Author: Jonathan Dodson

Christ Against the Powers

Posted on January 12, 2009

Christ against the what? Yeah, the powers. That’s what the Bible says: “He is the head of all rule and powers” (Col 2:10, 15). What are the powers and how is Jesus against them? Before you check out on this post thinking it’s a tirade against our evil culture, consider a few things first:

  • Real or perceived, powers exert considerable influence in our world.
  • We are all subject to some power, the question is whether or not it is true and good.
  • No one is truly his own master. We all serve somebody.

Christ claims to be the power over the powers, the one true Lord of all. If that is true, it should affect everything from work to watching movies. The problem, however, is that many of us are caught up honoring “little powers”—the powers of materialism, consumerism, patriotism, atheism, and so on. If Jesus is Lord then life will be radically different. In fact, Jesus takes his power makes God our debtor. The all-powerful God harnesses his power for the good of those who hope in him. St. Augustine wrote:

Excessive payments are made to you, so that you may be our debtor…You pay debts, although you owe no man anything; you cancel debts, and lose nothing. What have we said, my God, my life, my holy delight? Who will give me help, so that I may rest in you? Who will help me, so that you will come into my heart and inebriate it, to the end that I may forget my evils and embrace you, my one good? (Confessions I.4-5)

God has become our power, even our debtor, to make good on his promises of salvation, peace, and joy. Christ has paid our debts and offers us infinite credit in his promises. He made us new that we may forget our evils and embrace him as our chief good, our holy delight. For more on this topic see Sunday’s message and manuscript.

Bad News, Playboy is in Trouble

Posted on January 10, 2009

The economy is apparently hitting the Playboy pornographic empire, at least according to an article in December in Business Week.   The magazine which was famously described as being good for women, providing that women knew what they were good for, is struggling, but before you crack open the champagne, it is no cause for rejoicing those who deplore what it represent: the problem Playboy faces is twofold — the `softcore’ content on which it made its reputation is now so mainstream that equivalent material can be found in many magazines that would never be considered pornographic; and it cannot compete with the harder, more explicit stuff that is now easily available to any ten year old child with a computer and a modem.  As one pundit on Tina Brown’s politics and culture webpage, The Daily Beast, asked, `Who buys a skin mag these days?’

Read the rest here.

Interview w/ Steve Timmis (Total Church)

Posted on January 10, 2009

9 Marks is running an interview series with the British, insightful Steve Timmis, co-author of Total Church. Steve’s quotation of David Fairchild regarding the pastoral advantage of dialogical preaching is worth the whole interview:

Extended monologue can cause me to think about the sermon more than I think about the gospel and the people the gospel is for.  If I think of the people, I think about how I’m going to communicate the gospel to them.  If I think of the gospel, I think about how I am going to communicate the gospel to a particular people.  If I think about a sermon, I don’t much think about either of them at worst; at best I think about them as a sort of homiletical box to check.

Who Would Jesus Smack Down?

Posted on January 10, 2009

The NY Times Magazine article on Mark Driscoll and Mars Hill Church in Seattle explores this unusual form of Christianity, neither liberal nor conservative, yet “hypermasculine” and Calvinist. An excerpt:

Driscoll disdains the prohibitions of traditional evangelical Christianity. Taboos on alcohol, smoking, swearing and violent movies have done much to shape American Protestant culture — a culture that he has called the domain of “chicks and some chickified dudes with limp wrists.” Moreover, the Bible tells him that to seek salvation by self-righteous clean living is to behave like a Pharisee. Unlike fundamentalists who isolate themselves, creating “a separate culture where you live in a Christian cul-de-sac,” as one spiky-haired member named Andrew Pack puts it, Mars Hillians pride themselves on friendships with non-Christians. They tend to be cultural activists who play in rock bands and care about the arts, living out a long Reformed tradition that asserts Christ’s mandate over every corner of creation.

The article appears to be pretty even-handed except for the part on church discipline. However, the journalist closes with a pretty hard commentary on Calvinists:

Mars Hill — with its conservative social teachings embedded in guitar solos and drum riffs, its megachurch presence in the heart of bohemian skepticism — thrives on paradox. Critics on the left and right alike predict that this delicate balance of opposites cannot last. Some are skeptical of a church so bent on staying perpetually “hip”: members have only recently begun to marry and have children, but surely those children will grow up, grow too cool for their cool church and rebel. Others say that Driscoll’s ego and taste for controversy will be Mars Hill’s Achilles’ heel. Lately he has made a concerted effort to tone down his language, and he insists that he has delegated much authority, but the heart of his message has not changed. Driscoll is still the one who gazes down upon Mars Hill’s seven congregations most Sundays, his sermons broadcast from the main campus to jumbo-size projection screens around the city. At one suburban campus that I visited, a huge yellow cross dominated center stage — until the projection screen unfurled and Driscoll’s face blocked the cross from view. Driscoll’s New Calvinism underscores a curious fact: the doctrine of total human depravity has always had a funny way of emboldening, rather than humbling, its adherents.

What do you think? Do you find this article compelling? Is the Calvinist critique fair? Read the rest of the New York Times Magazine article here.