Transcript Christian

SSIMISM
reaching those who think they’ve heard it all before
post modern?
Europe is…
post christian?
The nose of Asia?
Area: 22,978,500 sq km
of which 74% is in Russia
Population: 730 million
Annual Growth: 0.10%
Urbanites: 73%
“modern”
% belief in ‘God’
“Christian”
“if our gospel is veiled…”
can you relate to this?
what do you think?
“we live in an age of great
spiritual blindness today
today.
Students have none of the
hooks we need to hang
the gospel on. No one
believes in God, sin, or
heaven any more
more. We
really need to pray that
God opens blind eyes”
Student worker
4th November 2008
implicit
questions
How can I be good?
How can I be free?
How can we have hope?
One gospel
Many presentations
Colossians 1v4-8
•
the gospel bears fruit all over the world
‘The gospel’ is an announcement, a proclamation,
whose importance lies in the truth of its content. It is
not, primarily, either an invitation or a technique for
changing people's lives. It is a command to be obeyed
and a power let loose in the world (cf. Romans 1v1617), which cannot be reduced to terms of the
persuasiveness or even the conviction of the
messenger. It works of itself to overthrow falsehood.
What does Paul say about the gospel?
Colossians 1v4-8
•
the gospel bears fruit when it is understood
God does not put his saving power into operation by
some automatic or magic process which bypasses
the consciousness of its recipients. Paul describes
the effect of Ephaphras' ministry in Colosse in terms
not of an emotional reaction, nor even of people
'accepting Christ into their hearts', but of hearing truth
and understanding it…The word here indicates an
intelligent thinking through & recognition of that truth.
What does Paul say about the gospel?
Acts 17v16-18
•
the gospel can be misunderstood!
…this babbler…
…foreign gods…
…this because…
How did people respond to Paul? Why?
Acts 17v32-34
…some sneered…
…others said…
…some believed…
How did people respond to Paul? Why?
The diary of
Antoine Requentin
How would this affect evangelism?
“it’s too good to be true”
I wish I had your faith
“it’s too bad to be true”
I wish I could eradicate your faith
« D’ou venons-nous? Que sommes-nous? Ou allons-nous? »
Paul Gaugin
1755 lisbon
1789 paris
1918 flanders
1945 auschwitz
1968 paris
1989 berlin
…those living in darkness…
…have seen a great light…
Humanism is a secular religion thrown together
from decaying scraps of Christian myth. In contrast,
the Gaia hypothesis…embodies rigorous scientific
naturalism. Gaia theory re-establishes the link
between humans and the rest of nature which was
affirmed in mankind's primordial religion, animism.
In monotheistic faiths, God is the final guarantee of
meaning in human life. For Gaia, human life has no
more meaning than the life of slime mould.
humanism
meaning
“The philosophers of the Enlightenment aimed to
supplant Christianity, but they could do so only if
they were able to satisfy the hopes it had
implanted. As a result they could not admit –
what pre-Christian thinkers took for granted –
that human history has no overall meaning”
hope
If we present man with a concept of
man which is not true, we may well
corrupt him…the gas chambers of
Auschwitz, Treblinka, and Maidanek
were ultimately prepared not in some
ministry or other in Berlin, but rather
at the desks and in lecture halls of
nihilistic scientists and philosophers’
A true opium of the people is a belief in
nothingness after death – the huge
solace of thinking that for our
betrayals, greed, cowardice, murders
we are not going to be judged
is anything wrong?
The New rebel is a sceptic & will not entirely trust anything.
He has no loyalty; therefore he can never be really a
revolutionist. The fact that he doubts everything really gets
in his way when he wants to denounce anything. For all
denunciation implies a moral doctrine of some kind & the
modern revolutionist doubts not only the institution he
denounces, but the doctrine by which he denounces it…As
a politician, he will cry out that war is a waste of life, and
then, as a philosopher, that all life is waste of time…In
short, the modern revolutionist, being an infinite sceptic, is
always engaged in undermining his own mines. In his book
on politics he attacks men for trampling on morality; in his
book on ethics he attacks morality for trampling on men.
The modern man in revolt has become practically useless
for all purposes of revolt. By rebelling against everything
he has lost his right to rebel against anything.
Despairing of truth
Whoever shouts loudest wins.
Despairing of justice
Power is ultimately vigilante
Despairing of purpose
Too much to live with; too little to live for.
‘Proper
contextualisation’
Although the Gospel in its entirety must be
contextualised, it should not be adapted to
culture in a manner that makes it lose its
counter-cultural edge. It is precisely as a
foreign and critical message, which speaks of
a salvation that comes from elsewhere, that
the Gospel can be a truly liberating force. That
is why proper contextualisation is only
possible when we go beyond a mere effort to
synthesise Gospel and context, but instead
evaluate the culture in the light of the Gospel.
- Dr Benno Van Den Toren, Wycliffe Hall
So much as we see of the love of
God, so much shall we delight in
him, and no more. Every other
discovery of God, without this, will
but make the soul fly from Him.
John Owen
God does not love us because Christ died for us;
Christ died for us because God loved us. If it is
God's wrath which needed to be propitiated, it is
God's love which did the propitiating. If it may be
said that the propitiation 'changed' God, or that by
it he changed himself, let us be clear that he did
not change from wrath to love' John Stott
Post-Communist: despair
His dark materials
Post-Catholic: distance
God
Son
Mary
Angels
Saints
How would John
Priests
16:27 help us in
evangelism?
Sinners
Back to the New
Testament…
Christianity:
What does it actually mean?
Idolatry:
What do you mean by ‘God’?
1) Faith is not as
foreign as we think
1) People who believe in God are
deluded
2) People only believe in God
because they want to believe it
3) People who believe in God are
dangerous
2) Sin is more complex
than we think
Man is in a state of contradiction
against God
Man is in a state of contradiction
against the natural world
Man is in a state of contradiction
against his fellow man
Man is in a state of inner selfcontradiction
Lesslie Newbigin, ‘What is Salvation?’,
in Sin & Salvation (1956)
3) Religion is more
attractive than we think
“…we drink more alcohol faster, sleep
around more, live less in long-lasting, two
parent families, and worship less, than
almost anyone in the world. The idea that
young Muslims might actually be putting
their fingers on some things that are
wrong with our modern, progressive,
liberal, secular society…Hardly feature[s]
in everyday discourse. It should”
Timothy Garton Ash (the Guardian, 2005)
4) Grace is more
amazing than we think
At least five times the Christian
faith has to all appearance gone to
the dogs. In each of these five
cases it was the dog that died.
GK Chesterton