does acknowledge that sin must be addressed. He points out some of the reasons why it is difficult to show iGens their sinfulness. He considers iGens “pre-moral” and questions whether or not they feel guilt. He states,

… Morality requires a potent sense of what is right and wrong, and it needs a powerful sense of what is true and false. Contemporary culture does not provide the average iGen with a profound grasp of what is right and wrong apart from the conviction that assaulting the self is clearly wrong.

Yet deciding to stake one’s life on Jesus and the cross requires a sense that we are wrong, that we need Jesus, and that his saving death and resurrection can become effective…. [iGens] do not feel guilt as much as they feel shame for not achieving what they are designed to accomplish.”

McKnight goes on to propose a strategy to reach iGens by beginning with Jesus and using the very issues that iGens fight against as evidence of of human sinfulness, such as war, poverty, and racism. While I don’t entirely agree with his solution, I fully agree with his diagnosis and I found this to be a very insightful read. Sin is always the problem, and Jesus is always the answer. I highly encourage you to read the full article….

Reaching For God

Muslims issue warning to South Park creators

Dan — Thu, 22 Apr 2010 00:26:48 +0000

A recent South Park episode depicted Mohammed in a bear outfit, and MuslimRevolution.com published this statement:

“We have to warn Matt (Stone) and Trey (Parker) that what they are doing is stupid and they will probably wind up like Theo Van Gogh for airing this show.”

Reuters reports that “the website posted a graphic photo of slain Dutch filmmaker Theo Van Gogh, who was killed in 2004 by an Islamic militant over a movie he made that accused Islam of condoning violence against women.”

When so-called Christians make death threats or carry them out, the Christian community is quick to distance itself from these individuals and issue statements of remorse. Time and time again, the Muslim community remains silent.

Now compare this to how the media portrays Christians when we respond negatively to abominable blasphemies such as the recent play Corpus Christi, which portrays Jesus as a homosexual. The media has no problem making angry Christians look like terrorists. But when Muslims threaten someone’s life, there is no such opinion. Just the facts, ma’am.

Of course this is because Islam is a peaceful religion….