Filed under: Book Review | Tags: Christianity, Hypocrisy, Missional, Post-Christian, Review, Spirituality
Since one of my resolutions for the New Year was to spend some time reading each day, I expect to finish a few books this year. I figured that this would be a good place to review the books I’m reading as well as hear your thoughts on them. I’m definitely not comfortable as a book critic (in fact I failed that part of English in High School), so please bear with me. I hope these attempts will be of some benefit, but we’ll have to see 
UnChristian (What A New Generation Really Thinks About Christianity…And Why It Matters)
By David Kinnaman and Gabe Lyons
In the latest study from Barna Research Group, Kinnaman focuses on what 16-29 year olds feel about Christians from both inside and outside the church. I wish I could call the results surprising but they only serve to verify what many of us already feel. Christianity has a major image problem. The people that should have the market cornered on being known for being loving, forgiving, life-giving revolutionaries are in fact best summed up by words like: hypocritical, anti-homosexual, sheltered, judgmental, too political, and too focused on obtaining converts. Only 16% of those surveyed outside of Christianity have a favorable impression of Christians, and 49% have a bad impression of evangelical Christians. Obviously if an entire generation feels this way about Christianity we have seriously failed in representing the real grace-filled gospel of Jesus.
UnChristian is basically two books. Much of the book is spent on discussing the results of the research which while interesting is some times belabored and repetitive. At the end of each chapter various Christian leaders lend their thoughts to the major issues discussed. This is by far the strongest part of the book. The perspectives offered are diverse and insightful and help to reenforce the challenges and opportunities facing Jesus followers who wish to change these perceptions. In my opinion these dialogues speak to the direct issues of the book, and should have made up more of the finished product. I even found a new author to read, Margaret Feinberg. I have no idea who she is, but her insight and wisdom reveal her as someone to be read and respected.
Overall, I would recommend this book to anyone who wonders about the perception problems facing Christianity in the future. It would be especially insightful to those who have not realized the gravity of the challenges facing the church, or who have yet to acknowledge that a serious problem exists. On the other hand readers who either come from these age groups or who have been students of the emerging cultures will find little to surprise them. The research will confirm much, but offers few new insights into how to challenge those perceptions. The book is a fairly quick read, and worth reading if you have the time. The commentaries highlight the opportunities ahead and offer hope to those who wish to repaint the image of Jesus to the world He loves.
Filed under: Bible, Missional Church | Tags: Bible, Christianity, Hypocrisy, Jesus, Judgment, Religious Elite, Temptation
First some thoughts on the last set of verses. It’s so interesting to note that whenever Jesus speaks of judgment he is referring to either 1) a future judgment done by God on all that has been distorted from what God created His creation to be, or 2) a different kind of judgment referring specifically to religious leaders and institutions who claim to represent God but who have allowed their personal holiness and interpretation of Scripture to take them away from the people God loves (ie. sinners, prostitutes, and tax collectors). This type of judgment is usually laid out on the religious establishment because they have become more concerned with looking and feeling righteous than with grace and forgiveness of God. In last weeks account the religious leaders refused to see the act of healing the blind man as God’s work and eventually threw him out of their presence (removed him from fellowship in the Jewish religious community). But Jesus responds by not only seeking and comforting the man with new sight, but declaring judgment on the “blind” religious elite.
Sometimes I wonder how far we are from this today. Are we, by our attitudes, pride, and methods keeping people from experiencing the grace of God? How would Jesus respond to us and our religiosity? And how would we respond to Jesus (or do we respond to the Spirit) when/if He does something that makes us feel uncomfortable? Those are really hard questions, and it’s so easy to throw stones at others. But I need to ask them about myself, and continually allow Jesus to shake me from my comfortable spot on understanding, safety, and security.
So enough of that on to something fresh. We going to spend the next couple months looking at the words of Jesus in the gospel of Luke. Hopefully this will not only allow Him to shake us up, but provide a sense of connection and context to all we are learning. We’ll start at what has been describes as the crux of Luke’s message, a statement by Jesus about who He is and what He has come to do: Luke 4.
Luke 4:1-30
Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the desert, where for forty days he was tempted by the devil. He ate nothing during those days, and at the end of them he was hungry.
The devil said to him, “If you are the Son of God, tell this stone to become bread.”
Jesus answered, “It is written: ‘Man does not live on bread alone.”
The devil led him up to a high place and showed him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world. And he said to him, “I will give you all their authority and splendor, for it has been given to me, and I can give it to anyone I want to. So if you worship me, it will all be yours.”
Jesus answered, “It is written: ‘Worship the Lord your God and serve him only.”
The devil led him to Jerusalem and had him stand on the highest point of the temple. “If you are the Son of God,” he said, “throw yourself down from here. For it is written:
” ‘He will command his angels concerning you to guard you carefully;
they will lift you up in their hands, so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.”
Jesus answered, “It says: ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.”
When the devil had finished all this tempting, he left him until an opportune time.Jesus returned to Galilee in the power of the Spirit, and news about him spread through the whole countryside. He taught in their synagogues, and everyone praised him.
He went to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, and on the Sabbath day he went into the synagogue, as was his custom. And he stood up to read. The scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to him. Unrolling it, he found the place where it is written:
“The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind,
to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
Then he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant and sat down. The eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fastened on him, and he began by saying to them, “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.”
All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his lips. “Isn’t this Joseph’s son?” they asked.
Jesus said to them, “Surely you will quote this proverb to me: ‘Physician, heal yourself! Do here in your hometown what we have heard that you did in Capernaum.’ “
“I tell you the truth,” he continued, “no prophet is accepted in his hometown. I assure you that there were many widows in Israel in Elijah’s time, when the sky was shut for three and a half years and there was a severe famine throughout the land. Yet Elijah was not sent to any of them, but to a widow in Zarephath in the region of Sidon. And there were many in Israel with leprosy in the time of Elisha the prophet, yet not one of them was cleansed—only Naaman the Syrian.”
All the people in the synagogue were furious when they heard this. They got up, drove him out of the town, and took him to the brow of the hill on which the town was built, in order to throw him down the cliff. But he walked right through the crowd and went on his way.
A couple things that stood out to me that I need to think about this week.
First, who led Jesus out to be tempted and who led Him back? How does that match up with how I understand the rest of Scripture?
Second, if Jesus sums up His own mission from that portion of Isaiah 61. What does that mean for us as His followers? Is that the kind of message I am living? And why didn’t Luke write down what else He spoke about that had all the people “amazed at the gracious words that came from His lips”?
I’m sure that only begins to scratch the surface of this passage and I’m equally sure that the Spirit will reveal different layers to all of us who spend time with this. I’d love to hear your answers to those questions and any other comments, questions, or insights you might have.
Here are a few other verses that seem to connect with these dots.
Filed under: Bible, Missional Church | Tags: Bible, Forgiveness, Grace, Hypocrisy, Judgement, Spirituality
Last week we had some great thoughts on forgiveness, judgment, and grace. It’s so freeing to see Jesus through fresh eyes. One of the things we’ve spent a little bit of time talking about on Sunday evenings the last 2 weeks has been different types of judgment (Thanks for pointing this out Omar). Is it OK for me to have a problem with the way some followers of Jesus represent God? How am I supposed to respond to this? If Jesus didn’t come to judge and I am sent the same way what do I do? I’ve really been thinking about this the last week, and just about fell off my chair when I read this “contradiction” in the Bible (gasp). So having said that what do we do with passages like this? I’d love to hear your thoughts:
John 9:24-41
A second time they summoned the man who had been blind. “Give glory to God,” they said. “We know this man is a sinner.
He replied, “Whether he is a sinner or not, I don’t know. One thing I do know. I was blind but now I see!”
Then they asked him, “What did he do to you? How did he open your eyes?”\
He answered, “I have told you already and you did not listen. Why do you want to hear it again? Do you want to become his disciples, too?”
Then they hurled insults at him and said, “You are this fellow’s disciple! We are disciples of Moses!
We know that God spoke to Moses, but as for this fellow, we don’t even know where he comes from.”
The man answered, “Now that is remarkable! You don’t know where he comes from, yet he opened my eyes. We know that God does not listen to sinners. He listens to the godly man who does his will. Nobody has ever heard of opening the eyes of a man born blind. If this man were not from God, he could do nothing.”
To this they replied, “You were steeped in sin at birth; how dare you lecture us!” And they threw him out.
Jesus heard that they had thrown him out, and when he found him, he said, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?”
“Who is he, sir?” the man asked. “Tell me so that I may believe in him.”
Jesus said, “You have now seen him; in fact, he is the one speaking with you.”
Then the man said, “Lord, I believe,” and he worshiped him.
Jesus said, “For judgment I have come into this world, so that the blind will see and those who see will become blind.”
Some Pharisees who were with him heard him say this and asked, “What? Are we blind too?”
Jesus said, “If you were blind, you would not be guilty of sin; but now that you claim you can see, your guilt remains.
What!? For judgment He came into the world? Isn’t this exactly opposite what Jesus says in John 3 and 12? And yet to me it all makes sense.
Heres the rest of the story for context and some other “judgment” verses for you to add to this:
Before I spew my thoughts I’d love to hear yours. So hook it up and write it down.
Oh, one more thing. We are not meeting this Sunday evening for discussion (we’ll be out playing), so if your part of the actual Sunday gathering feel free to post your thoughts here and come hang out with us. If your a virtual part of our community we want your thoughts too even if your too far away to come play Next week I think we’re going to jump into Jesus’ words in the gospel of Luke and spend some time with that account of Jesus’ story. It should be fun.
