The World's Worst Teaching

I may try editing this into something substantive at some point, but here's a tab dump of items related to the World's Worst Teaching:

* On the origin of the description: The last post of Slacktivist's review of the first book of Left Behind

Less tangentially:

* The Truth Problem

* Parts one and two of one blog review. Part one starts with the sentences: "I learned an important lesson recently. Never sign up to teach a curriculum that you have not reviewed."

* Parts one and two of another blog review -- Part one contains the sentences: "They are naive charlatans delivering complex theological and philosophical issues in an oversimplified and erroneous package... bless their hearts. So what exactly is my problem? It’s too massive to address. It’s like trying to mend a decapitated elephant with a box of Band-Aids" [Ellipses in the original.]

* I skimmed this magazine-ish article. It puts a larger strategic context around the World's Worst Teaching. Oddly, the first comment on the article comes from the author's uncle, disputing her description of her childhood church as "ultra-conservative."

* A few other blogs that I haven't finished reading their critiques yet.

Dallas Willard Quote

...justification is a new beginning for a relationship that has been broken, and it is made right by forgiveness, but that's just the doorway into the resumption of relationship. The relationship [itself] is atonement, and that involves Christ becoming one with us. [Atonement] means that we now [can] walk with Him and that He is in us, and we are in Him. We have eternal life, and that is what atonement is. The result of atonement is deliverance or salvation. We are not under the power of sin and death anymore. Justification, atonement, and salvation are three aspects of one thing.

My cousin sent me this article and it reminded me of one of our discussions last week on culture. It is actually a review of a book, To Change the World, which seems to be discussing the role of the church/bodies of believers in culture.

Personal Theology Quiz

Here's the quiz I was talking about tonight.

I just took the quiz now quickly. Apparently I interpreted some of the questions differently from before. Same top four as always -- the order varies -- but they're all usually clustered together in the 70s. My Charismatic/Pentecostal score dropped off to 50%! I'm clearly going to have to do something about that...

Full results:
Neo orthodox 79%
Evangelical Holiness/Wesleyan 79%
Emergent/Postmodern 75%
Charismatic/Pentecostal 50%
Roman Catholic 39%
Classical Liberal 39%
Reformed Evangelical 25%
Fundamentalist 18%
Modern Liberal 14%

Grow in Grace / Go and do likewise

"Grace is opposed to earning, not effort.". Dallas Willard

This quote is one of Dallas' favorite quotes. I have been slowly digesting it for a few weeks now and trying to internalize it and reconcile it with another concept that was ingrained in me many years ago: we are saved by faith alone through the grace of Jesus- we are not saved by works.

When I was younger, I was led by pop, modern Christianity to believe that the only point of grace is to forgive us of our sins when we ask for it. Taken in combination with my misunderstanding that "faith" was a matter of believing certain ideas to be true (ie. the "right" things about God, Jesus, and a myriad of sociopolitical issues) and my belief that I needed to try really hard not to sin (lest I ask forgiveness for the same thing too often and cheapen grace) resulted in a personal theology of "sin management" [citation needed :-] and what Willard calls "consumerist Christianity without discipleship."

I went to church to participate in worship, but also to get more head knowledge and clarify the head knowledge I had to make sure I had the right answers (this was before I was introduced to the idea of a healthy respect for the mysteries of God). I tried really hard not to sin (not in an attempt to earn grace, but so I wouldn't "cheapen it"). And eventually, when I was a senior in high school, I hit a wall. I realized that while I wasn't doing anything really bad, neither was I doing anything really good. This bothered me and I felt like it was a deficit in my life. But I also had the ingrained idea that we don't do good works in an effort to earn salvation (most Protestants I knew avoided good works as a general rule, just to be on the safe side). I felt like that young rich man who said to Jesus: look, I keep the commandments, I am a good boy...what now?

Jesus' answer: sell all your stuff, give the money to the poor and follow me (discipleship)! Ok, nice in theory. But how do I follow Jesus at the turn of the twenty first century? My church wasn't giving me too many specifics: believe, read the bible, pray, witness, ask forgiveness (but don't cheapen grace!), repeat. Since Jesus is not physically standing before me, how can I follow him? If I try to do the stuff he did, barring the stuff I cannot do (miracles and such), and the stuff I was already trying (scripture, prayer and witnessing) it seems like there were a lot of good works involved (helping those less fortunate, feeding the poor, etc) and a lot of talking back to hipocritical and out-of-touch religious authorities (scribes, Pharisees, etc). This seemed in direct conflict with the dual concepts I had been taught since a youngster: we are saved by grace, not works, and you must respect your elders.

Now, given my youth and the youthful inclination toward rebellion, I was all about exploring the possibility that Jesus was a little more complex than the docile, sacrificial lamb that Sunday School portrayed him as (except when he cleared the money changers out of the temple - that had always made him seem uncharacteristically edgy). So I began to re-read the Gospels for the first time as though Jesus was also my teacher (I was in college at this point). This read much differently than it had when I read it ealier in life. Before this, I had known that Jesus was saying cool stuff, but all I really needed to remember was that Jesus loved and forgave me. But as Jesus also became me teacher, I began trying to live a little bit like he did in terms of my interpersonal relationships. I have no delusions of grandeur - I do not actually think I am perfect- just ask anyone close to me. But if Jesus is my teacher, shouldn't I TRY to treat others with love and understanding, despite our differences? And still, this did not seem to me to conflict with the idea that you cannot earn Grace or salvation. However, it did not mesh either, until I read this Dallas Willard line: "Grace is opposed to earning, not effort".

Just because we are saved by grace does not mean we should go through life as passive as a lump on a log. Even the demons believe that God is God and Jesus saves (and they tremble), but to do kingdom work requires some effort. Dallas also elaborates on how Grace plays a part in this. Grace is not merely used as a sin-balm; grace also sanctifies our actions. How do you "grow in grace"? Not by sinning more to exercise God's forgiveness (Rasputin style!), but by acting out of a desire to follow Jesus everyday and to do God's will (Discipleship is, after all, an action). Then, God's grace sanctifies our actions to serve his purpose. If God works for the good of those who love him and have been called according to his purpose (and we know he does- it's in Romans somewhere) then surely that doesn't just apply to helping us work through the bad stuff in our lives. It also applies to helping our good efforts actually result in some good for the kingdom of God.

Grow in Grace!

Be disciples (and teach others to do likewise)!

Dallas Links

I ran across two interview with Dallas: one shorter and one longer. I haven't worked my way through them yet, but I wanted to pass them on to y'all.