Who do we serve?

Marcus Buckingham in his book, The One Thing You Need to Know, says that one of the four questions a leader must answer is Who do we serve? It has long been understood in marketing circles that when a company or organization tries to serve everyone they ultimately serve no one.

This can sometimes get tricky for a church.

Even the word “marketing” can make the church seem shallow and mercenary. And there is a great temptation to let the tail wag the dog and to let the market determine the message.

But every mission must have a target audience. Even Jesus had a target audience! (Matthew 15:24).

Here’s another way to look at this same issue.

We’ve all heard the mantra that the customer is always right. In the church this usually results in trying to accommodate all the complainers and objectors. But some of them may need to be invited to try a different church.

Here’s the irony, the more focused a church is on trying to reach a particular type of person, the more effective it will be in reaching people (even people not in its “target audience”).

Here’s my understanding of who the Wesleyan Community Church has been called to serve.

Pastor Rod

“Helping you become the person God created you to be”

Broadcast News

News must be broadcast, especially good news.

If someone finally found a cure for cancer or AIDS, this news could not be kept secret. A scientist who had this knowledge and kept it to herself would be vilified once the secret got out.

Because we have been entrusted with the Good News of Jesus Christ, we must recognize the “obligation that the reception of this good news demands.” Jesus gave his disciples the Great Commission (Matthew 28:19-20) to spread the Good News throughout the world.

However, if we truly believed that the Gospel was indeed Good News we would not need to be reminded of this obligation.

One person asks, “How did something that was supposed to be about ‘good news’ become, instead, an awkward, embarrassing and odious duty?”

His answer is that Evangelism is seen as a kind of marketing scheme. “It is not an invitation, but a sales pitch. It's like Amway without the soap.” (See my post on a similar theme.)

But I think we might be able to find a deeper cause for this problem.

If we really believed that the Gospel is Good News, we wouldn’t have to be told to let other people know about it.

If we really believed that the Gospel is the only answer to the deepest need of humanity, we would have plenty of motivation to “spread the Gospel.”

If we really believed that the Gospel is the only possible route to meaning, purpose and satisfaction in our lives, we couldn’t keep it a secret.

So what is the solution?

We don’t need to try harder: a "little better effort" is somewhat like changing the curtains in a house that has foundation problems. You may have nice curtains in the short run, but in the long run they won’t look too good on collapsed walls.

We don’t need to understand theology better. We already have a better understanding of theology than Peter did on the Day of Pentecost (Acts 2).

We need to experience the Gospel as Good News in our own lives. If we truly believed that the Gospel is Good News, if we experienced it as Good News, there’s not a force in this universe that could keep us silent.

Pastor Rod

“Helping you become the person God created you to be”

Gospel is Good News

Second, the Gospel is good news.

Michael Spencer quotes Josh Strodtbeck, “If your version of the Gospel isn’t actually good news, you’re wrong.”

Too often, the Gospel is seen as “negative, repressive, destructive, and discriminatory.” We’ve turned the Good News into just another religion. It’s no longer Good News about something that’s happened.

It’s become

• doing what is right,
• believing what is right,
• protesting what is not right.

So what makes this news good?

In Christ, we can have our deepest longings satisfied (John 4:14, Isaiah 55:1-2, Psalm 37:4).

In Christ, we can experience true freedom (John 8:32, Romans 8:15).

In Christ, we can live a life with meaning and purpose (Romans 8:18, 1 Corinthians 2:9-10, 2 Corinthians 3:18, 2 Thessalonians 2:14).

Of course, it is much more than any short list of “benefits.”

In essence, the Good News is that the most serious and basic problem of humanity (which we are unable to solve) has been solved for us by God in Christ. This makes an announcement of the discovery of a cure for cancer seem like trivial information.

Pastor Rod

“Helping you become the person God created you to be”

Gospel is News

We all know that the word “gospel” means “good news,” but what does that mean?

First of all, it is news.

The gospel is news about something that has happened. It is not advice about how to live your life. It is not a step-by-step arrangement by which one can obtain a ticket to heaven.

Let me explain this in a little more detail. We tend to simplify the Good News “to make it presentable in a way that is formulaic and manageable.” Many of us are familiar with The Four Spiritual Laws, The Roman Road and other “summaries” of the Gospel. But we should not confuse these with the Gospel itself.

They should be thought of “as pedagogical devices something akin to summaries of people and events you might find in junior high history textbooks or encyclopedias. They are valuable, they contain truth and they can communicate enough information to familiarize you with the subject, to some small degree.”

But the News is much bigger than these “summaries.”

Listen to how God describes the “gospel” through Isaiah:

How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of those who bring good news, who proclaim peace, who bring good tidings, who proclaim salvation, who say to Zion, "Your God reigns!" (Isaiah 52:7).

This is news about something that has happened. And what is that? It is the arrival of the Kingdom of God.

Already in Luke 9:6, the Twelve were “preaching the gospel.” In Luke 20:1, Jesus is preaching the gospel in the Temple courts. But the key event was yet to take place. As Paul describes in 1 Corinthians 15:3-4, the Good News is “that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures.”

The News is that we have been reconciled with God through Jesus Christ (Colossians 1:22).

The News is that Jesus Christ has defeated the powers of evil (Colossians 2:15).

Pastor Rod

“Helping you become the person God created you to be”

Brand X

The National Geographic special about the Gospel of Judas left the impression that the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John were arbitrarily chosen out of dozens of other gospels for inclusion in the official New Testament.

There was much that was misleading in the two-hour “documentary.” But I want to focus on just this one issue for now.
How was the official list of books (canon) determined? Was it the result of political maneuvering? Was it based on ulterior motives (to defend the authority of the church)? Was the process arbitrary with the outcome largely the result of the coincidental interaction of various factors?

I think the most valuable place to start is with some excerpts from the writings that were not selected as part of the canon (HT: Dr. Keith Drury @ IWU).

From “The Infancy Gospel of Thomas”

Now when Jesus was five years old … he took of the clay … and made … twelve sparrows…. Jesus spread forth (opened) his hands and commanded the sparrows, saying: Go forth into the height and fly.… And they flew and began to cry out and praise almighty God.

But a Pharisee … began to empty the pool which Jesus had made. And when Jesus saw it he was vexed and said to him: O thou of Sodom, ungodly and ignorant, what hurt did the fountain of water do thee, which I made? Lo, thou shalt become like a dry tree which hath neither roots nor leaf nor fruit. And straightway he was dried up and fell to the earth and died.

And after some days as Jesus walked with Joseph
through the city, there ran one of the children and smote Jesus on the arms: but Jesus said unto him: So finish thou thy course. And immediately he fell to the earth and died.

Jesus [as a child] said unto the [teacher]: If thou be verily a [teacher] and indeed knowest the letters, tell me the power of A and I will tell thee the power of B. Then was the master filled with indignation and smote him on the head. But Jesus was wroth and cursed him, and on a sudden he fell down and died.

From The Arabic Gospel of the Infancy of the Savior:

Jesus spoke, and, indeed, when He was lying in His cradle said to Mary His mother: I am Jesus, the Son of God, the Logos, whom thou hast brought forth, as the Angel Gabriel announced to thee; and my Father has sent me for the salvation of the world.

Wherefore they circumcised Him in the cave. And the old Hebrew woman took the piece of skin; but some say that she took the navel-string, and laid it past in a jar of old oil of nard. And she had a son, a dealer in unguents, and she gave it to him, saying: See that thou do not sell this jar of unguent of nard, even although three hundred denarii should be offered thee for it. And this is that jar which Mary the sinner bought and poured upon the head and feet of our Lord Jesus Christ, which thereafter she wiped with the hair of her head.

Coming thereafter to another city, they [Joseph, Mary & Jesus] wished to spend the night in it. They turned aside, therefore, to the house of a man newly married, but who, under the influence of witchcraft, was not able to enjoy his wife; and when they had spent that night with him, his bond was loosed.

Hence they turned aside to that sycamore which is now called Matarea, and the Lord Jesus brought forth in Matarea a fountain in which the Lady Mary washed His shirt. And from the sweat of the Lord Jesus which she sprinkled there, balsam was produced in that region.

Thence they came down to Memphis, and saw Pharaoh, and remained three years in Egypt; and the Lord Jesus did in Egypt very many miracles which are recorded neither in the Gospel of the Infancy nor in the perfect Gospel.

From The Book of James:

And Mary [as a child] was in the temple of the Lord as a dove that is nurtured: and she received food from the hand of an angel…. And when she was twelve years old, there was a council of the priests, saying: Behold Mary is become twelve years old in the temple of the Lord. What then shall we do with her?

And [the priest] took the rods of them all and went into the temple and prayed. And when he had finished the prayer he took the rods and went forth and gave them back to them: and there was no sign upon them. But Joseph received the last rod: and lo, a dove came forth of the rod and flew upon the [h]ead of Joseph. And the priest said unto Joseph: Unto thee hath it fallen to take the virgin of the Lord and keep her for thyself. And Joseph refused, saying: I have sons, and I am an old man, but she is a girl: lest I became a laughing-stock to the children of Israel…. Joseph was afraid, and took her to keep her for himself. And Joseph said unto Mary: Lo, I have received thee out of the temple of the Lord: and now do I leave thee in my house, and I go away to build my buildings and I will come again unto thee.

From The Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew:

And Mary was held in admiration by all the people of Israel; and when she was three years old, she walked with a step so mature, she spoke so perfectly, and spent her time so assiduously in the praises of God, that all were astonished at her, and wondered; and she was not reckoned a young infant, but as it were a grown-up person of thirty years old. She was so constant in prayer, and her appearance was so beautiful and glorious, that scarcely any one could look into her face.

From the morning to the third hour she remained in prayer; from the third to the ninth she was occupied with her weaving; and from the ninth she again applied herself to prayer. She did not retire from praying until there appeared to her the angel of the Lord, from whose hand she used to receive food; and thus she became more and more perfect in the work of God.

She refreshed herself only with the food which she daily received from the hand of the angel; but the food which she obtained from the priests she divided among the poor. The angels of God were often seen speaking with her, and they most diligently obeyed her. If any one who was unwell touched her, the same hour he went home cured.

Then Joseph received Mary, with the other five virgins who were to be with her in Joseph's house.

And the virgins who were with Mary said to him: We know that no man has touched her; we can testify that she is still a virgin, and untouched. We have watched over her; always has she continued with us in prayer; daily do the angels of God speak with her; daily does she receive food from the hand of the Lord.

After these things there arose a great report that Mary was with child. And Joseph was seized by the officers of the temple, and brought along with Mary to the high priest. And he with the priests began to reproach him, and to say: Why hast thou beguiled so great and so glorious a virgin, who was fed like a dove in the temple by the angels of God, who never wished either to see or to have a man, who had the most excellent knowledge of the law of God?

[S]he brought forth a son, and the angels surrounded Him when He was being born. And as soon as He was born, He stood upon His feet.

From The Gospel of Mary [Magdalene]:

Peter said to Mary, "Sister, we know that the Savior loved you more than other women. Tell us the words of the Savior which you have in mind since you know them; and we do not, nor have we heard of them."

Mary answered and said, "What is hidden from you I will impart to you."

Peter also opposed her in regard to these matters and asked them about the Savior. "Did he then speak secretly with a woman, in preference to us, and not openly? Are we to turn back and all listen to her? Did he prefer her to us?" Then Mary grieved and said to Peter, "My brother Peter, what do you think? Do you think that I thought this up myself in my heart or that I am lying concerning the Savior?"

Levi answered and said to Peter, "Peter, you are always irate. Now I see that you are contending against the woman like the adversaries. But if the Savior made her worthy, who are you to reject her?”

From The Gospel of Peter:

Then the Jews and the elders and the priests, when they perceived how great evil they had done themselves [by crucifying Jesus], began to lament and to say: Woe unto our sins: the judgement and the end of Jerusalem is drawn nigh.

And early in the morning as the Sabbath dawned, there came a multitude from Jerusalem and the region roundabout to see the sepulchre that had been sealed.

From The Gospel of Thomas:

These are the secret sayings that the living Jesus spoke and Didymos Judas Thomas recorded.

Jesus said, "Those who seek should not stop seeking until they find. When they find, they will be disturbed. When they are disturbed, they will marvel, and will reign over all. [And after they have reigned they will rest.]"

Jesus said to his disciples, "Compare me to something and tell me what I am like."
Simon Peter said to him, "You are like a just messenger."
Matthew said to him, "You are like a wise philosopher."
Thomas said to him, "Teacher, my mouth is utterly unable to say what you are like."
Jesus said, "I am not your teacher. Because you have drunk, you have become intoxicated from the bubbling spring that I have tended."
And he took him, and withdrew, and spoke three sayings to him. When Thomas came back to his friends they asked him, "What did Jesus say to you?"
Thomas said to them, "If I tell you one of the sayings he spoke to me, you will pick up rocks and stone me, and fire will come from the rocks and devour you."

Mary said to Jesus, "What are your disciples like?"
He said, They are like little children living in a field that is not theirs. when the owners of the field come, they will say, "Give us back our field." They take off their clothes in front of them in order to give it back to them, and they return their field to them.

Jesus said, "When you strip without being ashamed, and you take your clothes and put them under your feet like little children and trample then, then [you] will see the son of the living one and you will not be afraid."

Jesus said, "I disclose my mysteries to those [who are
worthy] of [my] mysteries.”

Jesus said, "How miserable is the body that depends on a body, and how miserable is the soul that depends on these two."

Jesus said, "Whoever drinks from my mouth will become like me; I myself shall become that person, and the hidden things will be revealed to him."

Jesus said, "Damn the flesh that depends on the soul. Damn the soul that depends on the flesh."

Simon Peter said to them, "Make Mary leave us, for females don't deserve life." Jesus said, "Look, I will guide her to make her male, so that she too may become a living spirit resembling you males. For every female who makes herself male will enter the kingdom of Heaven."

From The Gospel of Phillip:

When we were Hebrews we were orphans and had only our mother, but when we became Christians we had both father and mother.

Light and Darkness, life and death, right and left, are brothers of one another. They are inseparable. Because of this neither are the good good, nor evil evil, nor is life life, nor death death. For this reason each one will dissolve into its original nature.

Names given to worldly things are very deceptive for they divert our thoughts from what is correct to what is incorrect. Thus one who hears the word God does not perceive what is correct, but perceives what is incorrect. So also with the Father and the Son and Holy Spirit.

Some said, Mary conceived by the Holy Spirit, they are in error. They do not know what they are saying. When did a woman ever conceive by a woman? Mary is the virgin whom no power defiled…. And the Lord would not have said My Father who is in Heaven unless he had had another father, but he would have said simply My father.

Jesus is a hidden name; Christ is a revealed name for this reason: Jesus does not exist in any other language, but his name is always Jesus as he is called.

Those who say that the Lord died first and then rose up are in error, for he rose up first and then died. If one does not first attain the resurrection will he not die?

Some are afraid lest they rise naked. Because of this they wish to rise in the flesh, and they do not know that it is those who wear the flesh who are naked.

There are two trees growing in Paradise. One bears
animals, the other bears men. Adam ate from the tree which bore animals. He became an animal and he brought forth animals. For this reason the children of Adam worship animals. The tree whose gift Adam ate is the Tree of Knowledge. That is why sins increased. If he ate the fruit of the other tree, that is to say, the Tree of Life, the one which bears men, then the gods would worship man. For in the beginning God created man. But now men create God. That is the way it is in the world - men make gods and worship their creation. It would be fitting for the gods to worship men!

The world came about through a mistake. For he who created it wanted to create it imperishable and immortal. He fell short of attaining his desire. For the world never was imperishable.

Of course this is not exhaustive (though reading these excerpts may be exhausting). However, I think you can start to get a sense of the vast difference between the “lost gospels” and the four canonical Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke and John). I have added the emphasis in these quotations.

Pastor Rod

“Helping you become the person God created you to be”

Real Gospels

There are many who dismiss the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John as unreliable, fabricated or a-historical.

Thursday night, a popular cable news host said, “I don't know any theologians who take [the Gospels] as literal history.” (His reading list must be rather short.) His point was that the actual events didn’t really matter. What was important was the moral lesson taught in the stories. (“But no matter how you see Judas, the lesson is do not violate your beliefs -- do not violate your beliefs or another human being for money.”)

His guest, Father James Martin (author of My Life With the Saints) found himself basically agreeing with him. (Full transcript.)

There are many reasons why someone might decide to take this view of the canonical (“official”) Gospels. But none of these reasons is rooted in compelling evidence. As Keith mention in his comment on my previous post, People “need to read [the documents] and make up their mind for themselves.” Even the skeptic at Infidels.org says, “Many of these ‘enlightened’ skeptics would themselves benefit from the ‘trip to the library’ that they advise their opponents to take!”

So what are the facts?

The Gospels are much earlier than many people realize. The traditional dates for the completion of the four gospels are: Mark A.D. 60; Matthew and Luke between A.D. 60-70; John between A.D. 90-100. There is evidence that they could be even earlier. But these dates are well accepted as "latest likely" dates.

The oral tradition is reliable. When many people hear that the stories in the Gospel were circulated orally before they were written down, they immediately think of the “telephone game.” But this is the wrong model. Instead we should think of the father reading Goodnight Moon to his daughter who corrects him every time he skips a page or even a word. The first-century Jewish culture ensured the accurate transmission of oral tradition.

But here is the most important fact. The central claim of the Gospels, the bodily resurrection of Jesus, is the least incredible explanation for the birth of Christianity. Of course, some dismiss the accounts of Jesus’ resurrection as too difficult to believe. Some reject the possibility of any miracles at all.

(N. T. Wright is a Christian, but he is also a genuine historian who takes the historical issues seriously: “Frankly, both the desire to ‘prove’ orthodoxy and the desire to ‘disprove’ it ought to be anathema to the serious historian.” So, while he might not be totally unbiased (Who really is?), his comments must be taken seriously.)

But N. T. Wright states, “[The Gospel accounts of Jesus’ resurrection] are not the sort of thing, quite frankly, that people in that world spoke or wrote about….They tell stories with the puzzled air of someone saying, ‘I didn’t understand it at the time, and I’m not sure I do now, but this is more or less how it was.’… All of the evidence now indicates that something very like what the [Gospel writers] describe must indeed have taken place. However much they have shaped their stories and changed them this way and that, their basic testimony to the strange bodily resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth must be accepted as the best historical explanation available to us for why the early church ever existed at all, for why it took the shape and told the stories that it did.”

Yet many claim along with Michael Martine: “When Christians solemnly declare in churches across America that Christianity is the one true faith and that all other religions borrowed from it, they are saying the most ignorant of lies.”

So which is it?

Some argue that Jesus’ bodily resurrection is not that important, that it doesn’t matter if it really happened.

Alex Beam of the Boston Globe is quoted: “The literal truth of Jesus' story isn't what animates Christian belief. Many of us are awed by the figurative beauty of a story that created a system of values and beliefs that has survived for 2,000 years.”

But The Raving Atheist correctly points out, “If it's all just a fairy tale… there are plenty other stories with less violence, and a much more straightforward message.”

N. T. Wright agrees, “If Christianity is not rooted in things that actually happened in first-century Palestine, we might as well be Buddhists, Marxists, or almost anything else.”

Some might be tempted to throw up their hands in frustration and say, “Who can know for sure?” Others might even argue that it’s not all that important. “I’ll just go on believing what I believe. It works for me.”

But the truth or falsity of Christianity is not a question we can just disregard as irrelevant or unknowable. The stakes are too high. As C. S. Lewis wrote:

Christianity is a statement which, if false, is of no importance, and if true, of infinite importance. The one thing it cannot be is moderately important.
God in the Dock, “Christian Apologetics”

If you are going to reject the Gospel accounts, you owe it to yourself to make sure their claims are unsupportable.

If you are going to say, “Jesus is risen!” then you need to make sure you really believe it. And you’d better be prepared to accept the world-changing consequences.

Pastor Rod

“Helping you become the person God created you to be”

The Judas Code

Here are some excerpts from a Maundy Thursday sermon given by N. T. Wright:

The reason for the astonishing popularity of The Da Vinci Code on the one hand, and for the huge current media hype about the so-called ‘Gospel of Judas’ on the other, is that so many in our day are eager for enlightenment, hungry for spirituality, and yet desperate to avoid the way of the cross, the genuinely revolutionary kingdom of Jesus.

My brothers and sisters, I have to tell you that it’s a lie. I was studying this newly discovered little tract, the ‘Gospel of Judas’, yesterday morning, and reading what some of its editors had written about it; and there crept over me the horrible sense of a lie cheerfully told, a lie which people are eager to believe, a lie which could sap the vital energy of the church and individual Christians unless we name it for what it is, see the danger, and know why we reject it.

This isn’t the time or place for a full discussion. But let me just say three things about this ‘Gospel of Judas’, and about the contemporary movement which is so eager to fasten on documents like this and to make out that they represent the hidden truth about Jesus which the church has hushed up.

First, as a historian … I have to say that this ‘Gospel of Judas’ has no historical worth at all. It tells us nothing about the true Jesus, or for that matter about the true Judas.… It’s like finding a document purporting to be about Napoleon and his senior advisors, and discovering that they’re talking about nuclear submarines and B52 bombers. It is that crass.

But, second and more important, the ‘gospel of Judas’ and the worldview it represents are deeply, dangerously, damagingly opposed to the goodness of creation and the call of Israel, which of course go together. The whole scripture, and with it all mainline Jewish and Christian thought, is based on the belief that there is one God who made the world, who made it good, and who will put it to rights at the last. Gnosticism declares, very explicitly in the ‘gospel of Judas’, that the world was made by a lesser, low-grade divinity, and that the thing to do is to find the way to escape, to get rid of this human nature which is bottling up the divine spark within us.

And third, it cuts the nerve of working for God’s kingdom in the real world. Who cares about speaking the truth to power if the real task is to escape? Why bother feeding the hungry and housing the homeless, why worry about global debt or global warming or the madness of global warfare, if the main thing to do is to follow your own star and discover your true spiritual identity? Why bother following the real Jesus and standing defenceless before the powers of the world if you can invent a fake Jesus who panders to your inner desires?

What can I add to that?

Pastor Rod

“Helping you become the person God created you to be”

"Gospel” of Judas

There is so much misinformation about this new discovery that I want to set the record straight.

National Geographic says the Gospel of Judas is “one of the most significant biblical finds of the last century—a lost gospel that could challenge what is believed about the story of Judas and his betrayal of Jesus.”

An Australian newspaper has this headline: “Gospel of Judas Has Church Worried.”

The Chicago Tribune says:

National Geographic put $1 million on the table and reaped a golden return in the form of a text that is believed to have been a translation of the "Gospel of Judas." … This is fascinating stuff because it suggests the conventional biblical explanation of the fate of Judas in the Jesus story is a much more complicated story…. Expect a lot of argument and hand wringing about this.

Britain’s The Sun leads their story with:

Church leaders are bracing themselves for the release of the Gospel of Judas which will cast doubts on Christianity’s most deeply held beliefs…. The papyrus document is being hailed as the greatest archaeological discovery of all time…. It claims Judas was Jesus’s favoured disciple and that in betraying Christ, Judas was fulfilling a divine mission.

There is so much that is wrong or misleading that I can’t possibly address all of it in a single post. Let me start with the easy stuff first.

The Sun explains the timing of its release:

[I]t was originally discovered in a tomb in Egypt in the late Seventies…. It had remained untranslated in a New York bank vault for years…. A Swiss arts foundation acquired the document in 2002 and struck a deal with National Geographic magazine to publish the translations…. The full manuscript will be published in Washington on April 6 — a month before the release of the film version of the Da Vinci Code.

Its existence has been known for more than 30 years. It was purchased in 2002 and some rights to it were sold to National Geographic for $1 million. Its release is coordinated with the release of the Da Vinci Code movie. Scholar John Dart explains, “The torn and tattered papyrus text had been hawked to potential buyers in North America and Europe for decades after it was found at Muhazafat Al Minya in Middle Egypt.”

(Michel van Rijn, Dutch art dealer who specializes in exposing shady art deals, traces the history of this “discovery.”)

The claims of its significance are laughable. The Sun says it is “being hailed as the greatest archaeological discovery of all time.” I can find no reputable scholar who thinks this papyrus deserves even to be mentioned in the same breath as the Rosetta Stone.

National Geographic’s claims are somewhat more modest: “One of the most significant biblical finds of the last century.” Whatever its value, it pales in comparison to the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls. (This reminds me of the story Bill Wennington tells of the first game of Jordan’s 1995 comeback. “Michael and I combined for 57 points.” Bill had two points.)

It is not a “lost gospel.” Collin Hansen points out that the “Gospel of Judas

• is not a gospel,
• was not written by Judas,
• is not Christian,
• did not circulate until about 150 years after Jesus died,
• “tells us nothing more about Jesus' relationship with Judas than does Jesus Christ Superstar.”

Gnosticism is not a “branch” of Christianity that lost out to a rival group that later became labeled “true Christianity.” It is a different religion altogether.

Douglas Groothuis explains:

Gnosticism as a philosophy refers to a related body of teachings that stress the acquisition of "gnosis," or inner knowledge…. This gnosis is the inner and esoteric mystical knowledge of ultimate reality. It discloses the spark of divinity within, thought to be obscured by ignorance…

Gnosticism believes that the physical world was created by mistake or mischief. Therefore, material substance is unimportant (or evil) and the spiritual is divine.

Collin Hansen elaborates:

According to many Gnostic teachers, Jesus either did not actually appear in the flesh, or he at least wanted to shed his skin as soon as possible. Jesus longed to return to the spirit world. Judas helped make that happen.

The “Gospel of Judas” is not unique. There are many Gnostic gospels and other texts. A few of them are

• The Gospel of Thomas
• The Gospel of Philip
• The Gospel of Truth
• The Gospel of the Egyptians

(For a more detailed account of the Gnostic texts and their significance read The Gnostic Gospels, by Douglas Groothuis.)

The “Gospel of Judas” doesn’t tell us anything about Jesus or Judas. LiveScience reports a story by Richard Ostling, AP Religion Writer:

James M. Robinson, America's leading expert on such ancient religious texts from Egypt, predicts in a new book that the text won't offer any insights into the disciple who betrayed Jesus. His reason: While it's old, it's not old enough.

Robinson is an emeritus professor at Claremont (California) Graduate University, chief editor of religious documents found in 1945 at Nag Hammadi, Egypt, and an international leader among scholars of Coptic manuscripts.

Robinson writes that the journey of the text to Switzerland was “replete with smugglers, black-market antiquities dealers, religious scholars, backstabbing partners and greedy entrepreneurs.''

(Tertullian.org has more information and some English translation of the document.)

To sum up:

• This is not a “new revelation.”
• It tells us nothing about the real Jesus or Judas.
• Its importance has been hyped to make the investors more money.
• It has no impact on the truth claims of Christianity.

Pastor Rod

“Helping you become the person God created you to be”

________
Additional links: Mark D. Roberts, Scot McKnight, Mark Daniels, Ben Witherington, Al Mohler, John Reynolds.

Christianity=Secular (again)

There is a deeper dimension to this. When we try to claim all the world as sacred, we tend to think in terms of establishing “Christendom.”

(When Constantine became emperor, he legalized Christianity and started the process of placing Christianity in a position of political power. This is coming—or has already come—to an end.)

Some would like to see us establish a new Christendom. The founder of Domino’s Pizza is planning to build a Christian community near Naples, Florida. One blogger describes the proposed town:

The new community will have strict Christian beliefs. It will be a town without adult bookstores, or topless bars. It will have strict family values. Monaghan is a devout Catholic. In keeping with the Catholic doctrine, he is asking doctors that set up shop there to offer no contraception. Also, pharmacies and convenience stores will be asked not to stock condoms or any type of pornography.

But this is moving in the wrong direction. Christianity started as a subversive movement and seems to be most effective when it has no political power.

Darryl Dash @ ChristianWeek writes:

Culture has rejected nominal Christianity, and that is good. Underneath the rejection of nominal Christianity is a huge spiritual hunger waiting to be filled. The end of Christendom is not a threat to the gospel. In fact, the gospel first took root in a society much like ours, in a secular world at a time of massive change. According to the book of Acts, it did very well.

Besides, when we try to “Christianize” institutions we often emphasize unimportant (or wrong) things.

• American missionaries in Hawaii “converted” the native women from wearing “several layers of cloth wrapped around the waist, barely reaching below the knees, and with little or nothing above the waist” to “floor-length dresses that were loose-fitting and had long sleeves.” Because “most of the protein in the native diet came from shellfish caught by the women” and diving in a long dress was impractical, many Hawaiians suffered from malnutrition.
• According to The Evangelical Church Blues, at Pensacola Christian College “students could not sit in a chair that had been previously occupied by a member of the opposite sex until the chair cooled to room temperature. They were apparently afraid that the body heat absorbed by the previous occupant would stimulate the lust of the flesh.”
• I come from a tradition that considered dancing, jewelry and card playing sinful.

It’s no wonder that people like Glenn Greenwald are afraid that social conservatives want to “Christianize” the United States:

They believe that their time for true power has arrived and they are not going to modify their demands or be satisfied with token gestures. They believe that they twice delivered the Presidency to George Bush and that the GOP needs them if the party is to stay in power. These beliefs have made them drunk with power

Our job is not to “Christianize” any power structure. Our job is to advance the Kingdom.

Pastor Rod

“Helping you become the person God created you to be”

Christianity=Secular

We all use the terms “sacred” and “secular.” We talk about music, places and careers in these terms.

[In her book Total Truth, Nancy Pearcey builds on the premise of Francis Schaeffer that the sacred/secular distinction grew out of the Enlightenment. This resulted in a world where “science or empirical knowledge is about facts and religion or theology is about opinion.” This has “made possible the secular-religious dichotomy that defines so much of contemporary politics, law, religion, and science.”]

But these terms are not biblical, nor is the distinction.

Interestingly, this starts with a misunderstanding of the Mosaic Law (the Law God gave the Israelites after the Exodus). “The Moral, Civil, and Ceremonial distinctions are useful in studying the Law,” but this “division is unknown both in the Bible and in early rabbinic literature.” To a person of Moses’ day all of the Law was “moral.”

To Jesus and his followers, all of life is sacred (Matthew 6:33). There is nothing that is beyond reach of the Kingdom. Paul told his readers, “So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God” (1 Corinthians 10:31).

The sacred/secular distinction collapses in the Kingdom of God. But when we say that all of life is sacred, we often misunderstand what that means. We tend to think of it as dragging everyday life from the “secular” side into the “sacred” side. A better way to think about this is to let the Kingdom invade the “secular” side. In other words, the Kingdom of God is secular.

David Wayne explains it this way:

What we need is not so much training in how to "witness" on the job, although that is a part of it. What we need is for millions of Christians to flood the so called "secular" arena and simply bring the Christian worldview to bear in that arena.

C. S. Lewis explains it a different way:

What we want is not more little books about Christianity, but more little books by Christians on other subjects—with their Christianity latent (God in the Dock).

And here’s one more perspective from Andrew Jones:

Jesus is Lord of all creation, therefore we bring His presence and the values of his Kingdom into every sphere of life, including government, economy, media, education, sports, arts, science, technology and the environment.

Christianity is not about focusing on one area of existence. It is about integrating all of life according to the principles of the Kingdom of God and allowing Jesus Christ to be Lord of all.

Pastor Rod

“Helping you become the person God created you to be”

God=Story teller

It is widely accepted that Jesus was a master storyteller. Madeleine L'Engle writes in Walking on Water, “A friend of mine, a fine story-teller, remarked to me, ‘Jesus was not a theologian. He was God who told stories.’ Yes. God who told stories” (page 54).

But Jesus isn’t the only story-teller. In fact, the entire Bible is properly seen as story. Jim Bowman, Director of “Scriptures in Use” states, “Over 75% of the Bible consists of stories. Adding poetry and proverbs leaves probably less than 10% abstract 'intellectual' content.”

Yet we tend to reduce God’s Word to “a list of tips and techniques.” While the Bible contains principles and propositions, it is largely narrative (story). But even this description is misleading. As Dr. Paul Tripp of the Christian Counseling and Educational Foundation says, “The Bible is a story, not a compilation of many stories, but one story with many mini-dramas comprising the story.” As David Wayne points out, we are often guilty “of using the Bible mainly as a factbook or as a guidebook.”

But there’s still more. Not only has God told a story. He’s invited us to participate in his story. Pastor Brent McKinney quotes from Louis Giglio’s book, i am not but i know I AM: Welcome to the Story of God: It is “not about you and making your story better, but about waking up to the infinitely bigger God Story happening around you, and God's invitation to you to join Him in it... The story already has a star, and the star is not you or me... And here's why it matters--if we don't get the two stories straight, everything else in our lives will be out of sync. We'll spend our days trying to hijack the Story of God, turning it into the story of us. Inverting reality, we'll live every day as though life is all about you and me.”

And this is a life-giving story. But too often the church spends its time and energy quibbling over words.

Bishop Geoffrey Gibraltar quotes the poet Edwin Muir:

The Word made flesh
Is here made word again,
…
[T]he Word is impaled and bent
Into an ideological instrument.

The truth matters too much to be left in the hands of logical argument.

Pastor Rod

“Helping you become the person God created you to be”

God=Designer

When God finished his creation he “saw all that he had made, and it was very good” (Genesis 1:31). Psalm 19 says, “The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands.” Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote, “The world is charged with the grandeur of God.”

Sometimes we assume that the world is “just the way it had to be.” And while it is true that everything in the universe is minutely fine-tuned to work properly, God did not just create a functional world. Instead, he created a cosmos whose “exceptional beauty reveals the astounding craftsmanship of the Artisan.”

Not only does the beauty of creation call us to worship the Creator, but beauty also changes us. “Beauty is key to our spiritual formation.” As John Cunningham explains, “Often we reduce the means of becoming godly to a formula something like: truth + commitment = growth.” So we think that all we need is more (or better) information and more motivation. Instead, he writes, “We become beautiful as we participate in the harmonious corporate life of a redeemed people who are, in turn, grounded in and reflective of the very Beauty of God.”

This not only has implications for our worship. But it also has implications for our worship spaces: “Worship is about placing ourselves as close to God's presence as possible. If a beautiful and purpose-built space can assist with that effort, then it is not, in any fashion, a waste of money.”

But beauty does not have value only as an explicit aid to worship. It has value in itself. “Creating something of beauty in life is praiseworthy, and is an important way to glorify God in this life.”

Tom Wright points out that beauty is not only a reflection of God’s creation but that it also points to the New Creation:

“Art at its best not only draws attention to the way
things are but to the way things are meant to be… And when Christian artists go to that task they will be… pointing forwards to the new world God intends to make, the world already seen in advance in the resurrection of Jesus, the world whose charter of freedom was won when he died on the cross. It is by such means as this that we may learn again to imagine a world without evil, and to work for that to become, in whatever measure we can, a reality even in the midst of the present evil age.”

Beauty matters.

Pastor Rod

“Helping you become the person God created you to be”

A Whole New World

My brother put me on to this book by Daniel Pink, A Whole New Mind. Pink argues that we are on the verge of a “revolution” on the scale of the Industrial Revolution. He traces human history from the Agricultural Age, to the Industrial Age, to the Information Age and finally (for now) the Conceptual Age.

He says that several factors have shifted our world from a “left-brain” focus to a “whole-brain” focus.

Now people are looking for

• Design as well as function
• Story as well as argument
• Synthesis as well as focus
• Empathy as well as logic
• Play as well as seriousness
• Meaning more than material accumulation
  

My first reaction is that Christianity has an opportunity to reach these people with the gospel if we understand them and go about it in the right manner. (If you didn’t like that statement, you might want to look at the list again and decide if your view of the world is past its “sell-by date.”)

My second reaction is that the Emerging Church seems to be headed in the right direction.

But notice that Pink’s argument is not that the right brain needs to replace the left brain. His argument is that we need both sides of the brain. The answer is not to replace propositional truth with narrative. The answer is to have both.

Now some will argue that this is simply compromising with our culture. I would argue that this is, in fact, closer to the culture of Jesus’ day than our current emphasis on the left brain is. Pragmatism falls in love with truth, and they get married. This is quite literally a marriage made in heaven.

What do you think?

Pastor Rod

“Helping you become the person God created you to be”