{"id":4670,"date":"2017-09-04T10:00:25","date_gmt":"2017-09-04T18:00:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/?p=4670"},"modified":"2017-09-01T12:32:54","modified_gmt":"2017-09-01T20:32:54","slug":"to-change-the-world-week-eleven","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/archives\/2017\/09\/04\/to-change-the-world-week-eleven","title":{"rendered":"To Change The World, Week Eleven"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"To
To Change The World<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Blog readers: Chi Alpha @ Stanford is engaging in our annual summer reading project. As we read through To Change The World: The Irony, Tragedy, and Possibility of Christianity in the Late Modern World by James Davison Hunter, I\u2019ll post my thoughts here (which will largely consist of excerpts I found insightful). They are all tagged summer-reading-project-2017<\/a>. The reading schedule is online at https:\/\/xastanford.org\/summer-reading<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

I found chapter three much more engaging than chapter two. If you\u2019re getting bogged down, it gets better.<\/p>\n

Chapter Two: Old Cultural Wineskins<\/h3>\n

If sincerity were the same thing as faithfulness, then all would be well, for Christians, as a rule, are nothing if not sincere\u2014not least in their desire to be \u201cfaithful in their own generation.\u201d But if I am even partially correct about the nature and profundity of the changes of late modernity, then against these sincerity could never be enough by itself. At least a fragment of wisdom would be required as well. (page 213)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As a Protestant, I truly believe in sola fide (faith alone). But very often I find Christians in our culture treating faith as if it were a feeling or some mere sentiment. Faith encompasses so much more than that! Faith that lacks faithfulness is not the faith God requires \u2014 and faithfulness is a matter that springs from the convictions we have cultivated and the habits we have developed far more than it does from the emotional impulses we experience.<\/p>\n

Chapter Three: The Groundwork for an Alternative Way<\/h3>\n

In a milieu where the church and its people are so quickly and roundly criticized for their shortcomings, it is easy to overlook a central theological truth; that is, that however inadequate or pitiful the church may seem at times (and may, in fact, be), where the scripture is proclaimed, the sacraments administered, and the people of God continue to seek to follow God in word and deed, God is at work; the Holy Spirit is still very much active. (page 225)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

If I could have one truth tattooed on your generation\u2019s arm, something like the above would be a strong contender. Always remember that you are not merely inviting people to follow Christ, you are inviting them to become part of the Body of Christ. You should love it and invite others to love it alongside you. Sadly, the Body of Christ is often slandered by believers who think only of her faults (often with shocking inaccuracy) and little of her strengths.<\/p>\n

Be slow to assume you have a good read on how the church has acted in history. For that matter, be slow to assume you have a good read on how the church is acting today. Have you heard that Joel Osteen\u2019s church has been callous during the flooding of Houston? Reddit, Twitter, and Facebook users sure got that impression. Before you apologize to your friends for Osteen\u2019s alleged hypocrisy, read these articles: Flood him with criticism: Let him who is without sin cast the first stone at Joel Osteen and his church<\/a> (Bobby Ross, Jr, GetReligion), Was Joel Osteen\u2019s Houston \u2018Megachurch\u2019 Affected By Hurricane Harvey?<\/a> (Snopes), The Joel Osteen Fiasco Says A Lot About American Christianity<\/a> (Laura Turner, Buzzfeed). Based on the evidence I\u2019ve seen, Lakewood Church not only acted defensibly  but actually acted wisely and helpfully. Acting in a manner unfamiliar to some of their critics, they were more concerned with actually doing good than with merely giving the appearance of doing good.<\/p>\n

This, incidentally, is a useful reminder that the Bible isn\u2019t kidding when it tells us there will be those who \u201cthose who speak maliciously against your good behavior in Christ\u201d (1 Peter 3:16, NIV). I often meet young Christians who believe that if we just act nicely enough that the world will love us. You\u2019re not going to be a better representative of Jesus than Jesus Himself was, and He was tortured to death. Temper your expectations.<\/span><\/p>\n

I say all that to say this: if you hear a negative report about a church, do your homework before you assume the criticisms you are hearing are accurate. A surprising amount of the time the criticism will be false or will be misleadingly true.<\/p>\n

But when a criticism of the Church is true we need to take it seriously.<\/p>\n

Nowhere is the task of critical resistance more urgent than in the church itself for the ways that it too has accommodated to the spirit of the late modern age. St. Peter is right to say, \u201cjudgment begins with the household of God\u201d (1 Pet. 4:17). Antithesis, then, means that the church\u2019s own structures and its own engagement with the world must be continually scrutinized. Here especially, critical resistance must always be creative and constructive; guided by devotion to the beloved community. (page 236)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Moving on, Hunter identifies a problem that I think is particularly strong at Stanford:<\/p>\n

In contemporary America, Christians have faith in God and, by and large, they believe and hold fast to the central truths of the Christian tradition. But while they have faith, they have also been formed by the larger post-Christian culture, a culture whose habits of life less and less resemble anything like the vision of human flourishing provided by the life of Christ and witness of scripture. The problem, in other words, is that Christians have not been formed \u201cin all wisdom\u201d that they might rise to the demands of faithfulness in a time such as ours, \u201cbearing fruit in every good work.\u201d (page 227)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

We need to recognize that our culture is always trying to create unchristian convictions within us. Stanford does it more aggressively than American society because the campus is a much less free environment.<\/p>\n

But that doesn\u2019t mean that we give up and reject our society. Far from it.<\/p>\n

When people are saved by God through faith in Christ they are not only being saved from their sins, they are saved in order to resume the tasks mandated at creation, the task of caring for and cultivating a world that honors God and reflects his character and glory. (page 236)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And so we participate in our society and seek to make it better, recognizing that there is goodness everywhere because of God\u2019s common grace. But even when we find an area of alignment of our values with society\u2019s, we recognize that there will be tension.<\/p>\n

It is important to emphasize that the realm of \u201ccommon grace\u201d is, by no means, a neutral space. It is God\u2019s grace after all\u2014it emanates from him and its purpose is to give him glory. To make strong and active affirmations about the present world, then, in no way implies the autonomy of knowledge, morality, desire, justice, or beauty. The idea that there are common or objective standards for these things independent of the created order is an illusion. In the contemporary world, neutrality is the pretence of all secular establishments; a myth concealed by its hegemony. (page 233)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As a result, we need to have a level of skepticism about the structures of our fallen society.<\/p>\n

In the present historical context, this means that Christians recognize that all social organizations exist as parodies of eschatological hope. And so it is that the city is a poor imitation of heavenly community; the modern state, a deformed version of the ecclesia; the market, a distortion of consummation; modern entertainment, a caricature of joy; schooling, a misrepresentation of true formation; liberalism, a crass simulacrum of freedom; and the sovereignty we accord to the self, a parody of God himself. As these institutions and ideals become ends in themselves, they become the objects of idolatry. (pages 234\u2013235)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And now we\u2019re getting close to what I take to be Hunter\u2019s ultimate point: we don\u2019t participate in society primarily to change the world. We do it simply to bless those around us.<\/p>\n

If there are benevolent consequences of our engagement with the world, in other words, it is precisely because it is not<\/b> rooted in a desire to change the world for the better but rather because it is an expression of a desire to honor the creator of all goodness, beauty, and truth, a manifestation of our loving obedience to God, and a fulfillment of God\u2019s command to love our neighbor.<\/em> (page 234, the original has emphasis that I don\u2019t think is being reproduced here)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I\u2019m eager to see where his argument goes from here.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Blog readers: Chi Alpha @ Stanford is engaging in our annual summer reading project. As we read through To Change The World: The Irony, Tragedy, and Possibility of Christianity in the Late Modern World by James Davison Hunter, I\u2019ll post my thoughts here (which will largely consist of excerpts I found insightful). They are all \u2026 Continue reading \u201cTo Change The World, Week Eleven\u201d<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wp_typography_post_enhancements_disabled":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8],"tags":[209,210],"class_list":["post-4670","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-resources-reviews","tag-summer-reading-project-2017","tag-to-change-the-world"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Ded-1dk","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4670","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4670"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4670\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4677,"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4670\/revisions\/4677"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4670"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4670"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4670"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}