Quotes for Thought

From a 9 Marks page on the www.emergentvillage.com reading list on Walter Brueggemann:

When asked in an interview if Scripture was his authority, Brueggemann replied, "it's the chief authority to me as long as one can qualify that to say that it is the chief authority when imaginatively construed in a certain interpretive trajectory."

Interesting qualification, which being interpreted, seems to be: It is authoritative as long as my "interpretive trajectory" is more authoritative. Which is to say, It is authoritative so long as I can make it say what I want it to say. Which is to say, It isn't authoritative at all.

From a Christianity Today interview with Mark Moring of the band Jars of Clay:

I am my own worst pop music station, constantly telling myself what I want to hear—and coming up with creative ways to do it.

Great line about the self-focused "what I wanna hear" nature of pop music. And don't argue ... You know that pop music stations make their money because they play what people want to hear ... in more ways than one. (I am not saying that giving people what they want is necessarily bad, but we should know that it exists, and recognize the inherent dangers in it, particularly in the moral realm.)

From a.k.a Lost by Jim Henderson:

When the congregation I was leading resigned from force-feed evangelism a few years back, we also decided to rename the people we wanted to connect with. We realized that calling people who are outside the faith "the lost" sets up an us/them dichotomy, artificially separating "the found" from those who are hopeless in their "lostness." It also conveys a class system, setting up the assumed superiority of "the found" in contrast to the sad plight of "the lost."

Ignoring the issue of what we call the unsaved (which really does not matter to me much), what is with the infatuation of some with erasing the lines between the "in" and the "out"? Is not one of the most theologically significant descriptions of the believer one of "in" ... as in "in Christ"? Does not that imply that some are "out"? I have seen many similar kinds of statements of late, particularly among emergents. I do not get it. Let's not pretend that the differences are minimal. There are "ins" and "outs" when it comes to Jesus, doctrine, and church.

Lastly, from a.k.a Lost by Jim Henderson, citing Brian McLaren (original source not cited):

Missing people aren't bad; they're just not where they're supposed to be.

In all too typical fashion, McLaren undersells the sin problem. Missing people (the term Henderson chose instead of "lost") are bad. That's why they need Jesus. Jesus himself said he came to call sinners to repentance. He did not come for people who "aren't that bad." And as I say, if you think you "aren't that bad," you are not ready for Jesus. You're not hopeless yet.