does social action save?

at bible study on wednesday we looked at Matthew 5:13-16; the metaphor of unsalty salt being trampled underfoot was quite frightening, and had a completely opposite effect to the reassuring metaphor of light on a hill - we were encouraged to be lights, but warned against being flavourless salt.

we then went on to read Matthew 25:31-46, which Tim Keller picks up in the Prodigal God (which i finished last night). he says

There is no contradiction to what we have heard from Jesus in the Parable of the Prodigal Son. He is not saying that only the social workers get into heaven. Rather, he is saying that the inevitable sign that you know you are a sinner saved by sheer, costly grace is a sensitive social conscience and a life poured our in deeds of service to the poor. p112

i should mention, we started out by reading Amos 5, and i just kept thinking, 'we're gonna get so hammered for this'. to define 'we', 'hammered' and 'this' in reverse order,

• this = turning aside the needy (Amos 5:12), taking pride in our buildings of stone and the ceremonies that go within them (Amos 5:21)
  
• hammered = the day of the Lord for such as these will be darkness and not light (Amos 5:18)
  
• we = pretty much all western Christians

i might add, the sunday morning before this i visited a well known church and saw a hapless welcomer faced with a homeless man joining church that morning. they didn't say 'welcome, please take a seat, would you like a glass of water, meet gerald, one of our regulars', but 'can i help you?'

James would have welcomed him with open arms, walked him up the front, kicked one of the regulars out of their personalised pews and sat this man down there so he had every opportunity to hear of the healing words of a loving God (James 2:1-7).

The Reason for God - a review

I did a pop quiz at 6pm church this Sunday. I asked, ‘What are the top 5 reasons that people think Christianity is unreasonable, not even worth thinking about? what are the top 5 arguments that knock Christianity out of the water?’

I got four hands in the air:

• Science has disproved Christianity
  
• Christianity is a straightjacket, it curtails your freedoms
  
• how can we say Christianity is right and all the others wrong
  
• suffering and evil show there’s no God

They weren’t primed, but coincidentally, these were four of the seven topics that Tim Keller, the author of The Reason for God (Penguin: London, 2008), deals with. He doesn’t dismiss them, but essentially says – no, wait, don’t write us off that easily – we HAVE thought about that – we don’t exist in a cocoon – we HAVE thought about these issues, and are Christians not just despite these problems, but indeed, often because of them.


Apart from engaging thoughtfully and rigorously with these questions that would disprove God’s existence, he also raises suggestions why we should at the very least consider Christianity anew. Quite cheekily, he even suggests that the most hardened atheist, deep down inside of them, knows that there is a God (check out ch12 – the Knowledge of God).

Keller talks through all the big things. He goes places others might be scared to; he is open in sharing his own doubts and struggles, but he also shares with us the vast time he’s spent not running away from these questions, but chatting through them, reading through them, and praying through these issues.

At the end of the day, when everything else has been stripped away, we’re left with the cold realisation that “if there is a God, you are, in a sense, alone with him.” (p256)

The Reason for God helps us all to think through how we are going to respond to this God. In what is arguably the most important decision we will make in our whole lives, we need to ask ourselves whether we are going to obstinately refuse to think seriously about him, or whether we’ll give him an honest attempt.

as soon as church's website is back up, this review should end up there.

Alone

as mentioned, i'm reading Tim Keller's the reason for God for a book review. and just made it to the half-way point this afternoon (before succumbing to swine flu for an afternoon nap).

in it, this masterful quote from C.S. Lewis (who i think Keller really likes for his apologetics):

If what you want is an argument against Christianity... you can easily find some stupid and unsatisfactory Christian and say ... "So there's your boasted new man! Give me the old kind." But if once you have begun to see that Christianity is on other grounds probable, you will know in your heart that this is only evading the issue. What can you ever really know of other people's souls - of their temptations, their opportunities, their struggles? One soul in the whole creation you do know: and it is the only one whose fate is placed in your hands.

If there is a God, you are, in a sense, alone with Him.

You cannot put Him off with speculations about your next-door neighbours or memories of what you have read in books. What will all that chatter and hearsay count when the anaesthetic fog we call "nature" or "the real world" fades away and the Divine Presence in which you have always stood becomes palpable, immediate, and unavoidable?

this is from Lewis' Mere Christianity (Macmillan: 1965 p168), which (so it was sold to me) is what Tim Keller is trying to perhaps not emulate in the Reason for God, but retell, from his own perspective; to set out clearly, and carefully, just what it is that makes Christianity not stupid, but reasonable, and sensible.

i think Keller wants the non-Christian to pick up this book and say firstly, 'that's a stupid title - as if there's a reason for God'. then he wants their Christian friend to say, 'why's it stupid?' and then whatever their answer, be able to say, 'no, he talks about that too - he's thought about that, we - Christians - HAVE thought about that. you're not the first or the only one to ask that. read his answer. than come back to me'. or something like that.

if you're reading, Mick, i'll have that review out for you soon!

books books everywhere

reading three good ones at the moment:

1. Reformation, by Diarmaid MacCulloch (Penguin: Victoria, 2004)
   
   you may remember it from here!
   
   i'm really enjoying it - it's engrossing, thorough, and good at drawing together various threads.
   
   
   
2. also on my stack is The Reason for God, by Timothy Keller (Penguin: London, 2008)
   
   
   
   i'm reviewing it for church, where we're trying to get regular book reviews going. if you've read his ground breaking article (download here i think), Deconstructing Defeater Beliefs, you'll know what it's about.
   
   
   
3. last on my list is a book that my friends at AFES ordered me a review copy of! It's called What are we waiting for? Christian Hope and Contemporary Culture, eds. Stephen Holmes and Russell Rook (Paternoster: Bucks, 2008)
   
   
   
   i originally heard about it from Chrisendom, and have already read the first three chapters - getting it only late last night!
   
   when i've finished and reviewed it, assuming i don't upset anyone in the upper echelons of AFES, it should turn up here, at the AFES online magazine, webSalt. (where you can sign up to get RSS feeds - you can even check out my old reviews of Lee Strobel's the case for easter and Peter Bolt's Living with the Underworld)

lots to read about, lots to think about, lots to chat about.

apologia

chatting to someone in first year at college the other day. i mentioned case, the Centre for Apologetic Scholarship and Education.

and they said something like, "yeah, i don't really like apologetics."
so i says, "what?" (please bear in mind, this is someone who has just enrolled in 4 years at theological college)
and they says, "Christianity isn't just about arguing."

my eyes slowly returned to their sockets, as i realised how common a misunderstanding this must be.

of course the cornerstone apologetic bible verse is that of 1 Peter 3:15,

but in your hearts sanctify Christ as Lord, always being prepared to give an answer (απολογια, apology) to anyone who demands a reason for the hope in you.

on the bus today, reading this great little book, Shining Like Stars (IVP)
Lindsay Brown, present past General Secretary of IFES* writes, "The Christian faith goes against reason but is not against reason," yet "we must not pander to people's intellectual curiosity, but give them a full basis for believing," as "Christianity is never exclusively rational - it also has moral dimensions."

of course, my fave apologetics quote comes from Irenaeus,

to describe is to refute

that is, simply by explaining what it is the-one-demanding-a-reason-for-the-hope-that-is-in-you is saying, the inconsistencies with a Christological world-view. it is then, that, as Tim Keller puts it in this really tops article, you can put in truth of the gospel. however he puts this "dismantling defeater beliefs" in the middle of his "apologetic sandwich", or, in his words:

1. The attractive gospel – Brief gospel connected to baseline narratives
   
2. Why Christianity can be true- Dismantling doubts and defeaters
   
3. The Biblical story of the gospel – A more thorough telling

so, my good college friend, this is apologetics: sharing, in an inherently attractive way (joyful as we Christians all are), the gospel in which you trust. i say to you therefore, apologise away!

* International Fellowship of Evangelical Students (website here)