King of kings and Lord of lords

Cutting the plan from the story leads to a salvation culture that is entirely shaped by “who is saved and who is not saved.” That culture is important, and I believe in salvation in Christ. But, that culture is designed by God to be a subculture and not the dominant culture. The dominant culture is the gospel culture. And a gospel culture is one shaped by the Story of Israel and the Story of Jesus Christ, a story that moves from creation to consummation, a story that tells the whole Story of Jesus and not just a Good Friday story, and story that tells not just of personal salvation but of God being “all in All.” It tells the story that Jesus, not any human ruler, is the Lord over all. Mash; The King Jesus Gospel, page 62

<idle musing>
I like the fact that Scot doesn't throw out the necessity of salvation as a part of the kingdom story. He is simply trying to realign our priorities into a biblical order. Salvation is an important part of what God is doing, but it is only part of what he is doing, not the sum total of it.
</idle musing>

The imago dei

What does this all mean? It means you have worth because you are made in the image of God. You matter to God. No matter your past, no matter your proclivities, your habits, your flaws, your temptations, your orientation. You have worth! You are not what you do. Your self-worth does not depend on what you have. You are not a prisoner of what you desire. No—what the Scriptures make clear is this: humans, created by God, are a finite, visible picture of the infinite, invisible God.

So this is the Genesis key: we don’t find our identity.

That runs counter to the stream of our culture, but it is an undeniable biblical truth. We don’t find our identity.

Rather, we receive our identity. We are given it by God. Everything true about our identity is true because it was created and gifted to us by God.

That is why our self-worth derives from the act of our creation. We are rooted in the imago Dei. You are. I am. The weird smelly guy who sleeps in the armchair at your favorite Starbucks is. Every single person who has ever lived reflects and represents the everlasting God who created the universe and everything in it. That’s the imago Dei.— The Truest Thing about You, chapter 3

<idle musing>
Amen! Good preaching! Reminds me of Weight of Glory, a collection of essays by C.S. Lewis:

It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or other of these destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics. There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilization—these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit—immortal horrors or everlasting splendours.

Pretty heavy stuff, isn't it?
</idle musing>

Dehumanizing

Every human endeavor to protect the vulnerable, disenfranchised, and oppressed—including the American civil rights movement, women’s suffrage, the movement to end abortion, and efforts toward clean water—has its roots in a belief that a human person is fundamentally valuable and consequently has certain rights that are wrong to deny. Similarly, every human movement toward repression and totalitarianism—from communism to Sharia law to fascism—grows in the soil of ignorance or intentional dehumanization that suggests certain humans matter more and are more valuable than other humans.

God works differently.— The Truest Thing about You, chapter 3

<idle musing>
I don't know if his claim is true or not, but it does make sense. I know that when I dehumanize someone by labeling them, it is easier to snub them or be disrespectful of them...
</idle musing>

Limited (to) atonement

[T]he gospel for the apostle Paul is the salvation-unleashing Story of Jesus, Messiah-Lord-Son, that brings to completion the Story of Israel as found in the Scriptures of the Old Testament. To “gospel” is to declare this story, and it is a story that saves people from their sins. That story is the only framing story if we want to be apostolic in how we present the gospel. We can frame the “gospel” with other stories or categories, but there is one holy and apostolic framing story for the gospel.

This story begins at creation and finally only completes itself in the consummation when God is all in all. This is Paul’s gospel, and while it includes and encompasses the Plan of Salvation and leaves open how one might construct a Method of Persuasion, the gospel of Paul cannot be limited to or equated with the Plan of Salvation.— The King Jesus Gospel, page 61

<idle musing>
A truncated gospel, the "atonement only" or "soterian" gospel just doesn't do justice to the love of God—and it doesn't transform people. We need a fully-formed gospel—the apostolic gospel, as Scot calls it—in order to see people transformed. Anything less is a mockery of what Christ did.
</idle musing>

Nothing

Let me lay out some facts as I see them.
There is nothing about what you do that is 100 percent secure.
There is nothing about what you have that cannot be taken from you.
There is nothing about what you desire that cannot change.
Do you disagree with these statements? To me they seem beyond disagreement—not because I’m so wise and profound, but because the claims they make seem clear and warranted. As far as I can tell—and I’ve thought about this a great deal and talked to hundreds of people in all walks of life about this very issue—these three statements are solid, universal descriptions of what it means to be human.— The Truest Thing about You, chapter 2

<idle musing>
Pretty much sums up the human condition, doesn't it?
</idle musing>

A complete circle

One could say the end of ends in 1 Corinthians 15:28 completes the task God gave to humans in the opening chapter of the Bible on day six (creation of humans). Humans were given just one charge: to govern this world as God’s representatives. So, in 1 Corinthians 15:28, when we are finally connected to God in this eternal union with God through his Son, humans will be doing exactly what God intended for his creation. God will be God and we will be God’s people—and the whole Story will be about God.— The King Jesus Gospel, pages 56-57

<idle musing>
God will be God—it's so simple, but we want to be God, so we end up as "foolish puppets, who desiring to be kings, now lie pitifully crippled after cutting our own strings." (Randy Stonehill </idle musing>

Thought for today

Whoever oppresses the poor shows contempt for their Maker,

but whoever is kind to the needy honors God. (Prov 14:31 TNIV)

<idle musing>

Those in Congress and more than a few wealthy magnates would do well to remember that...

</idle musing>

That's a serious charge

If we preach the Plan of Salvation as the gospel, we will find ourselves doing everything we can to get people motivated or, to used words from earlier, bucking up our efforts to get more people into column three, The Discipled. But, if we learn to distinguish gospel from Plan of Salvation, we will discover an altogether different world. I am convinced that because we think the gospel is the Plan of Salvation, and because we preach the Plan of Salvation as the gospel, we are not actually preaching the gospel.— The King Jesus Gospel, page 40

<idle musing>
That's a serious charge he's making—but I believe he is right! We are doing both God and people a disservice by selling the gospel as a salvation package apart from discipleship and restoration. There is no salvation without transformation!
</idle musing>

It's deeper than that

Here’s the deal with Jesus. He’s egalitarian when it comes to this issue, and He wants everyone to repent of their sexuality because everyone is broken sexually. Straight, gay, bi, whatever … if there is something truer to our fundamental identity than Jesus and what it looks like to follow Him, we’re not really following Him.— The Truest Thing about You, chapter 2

<idle musing>
Amen! I've never heard it put so well before. We are more than sexual beings and we all need to repent of our dysfunctional sexuality. And far more important than our sexuality is who we are in Jesus and how we respond to his overtures.
</idle musing>

Half-baked

In this book I will be contending firmly that we evangelicals (as a whole) are not really “evangelical” in the sense of the apostolic gospel, but instead we are soterians [Greek for salvation]. Here’s why I say we are more soterian than evangelical: we evangelicals (mistakenly) equate the word gospel with the word salvation. Hence, we are really “salvationists.” When we evangelicals see the word gospel, our instinct is to think (personal) “salvation.” We are wired this way. But the two words don’t mean the same thing…— The King Jesus Gospel, page 29

<idle musing>
I think Jim Wallis calls it the "atonement only gospel." Either way, it is a defective, half truth—at best! God gives us more than that in Jesus!
</idle musing>

Fickle

What we desire, whether noble or corrupted, is not the truest thing about us. Building our identity on the foundation of what we desire guarantees that our identity will change every time our desires change.— The Truest Thing about You, chapter 2

<idle musing>
We're fickle, aren't we? If we reduce who we are to what we want, then every time we see a new advertisement, we become something new. Of course, that is what the advertisers want us to think, isn't it? They are no longer selling stuff, they are selling a feeling, a new you, a new image. No wonder we buy at unprecedented rates! And the whole time we are ignoring our real needs...I'm reminded of something well over 2500 years old:

  “Come, all you who are thirsty,
come to the waters;and you who have no money,
come, buy and eat!
Come, buy wine and milk
without money and without cost.

   Why spend money on what is not bread,
and your labor on what does not satisfy?
Listen, listen to me, and eat what is good,
and you will delight in the richest of fare. (Isa 55:1–2 TNIV)

</idle musing>

Decisions, decisions, decisions

I believe the word gospel has been hijacked by what we believe about “personal salvation,” and the gospel itself has been reshaped to facilitate making “decisions.” The result of this hijacking is that the word gospel no longer means in our world what it originally meant to either Jesus or the apostles.— The King Jesus Gospel, page 26

<idle musing>
To our great loss, I might add.
</idle musing>

The sum of the parts...

When we take any one of our strongly felt desires and construct our entire identity around it, we discover that we are making a part of who we are into the whole of who we are.— The Truest Thing about You, chapter 2

<idle musing>
The old saying, the whole is greater than the sum of the parts, is so true. We are more than a collection of felt desires—we are a unique creation of God, but he'll get to that!
</idle musing>

Truest and things

What we have—or don’t have—is not the truest thing about us.

Building our identity on the foundation of what we have means that we’ll always be focused on ourselves. A world of self-focused individuals sounds strangely like the world we live in now. . . and it’s the lonely experience of living in that very world that sends us in search of something truer.— The Truest Thing about You, chapter 2

<idle musing>
What is that old saying? A man (or woman) wrapped up in himself makes a very small package. Self-focus is a dead end; we need to focus outside ourselves—of course focusing on God is the best—but as Viktor Frankl found, even focusing on others, without God, pulled people out of depression...how much more when we focus on God!
</idle musing>

Whose gospel?

Isn’t the more important question about whether Paul preached Jesus’ gospel? Moreover, there’s another problem: Piper’s assumption is that justification is the gospel. The Calvinist crowd in the USA—and Piper is the leading influencer in the resurgence of Calvinist thinking among evangelicals—has defined the gospel in the short formula “justification by faith.” But we have to ask whether the apostles defined the gospel this way. Or, better yet, when they preached the gospel, what did they say?— The King Jesus Gospel, page 25

<idle musing>
Ah, that is the question, isn't it? We revere Paul so much that we start with him rather than with Jesus or the other apostles. Not that Paul is wrong, but without the added input of what Jesus and the apostles taught, we can put undue emphasis on certain aspects of Paul that the early church—and Paul himself—didn't...
</idle musing>

I should have expected this

This showed up in my inbox this morning:

Last month, “Big Food,” in the form of the Grocery Manufacturers Association (GMA), a trade organization that represents more than 300 businesses, sent a letter to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) advising that it intends to petition the agency to allow foods containing GMOs to be labeled as “natural.”

Right! But if GMOs are natural, then why this a bit further in the article:

General Mills, Inc., has started producing GMO-free Cheerios. The company expects this new product, which will bear the label, “Not Made With Genetically Modified Ingredients,” to be available to consumers “shortly.” However, this change does not affect other General Mills brands such as Honey Nut Cheerios.

Anything for a quick buck...Lord, deliver us from ourselves!

Grammar musings

I'm always wondering about grammatical usage of words. The question in my mind today was which is the correct way to say something: online, on line, or on-line. I've seen it all three ways, with online being the most common of late. When I worked at Eisenbrauns we always used on line as two words. But, which is correct in the minds of the rest of the world?

Google to the rescue—or not!

Here's what one grammatical source said:

Although all forms are seen in written communications, only two forms are correct (on line and on-line); the difference between them (ie the use of the hyphen) is very important and applies to many other grammatical forms.

To say that you are ‘online’ would be like saying that a tennis player is ‘oncourt’ or that a builder is ‘onsite’, rather than saying she/he is ‘on site’. We will never see the back of ‘online’, however, and the overall situation may change. To remain consistent though…

Where the phrase is just a factual statement, we use two words.
Where the entire phrase is used to further describe something else, we must use the hyphen to show this.

Seems straightforward enough—but can you trust a source that says "ie" instead of "i.e.,"? Plus, it is a site in the U.K. and their usage varies from American usage sometimes...

How about this: Purdue Online Writing Lab which is the next site Google lists after an ESL site. They don't raise the issue, but just use online as one word in their title. What does that say?

I could cite a bunch of sites (see the pun?), but this one says a lot (two words—not alot!): what is the name of the Merriam-Webster dictionary's Internet presence? Yep, you guessed it: Merriam-Webster Online!

Or, what about the venerable Chicago Manual of Style, my constant companion? Their Internet presence is The Chicago Manual of Style Online!

And my second companion, the The SBL Handbook of Style, what do they say? It might be getting a bit dated, being published in 1999 (before the Internet became the default source for research, what with JSTOR, WorldCat, and others), but even then, in paragraphs 7.3.13 and 7.3.14, they use online as one word...

What's a person to do?

The trials of being a copy editor...the question raised by all this searching? Does one still capitalize Internet? : )

True or truest?

But here’s the truth: what we do is not the truest thing about us. Building our identity on the foundation of what we do creates an identity that can crack or break or tumble down at any moment.— The Truest Thing about You, chapter 2

<idle musing>
But that's exactly what we do all the time. We take transient things about us and make them the absolute definition of who we are. The problem is that life is full of changes—and not all of them are better! If you have a minor (or major) setback/disappointment, you have to redefine yourself. Stress, anyone? But in Christ, we don't need to accept the merely true things as ultimate—that's what this book is all about—who you already are in Christ. And it's good news!

I read this in the electronic version, so I don't have page numbers, instead I will be citing the excerpts by chapter number.
</idle musing>

With open eyes

As a result of my Evangelism Explosion experience and its aftermath in my own thinking, I developed a cynicism about evangelism. It took deep root as I continued through my college, seminary, and doctoral education. I began to pay close attention to the connection of gospel and evangelism and salvation and our methods of persuasion, which (embarrassingly at times) border on the slick and manipulative. I am convinced there is something profoundly wrong with our evangelism and so have developed over the decades a sensitive ear for anyone with a thought about this problem.— The King Jesus Gospel, page 21

<idle musing>
Isn't it sad that we feel we have to stoop to slick marketing and emotional manipulation in order to get people to become Christians? As if the God of the universe is something we can put in a neat little package and sell!

We can be so blind...
</idle musing>

Security

So many of us grew up in homes where we never felt secure. We had to work extra hard, trying to earn approval or love that never came. Our tendency is to carry that mind-set into our relationship with God. We end up anxiously working to gain approval, not realizing that we already possess it.—Francis Chan in foreword to The Truest Thing about You

<idle musing>
I'm not sure that you need to grow up in such a home to feel that way. I didn't, but I still felt the need to earn God's love. Granted, it could be culture, but I suspect it's deeper than that. I think we know we don't deserve God's love—how can we? We're just created beings and he's the creator—infinite, all-powerful, totally other—how can we hope to gain his favor? But that's exactly what the gospel is all about. We are accepted in the beloved; we are the righteousness of God, we are...you get the idea. Later in the book, Lomas will list a whole slew of things that we already are and have...
</idle musing>