Scot McKnight: May 2008 Archives

Chicago Spring means spotting Baltimore Orioles and the morning dance of birds:

Evangelical renaissance?

Only God.

A lower case friend of mine points us to this: and it is cool.

Angry young men.

Good confession and a prayer for healing from us.

Been fishing?

Speaking of fishing ... one of our pastor's wisdom writers who loves to fish, Rob Merola, continued his post on his own blog. So did David Fitch.

I'm sure some pastors can find a great analogy or illustration in this story. Any come to mind immediately?

Here's a book deal on Jason Boyett's Pocket Guide. Only 6.99 per book.

Michael Kruse has a potent little chart posted about the growth of religious adherence in the USA.

Very thoughtful piece by Ed Gilbreath.

Karen doing good for the victims of war.

Your youth minister needs to see this listing by Marko.

Some of our students biking for justice.

A truth-teller.

Xenophobia in South Africa.

One in our blog community has just finished blogging about another in our blog community -- about his book.

1. A question for pastors.
2. Summer jobs ... many youngsters are struggling to find one.
3. Gotta love this one.
4. Elite teens struggling to find time for lunch.
5. Thabo Mbekei speaks about xenophobia unrest.
6. Wow, maybe the longest political rant I've ever listened to: Keith Olberman on Hillary Clinton.
7. Tribune links don't always last, but I hope this one does: some Midwest States are working on legislation to protect the water in the Great Lakes.
8. Has anyone read this book? Any thoughts?
9. This deserves to be higher and I've run out of space, and Eugene will forgive me (I hope), but his paragraph of misspellings is priceless.
10. Tamara Buchan, at Missio Lux, has some great missional work going on.

Sports:

The Cubs, in the simplest of terms, are the best. B-E-S-T

Big concern.

One of the good things about the arrival of summer is that it seems soccer seasons (finally and relievingly) end all over the world. How grown adults can play for 90 minutes, have a score of 0-0, and end it all by goal kicks is beyond me. It's like a baseball game ending with two pitchers on the mound seeing who can throw the most strikes in a row or a tie golf match ending with a putting contest. End the game playing the real game.

I don't know what you think is the best book on Christ and Culture, but I'd be interested in hearing. We are looking at John Stackhouse, Making the Best of It , and we turn to his first resource for how he builds his own version of Christian realism. He starts with CS Lewis.

By the way, there are some new books on this topic, including DA Carson's Christ and Culture Revisited, which just arrived on my desk. Any response to that book or any others you think should be mentioned?

Now, to Lewis.

He begins with what I might call the building blocks of how CS Lewis approached Christ and culture questions. He begins with the Christian Story: creation, fall, redemption, and consummation. Along the way, Stackhouse inserts some salty quotations from Lewis, including these you might want to respond to:

"Lewis has relatively little to say about church life or about society as a whole" (55).

"To me, religion ought to have been a matter of good men praying alone, and meeting by twos and threes to talk of spiritual matters" (55). [Stackhouse didn't think Lewis changed his mind on this after his conversion.]

"Yes this individualism is not self-absorption" (56).

Then he tackles the themes one finds in Lewis: sanctification of self -- and society?, conversion ... as chief mission and yet scholarship as worthy occupation, work and domesticity, hope and vocation, history and imagination, enjoying the world and its maker...

Lewis' concern "was not to subvert public institutions nor to convert them to their final messianic state, but to revert them back to their traditional sources and purposes in God's providence" (60).

Here's one: "The real reason for democracy is that we are so fallen that no man can be trusted with unchecked power over his fellows" (61). [What part does the Fall play in your "Christ and culture" view?]

He observes how much time Lewis took up with Mrs Moore and household duties. Lewis didn't live in a library.

He liked friendship, beer and food, conversation, and encounter with nature (66). He thought these things were intrinsically good. He did not simply see these things as iconic -- pointing to God.

He thought his devotion to literature was a perfectly good calling. His conversion did not call him out of culture and into the church ministry, but to work at the complex relation of Christian beliefs, values, and norms to the culture (68).

Stackhouse works through Lewis, Niebuhr and Bonhoeffer before he builds his case. So ... that's where we are.

We gather on Friday under this title to discuss a good idea or a good book with friends, and the book we are now discussing is Klyne Snodgrass's Stories with Intent, a complete study of the parables. It is written for pastors and teachers and is a handbook -- that is, it gives you the material to interpret the parables.

We turn today to the parable of the treasure in Matt 13:44: "The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field. When a man found it, he hid it again, and then in his joy went and sold all he had and bought that field."

How would you teach, preach, or explain this parable? What is the "treasure"?

Again, a masterful selection of the possible background texts, including cultural codes about hiding money.

Snodgrass suggests the parable is about both the value of the kingdom and the cost of discipleship. A focus is on the behavior of the person in the parable. Do you think his selling all is a call for us to sell all? Why or why not? And do you think the parable indicates that the kingdom is present and awaiting recognition?

Does this parable teach salvation by grace?

Is there anything you have experienced like the man in this parable?

This marks the end of our series from pastors. I have really enjoyed this series, I hope you have too, but I want to acknowledge their contributions publicly. Thanks. We probably won't know who helpful this is. While we were in South Africa, two young pastors approached me to say how much these posts were helping them! Today, we finish with a friend, Don Johnson, who serves in (sorry to say) Santa Barbara CA.

If I started again, I would prepare the same way; seminary training focusing on the classics of Greek, Hebrew, Church History, Theology and Ethics. I would spend less time on counseling and psychology and more on worship and liturgics.

But if I began again in a church, I would systematically visit every home and family in the church during the first year. I would visit both the oldest and youngest members of the church and just ask to hear their stories. I would get to know other pastors as friends and not competitors. I would try to spend more time listening and less time impressing. I would promise the church only three nights out each week and hold the line, giving my family the evenings I allowed the church to rob. I would laugh more and play jokes on my congregation. I would take myself less seriously and take children much more seriously. I would make sure I knew the names and stories of the old people. I would lead more trips for members, not only for missions, but for learning and for fun. I would learn to ball-room dance with my wife so I could have more fun at weddings and parties

I would continue doing some things I do: reading Christian classics, reading straight through the Bible, avoid breakfast meetings at all costs, instead get to a quiet place early and alone. I would continue to read the New York Times and good secular thinkers

Yes, these texts from Paul about wrath are the sensitive spot for many today, but our task is to look at them, to look them in the eye, and see if we can make sense of them. Romans 4 has the next reference to wrath:

13 For the promise that he would inherit the world did not come to Abraham or to his descendants through the law but through the righteousness of faith. 14 If it is the adherents of the law who are to be the heirs, faith is null and the promise is void. 15 For the law brings wrath; but where there is no law, neither is there violation. 16 For this reason it depends on faith, in order that the promise may rest on grace and be guaranteed to all his descendants, not only to the adherents of the law but also to those who share the faith of Abraham (for he is the father of all of us ...)

Seemingly out of the blue, Paul says the "law brings/effects/produces wrath." Well, we might ask, how? Since the next clause has the word "violation," we are led to think the law brings wrath because the law brings a moral clarity that humans fall short of and that falling short leads to the just judgment of God against sin. In such a way law brings wrath.

Paul's concern here is not universal but with the Jewish people whose sins were turned into transgressions by the Torah (Moo).

But, here is Paul's bigger point, law brings wrath and faith brings salvation. And "faith" here is "faith in Christ, who himself brings that salvation." So, Paul distinguishes what happens to the Jewish person who knows the covenant and does not follow Christ and the person who knows the covenant and does know Christ. Paul is pushing in this context against the adequacy of the Mosaic Torah -- it is a wrath-slinging set of words.