Still reading through Gospel Commission on my Kobo. This guy has wonderful insights on what is lacking in pop church today, mainly they've forgotten Jesus, who is the message, and now they just want to reach people where they are lest God should have forgotten them, too. Praise God he didn't or nobody could faithfully serve him. He has been more than gracious to me in allowing me to serve as youth pastor and counsel at a pregnancy center.
Chapter 2, Michael Horton draws on Exodus and Conquest. God saved Israel from Egypt and forty years later conquered Canaan for them. Years later, when Jesus came, the Israelites still could not see a world beyond this one. They thought the Messiah was going to Exodus and Conquer them from Rome. They could not see the invisible world that held both the Jews and the Romans captive to eternal damnation, a life apart from the only source of life. Fast forward to now: the Emergent Church, which infiltrates most of Christian publishing, sees no world beyond this one and has gone beyond and even forgotten that a Messiah has already come and saved it. They think we have to plant trees and save the planet, along with saving the poor, even though if you save the planet, you must eliminate the poor due to Darwinian theology. The church has woefully lost sight of her King and Horton is way nicer about it than I would have been or will be. Even when quoting Brian McLaren, at first he's a bit ambiguous about where he stands on his theology, but later on you can tell he's very much against the monster McLaren has perpetuated. I'm so glad Horton brings up John Lennon's "Imagine." I'm glad my dad and I aren't the only people who hate that song. A beautiful tune with destructive lyrics and a wonderful world with no heaven, and certainly no savior outside of ourselves to get us there. That is not good, people.
Chapter 3, I loved this chapter. It is about contextualization. It confirms my idea that it is a terrible idea. I have no problem with translating Bibles or using electric guitars to reach the youth, but when it comes to accommodating people so that they are better Hindus, Buddhists, or Muslims, yet not converting them to Christianity, then you are doing more harm than good. You are making them better hellions than they were originally. People have really disserviced the Muslims with contextualization by telling them they can believe in Jesus on the inside yet still do all the Muslim duties. This is tragic. Even more tragic, my seminary, a conservative ARP seminary, taught contextualization, not so much keeping people in their religions to avoid persecution, but trying to accommodate the Gospel to different demographics. Jesus didn't come to celebrate diversity. He came to unify us all into himself. I'm tired of people paying so much attention to differences when we should focus on what we have in common while throwing off all the sin that so easily entangles.
I honestly can't remember the rest of the chapters. I assure, it's still a good book. I suppose they kind of blend together. Horton makes an excellent case for paedobaptism. I think soon I'll repost an e-mail a sent to someone appalled at my paedobaptist beliefs if I can find it in my Sent archives. All I can say here is it was good enough for Calvin who dissected all the Scriptures, and it's good enough for me.
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