The Burr in the Burgh

Do you remember the unique way that Glassport Assembly of God church celebrated Easter in 2004? This Pittsburgh area congregation put on a community Easter pageant at a local stadium. Families from all around brought their young 'uns to see Easter bunnies and brightly colored chicken eggs.

Then in the midst of the drama, actors came out with whips and beat the Easter Bunny to death, causing quite a stir from the 3 and 4 year-olds etc. in the audience. It seems the church wanted to make the point that we should be commemorating the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus instead of bunnies and eggs. And the point is a good one. Their hearts were in the right place. . . . sort of.

But there probably would've been a better way. All this did was make their church look like a bunch of jerks.

Story here.

I want to direct you to a blog I just discovered. It's called Wretched of the Earth. The blogger is a missionary in Bangkok, Thailand. And the post I read today, Jesus Is Not a Nicer Buddha, is right on the mark.

He notes the temptation to "sell" Christianity on its practical worth. It's this line of thinking: You should be a Christian, because Jesus helps you with your problems. Or you should be a Christian because God'll make you happy, help you have better relationships, give you techniques for managing stress and so forth.

What about, 'you should be a Christian because Christianity is true?' God does help us with our problems. True. But your main problem is not that you are "stressed out." Your main problem is that - apart from Christ - you are going to die and go to hell. Christ is not the supreme advice giver. He is not your therapist. He is the sacrificial lamb who takes away the sin of the world. That should remain the focus. True evangelical preachers and missionaries know that the doctrines of sin and grace, thoroughly and winsomely presented, are the only message which will save. And as long as we live in this world, we need to hear that message.

Jason, over at Theology Geek, makes some interesting comments. As a man in the pew who listens to sermons every week, he reminds us preachers what we're about.

There's a lot of bad preaching out there, not that I speak as the master. But some observations:

1) You can't preach God's Law properly without offending people. If people don't get their feelings hurt, you haven't done it right. If people don't want to throw stones at you, try harder. Woe to you when all men speak well of you.

2) God's law condemns us all. My job as a preacher is not so much to rail against the evils of society. It's to slam the evils of the people sitting right in front of me (and including myself every step of the way).

3) If you hear me preaching the law and you say, "tell 'em Rev," then either I'm not doing it right or you're not listening. I'm talking to you.

4) I am not in the pulpit to give you advice or tips for living. Too many sermons are just ethics lectures.

5) A sermon that does not proclaim the cross as its central theme is NOT a Christian sermon.

6) If I do not preach about sin, hell, cross, justification, atonement, and forgiveness in every single sermon, I should be taken to the proverbial woodshed.

7) It's not about you. It's about Jesus. One of the errors of Rick Warren is that he claims that worship is primarily about you doing something for God. He actually says that it's not supposed to be for you to get something out of it. It's so that you can do for God. What a load of manure! Worship is Primarily about God serving us with his grace through Word and Sacrament. Our response of praise is secondary. It's about what God does, not what you do.

8) Sermons that mostly talk about Jesus as our example are toxic. Jesus did not come to show me how to live. He came to be tortured to death because of me and in so doing, to destroy the work of the devil.

9) The gospel is not a means to an end. We don't preach the gospel so that we can get on to something better, like morality.

10) The gospel is not just for unbelievers. I used to be involved, as a teen, with Youth for Christ and went to weekly Saturday rallies. The leader once told us that we should go bring our non-Christian friends because otherwise we're just preaching the gospel to a bunch of Christians. Even at 16, I thought, "What's wrong with that? I need it too."

[And before anyone flips, I do believe we should be bringing non-Christians to church.]

11) The cross is not just for special occasions, like Good Friday and evangelism. It's for every sermon.

12) A person who get tired of hearing about justification needs to go back to theses 1-4.

Guilt is more than a feeling. You can be guilty whether you feel it or not. Preachers often think that guilt is a feeling that we are supposed to eradicate. Well, yes and no. A lot of the time, it is our job to make people feel guilty. And that's a good thing. We comfort the terrified and terrify the comfortable.

The fact is that every person stands guilty before God. We are all - apart from Christ- objects of God's wrath (Ephesians 2:3). Though this is not a popular message in our churches, it is the truth.

Some popular diluters of the faith, such as Rick Warren, will say that "God doesn't expect you to be perfect (Purpose Driven Life, p.92)." But that contradicts the clear words of Jesus Himself. "Be perfect, as your Father in heaven is perfect (Matthew 5:48)." It is part of our fallen nature that we want to reduce the demands of God's law, to soften it. Why? To make it seem like we can attain God's favor on our own - even if we give lipservice to sin and grace.

"Gloom, despair and agony on me..." (a special prize to whomever can identify the source of that line)

Ash Wednesday is useful because it graphically proclaims our mortality. "I am nothing but dust and ashes," Abraham said (Genesis 18:27). Earth to earth. Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust. All who sin must die. This is the curse on the Adam in all of us.

We are sinners not because we commit sins. But rather, we commit sins because we are born sinful. Unless we drive this point home, the crucifixion of Jesus seems like overkill. Why did Jesus have to die? Because at that moment, bearing your sin and mine, he deserved to die. Was the Father unjust by slaying an innocent man? No. Jesus had to die because on the cross He became the vilest sinner on earth. "He who knew no sin became sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God (2 Cor. 5:21)."

Your justification is not just a legal fiction. You are righteous and holy on account of Christ. But in this life, you are also a sinner. It's a paradox, I know. I'm cool with that. So let's have a good lent. No one likes to consider his sinfulness and mortality. But we need to do that so that we can make sense of the cross. Not that your self-mortifications make you holy. But the Crucified One is your holiness.

I don't like Rick Warren's book, The Porpoise Driven Life. I'm sure many people have found some helpful insights in it, but that does not excuse its many flaws. First, he relies heavily on lousy paraphrases of the Bible instead of reliable translations. Second, he frequently distorts and misapplies biblical texts. Third, he has an erroneous- and dangerous - belief about worship. Fourth, he managed to write a book about the Christian life without much Christ in it. It's not sufficient to toss in an occasional reference to Jesus. Warren's whole program is man-centered and thus skewed. I really do not like his book.

If you need to know what your purpose is, let me give you a word: vocation. Dr. Gene Veith has written well on this matter. Here's a good appetizer.

For more, get this book:



But Rick Warren aside, tomorrow is the beginning of the solemn season of Lent. If you are searching for meaning, don't waste your time with Christianity-Lite, go to sound biblical content. Find a church that proclaims God's warnings and promises accurately and consistently.

Books I'm Reading:

The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell

It's a clever sci-fi story set in the 21st century. The premise is that intelligent life is discovered in a nearby galaxy and the Jesuits send a mission. She's a good writer and it deals with some serious theological and ethical questions.


Life of Pi by Yann Martel

A fun read about a boy from India, the son of a zookeeper, who decides to adopt every major world religion for himself. Lots of perceptive nuggets about God and zoology.


Movies I'm Watching:
The Butterfly Effect

Much better film than I expected. Deals with the quandry of time travel. What would you change if you could go back? And the unintended consequences. Has interesting implications from chaos theory. The idea that even the smallest action can, over time, have huge and unpredictable ramifications.