Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!rutgers!aramis.rutgers.edu!athos.rutgers.edu!christian From: gilham@csl.sri.com (Fred Gilham) Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian Subject: Love vs. holiness Message-ID: Date: 20 Jul 90 06:33:32 GMT Sender: hedrick@athos.rutgers.edu Lines: 91 Approved: christian@aramis.rutgers.edu Harry Edmon writes: ---------------------------------------- We have the duty to preach both the "Good News" (Gospel) and the "Bad News" (Law). After all, the Good News is not "Good" unless the Law is properly understood, i.e. what we deserve for our sins. The Church has a prophetic responsibility to call all to repentance, and if you read the O.T. prophets, most of that message is Doom and Gloom. What seperates us from those prophets is our sure knowledge of God's great forgiveness in Jesus Christ. ---------------------------------------- There are two issues here: 1) What is the law? I refer here to Jesus' answer to the scribe who asked what the greatest law was: ``Love God with all your heart, soul, strength and mind, and love your neighbor as yourself.'' It seems that a lot of the doom and gloom in the prophets was directed toward specific instances of failure to do one or the other (e.g. grinding down the poor, neglecting widows, sacrificing to idols etc.). 2) Where are we told to preach the law? My experience these days is that it is almost impossible to talk to non-Christians about sin(s) because they have such a misconception of it. I find it much easier to talk about restoring a broken relationship with the creator of the universe. The broken relationship is manifested by the state of the world and the state of one's life. The restoration is made possible by the death of Christ. Seems that if something like this approach doesn't make headway, the person is probably not willing to discuss it at the time. My sister became a Christian through some talks we had. During these talks, there was no emphasis on sin; her situation was such that no such emphasis was necessary. She knew she was needy and that her life was bankrupt. Several times she said, ``I can't make it on my own.'' This is the position people need to come to in order to receive the gospel. I am reminded of a James Thurber cartoon. There is a woman gaily dancing, and a man with a collar and a bible saying, ``Unhappy woman!'' I would repeat what I said in my previous post, that it is the job of the Spirit to convince of sin. I have the feeling he takes this job on himself because it is too dangerous for us. What we can do is point out the consequences of actions; if you do A, then B will happen. If this sort of thing gets done properly, we end up gaining credibility. For example, Christians believe in sexual abstention before marriage. Now, one of the big problems for women in college is date rape. Seems like there is an obvious connection; casual treatment of sex leads to casual treatment of the sex object. But the whole emphasis must be on the positive value of sex as the means of expressing deep love. Simply saying that ``God forbids sex before or outside of marriage'' will come across as a ``puritanical'' hangup. I think one of the problems Christians will have to come to grips with in the near future is the impact of the ``Post-Christian'' era on the United States. There seems to be an increasing antipathy towards traditional Christianity in our society. Besides this, virtually all the mass media impart values that undermine the assumptions of Christianity. I feel that in the next hundred years or so, unless something drastic happens, it is likely that Christianity in the U.S. will find itself in a situation a lot like that of Western Europe. Then we will not have the comman Christian cultural basis to underly our evangelistic efforts; instead we will really have to approach things like Paul did, who to the Greeks became as one without the law (though under the law of Christ). We will have to find the entry points in our culture where the gospel can progress, without assuming that people know what we talk about when we use Christian terminology and jargon. We will have to be a lot more creative. To me it's interesting to read about Paul's encounter with the Athenians (Acts 17). He does issue a call to repentance from superstitious idolatry, but there are two points to note. Most of his audience would agree with him here, and he supported his points by quoting the Greek philosophers (``We are all his offspring;'' ''In him we live and move and have our being''). He only started to lose people when he talked about the resurrection. To me, this is perfect. We should never drive people away from Christianity for any reason but that of Christ. There should be only one stumbling block in Christianity. If people stumble over Christ, it can't be helped. In fact, it means we're doing our job. But if they stumble over our politics, or our morality, or our social class, it is a sad thing. -- Fred Gilham gilham@csl.sri.com So long as the heaven of THOU is spread out over me the winds of causality cower at my heels, and the whirlpool of fate stays its course. -Martin Buber