So I've been reading a book called "Jonathan Edwards on True Christianity" by Owen Strachan and Doug Sweeney. It's a commentary, really, on Edwards work and writings. Funnily enough I'm going to be quoting not Edwards, but Strachan, Sweeney and another man named David Wells. I'll begin with a few words from the authors of the book:
"...we are not deeply rooted in any sense. Oftentimes, we don't think profoundly, we don't connect meaningfully, we don't focus extendedly. We can all to easily flit through life, trying new experiences, inventing new selves through online media. We watch endless amounts of television, keep a constant vigil over our email accounts, and update 800 of our closest friends when we make a piece of toast, but we often cannot be bothered to read, or think, or delve in to the lives of unbelievers who are everywhere around us. We have focused on ourselves, pumping ourselves up through self-esteem exercises, redefining ours sins as 'tendencies' that require therapy of one kind or another, and discarding traditional marks of maturity to gratify desires we refuse to tame. In the process, we have not grown. We have shrunk."
The danger of being a believer in America isn't persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword: it's SELF.
David Wells is quoted by the authors: "God is much friendlier, too. Gone are the notes of judgment, though these are more displaced than denied, and they are replaced by those of love and acceptance...Sin is preached but is presented more in terms of how it 'harms the individual, rather than how it offends a holy God. Sin, in short, prevents us from realizing our full potential.' Conversion is insisted upon but then, paradoxically, it is the this-worldly benefits that are accentuated, the practical benefits of knowing Christ receiving all the attention with scarcely a look at what happens if we turn away from Him."
Ask me, I'll tell you this is why people flock to some megachurches to hear a motivational speaker with a nice smile. In a consumer culture God has become, to many, merely a preference.
However, Christian maturity requires rigor along with transformation.
2 comments:
This is good stuff that more folks need to hear! I may have to read this one Blaine!
My son was recently at a youth event a local church put on where 5 adults were asked to share their testimonies, many nice stories told glorifying sin but not one scripture read all evening! This from a ''solid'' church!
maddening..saddening..sobering..
Maddening, saddening, sobering indeed! Where did the Gospel go???
Nice to hear from you, Rob!
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