I invite anyone reading this to make their own response to my response, or to Meunier's question, here or on their own blog. (But if not here, please let me know where because I want to see it.) I of course invite the other KBT to respond with their own posts if they want.
[Later edit:] The question is "If you had the opportunity to preach to a crowd of nominal Christians or non-Christians in an informal setting – like John Wesley’s field preaching – what would you preach?"
Here's my response:
Ask yourself this question: "Am I good?" And if you answer yes, justify it. Without appealing to grace or any coherent and concrete concept of goodness that does not change with culture and goes beyond just what we think it is.
If you justified yourself, you probably don't really believe in good at all, at least, not good with a meaningful meaning. Maybe you're good thinking that goodness is relative, something that's not inherent in anything, or something we have to make for ourselves, but I'm not. It's not meaningful meaning if we can change it as we please.
If you couldn't justify yourself, then I guess you'll need some help to be good. Christ can help you with that. Sorry state that I'm in, you should see what state I get into when I close myself off to Him. And if you're at all interested in being good, even if you already think you're justified on that front or that all I'm saying is twiddle-twaddle, you owe it to yourself to see what kind of change Christ might make in you.
So really, just try and live like Him. Try and fall in love with Him, even if--right now--you don't know what you believe about Him.
I think you'd be surprised to see the difference.
2 comments:
Thanks for the response and the heads up e-mail.
I have a Google Reader that I never bother to check for some reason.
I'm intrigued by your decision to start with self-examination and self-justification. Quite different from starting with "there is a hole (felt need) in you that only God can fill."
I think I have the influence of, of all people, Kirk Cameron on that point. I saw some clip of his evangelical show once (when he was being made fun of by VH1, I think), back when I was around high school. In this clip he told two women who claimed they were good that they'd actually committed a crapload of sins in the last couple of days and proceeded to list all the categories of sin they'd committed. Kirk Cameron or not, it was pretty awesome and quite frankly well-deserved, especially for a generation that styles itself good on the basis of...I'm not even sure what the basis is, but it's not good enough to overcome all the evil we've done. Not on its own, at least. But you'll note I didn't mention Kirk Cameron in the post.
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