Five Reasons to Plant New Churches

The Basic Scriptural Reason

The basic reason for planting new churches is that this is the way the church grew in the book of Acts. One missionary journey after another resulted in new churches. The kingdom of Christ grew by the multiplication of churches......

Someone might argue "that was then, today we have lots of churches (buildings) - in fact more than can be filled by existing Christians. Shouldn't you spend the time filling the existing churches rather than planting new ones?"

Four other reasons

(1) Existing churches often lose touch with the world. It's one thing to say "fill the existing churches", it's another thing to do it. Many churches become inflexibly traditional and cease to be relevant to the culture around them. Their religious buildings put people off and their inflexible forms of worship are so distant from the culture that the Gospel is unable to cross the barrier. Why should a hoodie be expected to worship with a pipe organ (what's one of those?)? This doesn't have to be, but it often is. A new church has no traditional baggage and can adapt quickly to the culture.  

(2) Existing churches can't change because of structural reasons. Existing churches may observe the great barrier between them and the world, but because of powerful internal institutional forces within may be incapable of adapting to the needs of the world. These forces may be due to internal politics such as the influence of long-standing families or other pressure groups within the church. So folk within an existing church may want to reach the lost, but find it impossible.  A new church does not possess this baggage. 

(3) Existing churches often grow indifferent towards the lost. Sad to say, but churches easily become  inward looking for one reason or another, and cease to care for the world.  Eventually some of them even justify their cold-heartedness with beliefs such as "it's the day of small things", "the world is so hard to the Gospel today", "the great commission was only for the apostles", "it's because we are being faithful that no-one is being converted" (they are right about this; faithful to man-made traditions), all the while neglecting the Master's words, "go..make disciples..." and "the fields are white unto harvest." 

(4) Existing churches can easily become ineffective feeding centres rather than serving centres. In mathematics, the following is true.............

100 = 4x 25 = 2x50 = 10x10

.......but not necessarily in the kingdom of Christ. A church of 100 members may be far less effective than four churches of 25, two churches of 50 or ten churches of 10 members. Why? Because...

1. the need to serve in a large church drops off as the numbers increase, "someone else will do it"
2. ownership of ministry rises as top-down organisational commands give way to "this is the ministry God has called me to and I want to do it."
3. relational organisation rather than organisational organisation. In a small church the family meet over coffee to decide who might look after children; in a large church a phone call takes place from an unknown stranger to another unknown 'church member' 
4. the friendliness to new people diminishes as a church grows and lost-in-the-crowd syndrome emerges; "Is this your first week?", "No, I've been here for seven years!" "Same here".
5. sacrificial giving is required - or we'll be closing doors
6. evangelism becomes a survival strategy rather than an optional activity

In The Churching of America, Fink and Stark point out that America was won for the Gospel by the rapid planting of many churches over it's brief history, resulting in a church attendance growth from 17% in 1800 to  62% in 1980.

The plain fact of the matter is this: the Kingdom of Christ grows by church planting.

Is Wright Wrong? Questions about Tom Wright's Simply Jesus

 

NT or Tom Wright 

 

 

A new gentle giant

Tom Wright, also known as NT Wright in his more scholarly role, was until recently, a bishop in the Church of England.

It is wonderful to have believing bishops in the Anglican church, and it was good to have a bishop who believed Jesus bodily rose from the dead in a city (Durham) where a previous bishop denied the resurrection (and was inexcusably not disciplined for it).

Tom Wright is a prolific author. His influence is growing, and seems to be on the increase in evangelical circles - hence my interest in him here. His reputation stands on three 700-page foundational books, which gained him widespread acclaim in the academic world. But now he's writing lots of "popular" books, so soon he'll be found in a Kindle near you.

"Popular"

I put exclamation marks around popular, because there is popular and there is popular. There is A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking kind of popular and there is Jamie Oliver's 30-Minute Meals popular. No question, Tom Wright's books are of the Hawking variety of popular. This will mean, on the one hand that few ordinary people will get through his books, but on the other hand, many church leaders could be affected by them: Steve Chalke and Rob Bell, for example, have been greatly influenced by Wright. I have read many of Wright's books with growing sadness and alarm, and so I take this opportunity to view his wider mission through the lens of this book. 

The Book: Simply Jesus

So to the book Simply Jesus, or subtitled "Who he was, what he did, why it matters." The book is anything but simple and the Jesus he represents is anything but simple. I cannot imagine many of my Christian friends making it to the end (no, that's not a reflection on my friends), and I certainly wouldn't expect my unbelieving friends to make it to page 230. Understanding why Wright thinks Jesus is difficult lies at the very heart of this book, and at the heart of Wright’s errors. For this reason, I shall spend most of this blog exploring this issue.

I will argue that since Wright has done up the first button of his shirt wrong, all the other buttons are out of sync too.

Jesus is difficult – why is Jesus difficult?

Wright goes out of his way to prepare the reader for how difficult, in his view, Jesus is to understand: "Jesus was not simple in his own time, and he is not simple now" (p. x). Why is Jesus complex? Two main reasons: (a) because the Gospels are difficult: "The sources we have for his public career - the four Gospels... are dense, complex and multilayered." (p.9) and (b) because we cannot understand Jesus without a deep understanding of his historical setting. Somehow we have to get into his world:   "This is absolutely necessary, because first century Jews thought very differently from the way we do now... we have to make a real effort to see things from a first century Jewish point of view, if we are to understand what Jesus was all about." (p. xii). 

Now because you need to understand Jesus’ historical setting, you need to either be a first-century historian, or, rely on a good one......

In the few quotes above lie a universe of questions:

Question 1: What is your “interpretative framework”?

Big words, but simple meaning; please stay with me.  Wright wants evangelicals to move away from our interpretative moorings. We are convinced that the only proper way to interpret Jesus is to place him in the setting of the New Testament and the Old Testament. The Old Testament points forward to Jesus, and the apostles who wrote the New Testament (we are thinking of the 27 books) point backwards to Jesus and make sense of his life and death. We believe that the apostles are the legitimate interpreters of Jesus. In short we believe in sola scriptura – the Scriptures alone. We could represent this with a diagram:

Evangelical View

 Wright disagrees. He wants to add another interpretive framework -  first century history:

An alternative view

But tragically, that is not all. If I understand Wright correctly, he wants to diminish – at the very least – the role of the apostles as the legitimate interpreters of Jesus’ life and work. Proof: very rarely do the apostles get quoted in a book that purports to be all about Jesus! So what we end up with is:

NT Wright's View

In summary, then, Wright is arguing that Jesus and the Gospels be placed in a new interpretative framework, that of the first century. And naturally, it follows, you need a first-century historian as your guide. Who, I wonder, might that be?

Question 2: What is your world? The world of the academic or the humble saint?

This is the second, fatal flaw of Wright’s approach. Wright is primarily a scholar, not a pastor or preacher. A scholar, is concerned with knowledge, particularly cutting edge stuff and his teaching is aimed to stimulate the novel-seeking mind. She is always glancing over one shoulder to see what her peers think: the testing ground of ‘truth’ is the academy (you make a name by finding out new stuff). A preacher or pastor is interested in building up the saints, to edify them, to strengthen their faith through the joys and storms of life. The test of truth is not the academy, but the church. The preacher, while wanting to bring new treasures out – and what amazing treasures the Word contains – has absolutely no interest in novelty. 

Question 3: What is your Gospel (of the Gospels)?

If you exclude the apostles as your legitimate interpreters of Jesus, and consider only the Old Testament plus the first century as your only guides, you are going to end up with a Gospel that differs from the apostolic one. And that tragically is what we get in Simply Jesus. What is the central message of Jesus? Jesus announces and establishes the kingdom of God. That's it. Through his life (and somehow through his death) he establishes the kingdom of God and that's the Gospel of the Gospels.  Jesus did not come "to teach people how to get to heaven" but to "tell them that God was now taking charge right here on earth; that they should pray for this to happen; that they should recognise, in his own work, the signs that it was happening; and that when he completed his work, it would become a reality." (p.142)

What about the death of Jesus?

Well, Jesus died "not in order to rescue people from this world for a faraway heaven, but in order that God’s kingdom may be established on earth as in heaven." (p.180) While Wright does not deny some kind of substitutionary or penal (‘penal’ is the strange word we use to describe the legal ‘must punish sin to be Just’ characteristic of God's justice)  aspect to Jesus' death, it takes a back seat. Of course it would, if you neglect Romans and Hebrews.

The meaning of the cross becomes this: Jesus "took the full power of evil and accusation upon himself, to let it do its worst to him, so that it would thereby be exhausted, its main force spent" (184). In other words, evil has a battery full of limited power; it expended that battery on Jesus on the cross (how?) and now its energy is gone. Wright is not happy with penal substitution,  regarding it as notorious because it “leaves unanswered the question of how such a punishment could itself be just, let alone loving” (p.181). Come now, even a child can understand how the cross of Jesus can be loving and just! Loving because the lover has given up his life for the beloved and just because a holy and just God is satisfied; sin has been paid for.

Wright is frankly confused over penal substitution: “Jesus has announced God’s imminent judgement on his rebel people, a judgement that would consist of devastation at the hands of Rome. He then goes ahead of his people to take precisely that judgement, literally, physically and historically upon himself.” (p.181) This is absurd! If Jesus bore the judgement that should have come upon Israel, then God was unjust – or even wicked - to then pour it out on the Jews in AD 66-70, for now he has exacted the penalty twice. 

Question 4: Who will be your guide?

In the end, who will be your guide when it comes to understanding Jesus? Will it be the passing findings of the fickle academy, or the passing words of a human scholar? Or will it be the solid Scriptures illuminated by the Holy Spirit?

Question 5: How come it don't all fit together?

If the message of Jesus is "the kingdom has come" how come that message is not the one preached in the Acts and the rest of the New Testament? Theories are successful in so far as they fit the data. I find no evidence that this was the message of the apostles as they went into the world. Instead I find their message was frankly, the old fashioned one: "repent and believe".  

Questions 6:  Isn't this just one more attempt to produce a clever Gospel that has no offence?

Don't we have here, the age old attempt to avoid the scorn of preaching the scandal of the cross of Christ, by preaching a new and clever Gospel, that will appeal to the world (at least the academics, leaving everyone else high and dry and bored)? Clever boffins and an educated world looks for wisdom, but we must continue to preach Christ crucified.

Question 7: Is Jesus really all that difficult? 
On the one hand, Wright is helpful to point out the riches of Christ and not to settle as some have with a reduced Jesus. But on the other hand, I cannot find the apostles ever talking like Wright, preparing their congregations for the enormously difficult and daunting task before them, if they are ever to really understand Jesus. Of course, Wright will reply - they didn't have to because they lived in the first Century. But the Gospel travelled to non-Jews who would have to enter the Jewish world of the Old Testament to understand prophecies and sacrifices. And nowhere do we get the impression this was going to be an impossible task for them. Isn't the real problem that Wright is approaching Jesus from completely the wrong perspective - from the narrow (and frankly irrelevant for 99.999% of the people of the world including the West) perspective of a western academic. And from this rational perspective Jesus is mighty difficult because all the wrong questions are asked about him - of course they would be, for they are asked by scholars, many of whom, it must be sadly said, are unbelievers!

Question 8:  Do you have to be a first-century historian to understand Jesus?
Of all the errors in Wright, this stands as one of the greatest. If God gave Jesus to the academy, yes, perhaps. But he didn't, and frankly, God and Jesus have very little to do with the passing fancies of the academy (one million different and often false Jesus' have been fabricated by them, with another zillion to come). What you need to see Jesus is the Bible, the Holy Spirit and a believing community. I throw in the last one, because whenever we go off on a limb interpreting Jesus without the feedback of God's people, we are bound to err - particularly if we do it in a university setting.

Question 9: Was the world of Jesus so alien to our world that we need a degree in history to get it?
No - if you're talking about hope, love, faith, salvation, service, life, and all the one thousand other concerns of ordinary human life. On these universal and eternal issues we find ourselves immediately in the world of the Bible without scarcely a blink. Yes - if you are interested in secondary matters such as the details of the politics of the age, then perhaps you need a little help. The real problem with Wright is that he majors on minors and minors on majors. The issues that really matter do not separate us one iota from the world of Jesus' day; it's only on peripheral issues that our worlds differ.

Question 10: Isn't this kind of approach the triumph of the enlightenment project (the from-the-dawn-of-time attempt by mankind to find truth without Revelation)?

If the aim of the enlightenment was to arrive at truth using human methodology (like Spinoza's attempt in Ethics to produce a universal philosophy/theology/morality based on first principles), isn't NT Wright merely one more child of the enlightenment and his work the triumph of it in "Christendom". What can be more compelling to a child of the enlightenment than to start off as a historian (using methods, a, b, c such as primary sources only please, to assess probability of event d, etc.) and then from that foundation to build your whole theology, ignoring the apostles along the way.

Question 11: Isn't "you have to know first-century history" simply a modern form of gnosticism?
Gnosticism is the error that teaches that access to some knowledge gives you the real key to understanding Jesus. Without this knowledge you will never really understand Jesus. This is in effect what Wright teaches.  In other words Wright's problem is nothing to do with knowledge, it's a spiritual problem - gnosticism.

Question 12: There is a good reason you don't need to be a First-Century historian to understand Jesus.
The glory of the Gospel is that it floats outside of first-century Palestinian culture. The Gospel is for the world. This is why the apostles, and not the historians are the true interpreters of Jesus. To drag Jesus back into first-century Palestine and force him to be interpreted only in that setting is to misunderstand the Gospel, which floats above culture, so it can make its home in any culture of the world.

Although we may learn much from Tom Wright, "Simply Jesus" is not an adequate explanation of who Jesus was. It emphasises things that are unimportant and minimizes things that are all-important. It complicates things that are actually very simple and overlooks simple truths.

And most tragically of all, it is not a faithful representation of the Gospel of Jesus. 

The Shepherding of Mary's Faith

The tender shepherd
Jesus, the Great Shepherd, is gentle with young believers, "he gathers the lambs in his arms and carries them close to his heart he gently leads those that have young" (somewhere in Isaiah). And nowhere is this tenderness more beautifully demonstrated than in Luke's record of God's dealings with the young Mary.

An explanation from Gabriel
First act of care - Gabriel did not despise the question any young woman would ask about history's first (and only real) parthenogenesis (you can google it): "how can this be so" but told her that her pregnancy would be from God, "the power of the Most High will overshadow you."

An older woman to chat with
Next, God gave to Mary an older woman to chat with and no doubt pray with - for three months! Elizabeth was also experiencing a miracle, but only the restoration of normal reproductiveness, not the big word miracle above. Nevertheless she could help Mary with the questions she would get from Joseph and her village folk. She probably couldn't go to her own mother, and in any case someone outside of the village was better able to see things straight.

Some shepherds with news to calm the shocking birth
So it's beginning to sink in that this baby is something special, "he will reign over the house of Jacob for ever", but then a rude turn of events - the baby has to be born in shocking circumstances, a manger; and what first-time mother would place their precious child in a feeding trough? This needs some explanation. What's gone wrong? This can't be right? What does God do? He sends along some shepherds who tell their story - messengers from heaven who tell them that the Messiah had been born - and would be found, guess where? in a feeding trough. This news from another world, is as much for Mary's faith as for the world's joy.

Some age-d saints to assure them that costly obedience was right!

Next, this poor couple (the Magi haven't yet come with their "we three kings" gifts) have got to make some costly gifts demanded by the law of Moses. Like the two sacrifices required for childbirth purification, like five shekels to pay for the redemption of a first-born son. I mean, they've just undertaken a costly 70-mile journey from Nazareth, they are 'saving for a first home' (modern parlance) and they've got a newborn baby. Surely, they could be excused from these costly requirements. But they were a pious righteous couple and just (providence, not chance) as they were making their costly gifts, God sends into their lives two godly saints to encourage them on their way: Simeon and Anna.

A gracious preparation for future sorrow
And finally, the tender Shepherd of the sheep prepares Mary for the future, when her heart will be torn as she sees the hatred poured out against her Son. Simeon doesn't tell her about bloody thorns and back, or about nails or terror crucifixion, but he tells her that her Son will cause the falling of many, will be a sign spoken against and that a sword would pierce her own heart.

Assurance, comfort and preparation.

What wonderful Shepherdly care.

The simple faith of Mary

Same angel, different response
God gave to Gabriel the task of taking real good news to an old priest (Zechariah) and real good news to a young ordinary woman (Mary). I don't know what angels think of us, but what a shocking difference in responses this one received!

In both cases the news he was sent to deliver was good: "I want to bless you and bring blessing to the world through you." Not judgement, not trouble, just blessing! For Zechariah it was the news that he and Elizabeth would bear a special son in old age and have the ancient stigma of childlessness removed. For Mary, it was the stupendous news that she would bear the Son of God into the world.

Visit One - the unbelief of Zechariah
If anyone should have been prepared for good news, it was Zechariah. For a starters, it was news he had probably prayed for. Then he was a priest on duty - shouldn't his spiritual antenna have been in tune?  Furthermore, he was chosen by lot on this occasion to burn incense - a once in a life time privilege for a priest. The message was even delivered at the height of that ceremony for effect, and for added impact was delivered by an angel! The news was not even 'out of the blue' historically, for Abraham and Sarah had borne a child in their old age.

Everything was arranged to make faith easy for Zechariah, but he did not believe "How can I be sure of this? I am an old man and my wife is well on in years", and was chastised with nine months of dumbness.

Visit Two - the faith of Mary
Six months later, Gabriel was sent to visit someone at the opposite end of the "religious"/ "favoured" spectrum - an ordinary girl from an ordinary village, engaged to the village carpenter. If anyone had reasons not to believe it was her. In addition to her ordinariness ("Why should God be bothered with me?") she had to climb the hill of biological impossibility and novelty. Everyone knows babies aren't born without fathers. Nothing like this miracle is found in the Old Testament. And what about Joseph and what about the response of this news on Mary from the village?

And yet, though the bar is set so very high, Mary believes the good news; "I am the Lord's servant. May it be to me as you have said." 

The Encouragement and the Warning
Zechariah serves as a great great warning to every believer - and especially to older believers who have been on the road for years  - of the danger of a hard cold heart of unbelief. Wow what a serious warning! God may be speaking - and even be speaking blessing - but it's possible to be deaf to his voice.

Mary, on the other hand, serves as an encouragement for those who though small in their own eyes and in the eyes of the world, nevertheless have, not great faith, but faith in a great God.

Why Old Testament Law is so Kind

A common accusation
One very common criticism of the Old Testament is that its laws - especially its retributive justice laws, "an eye for an eye..." are harsh. This of course is not a criticism leveled by anyone who has spent one hour in a typical village in the world - it's made by ignorant western arm-chair academics.   

Village life across the world

Village life in many cultures is self-policing. Without a bobby-on-the-beat, or in some cases because of a corrupt bobby-on-the-make, family groups undertake local justice.

If, for example, a lad touches up one of their girls, they will send the boys around, give that lad a sound beating, and two good things will happen as a result. First, the lad who did the touching will learn it's not a good thing to do: that will help him in life and protect all the girls in the community. Second, the family will gain the status as a family not to be messed with. This is also vitally important, because if nothing is done about the 'touching up' this will be seen as a weakness, and next time the girl is alone, she could be raped.

You and I westerners may not like it, we may prefer bobbies on the beat, but village justice is common across large parts of the globe. The village elders know this is going on and allow it - it's just part of the rhyme and rhythm of daily life.  

The dangers of village justice
The great danger of village justice, however, is Justice. It is very easy for two eyes to be taken for one lost, two teeth to be knocked in the place of one. Human anger is impure and often over the top. Enter Old Testament law....

The Kindness of the Old Testament Civil Laws
The purpose of the OT laws is to curb and limit 'village justice'. They impose a limit on the retributive justice that can take place. They prevent the natural desire for revenge to go over the top. They prohibit people going too far.

Seen from this perspective, these laws safeguard the community.

Barbaric?
The charge that these laws are 'barbaric' can only be made by people who are wholly ignorant of the ways of the world. Far from being barbaric, these laws are actually very kind.

Love Wins - a review of Bell's Book

Eat the fruit - spit out the seeds
I remember giving a review of Steve Chalke's book "The lost Message of Jesus" to a group of  pastors. They were expecting brimstone and fire, but I began with some positives - because there were some positives.

(Some real big negatives too....)

I am trying to learn over the years to appreciate the fruit and spit out the seeds.
Hold on to the good while rejecting the evil.

So I like some things about this book. I love the positives he highlights in the Gospel. I appreciate Rob Bell's emphasis on the greatest gift of all - love - and his concern for the practical outworking of it in our lives. We should all appreciate the way he questions acquired doctrines rather than just accepting them. (Would be that every believer's theology was first hand rather than borrowed from their church community.)

I also appreciate a fresh attempt to apply the Gospel to our present culture - question is, does he succeed?

Bell indicates his questioning nature stylistically with novel punctuation and page lay out. (Unfortunately this just gets on ones nerves after page 1).

Some background
Perhaps we across the pond can stand back from a book like this and see things native Americans can't.

It's not difficult to detect the following influences on Bell:

(1) Reaction against dead Religion. No question - Bell is reacting against a dead fundamentalist strain of evangelicalism that is all law, thunder and negatives. If you want to see it in action, tune in to some of the God channels.

(2) Western Ease. Where you write your theology, your context, acts like a filter. If you write your theology out of persecution and struggle it is likely to be cross-shaped. If you write it out of wealth and ease, you're shaped by the reaction of your culture to any hard doctrines - out must go a bloody cross, hell and judgement. Contemporary culture just doesn't do tough doctrines such as hell.

(3) Neo-orthodoxy. Unquestionably, and connected to (2), Bell, like McLaren, Chalke and others before him has been influenced by the neo-orthodoxy of scholars such as NT Wright. On the surface these men believe in doctrines like the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ, but upon further inspection they turn out to be woolly around the edges, see (4).

(4) "You have to be a first-century historian to understand the NT". This is the cry of the arm-chair academics. If you don't know the historical setting of Jesus and first-century Palestinian Judaism, how will you understand the Gospels? This is a deep deep deep fallacy. All we need to know about first century Palestinian Judaism is in the OT and the NT. It is very likely that uninspired external writings will skew, deceive, obscure and twist.

If, as an important example, Jesus says that many Pharisees believed in works-righteousness and came to the temple telling God that in their prayers (Luke 18), we believe Him against all the writings of contemporary rabbis and what nots.

The New Testament was given by God to float outside of Palestine, around the world; it contains, along with the Old Testament, all you need to know. (This doesn't mean external sources aren't helpful and interesting when interpreting the New Testament; all it means is that they are not absolutely necessary).

(5) Only the Gospels matter, the apostles (especially Paul) are excluded. Part of this neo-orthodoxy is an exclusion of the apostles, and especially Paul as the interpreters of Jesus. The idea (primary documents historian stuff) is that all we really need are the words of Jesus (and many of the ones in our Gospels probably don't come from  him, so now we have a canon within a canon within a canon - Chinese dolls?) These are the primary sources (historian approach to the Bible) - the canon within a canon. All the emphasis is on these words of Jesus in the Gospels (and Oh yes, parts of the OT), but almost nothing from Paul, Peter, John, James.........

(6) Who are Jesus' legitimate interpreters? The moment you rid yourself of the rest of the NT you are left with the words of Jesus hanging in the air with no interpreter at all. In to fill the vacuum comes (you guessed) first-century historians. Actually, that's the job of the apostles - it's their job to interpret the Gospel of Jesus to us. Exclude the apostles, and frankly you have lost the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

(7) Ignore continents that don't fit on your map. We can be all guilty of this to some degree, but most of the time we just ignore small islands and it's accidental. Bell ignores continents: like all the verses that don't fit the 'no-hell' theory, such as......  "They will be punished with everlasting destruction and shut out of the presence of the Lord and from the majesty of his power on the day he comes.." (2 Thess 1:9) "Their destiny is destruction." (Phil 3:19) "..the present heavens and earth are reserved for fire, being kept for the day of judgement and destruction of ungodly men." (2 Pet. 3:7), etc., etc., etc.

So to the book
With these seven  filters working over-time on the NT, what we have in Love Wins is a tragic misrepresentation of the Gospel in the following ways....

Hell is erased. You see if God says he wants to save people he can and will. Even if they die cursing him, could they not get an eternity of chances to change? After all we all morph and change; could it not be that such people will decide one future day 10,000 years hence that they want God? In which case the doors of heaven (always open, didn't you know?) will welcome them. 

Regeneration is not necessary. Because if men and women can change their mind about God at any time and at their own whim, no powerful tranformation of the heart by the Holy Spirit is necessary. 

God's Justice is denied. Because if there is no hell, God ultimately is unjust - he has allowed sin to go unpunished. How can we love and trust an Unjust God?  

Everyone will be saved. God - and Jesus in particular is much bigger than Christianity. No-one can tame or domesticate him. Who is to say he's not to be found everywhere? After all, if he was the rock that refreshed some weird band of desert wanderers who is to say that he is not everywhere, with everyone, in everything?

In the end, a Bell-shaped Gospel
Ultimately, what we have in Love Wins is not a New Testament-shaped Gospel at all, nor a valid contextualisation of the Gospel for modern men and women. What we have is a Bell-shaped Gospel, which turns out, like so many other gospels before it, to be no gospel at all.

This is a contemporary 'gospel' - but tragically only in the sense that it rides all the fads of western culture and thought. This is not orthodoxy, this is not the Gospel delivered once for all to the saints.

The greatest tragedy of all......
Sadly - weep for Jerusalem - sadly, the greatest tragedy of this book may have nothing to do with its contents.......

What do I mean?

The greatest tragedy may be that the wide-spread acceptance of this book reveals a shocking ignorance of the Bible and basic Christian doctrine in our western churches today. Any believer schooled in Bible Doctrine 101 (the American educational way of indicating basic this or that) ought to discern heresy in this book.

The future of other Gospels
In the fullness of time every old and every modern false gospel, whether from McLaren, Chalke or Bell, will be consigned to history, viewed as a distraction at best, a heresy at worst.

And all the while, the church will continue preaching the true Gospel of Jesus Christ, crucified for sinners.

The New Superstitions

Missionary descriptions

Missionary descriptions of people untouched by the Gospel of Jesus Christ often refer to them as beset by ignorance and superstition. For example, William Carey, who wrote an enquiry on the spiritual the state of the world, included these words:

"The Swedes are serious Lutherans
 but most of the Laplanders are Pagans, 
and very superstitious."(p. 39)

Today, westerners who know so much better laugh at such descriptions and think of them as the product of the fevered minds of colonial religious zealots.

But the plain fact of the matter is that men and women who reject God always believe myths and superstitions. They think their knowledge is wisdom, but in fact it is folly!

Examples please

We don't need to scan history in any depth to see this demonstrated. A writer produces a tome which looks indefensible (because it is new and big) and legions jump on the band wagon. Marxism, Freudism, Logical Positivism, you name it. Then given time, the work is analysed, holes found in it, debunking takes place and soon it becomes the burden and concern of no-one but poor students of history - in one branch or another.

The wisdom has been revealed as folly, and in the worst of cases, blood has been spilt along the way.

The New Superstitions

New superstitions will arise in every age, and today one of the most prominent is a spin off from evolutionary theory and brain studies. In other words the latest superstitions are coming from the scientific world. Not from science itself, but from devotees of neuromania and darwinitis.

Talons Tallis

More of us should know about Raymond Tallis - because he is on a campaign to expose and debunk these silly myths. Remarkably, he is an atheist (and has to constantly defend this, since many of his readers will think he is a cloak-and-dagger theist). I know that God doesn't need atheists to defend his cause, but it is always interesting when unbelievers can see through some folly - it shows how obvious the mistakes are.

The book to read is "Aping Mankind" (subtitle: Neuromania, Darwinitis and the Misrepresentation of Humanity) and the superstitions he wishes to expose are legion. Here are a few:

"Mankind and animals are really the same"

With only the light of natural revelation, Tallis is able to see what anyone who thinks can see - that human beings rise infinitely above animals, that the gap between the two can only be called a chasm. Made in the image of God, mankind is in a totally different league.

Tallis exposes the urban myths that attempt to bring the two together. On the one hand, animals are lifted up, and their wonderful but absolutely limited behaviour is humanised: "tool making" for example; and on the other hand, humans are brought low. Eating a meal with friends is described as "feeding behaviour." A tiny little bit of thought reveals the absolute folly of these attempts to connect beast to man. When I eat a meal with friends, that behaviour is infinitely more complex and full of significance than the 'feeding behaviour' of a brute beast that sees a banana and gobbles it up. In my case, where I eat, the shopping and planning beforehand, the cooking, the preparation, the laying of the table, the invitation, the cultural manners at the table, even the lighting, the background music, the conversation, etc. ad infinitium are not in any way like the "feeding behaviour" of a brute ignorant beast! Describing it as such is not just an insult to humans it's an insult to my intelligence.

The point is many westerners believe this hokey pokey - that we are the same as beasts! But it's superstition on par with the fairies who come out at night! (National Geographic is full of the stuff.)

"Your behaviour is shaped by evolution"

Apparently, girls like pink because when we were hunter-gatherers they had to know when fruit was ripe! And boys like blue because they had to know what colour of sky revealed a good day for hunting! Only problem with this view is that in Victorian times, situation was reversed. Boys liked pink (a toned-down version of brave red) and girls liked blue (for some reason the colour associated with Mary). The point is that these things are culturally determined and nothing to do with evolutionary behaviour.

"You are your brain"

You must read the book, but Tallis shows the nonsense of thinking that the real conscious 'me' is nothing more than the product of firing neurons. The identity between electrical activity and our consciousness is facile and foolish.

These and many other superstitions are revealed in this rip-roaring read. Though it's tough going at times - and for that reason may not have the impact it deserves.

Chesterton's word
The west thinks it lives in a world full of fact and solid reasoning, but in point of fact it inhabits a world of lies, myths and superstitions, barely indistinguishable from the pagans of the past.

This of course should not surprise us, and it should move us to the tragedy and lostness of life without God. When people do not believe in God, they don't believe in nothing, they believe in anything.

God's last word
"Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools..."