Christmas is Around the Corner

Well Christmas is around the corner and I am excited. Yes, I will continue to say Merry Christmas, not because I dislike other religions and festive celebrations, but because this season is encapsulated in Christ for me. Some have been trying to get me to say 'happy incarnation' so that I can apologetically defend the incarnation. I think that this type of reasoning is nice, but sincerely misguided.

In other news, I am currently reading The Jesus Way by Eugene Peterson. I am enjoying this spiritually formative read and I will keep on this blog my thoughts about what I am reading.

This book is predicated on John 14:6 where Jesus says, "I am the way, the truth and the life..." Peterson would like to point out that the 'truth and life' can only be accomplished when we are on the 'way.'

In his introduction, Peterson discusses how Jesus is not offering a complementary way to the ways and means of the world, but an alternative way. The manner in which God goes about defining success and production is completely different from the way in which the world offers these signposts of greatness. Peterson also critiques the consumer driven American church with a strikingly harsh, but true, statement; "A consumer church is an antichrist church (page 6)."

The flow of thought continues to show just how far reaching salvation is. Peterson shows that the 'end' goal of the Christian experience is salvation. It is highly important to realize that this salvation is not just an eschatological divine pardoning, but also a life altering and transforming, long lasting experience. "This is a salvation understood as comprehensive, intricate, patiently personal, embracingly social, insistently political. Salvation is the work of God that restores the world and us to wholeness (page 7 emphasis mine)." Peterson continues to discuss how to often the church will use the ways and means of the world that are at odds with what God desires.

It is integral in this understanding is the realization that Jesus is King. "We live in a world where Christ is King. If Christ is King, everything, quite literally, every thing and every one, has to be re-imagined, re-configured, re-oriented to a way of life that consists in an obedient following of Jesus (page 9)." This coheres well with NT Wright's understanding of the word 'gospel' as being the pronouncement that Jesus is King. Those who try to divorce Jesus Christ and his work from political action misunderstand the nature of the gospel. The gospel according to Jesus was "the kingdom of God is at hand (mk 1:15)." The reason the gospels are so inundated with the Kingdom of God is that Jesus came to establish a kingdom, not a simply a system of how people get their sins managed. Peterson continues, "The ways and means promoted and practices in the world are a systematic attempt to substitute human sovereingty for God's rule (pg 9)."

To conclude the introduction, Peterson speaks against what he calls the 'Laity Myth.' There is a pervading myth in the Christian church that people who do not have a degree in theology or who do not the gifts of preaching/teaching are sort of second-class believers. This is completely untrue. The people of God are built up of mainly people without such degrees and the like. Jesus's disciples were not those schooled in theology, but those who knew how to fish, do taxes, be zealous and the like. A problem connected with this is that people invest too much of their identity in what they can do well, rather in who they are (in the case of believers, Children of God). It is important for the 'leaders' of the church to get involvement from those without the official training. It is important for those who are not officially trained to believe that God desires earnestly to use them.

That is it for now. I am challenged and encouraged in reading this book, I hope that my synopsis has aided you as well.