The King Jesus Gospel by Scot McKnight
Scot McKnight examines the gospel as preached by Jesus and presented by the apostles, and finds it different from the "plan of salvation" typically offered by evangelists today.
Key Quotes:
"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."
"Evangelism that focuses on decisions short circuits and -- yes, the word is appropriate -- aborts the design of the gospel, while evangelism that aims at disciples slows down to offer the full gospel of Jesus and the apostles."
"Gospeling declares that Jesus is the rightful Lord, gospeling summons people to turn from their idols to worship and live under that Lord who saves, and gospeling actually puts us in the co-mediating and co-ruling tasks under our Lord Jesus. When we reduce the gospel to only personal salvation, we tear the fabric out of the Story of the Bible and we cease even neeeding the Bible. I don't know of any other way to put it."
"The apostolic gospel can't be reduced to a gospel of sin management because it was a gospel of Jesus-declaration (that included the defeat of sin and death)."
"The entire sweep of the Story of Israel and the Story of Jesus ushers us into a world where God's people rely on and trust in God, and such a trusting relationship generates a life of obedience, holiness, and love."
"The gospel is framed by Israel's Story: the narration of the saving Story of Jesus -- his life, his death, his resurrection, his exaltation, and his coming again -- as the completion of the Story of Israel."
"The gospeling of the apostles is bold delcaration that leads to a summons while much of evangelism today is crafty persuasion."
"The gospel propels us into mission, into the holistic mission of loving God, loving self, loving others, and loving the world."
As presented by McKnight, the gospel does not issue in a plea to accept Jesus as Savior, but a summons to submit to Jesus as Lord.
Feminism Corrupted by Men
As Frederica Mathewes-Green explains, feminism's bad ideas were the ones they adopted from men:
"There are two bad ideas from seventies feminism which combine to create a current situation that makes abortion seem indispensable. Think about it this way: Abortion is the solution, so to speak, of the problem of pregnancy. But when, and why, did pregnancy become a problem? Throughout most of human history, pregnancy has been a blessing. New children were welcomed because they built the strength of a family and became the support of a couple’s old age. New children meant new life; they meant both personal delight and growth of the tribe.
"But for some reason in the late twentieth century, pregnancy came to seem an unbearable burden. It became so unbearable that a fourth of the time it occurred women sought abortion to escape it.
"The reason pregnancy became unbearable is due to a twofold change in expectations about women’s behavior—two bad ideas. One was the idea that women should place career above child-rearing. The other was that women should be promiscuous.
"Both ideas were promoted by the feminist movement, yet there is a profound irony: Both ideas are stubbornly contrary to the average woman’s deepest inclinations. Both ideas, in fact, were adopted unchanged from the worldview of the folks feminists claimed to hate—male chauvinists.
"There is a pop-sociology concept called “imitating the oppressor,” which means that when a group emerges to a new identity it tends first to adopt the values of whomever it perceives to be holding power. In this case, it means that feminists presumed that if men wanted something, it must be valuable, so it must be what women want, too. If men wanted to sleep around, women must want the same thing. If men thought the workplace was more important than the home, women must think the same. Whatever “the oppressor” valued was assumed to be intrinsically valuable, and feminists fought for their share.
"Take the bad idea that I’m calling “careerism.” I don’t mean by this that women shouldn’t have careers. By “careerism” I mean a half-conscious ideology that holds that the most important thing in life is the prestige conferred by one’s employment, and it’s as bad for men as it is for women.
"This is a foolish notion on many levels, not least because only the most fortunate and elite people get to have careers. Most people just have jobs. Most of the people in the world don’t get their fulfillment from the thing that gives them a paycheck. They get their fulfillment from other facets of life: faith, family, hobbies, literature, music. For most people, a job represents only the hours they must spend each week to earn the free hours in which they can do the things they really care about. Careerism is the misguided notion that work trumps everything else.
"Feminists concluded that men were right about everything. If men thought that housewives were dumb, that staying home and raising kids was mindless drudgery, it was so. It didn’t matter that our foremothers for generations had found homemaking noble and fulfilling. What did they know?—they were stupid housewives! We were embarrassed by our female ancestors and envied the males. They had power, and we wanted power. We couldn’t imagine any success except success in men’s terms.
"Another bad idea was rising at the same time, the idea that it would be fun if everybody had as much sex as possible with as many people as they could. Through the last few decades women have continued to try to convince themselves that this is fun; it’s reputed to be fun, it looks like fun on TV, everyone else thinks it’s fun, right?
"This notion, of course, has been a favorite with men for quite awhile. But its formal expression goes back to Playboy magazine, when the thesis was dignified with the audacious label “the Playboy philosophy.” In the early seventies Playboy was a clearly identified enemy of feminism, due to its “exploitative images.” That changed; Playboy is now an ally of feminism because Playboy is such an enthusiastic defender of abortion. I’ll leave you to put two and two together on that.
"There isn’t a venerable history of women celebrating promiscuity; if anything, women’s wisdom over the ages taught that emotional security was the precondition for sex being fun, and a wedding ring was the best aphrodisiac. But again, what did stupid old housewives know? Men called them prudish, so that’s what they were. Thirty years later women are still going morosely out into the night in dutiful pursuit of fun. And if it’s not fun, she presumes, it must be because something is wrong with her."
Please read the full article in Touchstone.Posted at 11:04 PM in Commentary, Quotes | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
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