The problem of evil and the Genesis Flood

We’re all familiar with the problem of evil. How can God sit back and watch this misery. I was reading the paper recently and caught a piece on child trafficking. Reading the story of a six year old working 14 hour days bailing out a fishing boat broke my heart. I have a six year old boy and the thought of him living such a life undoes me. It is easy in those moments to challenge God. Either he isn’t paying attention, he isn’t good, or he can’t do anything about it.

What do we want from God? We want action. We want to see God step in and start breaking some skulls. We have a list of the evil doers that we believe needs addressing immediately and we want God to get busy. We all know that there is less damaging, less heinous evil, like the kind that you and I and other good people do, but we’d really like God to get to work on the flagrant violators like those who abuse children and prey on the weak. Is all that Old Testament language just lip service? Let’s see some action.

Why the church really doesn't believe in grace

Most of us can rattle off Ephesians 2:8 with no problem at all. We are saved by grace through faith and not by works. This has become a standard Protestant mantra since the Reformation and most can rattle it off and pledge allegiance to it without a twinge of guilt or hesitation. We say this, but nearly everything we say or do in our churches speaks otherwise. We claim we are "saved" by grace but in church we seek our salvation through out works. Many have asserted this before, this is nothing new, but let me tell you what I see.

Most of us in North America who have been around church a bit can’t help but understand the word "salvation" to mean hell avoidance. This meaning has become it’s church meaning, it’s religious meaning, it’s "Christian" meaning for most of us. When you speak with other Christians and ask "are they saved" what you are really asking is "when they die will their soul go to heaven." Everyone understands this. Even the non-Christian world gets this. Notice the challenges they continually present to Christians: "Do you mean to say that gays won’t go to heaven? Do you mean to say that devote Muslims, Buddhists and people who have never heard the word Jesus are going to hell? Why do you think only Christians go to heaven?" Our Christian ghetto language is no secret. We have made it our mission to "present the gospel" to everyone and most people have some understanding of what we’ve been talking about. They get it. Salvation means you soul goes to heaven when you die. Jesus died so that our souls can go to heaven and not go to hell. Plain and simply, ask the proverbial Sunday School teacher.

Changing focus on church mission statements

Individual/personal transformational mission statements vs. city/community/world transformational mission statements.

I don’t know if churches had mission statements before the seeker movement. The Seeker movement employed business tools in churches and part of what came along with this was mission statements. Mission/Vision statements are supposed to help churches get specific and focus their efforts and energies. It’s a good goal. Most churches wind up with mission statements that are a hodgepodge put together by committee. They accurately express the diffused assumptions and aspirations of churches that at one level kind of know what they want to do/ought to do but struggle to put it into one tight sentence.

On Hell and Parties

Not morally superior

Both in the Supremacy talk (around minute 57 in the MP3) and the (pay for) sermon on Exclusivity of the Gospel Keller makes the point that a Christian may not be morally superior to a non-Christian. In fact he says it stronger, even to the degree of expectation. I find this is a really important point when it comes to dealing with the various other religionists around me. Some of them are excellent moral, giving people and they project that very well. This is something I want to ponder more thoroughly. Surely it is clear that the Gospel cleans us up, but there are obviously more ways to be moral than the gospel. This also touches on the common virtue vs. true virtue notion.

A few thoughts to follow...

Keller's Speech at the Piper Conference

Link to download the audio.

Here is a written summary by an attendee: http://www.challies.com/archives/002116.php

The assumption behind the "damning the good" question

The very common question of "damning the good" came up at my small group tonight. You all know the question. "Are you saying that God would send a very moral muslim man to hell simply because he isn't a Christian? What about the person in a tribe out in the jungle who never heard the word Jesus..." For a while I was engaging this question both on the front of grace, not moral accomplishment as well as the CS Lewis approach of "if they haven't wanted to have anything to do with God now, why would they want to spend eternity up close to him at full wattage..." These answers were bringing pauses but not really engaging in the ways I intended. Then I remembered a conversation I had on Sunday with a person with a rather unusual take on things.

Identity in Keller's Preaching

A key theme that Keller works again and again has to do with the concept of identity. All preachers use what I call pathways. These are ways to easily get from here to there, they are the main arteries of one’s theological fabric and one of the central arteries for Keller is use of the concept of identity. Keller quotes Kierkegaard in The Sickness Unto Death by depicting sin as "building your identity on anything but God". Sin can be defined as law breaking, but Keller points out that in a post-modern age the immediate retort is "who sets the laws?"

This quote from a piece on the web from Keller is a great example of how he uses identity.

"Message: Sin is building your identity—finding your greatest meaning, significance and security—on something besides God. Everyone centers his or her life on something, and whatever that is becomes by definition and function a)your god—something you adore and serve with your whole heart, and b) your "savior"—something you have to have in order to feel spiritually and emotionally significant and meaningful. So even the seemingly most nonreligious people are living lives of worship, working for their "salvation" though not expressing it so to themselves."

Keller reference to a NY Times Mag Art.

Part of the reason to listen to other preachers is to find good illustrations. In Keller's sermon entitled Christ our Life he notes an article from Mark Lilla written for the NY Times on Sept 18, 2005 entitled Getting Religion. You can find it via the archives search page under the author or the title. You can purchase the article for $4.95.