...& following

Case for Christ: Heart or Head

Ray Fleming — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 14:58:27 +0000

Our spring “trimester” study group at church last night began a six-week series of discussions on Lee Strobel’s and Gary Poole’s book and DVD study called The Case for Christ.

This study is aimed at a general audience of people investigating the Christian faith, probably, for the first time in a serious way. Since the room was filled with people who were already Christians (some for many, many years), the approach probably felt somewhat basic.

It is helpful, though, especially for longstanding Christians, to examine their faith through the eyes of someone who might be skeptical. I, for one, have the tendency to over complicate the issue. A case in point:

During one segment of the DVD, Lee and his wife Leslie described how they came to a faith in Jesus. Leslie Strobel mentioned that her conversion was primarily emotional and a matter of the heart. Lee, on the other hand, mentioned that he needed to investigate the claims made regarding Jesus to determine their validity. He is, after all, a journalist and it is a natural for him to engage his head before his heart.

This led to a discussion in our group about the different methods of obtaining knowledge about the Christian faith. I jumped right in with a defense of an intellectual approach. My wife, Gale, said, after we had been talking for quite some time, that it is ALWAYS the heart.

I thought about this even after the meeting: She’s right!

First of all, it’s the heart of God that is first engaged: “For God so loved the world…”

And, then, our hearts: “We love because He first loved us…”

The idea that there’s a dichotomy between “heart” and “head” is really a distraction from the real issue. When God enters the scene, heart and head are reunited.

Review: reJesus

Ray Fleming — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 04:28:23 +0000

Near the end of their book, reJesus, Michael Frost and Alan Hirsch put forward a provocative idea: Jesus didn’t ask us to worship Him. Jesus demanded obedience instead.

This is a simple idea when you think about it. In its day, this idea changed the landscape, shifted the paradigm, and turned the world upside down.

To this day, I nod my head in agreement with this idea. But, then, while the idea is still reverberating, I shake my head in sadness as I realize how far from it I’ve strayed. I think longingly of a time long past “when I knew next to nothing” and Christianity was exciting and scary and exhilarating and delicious and sweet and all that was Christianity was someone named Jesus; no institution, no programs, no buildings, just Jesus. That was all and that was enough.

If I approach the message of Christ as a call to obedience it changes radically what I do on Sunday morning and even more radically what I do on Monday morning.

Frost and Hirsch don’t claim this idea is original. But, then again, Christianity is not about originality. It’s about following. Following, by its very nature, is not original. Paul told the Philippians to follow him as he followed Christ. And we follow those who came before who followed Christ. Nothing original here.

But a lack of originality does not necessarily preclude the use of creativity.

Sounds odd, doesn’t it? Originality is not creativity: This is the kind of paradox Frost and Hirsch seem to address in reJesus. And, as they compellingly argue, we need to address this kind of paradox, both as individuals and in groups.

How do we follow Christ creatively?

Their answer does create possibilities for creativity: We need to get to know the Jesus of the gospels. What kind of man was/is He? What did He teach? What is it about Jesus that surprises us? And, maybe as important as the things we don’t know, what do we do with the things we think about Jesus that cannot be validated by the gospel accounts, about the “ things we know that ain’t so?”

This is the second book they’ve written together. The first book, The Shaping of Things to Come was about ecclesiology and how the church could become more missional and incarnational. ReJesus, however, centers upon the more foundational idea of how a study of Jesus (Christology) informs and shapes the mission of the church. “Christology,” they say, “is the key to the renewal of the church in every age.” Christology leads to Missiology which then informs Ecclesiology. This is constantly recalibrated with every age in church history.

As they say: “The inference is that by and large the church as we currently experience it in the West has to varying degrees lost touch with the wild and dangerous message it carries and is duty bound to live out and pass on.” In their third chapter, they include a generous profile of the Pharisees, a group about whom Jesus said nothing good. Every point they make about the Pharisees could also be applied to many contemporary groups of Evangelicals. Their point? That our institutional structures and even our so-called Christian sub-culture has lost touch with the Jesus of the gospels. And this is what we need to regain: We need to re-Jesus the church.

If their first three chapters are theologically heavy, their fourth chapter takes a light-hearted turn. The chapter is entitled “ I Have a Picture of Jesus” and examines artist’s depictions of Jesus through the centuries. They discuss paintings they rename “ Bearded Lady Jesus” and “Spooky Jesus” to show how our preconceptions can work their way into who we think Jesus was and is. I’d love to take a small group through just this chapter and then end the session with a paraphrase of the prayer by C. S. Lewis, “Lord, I pray to you not as I think you are but as you know yourself to be.”

All in all, I liked their book; it gave me much to think about and I recommend it highly. Their last three chapters give practical advice as to how to put the idea into practice and how they think Christians could be obedient to their calling. You may not agree with everything they say and they don’t provide an exact blueprint. But then again, they leave plenty of room for creativity.

What’s the big deal about the ARIS Survey?

Ray Fleming — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 12:44:40 +0000

Here’s a link to Touchstone’s summary of the American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS).

Take a look and make a comment. We’ll talk a bit about this on Sunday.

One of the more interesting findings:

Most of the growth in the Christian population occurred among those who would identify only as “Christian,” “Evangelical/Born Again,” or “non-denominational Christian.” The last of these, associated with the growth of mega-churches, has increased from less than 200,000 in 1990 to 2.5 million in 2001 to over 8 million today. These groups grew from 5 percent of the population in 1990 to 8.5 percent in 2001 to 11.8 percent in 2008. Significantly, 38.6 percent of mainline Protestants now also identify themselves as evangelical or born again.

“It looks like the two-party system of American Protestantism—mainline versus evangelical—is collapsing,” said Mark Silk, director of the Public Values Program. “A generic form of evangelicalism is emerging as the normative form of non-Catholic Christianity in the United States.”

Resurrection Songs 7

Ray Fleming — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 16:55:06 +0000

Johne Donne: Holy Sonnets X

Death be not proud, though some have callèd thee
Mighty and dreadfull, for, thou art not so,
For, those, whom thou think’st, thou dost overthrow,
Die not, poore death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
From rest and sleepe, which but thy pictures bee,
Much pleasure, then from thee, much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee doe goe,
Rest of their bones, and soules deliverie.
Thou art slave to Fate, Chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poyson, warre, and sicknesse dwell,
And poppie, or charmes can make us sleepe as well,
And better then thy stroake; why swell’st thou then;
One short sleepe past, wee wake eternally,
And death shall be no more; death, thou shalt die.

Resurrections Songs 6

Ray Fleming — Sun, 22 Feb 2009 03:25:02 +0000

Loretta Lynn: Everybody Wants to Go To Heaven

Timing of Evidence

Ray Fleming — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 12:35:48 +0000

Read Craig Blomberg’s post about when resurrection beliefs became widely known and believed.

This sounds remedial to Christians who take for granted that Jesus rose from the dead. “Of course,” we say. “If Jesus really rose from the dead, the belief would have surfaced very early in church history…like, RIGHT AFTER IT HAPPENED! Isn’t that obvious?”

Well, no. Or at least it isn’t obvious to a large number of scholars who want a bit more evidence than 2,000 years worth of people saying, “I believe.”

But, even when scholars look at the resurrection from a rules of evidence perspective, there’s enough to say that the belief is rational.

Blomberg’s post describes the work of two scholars who–though they come from wildly different traditions and come to different conclusions–explain why they believe the resurrection was accepted very early in church history. Why is this important? It rebuts the argument that the gospels and the resurrection stories came later after much thought and reflection.

Evidence for the Resurrection

Ray Fleming — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 04:30:44 +0000

The Evidence for the Resurrection website gives reasons why someone should believe that the resurrection of Jesus truly happened.

There’s enough on this site to give you something to think about. I think that one of the more compelling arguments that something wild happened is this one:

But the most telling testimony of all must be the lives of those early Christians. We must ask ourselves: What caused them to go everywhere telling the message of the risen Christ?

Had there been any visible benefits accrued to them from their efforts–prestige, wealth, increased social status or material benefits–we might logically attempt to account for their actions, for their whole-hearted and total allegiance to this “risen Christ .”

As a reward for their efforts, however, those early Christians were beaten, stoned to death, thrown to the lions, tortured and crucified. Every conceivable method was used to stop them from talking.

Yet, they laid down their lives as the ultimate proof of their complete confidence in the truth of their message.

This is difficult to explain. The apostles really believed that Jesus rose from the dead, or they were just, plain crazy.

Week 2 SBH Discussion: The Strange Story of Easter

Ray Fleming — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 12:10:44 +0000

In this week’s session, Chuck reviewed the Easter stories in each of the four gospels:

The Easter story—as suggested by Wright—is actually a strange story, with unusual details. Opponents of Christianity point to inconsistencies in the individual gospel accounts as proof that the gospels were made up by those people in the early church.

Related to Wright’s point in SBH, Simon Greenleaf—a lawyer and author who wrote at the beginning of the last century—subjected the gospel stories to modern day “ rules of evidence” as if the gospels were exhibits for a case in a court of law. What was his conclusion? The inconsistencies in the gospel stories, rather than destroying claims made in those stories, actually go further towards proving that the manuscripts were very early documents in the history of Christianity and that they were probably written by eyewitnesses to the events described. In other words, they were not fictional pieces or legends or myths or some sort of oral history that were compiled at a later date. If the stories were made up, he reasoned, the details would match and fit together more neatly than they do. The fact that there are inconsistencies in the gospel accounts match the way witnesses to a crime may emphasize different aspects of what they saw without calling into question that what happened really happened in the first place.

Resurrection Songs 5

Ray Fleming — Sun, 15 Feb 2009 11:44:51 +0000

Jars of Clay: All My Tears

Resurrection Songs 4

Ray Fleming — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 11:20:31 +0000

Handel!

That’s all I need to say. The sound is very low at the beginning of this video. It gets louder, so no need to adjust your volume setting. This is a stunning performance by Teddy Tahu Rhodes from New Zealand, although I don’t think what he performs can be classified as a mere “song.” I enjoy this piece of music very much.