Saturday, April 16, 2011

N.T. Wright; Gnosticism; Lukewarm Church

So yesterday I discovered iTunes U. iTunes U is a place where all sorts of universities from around the world post lectures and such on all sorts of topics and you can browse and download them as you like. I'm an avid podcast listener and have been for some years now, so this is really exciting! Upon discovering this I promptly downloaded everything I could find by the illustrious Nicholas Tom Wright.

This morning while running and then while at the gym lifting weights, I listened to a lecture given by Dr. Wright at Duke Divinity School titled "Revelation and Christian Hope: Political Implications of the Revelation to John." I would like to share one thing he said in this lecture:

"Again and again, Revelation draws on the great themes and insights from the Old Testament prophets...because Revelation, like the whole New Testament, sees the Old Testament as a great, complex, multi-faceted narrative which came to its climax in Jesus and is now generated a new narrative which is demonstratively the fulfillment of that ancient story but also in a significantly new mode. Revelation is...the climax of prophecy...The book of Revelation tells the same story the gospels tell, which though we may not normally read the Gospels like this, goes like this...it is the story of how Jesus of Nazareth, Israel's Messiah, conquered the power of evil through His death, and became the Lord of the world. The New Testament is not about how Jesus, on the one hand revealed that He was divine and then died so that we can go to heaven. That's half-way to gnosticism if you aren't careful. They are about how Jesus acted as the embodiment of Israel's God to overthrow the usurping forces of evil and to establish through His death, resurrection, and ascension, God's Kingdom on earth as in heaven."


Amen and Amen.

Now here's my question. I am acutely aware of the fact that the church culture in which I have grown up regularly sees the vast majority of young people who grow up in church promptly leave that church at the age of 18 when they go off to college and then maybe they will come back when they turn 35 and have kids (mostly just to instill some good old morals in their young ones...remember when the gospel used to be good news?). Anyway, building on Wright's statement that the gospel is about Christ embodying Israel's God, and defeating the usurping forces of evil to establish God's Kingdom and that the gospel of Christ coming to "prove" He was God and then die "for our sins" so that we can "go to heaven" when we die is dangerously close to gnosticism, I wonder if the majority of churches, at least in rural middle america, aren't more gnostic than Christian? And if that's the case, is it any wonder so many close their doors each week? Maybe gnosticism was a hot thing 50 years ago when most of the people in church now were growing up, but somewhere along the way it has lost steam. Maybe a big part of the work we need to do as Kingdom citizens in the immediate future is converting "christians" from gnosticism to the gospel of Jesus Christ?

Friday, April 1, 2011

An Ode to Beans and Rice

I eat beans and rice almost every day of the year. Some days I eat beans and rice twice a day. I have even been known to eat beans and rice for breakfast. Beans (1 part pinto, 1 part black) and rice (brown, never white) is delicious. You can dress it up with cheese, barbeque sauce, jalepenos, onions, you can wrap it in a tortilla and toast it on the cast iron skillet, you can eat it on a bed of fritos or tortilla chips. I got a 10 pound sack of black beans for Christmas and it was gone by february. My dad orders 50 pound sacks of pinto beans and we split them up amongst the family. That's how I roll.

So in honor of how much I love beans and rice (fresh pepper season is coming! I've got 4 dozen little starts sitting next to a window in the sun right now), I wrote this poem:

I love beans and rice,
I love them very much.
I love beans and rice,
I could eat them for dinner and lunch.

Thank you, thank you very much