Evangelism in a Post-Modern World

Andy, this is for you. I tried putting it on your Facebook as a response, but for whatever reason it was not letting me do it. I would certainly covet a response from you as well as your additional thoughts at where you find yourself currently for this difficult question:

I think the more I learn about the Bible, the less relevance I truly see to our society. How do we try and share this good news that we fail to live out so much ourselves? More than that, once we get past the good part, how do we then share these teachings(or torah; chalk me up for one point! haha) that bid us to take up our cross and abandon family and other distractions. I think part of helping this has been coming to some sort of resolve within myself to think through it "logically" rather than through my life's context so far. For me, I can recognize that this world as it exists needs to be "put to rights" and that there has to be some sense of order that has initially created it and seeks to restore that. Now, this is where I am somewhat limited to my context, but I can say at this point the character of the Christian God is most compelling in completing this puzzle in my brain. If I at least have a starting point, I feel this can aide in setting some mutual footing.

Yoder

Although I have not done much reading outside of that for my Pentateuch "class" I'm informally taking through mp3's courtesy of Fuller and iTunes U, I am reading John Howard Yoder's most well-known work "The Politics of Jesus." Although not far in, I can already see that this will be a challenging but rewarding work. He gives a refreshing take assessing the implications of Jesus' purpose and saying as opposed to instilling on Him a certain bias. Some examples:

"...there is often an appeal to Jesus as a revolutionary and political figure; yet this appeal is a slogan-like formal one. It is not linked to a substantial concern for the kind of politics Jesus incarnated. It is thus marked by the absence of precisely the concerns to which the present paper is devoted."

Speaking to folks who come to Jesus' teaching and actions as if he is simply a radical:
"...their style is still sufficiently impressionistic that the theological reader is not sure how much of what they say about 'Mahatma Jesus' should really be taken seriously as exegesis, and how much is simply the new symbolic dress for something they could say without it."

This balance that is found here is something that is desperately needed in the church today. While my generation and younger have been influenced largely by many who say Jesus was a social activist and actually fell more on the side of love than hate/dislike. It is definitely attractive and desirable to come to an understanding of faith that involves action and being involved in caring for the needy(which is certainly not unique in Jesus), but it is important to not lose sight of why we ought to be this way. We shouldn't trade or mistake a living and active faith for social action. We are to be a blessing and we ought to be aware that we are carriers of good news for all, however especially to the poor(however that may be defined) because the rich have had and are having their reward.

I'm looking forward to continuing this book and seeing the other things I will learn along the way.

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Now playing: The Onion - Prematurely Born-Again Christian Suffers Complications

Making Wise The Simple

Professor Goldingay uses the text Making Wise the Simple by Johanna W.H. Van Wijk-Bos, and the small portion of it I have read so far as been extremely profound and has really aided in teaching different insights of the Torah.

"The use of the so-called Ecumenical Lectionary in many congregations illustrates this customary devaluing of the largest part of the Bible. Old Testament passages are served up in a fragmented fashion, subordinated to the agenda of the Christian year, and either trumped by New Testmant selections or interpreted as merely a prelude to them."

"Having lost their moorings in the Torah, churchgoers at best assume the central tenets of faith and practice, as love of God and neighbor, to belong mainly to the prophetic critique of biblical Israel's shortcomings, or to have been invented by Jesus and his followers."

"In order to become reacquainted and reengaged with the Bible, it is important to establish and evaluate the distance between us and the text, between our world and that world."

Most of our sermons and our focus are on Jesus and clearly this is with reason, but how can we expect to understand Jesus if we fail to see him as a faithful Jew. To take that further, we must understand that the Torah would have been written on His heart and would greatly shape the way He would look at the world. The holy and perfect teaching and law of the Torah would be central to Christ's purpose in continuing what God had started from the beginning. What God began in Exodus 19 in calling Israel to live and become a blessing to the world was carried through with Jesus' message and purpose as well.

What a shame that we don't take the time in our lectionary and sermons for these texts which undergird that which we do teach every week. We seem to be teaching this message that has no solid foundation and miss out on the richness that is found in the Hebrew Bible.

It is hard to know what to do, however, because it seems that this meaning is not readily available for the common laymen and if it wasn't for my renewed interest and vigor for the Bible by these different authors I would certainly continue being in the dark. I am only now discovering that there is so much to the Scriptures, and it truly has been a blessing to uncover the utter depth that is found there. My increased awe and wonder of the Bible has done the same for how I interpret God.

So much to keep learning...

The First Post

It seems as more blogs are added to the fold on a daily basis there has to be some sort of explanation in justifying yet another. I suppose that I look at this more as a tool for myself to aid in a running timeline of my theological understandings as well as having a place with my thoughts that I can use a search engine on as opposed to spending large amounts of time looking for it through a journal or other similar tool.

The title of my blog comes out of all the new findings lately that have stemmed from me understanding that if I am truly going to begin to learn anything then I must be willing to unlearn first to allow for a fresh understanding. This means that I need to unlearn both what I learned from growing up on the more conservative side and also more recently from the side that is more liberal. A true clean slate. In doing this I need to eliminate any presuppositions I have and allow those who have spent their entire lives studying these topics speak to me of the Scriptures.

Because of the context in which the scriptures were written I am unable to take them at face value because I can only do so within the framework of an American white 25 year old male. I must not make simple presuppositions of what something truly means unless I am willing to understand the culture in which I am reading about. I don't want to assume Jesus was simply concerned only with getting us into heaven or about social justice, lest I do to this central figure what our nation has done in attempting to spread democracy to places that want nothing to do with it. God deserves better than that and I truly believe this is the beginning of a new quest of which I am very excited and intimidated by it all.

This was first initiated by reading works by N.T. Wright and through his rabbit trail that are his bibliographies I have encountered a new world that is so vast and endless. While Wright and other's that he may mention are mostly New Testament scholars, they know that they are unable to fairly approach the New Testament by means of understanding and gleaning from the Old Testament or Hebrew Bible.

And this is where I find myself at this point. I learned that Fuller Theological Seminary had a few classes online and that two were on the Old Testament taught by a guy named John Goldingay. While I didn't know the name initially, I came to find out that he is going to be taking on the For Everyone popular commentary series for the OT that Wright has done for the NT. This was all I needed to hear and from there I decided I would get the books(for Christmas!) so that I could follow along like I am auditing the class. It has already been enlightening and I will actually do another post now to highlight what I have learned so far(to avoid this post stretching on into two browser windows!)

Here goes nothing!