A perennial favorite at the Armstrong home:
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The Emerging Church at CBE
The Christian Book Expo in Dallas a couple weeks back held a very interesting panel discussion on the subject of the Emerging Church.
I’ve gotta be honest, I find Tony Jones to be more than a little pretentious. Jones’ opening statement really came across as nothing more than an extended resumé of how well read and learned he is, and how varied his writing is. Jones speaks very much as a philosopher. Very circular in his reasoning, but I do appreciate his attempts to honestly answer questions presented.
Scot McKnight honestly comes across as full of vitriol because he feels Kevin DeYoung is uncharitable in his critique of the popular Emergent movement. I did find McKnight’s statements about Brian McLaren interesting because they’re so contradictory. First he says, “Who says Brian is the poster-boy for Emergent?” Later he says, “We all know Brian is the poster-boy for Emergent, although he’s not happy about it.” Which is it? All in all, I understand that McKnight was trying to present more of a middle-ground in the Emerging/Emergent movement.
The Harris brothers asked good questions. They made a great and crucial point: Young evangelicals want to be both doctrinally sound and culturally engaged.
DeYoung made several great points about why he focused on the leaders he did in Why We’re Not Emergent, particularly that these are the folks DeYoung’s congregations are reading and being influenced by. As a pastor, he is absolutely right to be focusing on those gentlemen. Generally speaking, I felt DeYoung was getting beat up simply because Jones and McKnight are far… louder than anyone else on the panel. They consumed a lot of the discussion time, so I don’t know how balanced the discussion truly was.
HT: Kevin DeYoung
Blogging the Psalms: Psalm 5
For you are not a God who delights in wickedness;
evil may not dwell with you.
The boastful shall not stand before your eyes;
you hate all evildoers.
You destroy those who speak lies;
the Lord abhors the bloodthirsty and deceitful man (Psalm 5:4-6).
There is a tension that exists within the Scriptures, and in the Psalms particularly, between the love of God and the wrath of God.
The Psalmist in multiple writings exalts God as our Savior, our protector, who loves his creation deeply. And this is true. God does love His creation. He does loves mankind.
But God also hates all evildoers.
The boastful (those consumed with pride).
The deceitful (liars).
The bloodthirsty (those who murder and seek to harm others in thought or deed).
Throughout Scripture, it is made abundantly clear that God hates sin. Not only that, he hates sinners—evildoers, as this psalm says.
So what’s the problem? We are all evildoers. All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, says the Apostle Paul in Romans 3:23. Because of our first parents’ sin, because we do evil continually (see Genesis 6:5), we are God’s enemies by nature and by choice.
If this is true, how can God love us?