I love flying in to OC at night because of the reminder of how much work there is to do - bigger than one man, one church, one group of churches. Thankfully it is God’s story.
Some Preach From Envy or Rivalry
This is part 2 of a series. Read part 1 here.
Land of Disenchantment
Our culture is becoming more polarized. The right and left of almost any issue are drifting ever farther apart, and the church is not immune.
In The Courage to Be Protestant, David Wells broke down the evangelical world into three streams: marketers, emergents, and traditional Protestants. A couple years ago, I asked Dr. Wells if he would maintain those three circles described where the church would be going in the future. Nope, he said. Now we’re heading into a much more polarizing time where the church would be divided in two extremes.
The Easiest Way to Build a Platform
Want to know the easiest way to build a platform these days? Set yourself up as the antithesis to a person or position of influence. Be the contrarian or critic who rides the coattails. It’s easier to be known for what you’re against than what you are for.
Many of the most prominent bloggers sell advertising and more subtly, and I think more influentially, are not just “bloggers” but also speakers and authors. (Even more, those decrying evangelical celebrities have un-ironic speaking request links on their front page.) Their ability to make a living is based on site traffic and conference invitations, and they build their reputations—and traffic—by walking over others.
The problem is, those people we’re against? They are usually people who are near to us—not close, but near. Dave Eggers said it best:
Too cowardly to address problems of substance where such problems actually are, we claw at those close to us. We point to our neighbor, in the khakis and sweater, and cry foul. It’s ridiculous. We find enemies among our peers because we know them better, and their proximity and familiarity means we don’t have to get off the couch to dismantle them.
We’re more likely to tear each other down—and that means the people who are around us—than put in the effort to build each other up. Because rage is easier than rationality, and it’s more popular.
“The sad reality is, in our polarized culture, that’s what sells. And when that sells in the church, Satan laughs.
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A Prophet Can’t Be Bought
Please don’t read this as a bland plea for tolerance or a wishy-washy ecumenism. Sometimes lines need to be drawn.
My concern is this: are we staking ourselves and our reputations on truth, or are we drawing lines based on a wildly profitable animosity? Find the difference between shilling your opinion and proclaiming a truth.
The result of all of the above is a general confusion, chaos, and a sense of instability. The good news of Jesus as Lord, God, Savior, and King must be exalted above good advice and individual branding.
In Philippians 1:15–18, Paul says this:
Some indeed preach Christ from envy and rivalry, but others from good will. The latter do it out of love, knowing that I am put here for the defense of the gospel. The former proclaim Christ out of selfish ambition, not sincerely but thinking to afflict me in my imprisonment. What then? Only that in every way, whether in pretense or in truth, Christ is proclaimed, and in that I rejoice.
Yes, and I will rejoice.
According to D.A. Carson, in his exposition on this epistle, the men preaching from envy and rivalry were more than likely saying some ugly things about Paul, along the lines of:
“It really is sad that so great a man as Paul has frittered away his gospel opportunities simply because he is so inflexible. After all, I and many others manage to remain at large and preach the gospel. One must assume that Paul has a deep character flaw that puts him in the path of trouble. My ministry is being blessed, while he languishes in prison.”
We know that Paul has no problems calling out heretics (2 Timothy 2) or correcting wayward brothers (Galatians 2). Yet, in this case, he doesn’t correct these men or feel the need to vindicate himself. Paul simply points out their motives and then says that as long as Christ is preached (Philippians 2 and 3), even in our most foolish pretentious ways, he will rejoice.
“Is Christ being preached? Rejoice!
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Don’t confuse a different style for a wolf. And don’t rush to label a differing opinion heresy, a serious charge. Trust that you’re not the Holy Spirit and that he will use even someone’s most pretentious efforts as long as Christ is preached.
Pastor, be known for proclaiming the truth of Jesus.
Blogger, be known for writing about the truth of Jesus.
Christian, be known for loving and rejoicing in the truth of Jesus.
The church must be the one place where this truth is most clearly, passionately, and wonderfully proclaimed.
Jesus, his gospel, his church, and the lost are more important than all the rest of it—especially your SEO.
We have had a rapid emergency of an all-instant society: instant therapy, instant religion, instant food, instant friends, even instant reading. Instancy is one of the main teachings of our present information environment. Constancy is one of the main teachings of civilization.
Neil Postman, Teaching as a Conserving Activity (1979), p. 76 (via dompascarella)
How Can You Believe Anybody When Everybody is Selling?
This is part 1 of a series. You can read part 2 here.
Advertising has fundamentally changed the way we communicate information.
The millennial generation has been called “Generation Sell” by the New York Times. This generation has grown up under such an onslaught of individualism and advertising messages that entrepreneurship is second nature.
“But where does the individual end and the brand begin?
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A Fight for Survival
Newspapers, magazines, and television news always ran advertising. One article in The Atlantic explained that a typical newspaper business model includes 80% of revenue coming from ads and the remaining 20% from subscriptions, thereby requiring outlets to become advertising-delivery vehicles. But as people increasingly have started to go online for their news and sites like Craigslist killed the major revenue generator of classified ads, traditional media outlets have been put in a fight for survival. As subscriptions plummet, even more emphasis and dependence are put on advertising.
But the change in advertising is indicative of a deeper change in audience, an increasingly fickle one.
A Profound Shift in Focus
The PEW Project for Excellence in Journalism has documented this decline in revenue and their resulting shifts. These are some of the most significant changes they’ve found:
• Popularity has become more important than consequence. Since outlets are depending on more eyeballs seeing their ads to bring in more revenue, stories are chosen that appeal to more people immediately rather than stories that might have long-term consequence or importance.
• Speed is now more important than accuracy. With the decreasing attention span of people and increasing velocity of news stories, it’s become more important to be first with a story than to be accurate.
• Opinion and argument are more important than information. Because outlets are focused on the rapid delivery of stories for the masses at the expense of hard information, the result is that personalities and outlets are known more for opinion and argument than actual information.
The Ensuing Effects
All of these are typified in the media outlet that is often referred to as a paradigm of this new, frantic model, the behemoth aggregator The Huffington Post, which Esquire’s Stephen Marche recently called, “The single most destructive force for intellectuals since the first Emperor of China because it convinces writers that their writing is really advertising for themselves.” But the effect is hardly limited to HuffPo.
Like it or not, the church is also not exempt from these effects. Much of Christian content today is also affected by the profound shifts above: popularity is more important than consequence, speed is more important than accuracy, opinion and argument are more important than information, and writing gets boiled down to self-promotion.
“How are we going to counter these negative shifts today?
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We must care more about correcting in truth instead of making rash criticisms.
We must write to promote Jesus and his gospel, not ourselves.
We must be known more for who we are for, than who we are against.
We must not sell truth short for the sake of popularity.
Date night Ferris Wheel.
Since we are victims and not really sinners, what we need is affirmation and support, and so on. The language slips and falls out of place. It becomes therapeutic rather than evangelical. It must be trimmed more and more so as to not give offense. In thesis 21 of the Heidelberg Disputation Luther says that a theologian of the cross “says what a thing is”, whereas a theologian of glory calls the bad good and the good bad. This takes out the claim that language and its proper use in matters theological is a fundamental concern of the theologian of the cross. Luther’s words suggest that the misuse or slippage of language in this regard has a theological root. When we operate on the assumption that our language must constantly be trimmed so as not to give offense, to stroke the psyche rather than to place it under attack, it will of course gradually decline to the level of greeting-card sentimentality. The language of sin, law, accusation, repentance, judgment, wrath, punishment, perishing, death, devil, damnation, and even the cross itself - virtually one-half of the vocabulary - simply disappears. It has lots its theological legitimacy and therefore its viability as communication.
A theologian of the cross says what a thing is. In modern parlance: a theologian of the cross calls a spade a spade. One who “looks on all things through suffering and the cross” is constrained to speak the truth. The theology of the cross, that is to say, provides the theological courage and conceptual framework to hold the language in place.
Gerhard Forde, On Being a Theologian of the Cross
Cooking with mom in her new learning tower. (Taken with instagram)
