I started a new blog. Feel free to check it out. The following was my first post. I figured it was Humble Orthodoxy worthy. I would like to get your response.
While preparing a message from 1 Cor 1.18-25, I came up with a number of questions to ask myself and the congregation in the application section of the sermon. The main question was “What defines you?” A partial list of subsidiary questions follows:
- Can Christ be seen in what you say, write, think, how you live?
- Do you read your Bible Christocentrically (to know a person)?
- Does your Facebook or Myspace page demonstrate that you value Christ above all or is it just about you?
- Does your blog demonstrate an adherence to a particular theological position and your being right or does it magnify Christ above all?
- Does your use of time and money reflect Christ’s supreme value?
- Is your life stamped by Christ – is everything tainted by Christ?
- Could you lose all individuality (the minor things with which we define ourselves), be defined by Christ, and be ok with it?
- Is the cross all over you?
- To the teachers present, have you exalted other doctrines or teaching methods so much that Christology has become a neglected understood?
I concluded the sermon with these words:
What I am arguing for is a life that is so radically Christ centered that everything you do, say, and think is tainted with a recognition of the supreme value of Christ. Christocentricity is not for theologians only. Radically define your life by Christ – live like nothing else matters – there is no power elsewhere.
One phrase stood out to me that demanded more reflection in my own life: “neglected understood.” I can point to times in my life where Christ was a neglected understood theologically and practically. I assumed His presence and power but did not live in his presence and power. I have lived, spoken, preached, taught, thought, etc. as if Christ was a sub-point in theology and life when He is truly the main point. I have taught and preached under the assumption that those who were listening not only understood the Gospel and its power, but were living accordingly.
This action of assuming the most basic and most important facts about the Christian life is all over the church. I will speak from my own experience in the church. I grew up in Fundamental Independent Baptist circles. Because Fundamentalists have assumed that their people knew doctrine and lived in the Gospel, they began emphasizing other things (like Bible versions and hair styles and music and how women dress). They assumed the fundamentals of the faith and created new fundamentals. As a result, people came out of church (I’m emphasizing the fact they view “the church” as a meeting or a building – another assumption) holding the “right” Bible version, with the “right” haircut, having sung the “right” music, while wearing the “right” clothes with no Gospel. From my observation, Fundamentalists are not the only guilty party. Charismatics and Pentecostals have assumed Christ and the Gospel and emphasized the sign gifts. The MegaChurch movement assumed Christ and the Gospel and emphasized contemporary music and dress. I’ll stop name calling and get to my point.
For me the neglected understood is a reference to both Christ and His Gospel. The church has done a pretty good job at believing and acting as though believers in the church know Christ and understand His Gospel when they truly do not. If the church does not know Christ or understand His Gospel, non-Christians definitely do not.
