There is a very good interview with Tim Keller about several subjects in Christianity and religion in general. I wanted to focus on just one here: marketability.
You reject marketing apologetics like, “Christianity is better than the alternatives, so choose Christianity.” Why?
Marketing is about felt needs. You find the need and then you say Christianity will meet that need. You have to adapt to people’s questions. And if people are asking a question, you want to show how Jesus is the answer. But at a certain point, you have to go past their question to the other things that Christianity says. Otherwise you’re just scratching where they itch. So marketing is showing how Christianity meets the need, and I think the gospel is showing how Christianity is the truth.
They even have chairs in religious departments now. Bart Ehrman (who we have quoted on here a fair amount) has released a new book “God’s Problem”. And one of the first reviews that have come out can be found here. Again, as in the first case of “the new athiesm”, nothing here is actually new at all. It is the oldest play in the book getting run again, the presence of suffering in the world.
Many of the attempts against God or the Scriptures come down to two things: (1) misrepresenting, or incredibly simplifying the situation, and (2) not willing to encounter dialogue with others who also study the subject.
I was really surprised to see this: Tim Keller speaking about God at Google.
You can find out a little more about Keller at his wikipedia page. He is an author, part-time seminary professor, and founder and pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City.
I am truly shocked that the employees of Google would have him speak, that the company would allow it, AND that is would be the highest attended talk! It seems from the limited description of the talk that he was doing the very basics of apologetics and intro to philosophy of religion type things:
1. Why the reasons for God are important.
2. How the reasons for God work.
- Intellectual Reasons
- Personal Reasons
There seems to be a huge clash that is about to happen. Recently Rowan Williams (the head of the Anglican church) gave a lecture focused on the area of law. It was really about how a better pluralistic society could work to satisfy everyone in it. The lecture was entirely misunderstood by the media, and because he talks about sharia law, the coverage and reactions were completely over the top. NT Wright even had a recent lecture on the same topic in light of the massive misunderstanding.
As many of you probably have already come to know, there was a school shooting yesterday at Northern Illinois University in which six people died, including the gunman. At this very difficult time, let us unite together in prayer for the families of those who have lost loved ones and also for all of the injured students both physically and psychologically. more information
Last Friday, 42 year-old, homosexual, Christian, John Reaney was awarded £47,00 (approx. $92,000) for being denied the job as a youth worker for the Church of England based on his sexual orientation. The man had been approved for the job by an eight person panel and only needed the approval of the Bishop. However, after a two hour interview, Bishop Priddis came to understand that Reaney had just exited a five year same sex relationship. A few days after the interview Reaney received the call and learned that he had been turned down for the position. In response, and backed by the homosexual rights group “Stonewall,” Reaney sued the Hereford Diocesan Board of Finance and won. Read the recent BBC article here or an older article from last year here.
CNN just finished airing an hour long special titled “Who is Jesus?”. All in all, it was a fantastic portrayal of many truths, and I do hope they have an encore presentation. Many names we know were interviewed: Bishop NT Wright, Dr Amy Levine, and Bart Ehrman, among others. It presented Jesus in an apocalyptic light as a Messiah claimant, with Ehrman, of all people, saying that his resurrection vindicates his Gospel message. They share that the Kingdom message was not a one-off, unusual topic. It was a commonly preached topic, and one understood within Judaism at the time. Surely, to some of a tight Orthodox faith this message from the media might be hard to hear. However, from a scholarly perspective, and a perspective that we here hold to, it is right on the money.
Please read this article.
Here are a couple of excerpts:
“In effect, the law denies that there is any such thing as one’s biologically determined “gender,” any such thing as “male” or “female.” For the purposes of the law, you are whatever sex you say you are—and your claim, no matter how preposterous, must be treated as reality by school authorities.”
“The possibilities here are endless—Bible clubs, any activity, text, or teaching that portrays traditional families in a positive light, etc., could easily be argued to be either discriminatory because they ‘privilege heteronormativity’ or tend to foster a discriminatory bias against any group included in the definitions of ‘sexual orientation’ or ‘gender,’” Shortt said….”
Link here: http://blog.christianitytoday.com/outofur/archives/2007/10/willow_creek_re.html
I was frankly shocked to see this article. It gave me much joy. I was happy that a major church realized that people aren’t growing spiritually, and realizing that this means they need to change how they approach the people and essentially what they are doing at the church there in Willow Creek.
They’ve basically found that participation doesn’t signify the maturing of a Christian. This means that just because you attend church, or attend another fellowship during the week, or a small group meeting, it doesn’t mean you’re growing. Essentially - the numbers don’t matter. For years in mainstream Christianity the only thing that has mattered is the numbers.
I was just listening to an interview on some current New Testament studies that intersected with a book I am reading that was very interesting. Some current studies called, New Perspective, make some great strides in pushing past some lingering traditional viewpoints from the time of the reformers. The time of the reformers was very anti-semitic, and results in a very anti-semitic view of the Scriptures. This still colors the Church and reading the Scriptures today. The New Perspective finds a much greater continuity between the Old Testament and the New Testament.