Friday, January 27, 2006
speaking a new language
I am going to start a new posting to move the focus off my boys and move it this aspect of postmodernism and if being a good model of what it looks like to follow christ is enough. I am saying that is great but what happens when we open our mouths. Do we discredit ourselves? What if I moved to central america and I loved my neighbor as christ teaches me, but when they asked me a question and when I attempted to speak to them I did not know spanish. How well will I be able to communicate the gospel to them. My point is that the world is speaking another language and we must learn this language if we are too communicate it to them. We also must remove the western glasses that have hindered us from understanding what the gospels are saying to us. We cannot use words like "saved" "born-again" "santification" "altar call" "sinners prayer" and others that I could continue with that have been created over the last decades to help us create the system of Christianity that I grew up in. I am rambling, but I feel like we are missing the point in regards to the struggle I am feeling. A post christian generation will continue to ignore Jesus if we do not do a better job of speaking their langiauge and a better job of taking our western individualistic form of faith out of our language.
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2 comments:
hear, hear! i fully agree. i didn't put it on my earlier post but i've also been trying to find the balance of these things in my own faith. and the greatest weakness we have right now as people who are supposed to have the greatest answer is that we're definitely speaking in a jibberish language to the world and saying that it's acceptable because they just don't understand. the whole idea of creating this little "bubble of a society" and claiming that only the righteous can join-in is ridiculous. and i do find the greatest difficulty is trying to proclaim the love and acceptance of christ out to the world (and dare i say even christians?!) and not getting stoned for being someone who's compromising the "christian standards of living". but i liked what someone wrote on an earlier post about jesus not being on the left or the right but embracing them both in his own amazing way. i've found that my disgust for the conservative right began a journey down towards the left-wing claims, but i found that wasn't satisfying either. and what you said about showing your neighbor love - isn't that what we're basically talking about. not love in that whatever you decide is ok (the basic/extreme post-modern idea?) but that i'm here to listen to what it is that you have to say and we'll go from there. isn't that what christ did in all his interactions with each individual? he always met them at where they were at - not just screaming out his own platform of ideas. isn't this what we all learn to be the way to people's hearts? isn't this what it means to be someone who is considered a friend; someone who has a willing ear to hear without judgment or prepared stones and has the willingness to support through the struggles of life?
I could seriously listen to that all day. I feel like now I can skip church because I've been ministered to.
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