Showing posts with label Christians today. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Christians today. Show all posts
Tuesday, 3 February 2009
The Gospel is foolishness to many who think they are being saved
I teach Christianity to pupils of various faiths and various attitudes to the Christian gospel. But one thing really disturbs me, and that is this: unbelievers understand the Bible better than believers in my classroom. On one level that's not true - I'm not talking about spiritual receptiveness. But their conceptual understanding of the awesome nature of God ("if there is a God, then if I was standing before him, I'd be scared out of my mind"), holiness and sin ("why doesn't God just spit on us?") and the transcendence of God and its impact on the likeliness, and therefore graciousness, of divine intervention for us ("if there is a God, then why does he bother with tiny little insignificant human beings?") beats the conceptual grasp of many churchgoers, whose God is thoroughly domesticated. No wonder I have two Christian pupils who regard church as stupid: the semi-Christian Christless Christianity they are, by their account of it, receiving probably is.
Wednesday, 30 January 2008
Not bothering with the best
If under the Christmas tree were a huge present with your name on it, you wouldn't leave it under the tree. Would you? Yet the Christian church does that. There's a present marked "Gospel" left unopened and uninvestigated.
I see it everywhere. Here's a few examples:
I was discussing Christian work with a minister and saying I felt we needed to teach people grace until they got it. He said that many people in churches don't, so we shouldn't get hung up on teaching grace and teach other things too.
Bible studies on Mark I've been to focusing life applications rather than on "trust this Jesus."
Christians who see Christ as a role model offering solutions and who get upset when I talk of Him as a Saviour and not a solution.
The majority of children I teach are Arians (don't believe that Jesus is God) and Pelagians (we get ourselves to heaven with good works) and yet they call themselves Christians. But they have a Jesus incapable of saving, because He is not God, and they don't think they need it, because they think they can save themselves.
Lord, have mercy on us, for though You are gracious, we won't have it. Be overwhelmingly gracious and bring even sinners like us, who spurn Your mercies, into Your Kingdom.
I see it everywhere. Here's a few examples:
I was discussing Christian work with a minister and saying I felt we needed to teach people grace until they got it. He said that many people in churches don't, so we shouldn't get hung up on teaching grace and teach other things too.
Bible studies on Mark I've been to focusing life applications rather than on "trust this Jesus."
Christians who see Christ as a role model offering solutions and who get upset when I talk of Him as a Saviour and not a solution.
The majority of children I teach are Arians (don't believe that Jesus is God) and Pelagians (we get ourselves to heaven with good works) and yet they call themselves Christians. But they have a Jesus incapable of saving, because He is not God, and they don't think they need it, because they think they can save themselves.
Lord, have mercy on us, for though You are gracious, we won't have it. Be overwhelmingly gracious and bring even sinners like us, who spurn Your mercies, into Your Kingdom.
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