Today, my friend Grace wrote a post about a group called Beautiful Angle. Now, this was the first time I had heard of this particular group but it was not the first I had heard of their ideas. They sing the mantra of what is becoming known today as the "Emerging Church." I could write pages and pages about my opinion of their ideas (and I almost did on poor Grace's blog) but decided instead that I would post it here. It was the second time in one day that these ideas were again presented to me and in my opinion, it is very worth a dedicated and honest probe into scripture. I hope you'll appreciate my thoughtful opinions and that it will cause you to consider your own evaluations of these topics. Here's what I had written. It does not even scrape the surface of these topics.
So, if I'm being honest I must say that I dislike a lot of what this poster says. It seems to me that the people who wrote it are being what they are condemning others for - like they have the inside scoop on what being Christ-like is or something. Why not say, "Yes, Christians are all sinners. Every one of them has messed up, including us."
I have a personal irk about this "judge not" thing. It does not mean that we don't evaluate, according to scripture, what is right and wrong or say what is sinful - what God clearly states is sinful. What it means is that we do not act as their judge - we do not declare or execute their eternal sentence. We can though, obtain a pretty good idea of what it will be from what God Himself says... 1 Cor. 6:9,10 Gal. 5:19-21 Eph. 5:5-7
We must not forget that the God of the Old Testament is the very same God of the New Testament and of today. We cannot deny that He is the same God that destroyed whole cities for their sexual immorality. Yes, He is loving, gracious and merciful - but He saved us from Himself alone. From His own eternal wrath, judgment and condemnation. We cannot appreciate our salvation if we first do not acknowledge from what and more importantly, from WHOM, we were saved.
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4 comments:
I LOVE your last paragraph! You are so right. If we first do not understand our sin and that it deserves death than the fact that we can be saved from our sin matters little! I think it is modern Christianity's (and My) biggest probelm: I do not get and grieve my sin enough. And God IS just He will judge. It's the plain ol' truth and has been from the beginning.
I think it's funny that you don't want to ruffle feathers. Pretty much anyone into the whole EC thing will get their feathers ruffled.
My biggest issue w/ the whole thing is the attitude of "we do churce the way it was meant to be done" that seems to seep out of any EC discussion I read. On one hand, I guess everyone feels that they are doing church "the right way" or they should probably be doing it differently, but it's another thing entirely to find something that's pretty out there and say "this is the right way" when it would mean 99% of church today is more or less done wrong.
It's so typical of my own irony-driven, too-cool-for-school generation though. It's not at all unlike the rampant premillenialism that exists today. It's like people think "Left Behind" is really the only way to understand apocolyptic literature. Forget the fact that up until WW2, the whole idea was more or less foreign to protestantism. People need to have a respect for where they came from. Maybe, just maybe, if you are in the 1% minority of what Christians have done since Christ Himself walked the Earth, you ought approach such issues w/ a bit of humility and respect for the thoughts of saints of old.
LOL at feather ruffling...
-Mike
Here is an e-mail I received from Grace which she gave me permission to post here. I appreciate her clarification and graciousness. We are good friends and, as we are both moms with two small children, we admittedly did not have the time to get into a full theological examination on our respective blogs. After writing my own I wondered if I should not have clarified more that I was questioning the poster and not necessarily Grace - especially since I really did not know what she believes in this area. That said, I think both our Reformed forefathers and the creators of the poster would be pleased with how we handled this.
Just a quick thought on your blog today. Sorry I didn't comment there but I'm sleepy and I'm afraid I might not make as much sense as I'd like to, and maybe this is too long to post publicly. If you want to can stick it up there in my defense, though ;)
I think we agree more than you might have thought! I totally agree with you on the Emergent/Emerging church thing, at least on the strain of that movement that tries to lessen the value of scripture or lower the importance of morality. It seems like there are two camps in that movement, and I at least know that our church (and I think the message behind that poster, although I don't know those guys' personal theology) ascribes to the school of belief that there is no standard higher than scripture, and that God's requirements for morality are never changing for our convenience.
I think the gist of the poster is that our "judgment" of sin shouldn't separate us from interacting with the sinners around us and showing them Christ's love and truth, but that sometimes it has. The weaknesses and hypocrisies of the people in the church that stand out in so many peoples' minds are what seem to stick with them and color their ability to even come into relationship with a Christian, and sometimes a public display of humility (and a commitment to be more Christ-like) is just what a lot of people need in order to open up that door.
But that certainly doesn't mean that we suddenly "accept" the sin that people carry and try and change our theology to accommodate them. I don't agree with that idea at all, either. Maybe I am only seeing what I want to see and there are some more subversive ideas in the poster than I thought, though.
Thanks for sharing your opinions and thoughts, and in the future, please feel free to address me directly so I can clarify myself if I'm not making sense in my theology, or if we seem to disagree. I felt a little bit (in an online, disconnected sort of way) like I was misrepresented as having some unsound theology to your friends who came to my page when that's really not what I believe at all. While in one way it is just the internet, I appreciate you being bold enough to speak your mind concerning the defense of God's scripture. I think I need to be that bold sometimes, too.
Ok, keep in touch and I wish we could be friends in real life more but I'm glad for the internet! Please forgive me for not being as clear as I want to be sometimes, I'm still learning how to navigate in the blog world.
Take care,
-Grace
Thanks, Cutzi! You're awesome.
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