The Gospel Coalition

I’ve been asked to be part of a blog tour for Kary Oberbrunner’s forthcoming book The Fine Line: Reinvisioning the Gap Between Christ and Culture. 

Eleven days ago I brought your attention to this book. I was introduced to Kary by a mutual friend of ours who told me, when I asked him to write a blurb for Unfashionable (my forthcoming book), that “his friend Kary had just finished a book that moved in a similar direction.” So I looked up Kary’s book on Amazon and what did I find? Kary’s forthcoming book and mine were being sold together! Well, I had to contact this guy. And as a result, we’ve become buddies. We’ve compared notes, shared ideas, and commented on eachother’s work. The parallels between our books are pretty remarkable. For instance, Kary writes:

Our difference from the world, not our similarity to it sets us apart. But even though Christ followers are called to be different, we’re also called to transform the world. Here lies the tension. We can’t be so far removed from the world that we lose contact, and we can’t be so much like the world that we’re no different from it…

In my post eleven days ago I wrote (in response to the above quote):

Geez, that sounds familiar. The subtitle of Unfashionable is “making a difference in the world by being different.” It seems like God has lit the same fire in Kary that he has in me (and many others): helping a new generation understand what it means to be “in the world, but not of it” in these challenging, but opportune days.

What I love about Kary’s book is his committment to balance, exhibited in his title, The Fine Line. He sees both the benefits and the detriments of our typical responses to culture. In this way, his book reminds me a little bit of Andy Crouch’s book Culture Making. J.I. Packer once said, “There are always two ways to fall off a tightrope.” Kary recognizes this and does a good job of helping the reader maintain persepective and avoid extremes.

Kary recognizes that faithfulness to Christ means we cannot afford to leave our culture unexamined. We’re called to think long and hard, deep and wide about our times and all the issues surrounding the mission of the church—its proper relationship to this world as well as its proper place in it.

One helpful word picture that has helped me think through this for years and years now comes from the great nineteenth-century evangelist D. L. Moody. He was once asked to describe what he thought the relationship between the church and the world ought to be. He answered, “The place for the ship is in the sea; but God help the ship if the sea gets into it.” We need to avoid being culturally removed—failing to be “in the world,” like a ship out of water. We also need to avoid being culturally relaxed—becoming “of the world,” like a ship being submerged.

Using Moody’s picture, the place for the church is in the world, but God help the church if the world gets into it. Christ has called his followers to be in the world yet distinct from it, to live against the world for the world. This is a fine line to walk, and Kary’s book will help you do it. 

You can pre-order Kary’s book here. And watch a video trailer of it here.

Over at the Christianity Today liveblog, Rob Moll (whose article on giving in the most recent Christianity Today magazine is excellent–I just read it this morning) writes:

Recessions, before the Great Depression, were often viewed as good things. Secretary of the Treasury Andrew Mellon, even after the crash of 1929, expressed the common view of the time: “It will purge the rottenness out of the system. High costs of living and high living will come down. People will work harder, live a more moral life. Values will be adjusted, and enterprising people will pick up the wrecks from less competent people.”

Read the rest here.

Anglican Bishop N.T. Wright recently spoke at Harvard University during an outreach event sponsored by InterVarsity Christian Fellowship. His topic was, “Why do good in what seems to be a hopeless world?”

In a post-September 11 world where the AIDS crisis and now the credit crisis are ailing millions, why should we try to make a difference at all? Why should we try to do good … to create good things out there in the world when in fact all the hope that our society has lived on seems to be imploding all around us? Contrary to popular belief, heaven is not the end of the world or the ultimate goal. It’s just phase one. Further down, there’s a new heaven and new earth – in other words, a renewal or recreation of the cosmos. It is a “world put to rights.” And humans are a part of that remaking.

Read the rest here.

My friend Justin Taylor pointed me to Abraham Lincoln’s Thanksgiving Proclamation delivered in Washington D.C. on October 3, 1863. Here Lincoln acknowledges the rich blessings in America despite the pain of the Civil War. 

The year that is drawing toward its close has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added which are of so extraordinary a nature that they can not fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever-watchful providence of Almighty God.

In the midst of a civil war of unequaled magnitude and severity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign states to invite and to provoke their aggression, peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere, except in the theater of military conflict, while that theater has been greatly contracted by the advancing armies and navies of the Union.

Needful diversions of wealth and of strength from the fields of peaceful industry to the national defense have not arrested the plow, the shuttle, or the ship; the ax has enlarged the borders of our settlements, and the mines, as well as the iron and coal as of our precious metals, have yielded even more abundantly than heretofore. Population has steadily increased notwithstanding the waste that has been made in the camp, the siege, and the battlefield, and the country, rejoicing in the consciousness of augmented strength and vigor, is permitted to expect continuance of years with large increase of freedom.

No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy.

It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently, and gratefully acknowledged, as with one heart and one voice, by the whole American people. I do therefore invite my fellow-citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next as a day of thanksgiving and praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the heavens. And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to His tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners, or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the imposition of the Almighty hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it, as soon as may be consistent with the divine purpose, to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquillity, and union.

On October 30th, Scott Oliphant (Professor of Apologetics at Westminster Theological Seminary) hosted a debate between atheist Christopher Hitchens (author of God is not Great) and Christian Douglas Wilson (author of Letter from a Christian Citizen) on the existence of God.  

You can watch the lively debate here.

You can also read Dr. Oliphant’s thoughts on the debate here.

In the comment section a couple days ago on this blog, David Nelson provided a remarkable quote from Charles Spurgeon regarding the way we try and “help God out” by spicing up the church with some up-to-the-minute cachet. This comes from a sermon delivered on November 26, 1868 entitled “Man Transient: God’s Word Eternal”:

Never think of the Church of God as if she were in danger. If you do, you will be like Uzza; you will put forth your hand to steady the ark, and provoke the Lord to anger against you. If it were in danger, I tell you, you could not deliver it. If Christ cannot take care of his Church without you, you cannot do it. Be still, and know that he is God. . . When you begin to say, “The Church is in danger! The Church is in danger!” what is that to thee? It stood before thou wert born; it will stand when thou hast become worm’s meat. Do thou thy duty. Keep in the path of obedience, and fear not. He who made the Church knew through what trials she would have to pass, and he made her so that she can endure the trials and become the richer for it. The enemy is but grass, the word of the Lord endureth for ever.

(My friend Paul Manuel wrote this last year at this time. Reading it today reminded me of God’s goodness. I hope this helps you the way it helped me.)

Thanksgiving is next week and I (like most people I know) am really looking forward to it–the break from normal work/school routines, the time with family and friends, the football, and (of course) the food. Thanksgiving is an annual occasion for us as a nation to feel and express gratitude–a wonderfully cathartic duty. Even for those who will spend Thanksgiving away from loved ones (separated by war or death), it is good (and good for us) to give thanks. Therapists and celebrities have jumped on the thanksgiving band-wagon. Oprah Winfrey’s encouragement to people to keep a gratitude journal is a good example. Having a gratitude attitude promotes health and healing.

But is just giving thanks enough? Can thanks be given without someone to thank? To say that general gratitude is sufficient is like saying that generic affection is adequate. We cannot truly know what love is without a lover. In the same way, we cannot truly be thankful without giving thanks to  someone. In Keep a Quiet Heart, Elisabeth Elliot responded to our drift from the original purpose of Thanksgiving:

Those who call Thanksgiving “Turkey Day,” I suppose, take some such view as this: Unless we have Someone to thank and something to thank Him for, what’s the point of using a name that calls up pictures of religious people in funny hats and Indians bringing corn and squash?

Christians, I hope, focus on something other than a roasted bird. We do have Someone to thank and a long list of things to thank Him for, but sometimes we limit our thanksgiving merely to things that look good to us. As our faith in the character of God grows deeper we see that heavenly light is shed on everything–even on suffering–so that we are enabled to thank Him for things we would never have thought of before. The apostle Paul, for example, saw even suffering itself as a happiness (Colossians 1:24, NEB).

Elisabeth Elliot goes on to address what she sees as the culprit that stifles thanksgiving, namely the spirit of greed–the greed of doing, being, and having. As we grow more greedy, our gratitude diminishes. Our wants become demands that grow into entitlements. Why should we give thanks for what we deserved to get in the first place?

There is a remedy for this horrid cycle. It is to return to God and praising him for his gifts. We need to recognize them, acknowledge their source and return thanks. This doesn’t diminish our enjoyment of the good things in life. Rather it fulfills our enjoyment. It brings the enjoyment to its climax. George MacDonald, literary mentor to C. S. Lewis, wrote this about finding God in gifts:

No gift unrecognized as coming from God is at its own best: therefore many things that God would gladly give us, things even that we need because we are, must wait until we ask for them, that we may know whence they come: when in all gifts we find Him, then in Him we shall find all things.

Where I found Truth, there I found my God, the Truth itself, which since I learned, I have not forgotten…. Too late I loved You, O Beauty of ancient days, yet ever new! too late I loved You! And behold, You were within, and I abroad, and there I searched for You… You called, and shouted, and burst my deafness. You flashed, shone, and scattered my blindness. You breathed sweet aromas, and I drew in breath and pant for You. I tasted, and hunger and thirst. You touched me, and I burned for Your peace.

I swear we didn’t plan this (we just met, actually), but my friend Kary Oberbrunner has written a book entitled The Fine Line (coming in January) that seems to parallel my forthcoming book, Unfashionable, in some remarkable ways (scroll down the Amazon link and see that even Amazon thinks these books belong together!).

Kary writes:

Our difference from the world, not our similarity to it sets us apart. But even though Christ followers are called to be different, we’re also called to transform the world. Here lies the tension. We can’t be so far removed from the world that we lose contact, and we can’t be so much like the world that we’re no different from it…

Geez, that sounds familiar. The subtitle of Unfashionable is “making a difference in the world by being different.” It seems like God has lit the same fire in Kary that he has in me (and many others): helping a new generation understand what it means to be “in the world, but not of it” in these challenging, but opportune days.

You can pre-order Kary’s book here. And watch a video trailer of it here (I wish I would have thought of this!).

You can also read a sample here (Kary’s a great writer!).

(Given the divide in this country, even amongst Christians, regarding the recent election of Barack Obama, I thought it might be a good idea to re-post this small section from Unfashionable on politics and cultural renewal. If you’re a Christian, whether you voted for McCain or Obama, you need to be reminded of this):

When it comes to transforming culture, many Christians think exclusively of political activism. I fully agree that Christians need to be involved in the political process; as I’ve argued, Christians are to bring the standards of God’s Word to bear on every cultural sphere, politics included.

But political activism isn’t the only thing—definitely not the main thing—God had in mind when he issued the cultural mandate to mankind. Nor is politics a particularly strategic arena for cultural renewal, as theologian Vern Poythress writes:

Bible-believing Christians have not achieved much in politics because they have not devoted themselves to the larger arena of cultural conflict. Politics mostly follows culture rather than leading it. . . . A temporary victory in the voting booth does not reverse a downward moral trend driven by cultural gatekeepers in news media, entertainment, art, and education. Politics is not a cure-all.

After decades of political activism on the part of evangelical Christians, we’re beginning to understand that the dynamics of cultural change differ radically from political mobilization. Even political insiders recognize that years of political effort on behalf of evangelical Christians have generated little cultural gain. In a recent article entitled “Religious Right, R.I.P.”, columnist Cal Thomas, himself an Evangelical Christian, wrote, “Thirty years of trying to use government to stop abortion, preserve opposite-sex marriage, improve television and movie content and transform culture into the conservative Evangelical image has failed.” American culture continues its steep moral and cultural decline into hedonism and materialism. Why? As Richard John Neuhaus observes, “Christianity in America is not challenging the ‘habits of the heart’ and ‘habits of mind’ that dominate American culture.”

For a long time now I’ve been convinced that what happens in New York (finance), Hollywood (entertainment), Silicon Valley (technology), and Miami (fashion) has a far greater impact on how our culture thinks about reality than what happens in Washington, DC (politics). The political arena is the place where policies are made reflecting the values of our culture—the habits of heart and mind—that are being shaped by these other, more strategic arenas. As the Scottish politician Andrew Fletcher said, “Let me write the songs of a nation; I don’t care who writes its laws.”

In bringing my forthcoming book, Unfashionable: Making a Difference in the World by Being Different, to the finish line, I added this “quiz” at the very beginning. What do you think?  

YOU MAY BE TOO FASHIONABLE IF . . .

1. You can look around at church and notice that everybody is basically the same age and they look and dress pretty much like you do.
2. You can’t stand singing a worship song that was “in” five years ago—much less singing a hymn from another century.
3. You believe social justice is more important than evangelism OR evangelism is more important than social justice.
4. The church you go to is so dimly lit during worship that you can’t see the person singing next to you, much less the person singing across the room.
5. You’ve attended a “leadership” conference where you learned more about organization and props than proclamation and prayer. 
6. Your goal in spending time with non-Christians is to demonstrate that you’re really no different than they are and to prove this you curse like a sailor, drink like a fish, and smoke like a chimney.
7. You’ve concluded that everything new is better than anything old OR that everything old is better than anything new.
8. You think that the way Jesus lived is more important than what Jesus said–that his deeds were more important than his doctrine.  
9. You believe that the best way to change our culture is to elect a certain kind of politician.
10. The church you’ve chosen is defined more by its reaction to “boring” churches than by its response to a needy world. 
11. You’ve decided that everything done by the church you grew up in was way wrong and you’re now, thankfully, part of a missional “community” that does everything right.
12. The one verse you wish wasn’t in the Bible is John 14:6 where Jesus says, “I am the way, the truth, and the life, and no one comes to the Father but by me.” That’s way too narrow!

Have fun!