Youtube Tuesday: Simply Christian Part 2

Part 2 of 7 with N.T. Wright discussing his book Simply Christian.  This is audio only.

Kabbalah in They Like Jesus but not the Church

One of our small groups in our church has begun a study of Dan Kimball’s book, They Like Jesus but not the Church. In the first section, Dan speaks about talking with two folks in a coffee shop. The two folks he met had come into the coffee shop and were discussing Kabbalah.

Kabbalah is becoming more widely known and practiced in culture. It is something that Christ followers need to understand.

One of the things we’re doing in our study is putting together information that can be used in an apologetic sense to share with folks around the themes Dan deals with in his book. Since he has a discussion of Kabbalah, I’ve done some, just a little actually, research on the topic and provide a couple of those links below. I would love to hear what you know about the topic especially if you have interacted with folks apologetically.

Resources:

• wikipedia
• Kabbalah 101 - this website has a scheduled 42 part series on Kabbalah. Currently, there are 23 articles posted.
• Kabbalah and Jewish Mysticism
• LearnKabbalah.com - this website is a free source of Kabbalistic teachings, texts, and resources. It is suitable for those new to Kabbalah, and those with some background who wish to deepen their knowledge. Learnkabbalah.com was created by Jay Michaelson, who is both a teacher and a student of Kabbalah, meditation, and spirituality. Jay has learned Kabbalah in both traditional and academic contexts; he is currently a Ph.D. candidate at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

If you have any references, other than those listed about, that you could provide, please let me know. I am trying to put together as many sources of reputable information as possible.

Josh McDowell on relational truth

A new blog I’ve found recently is from Bob Robinson at Vanguard Church. Bob recently was able to have lunch with Josh McDowell at a conference in Ohio. The thing that stood out to me as Bob was recounting McDowell’s discussions at the table is how McDowell talks about truth. He says:

McDowell then explained “how we got here,” with a quick review of history, from the Enlightenment to the Industrial Revolution to Darwinism, explaining that instead of God being the source of truth, nature and science had taken God’s place as that source. “Hmm,” I thought, “He’s pretty tough on Modernism. That’s good.”

He never said the word “Post-modernism,” preferring instead the phrase, “The Cosmic Shift.” He explained that we have experienced a shift in our epistemology. This shift is characterized by how the new generation processes truth. The older generation saw truth as something to discover, but the younger generation sees truth as something to create. The older generation said, “If it is true, it will work”; the younger generation says, “If it works, it is true.” In other words, the younger generation bases their idea of the true based on experience; they don’t believe in things that have, in their minds, proven not to produce good results.

He then goes on to describe McDowell as saying (emphasis mine):

McDowell pleaded with these Christian leaders that ministry to the young generation needs to bring together “unfailing love” and “truth.” He insisted that it’s not just about being sure of the truth, it’s also about lovingly showing it to people.

And then he said, “I’m sick of McLaren and Bell putting me in the modernist camp. I am anything but a modernist.”

He proclaimed that he was advocating a “Relational Apologetics” and that “all truth is through relationships.”

I was amazed. At first I thought McDowell would advocate a mere reasoned apologetics and a fight for the concept of propositional truth. Instead, he was arguing for churches to create opportunities for young people to have genuine relationships with Christians so that they can experience what its like to live out their Christian convictions in real-life situations.

He was arguing for incarnational apologetics (what I’ve called “Emmanuel Apologetics”)!

All I can say is WOW! McDowell appears to be arguing for truth as relationship, not proposition. Now I’ve got more in common with McDowell than I knew as well!

Redux: Signs and Communicating the Gospel

Len Sweet noted to us in a chat this week a scripture from 1 Thes. 5:21 “Pay careful attention to everything . . “ “Semiotics”, he said, “is the art and science of paying attention”. As I said in a previous post, Semiotics is the study of signs.

In Matthew 16, Jesus rebukes the Pharisees for their inability to read the signs. He says, “And the Pharisees and Sadducees came, and to test him they asked him to show them a sign from heaven. He answered them, “When it is evening, you say, ‘It will be fair weather, for the sky is red.’ And in the morning, ‘It will be stormy today, for the sky is red and threatening.’ You know how to interpret the appearance of the sky, but you cannot interpret the signs of the times.” (Matthew 16:1-4, ESV)

When Jesus stood, in Luke 4:16-21, before the synagogue to announce the beginning of his ministry, he read a passage from Is. 61. Note what his ministry calling consisted of: signs. Signs of what? Signs of the kingdom. These signs were announced in the Isaiah passage as demonstrating the one who would come and lead the people out of exile. When Jesus sought to begin his ministry, he announced it using sign language.

When John the Baptist was in prison, about to get his head handed to the queen on a silver platter, he sent messengers to Jesus. His question? “Are you really the Messiah?” Notice how Jesus answered him: “And Jesus answered them, ‘Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight and the lame walk, lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear, and the dead are raised up, and the poor have good news preached to them. And blessed is the one who is not offended by me.’” (Matthew 11:4-6, ESV) How did Jesus choose to let John know that he was indeed the Messiah? Via signs.

In Matthew 25, Jesus identified people would enter into his kingdom in the following way: “I was hungry, and you gave me food…” Again, signs.

These activities were all kingdom activities. These were signs that the exile would be over and that the Messiah had come. These were signs that the exile was over. Unfortunately, the religious people missed it. All of it.

Reminding us again of Matthew 25, seeing the Christ in others is how we will one day be judged: Mt. 25:50 . . “As you did it unto the least of these, you did it to me.“

The gospel in Jesus’ day was communicated by signs. Compare that to how we are trending in our communication of the message of Christ: verbal. But images and signs are much more powerful communicators in our image-rich culture. So what images do we create with our word choices? Using what you know of the many gospel presentations, (EE, CWT, FAITH, the Roman Road, etc) let’s examine this for a moment:

We want to share the good news, but do our best to talk about hell. I am not arguing that hell doesn’t exist or that we shouldn’t talk about it, but think of the image we are creating by sharing good news with images of hell. Is it really good news? Even more importantly, we should ask this question: When Jesus shared the gospel, did he speak of hell?

We communicate the reality that if we trust Christ as our savior, we will spend eternity with him in Heaven. Think about this for a moment. What are we communicating? We are communicating that Christianity is all about getting great seats into that holy, heavenly stadium. We are communicating a “then and there” message and neglecting the “here and now”. Is there any wonder that since the verbal images we create do not communicate involvement in the community of Christ we have so few in our churches?

We communicate that all we have to do is believe certain facts about God and confess them. What images and signs are we communicating? Christianity is an intellectual assent that doesn’t really have much to do with how I behave or how I am transformed.

Can their be any other conclusion that the signs we introduce when we verbally communicate the Christ message is creating a void in our churches? Is there any reason to think that the methods we use strip so much of the true message of Christ out that the effects we long for are non-existant?

Maybe it’s time to reject the patterns we have learned and begin to be a sign to the world. Maybe if we recover a signing mentality, with people seeing Christ, we will see people become fellow pilgrims on the journey to Christ-likeness.

Reframing the Message - Gospel

Does the gospel, as presented today, have any interest to those outside the Christian faith? In my own discussions with people, I have yet to find any interest in discussing salvation or the gospel. People have more that interests them than the message we present. Could it be that the message we present is so far from the original that it has lost not on it’s power but it’s relevance in people’s life?

Some of the following thoughts were sparked by reading Ron Martioa’s new book called Static. Some are thoughts that I personally have had examining change theories. I admit that these may challenge you deeply; but it is a challenge that must be undertaken in trying to communicate the message of Christ in a new culture.

We have reduced the gospel and abbreviated it’s story. The gospel is about getting people a house in God’s heavenly subdivision. But what if a 4/2 ranch house on a cul-de-sac is simply the by-product of the gospel and not the newsflash that we should be sharing?

Does Jesus’ dying on the cross for our sins so that we can go to heaven paint an accurate picture of what those in the first century would have used to explain the gospel? While I understand how this is important for those in the Christian faith, it doesn’t seem that Jesus, John the Baptist, or even Paul associated heaven and the gospel. It appears to be more of a by-product.

The background for the word gospel comes from Isaiah 40 and Isaiah 52. In Is. 40, Isaiah established an expectation that there would come a day when one would emerge who would prepare the way out. It would coincide with Israel being rallied from exile. The breaking news, the good news, or the gospel would be that whoever was in charge would wither away like the grass and God would reign as king. When John the Baptist came on the scene quoting Is. 40, you can imagine the reaction of the people who heard it.

In Is 52, what is the good news expressed here? The good news is that there is someone is coming who will say to Jerusalem, “God Reigns! He’s the king!”

What would the listeners of Isaiah’s gospel understand when the John proclaimed the good tidings? They would have heard that salvation has arrived. Be careful not to insert our own meaning for that word there. We think salvation “is some sort of possession we get after reciting a prayer that ensures we are saved from the fires of hell and are given a seat in the afterlife, usually called heaven. (Martoia, Static, pg 33)” But what the Isrealites heard was that there was coming an end to their exile and an end to foreign rulers. The king would be restored to the throne and they would be free and whole and experience peace.

In the Greek world, the word euangelion (”gospel”) was used to announce a great victory, an important birth, or the enthronement of a new king. The coming of a new king meant the beginning of a new world order and peace was anticipated.

What if we looked at these cultural understandings of “gospel” to help us understand our message? From the Old Testament we would come to recognize that the king is finally on his way. And from the Greco-Roman world, we would see that the announcement of Jesus as King would be a direct challenge to the claims of Caesar. With the coming of the new king who supercedes the son of god enthroned at Rome, the oppression will end, and we can finally be whole and live in peace.

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