A Coming Civil War

I want you to think about a coming civil war. No, not the Captain America movie (which I will definitely go see). I'm referencing another civil war that will directly affect most of my readers. This will be a conflict between religious ideas about the nature of America, and the role of Christians in this nation. I think the post I'm about to link to is so important I want to urge all of you to read it. Even if you do not concur with his conclusions, please at least think (and pray) about these issues.

A Coming Evangelical Civil War? by Alan Cross

Here's one sample paragraph:

...the conflict will be about theology in a way that we have never really had agreement on and do not often raise in level of importance to the place where division is ever even considered. But, events are driving us to consider not just our orthodoxy (right teaching), but also our orthopraxy (right practice). How does our Evangelical theology cause us to love God and love people (the Great Commandment)? How does our theology cause us to see other people? How does it cause us to see ourselves? To see our churches? To see America? Will we be people of the Cross or people seeking glory? Will we see the sacrifice of Jesus on the Cross as our hope and salvation that then causes us to love and sacrifice for others, even our enemies? Or, will we see the Cross as the means to and end of us being safe and secure and receiving our “best life now”?

Please go to the link and read the whole post; it is well worth the time.

Cruciform Faith

Holy Week Thoughts at Internet Monk:

At Mockingbird, they have this helpful entry on the subject of “Theology of Glory” in their site glossary:

Theologies of glory are approaches to Christianity and to life that try in various ways to minimize difficult and painful things, or else to defeat and move past them, rather than looking them square in the face and accepting them. In particular, they acknowledge the cross, but view it primarily as a means to an end – an unpleasant but necessary step on the way to good things in the future, especially salvation, the transformation of human potential by God and the triumph of the Kingdom of God in the world. As Luther puts it, the theologian of glory ‘does not know God hidden in suffering. Therefore he prefers works to suffering, glory to the cross, strength to weakness, wisdom to folly, and, in general, good to evil’ (The Heidelberg Disputation, Proof to Thesis XXI). This is the natural default setting for human beings. A theology of the cross, by contrast, sees the cross as revealing the fundamental nature of God’s involvement in the world this side of heaven.

That last sentence is striking. “The fundamental nature of God’s involvement in the world this side of heaven” is the way of the cross.

People don’t like that. I don’t like that.

I want a God I can see, not a God who is hidden.

I want a God who will convince me beyond a shadow of a doubt that he is living and active and on my side.

I want spectacular answers to prayer.

I want to witness remarkable events that can only be explained by God’s intervention.

I want tangible evidence that faith pays off, not only in the end but here and now.

I want a God who solves my problems, eases my pain, answers my questions, and makes me successful.

I want God to enable me to do good works so I can feel good about myself and my contribution to the world.

I want to be made strong, confident, optimistic, fit for the long haul.

I want insight into how life works so that I can follow the right steps and help others do the same.

I want a God who makes a way in the wilderness, not one who leads and leaves me there.

I want fulfillment in my work, health and happiness in my family, grace and cooperation among my neighbors, peace, security, and ample provision in my world.

I want to hear God speak. I detest silence.

I want God to show up when I need God. On time. Bringing what I need.

I don’t want a God who bleeds, who thirsts, who worries about his mother, who lets clueless, cruel people drive nails through his hands and feet, whose lifeless body is carried away by weeping women and timid men.

I don’t want a God who forgives people who do things like this. I want them to pay dearly.

I’m with the crowd here: “Let him come down from the cross now, and we will believe in him.”

Show us, God. Prove yourself. Let us see, let us hear, let us experience your power and glory.And the one on the cross says not a word.

Present in the Defeats

"...a theology of glory sees God at work in the victories of life ratter than the defeats.

...a theology of the cross allows us to love and serve a suffering person independent of whether on not, or how fast, he is healing. We can walk with these people in their present pain, as opposed to impatiently focusing on their future health.

God is right there, not somewhere else."

    -Tullian Tchvidjian, Glorious Ruin: How Suffering Sets You Free.  pages 122-123

The God of the Cross

I'm still trying to digest Carl Trueman's words from yesterday, and now he has added this continued discussion at The God of the Cross - Reformation21 Blog: -

...The love of human beings is fundamentally reactive: the lover sees something intrinsically lovely in the beloved which draws out his love towards her; her loveliness precedes and indeed causes the love of the lover. That is how the theologian of glory thinks of God's love: I thank you, Lord, that I am not like other men....

The God of the cross, however, is far different. He delights in setting his love on the unlovely and thereby making them lovely. That is the logic of 1 Corinthians 1: the church, built in the midst of a port town, undoubtedly contained a high proportion of those who would have been regarded as the scum of the earth - the poor, the weak, former prostitutes, the sexually profligate; yet God chose these, the things that are not, to shame the things that are. The logic of the cross itself is manifested in the fact that God's love is no respecter of persons as society respects persons; God delights rather in loving those that are most despised.

Again, this is a word both of grace and of judgment on the contemporary church. Of grace, because it reminds us of God's promise that He - He and not we - will build his church and the gates of hell will not prevail against her. Only a God of the cross and of creative love can make and keep such a promise. Surely there is nothing greater that can give us confidence than the thought that it is ultimately God who gives the increase.

Luther's Forgotten Insight

I'm so glad I found this! Here's Carl Trueman on The Forgotten Insight of Martin Luther:

At the heart of this new theology was the notion that God reveals himself under his opposite; or, to express this another way, God achieves his intended purposes by doing the exact opposite of that which humans might expect. The supreme example of this is the cross itself: God triumphs over sin and evil by allowing sin and evil to triumph (apparently) over him. His real strength is demonstrated through apparent weakness. This was the way a theologian of the cross thought about God.

The opposite to this was the theologian of glory. In simple terms, the theologian of glory assumed that there was basic continuity between the way the world is and the way God is: if strength is demonstrated through raw power on earth, then God's strength must be the same, only extended to infinity. To such a theologian, the cross is simply foolishness, a piece of nonsense.

Now, some will respond: But the theology of the cross has not been forgotten; it is often talked about and discussed and even preached. But here's the rub: in the Heidelberg Disputation Luther actually refers not to a theology of the cross but to theologians of the cross, underscoring the idea that he is not talking about some abstract theological technique or process but rather a personal, existential, real way that real flesh-and-blood theologians thought about, and related to, God. A person's theology, whether true or false, good or bad, is inseparable from the individual's personal faith.