Blog Archive
for March, 2008
Why You Shouldn’t Worry About Jeremiah Wright, and Why You Should
— Monday, March 24th, 2008 —
The main problem with Jeremiah Wright isn’t that he’s anti-American.
Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama’s pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ has lit up the radio and television airwaves with his youtubed comments on conspiracy theories regarding American “state-sponsored terrorism.” Almost everyone this week has seen Wright call on God to damn America. Almost everyone has heard his echo of Malcolm X, that the September 11 terrorist attacks on the nation were simply America’s “chickens coming home to roost.”
Wright’s comments make for easy discussion fodder because they are shocking, angry, and, frankly, well on the way to delusional. Some of the talking heads have discussed Jeremiah Wright as though his kind of rhetoric is essential to the African-American church, a claim that is patently untrue, and easily verifiable as such. At the same time, many of the pundits seem to assume that Jeremiah Wright’s style of ministry is unique in America’s pulpits. Truth is, Jeremiah Wright’s name is Legion, and one is just as likely to hear his kind of preaching in a white congregation as in a black church.
Wright, after all, is not simply making this stuff up. What he is preaching is a form of liberation theology, leftover Marxist theory baptized in the narrative of Scripture and applied to a set of political goals. The tenor of the Trinity United Church of Christ ministry is one that is defined by race and politics. The church is “unashamedly black and unapologetically Christian,” it says, and the language of black liberation theology is everywhere in the public presentation of the mission and identity of the church.
What is disturbing to me is that too many Christians have been diagnosing the particular political aims of Reverend Wright and his church as though this were the preeminent problem.
Keep Reading...A Eulogy at Eastertime
— Friday, March 21st, 2008 —
Easter is about graves. It is about an empty grave in the Middle East. But it is also about the full graves around us, as the creation groans for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. And it is about the soon-to-be-filled graves, graves that wait for each of us should the Day of Christ be delayed as it has now for millennia.
As Holy Week comes to a close, I’m trying to discipline myself to hope and to grieve in a tension fitting for the time-between-the-times. For me, the abstract concept of death is not nearly as weighty as the particular remembrance of particular persons, persons I love, who wait for the sound of the Trumpet.
Below is a eulogy I delivered for my grandfather, on January 25, 2003, at his church, the First Baptist Church of Gulfport, Mississippi. I happened upon it today as I was clearing out some files on my computer. Thinking about him reminded me of the stingless power of the Grim Reaper, and of the awesome wonder of the triumphant Son. Perhaps it will spur you to think of the dead in Christ. I hope that, this week especially, we will miss them more, and pray even harder to the Lord of the Resurrection that they will be with us, and we with Him, soon.
Keep Reading...Lectures on a Whole Bible Theology
— Thursday, March 20th, 2008 —
In the past several weeks, Southern Seminary has heard four lectures on appropriating biblical theology for the preaching, witness, and ministry of the church. Graeme Goldsworthy, retired lecturer in hermeneutics and Old Testament at Moore Theological College, just finished Gheens Lectures entitled “And Beginning with Moses and All the Prophets: Biblical Theology in the Church, the Academy, and the Home.”
The printed text of each of Professor Goldsworthy’s lectures can be accessed below:
Lecture One: The Necessity and Viability of Biblical Theology
Lecture Two: Biblical Theology in the Seminary and Bible College
Lecture Three: Biblical Theology and Its Pastoral Application
Additionally, last week, we welcomed back an alumnus, Dr. James Hamilton, assistant professor of New Testament at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, who delivered the Julius Brown Gay Lecture, entitled “The Typology of David’s Rise to Power: Messianic Patterns in the Book of Samuel.”
The printed copy of Professor Hamilton’s paper may be accessed here and the audio can be listened to from here.
Keep Reading...Silly Rabbit, Easter’s Not for Kids
— Sunday, March 16th, 2008 —
Jesus was dead, and I mean really dead, on a cross, but he’s not anymore.
That’s how my son Timothy, a few years ago when he was three, explained to neighbors why he was so excited about Easter. No one referred me to a therapist, or to a cognitive development seminar. Those around me didn’t see the horror of what I was doing to my children. Neither did I.
We didn’t know that the Gospel, like Ginsu knives and blood pressure medicine, ought to be kept out of the reach of small children.
At least that’s what one church was told recently, by a publisher of children’s Sunday school curricula, according to Two Institutions, a blog about family and church matters.
The pastors at this church in Raleigh, North Carolina, were perplexed when they saw the Holy Week Sunday school lessons for preschoolers from “First Look,” the publisher of the one to five year-old Sunday school class materials. There wasn’t a mention of the resurrection of Jesus. Naturally, the pastors inquired about the oversight. It turns out it was no oversight.
The letter sent from the publishing company is up on the Two Institutions blog website. I had to read it three times to make sure I wasn’t falling for a Lark News parody. It turns out this publisher has decided that the Gospel is too scary for preschoolers.
Keep Reading...What Justin Martyr Could Teach Us About the Great Commission
— Wednesday, March 12th, 2008 —
Given the controversies of recent years, it is tempting for some to believe that Jewish evangelism is an innovative concept, pioneered by Southern Baptists. Justin Martyr was no Southern Baptist. He was a first-generation Christian in the second-century Roman Empire, who sought to engage paganism, Hellenic philosophy, and Judaism with the truth claims of Christian theology. But he has much to teach contemporary evangelicals about the necessity of knowing and interpreting the Bible for the task of apologetics.
Justin’s Dialogue with Trypho serves to remind Christians of the ancient Great Commission mandate of a robust, clear, and Christocentric defense of the gospel before all people.
In the Dialogue, Justin seeks to persuade a prominent Jewish thinker of the reality of Christian truth claims. Reading the Dialogue is much like listening to a one-sided telephone conversation. All that we have are Justin’s arguments. But he so thoroughly deconstructs Trypho’s objections, that it is not difficult at all to see both sides of the debate shaping up throughout the work. What contemporary evangelicals may be surprised to see is how little the debates over Christian theology have changed in the past two thousand years.
Keep Reading...Should We Miss Our Church Graveyards?
— Monday, March 10th, 2008 —
Drive by your local booming suburban church, or the up and coming congregation everyone’s talking about in your community. You might find a state-of-the-art children’s complex–complete with antibiotic soap dispensers on every corner. You might find a Family Life Center–previously known as a gym–with a basketball court, foosball tables, maybe even an Olympic size pool. You’ll almost certainly find a feeding hall, perhaps with a franchised gourmet coffee kiosk nearby. What you will not find is a graveyard.
Not many churches have cemeteries anymore. In some ways, that’s a good thing. Churches that are growing and evangelistic rightly conclude that sharing the Gospel with the living is more important than remembering the dead.
We all know churches who carefully manicure their graveyards, and many of them are ingrown and, well, dead. Of course they remember who is buried where. They also remember who paid for what pillar–so don’t you try to remove it to create additional space for your children’s Bible fellowship area. There are some churches for which the graveyard is a symbol of what’s wrong, a concern more for maintaining their family genealogies and the memories of the past than in forging forward for the Kingdom.
Keep Reading...Triumph of the Warrior-King: A Theology of the Great Commission, Part 5
— Friday, March 7th, 2008 —
A theology of the Great Commission is inextricably tied up with a theology of the church. King Jesus, after all, commands the believing community to baptize the nations, and to plant congregations across the planet. Contemporary evangelicals seem to recognize at least this much. What is often missed, however, is the authority Christ grants to his church in the Great Commission. At the calling of the apostle Paul, Jesus does not say, “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting a voluntary association that mentions me in their constitution and by-laws?” Instead, he asks, “Why are you persecuting me?” (Acts 9:5).
The New Testament presents the union of the head and his body as a mysterious “one-flesh” union (Eph 5:31-32). What is true of the one is to be true of the other (Matt 18:18-20; cf. Isaiah 22:22). This means that the church is to mirror the mission of Jesus in seeking the salvation of the world (Matt 18:10-14). A non-evangelistic church is more than just a disobedient body (although it is that). A non-evangelistic church is denying before the nations that Jesus is the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. And that is blasphemy.
The church, however, is to throb with the same evangelistic fervor that fuels its king, and to call, with his authority, the nations to surrender before his coming global reign. Thus, the apostle John sees the universal invitation to Christ coming not only from Jesus, but also from his Spirit and his Bride, the church (Rev 22:16-17). A church that is not enflamed for evangelism, missions, and church growth is not just practically ineffective; rather, it is theologically anemic. A church that prizes itself on its pristine confessional statements, but is not seeing sinners converted to Christ and is not fueling the global missions endeavor has a defective Christology. It may have some cognitive knowledge of the attributes of God or the ordo salutis, but a church that does not long for the expansion of the name of Christ to the nations is at cross-purposes with the Father God (Ps 2:8).
Keep Reading...Evangelical Fetus Fatigue
— Thursday, March 6th, 2008 —
Justin Taylor links today to what I believe to be a powerful and prophetic call from philosopher Douglas Groothuis regarding what he calls “fetus fatigue” among younger evangelicals. Specifically Groothuis speaks of those evangelicals who wish to “broaden the tent of evangelical concern.”
I agree with broadening the tent, and am concerned about poverty, the environment, racial justice, and other issues, and am frustrated by the apathy with which some conservative Protestant churches have approached such things. Still, one should be as shocked as Groothuis is at evangelicals who are willing to embrace political leaders who embrace abortion rights, often dismissing the unborn as “one issue among many.”
“It appears that millions of evangelicals, especially younger ones, are experiencing fetus fatigue. They are tired of the abortion issue taking center stage; it is time to move on to newer, hipper things–the sort of issues that excite Bono: aid to Africa, the environment, and cool tattoos. Abortion has been legal since they were born; it is the old guard that gets exercised about millions of abortions over the years. So, let’s not worry that Barak Obama and Hillary are pro-choice. That is a secondary issue. After all, neither could do that much damage regarding this issue.”
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