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January 31, 2007
Message or Marketing?
Hal has an interesting post on the state of modern Christianity.
American Christianity is sick, and it's something we've done to ourselves. We're losing a lot of credibility in the larger culture, but it's our own fault that it's slipping away. I don't think, however, that we're going to put ourselves on the path to healing and renewal by preaching a gospel of meaningless banalities and trite feel-goodisms. No, doing so will only exacerbate the sickness.His thoughts reflect some of what was discussed in the best Hot Air thread ever. Best, that is, until it turned into the tired "creation versus evolution" debate that goes around and around until both sides just snark at one another. Anyway, much of the debate centered around how Christians are perceived in modern culture, and whether the popular characterization is a particulary fair one. Personally, I don't think it's always fair, but the behavior of some in the church does make for easy targets.
And that's especially true when there is no message, as Hal is saying here. Far too often, the church seems to substitute teaching scripture with something else - what C.S. Lewis called "Christianity Plus." A lot of churches and Christian organizations, in an attempt to achieve cultural relevance, have watered down the basic truth of scripture until it's a tasteless pablum.
Oddly enough, MainiacJoe also has a post dealing with issues of faith and it applies here. Instead of taking the message and muddying it up with feelgoodism to make it more palatable, how about we just make sure scripture is understandable? I know some have issues with paraphrased Bibles, but my personal feeling is that if someone finds literal Gospel truth in the TLB or The Message and accepts it, then it's done what it needs to do.
Posted by slublog at January 31, 2007 10:29 PM
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