Category Archives: definitions

February 6, 2012 · 08:20

what are you afraid of?

I asked the crowd at church “what are you afraid of” Yesterday was a great first full day, I taught at one of my favorite churches on the planet (admittedly, there are several of them) at South Budapest (click here to see their website) and had some good catch up conversations with folks there after which, Will and Joanna took me out to lunch and then a quiet afternoon. At 17:00, the whole northern Hungary gang gathered for pizza where I asked Laci to brief us on his trip to Bosnia. This made me pretty excited about my trip there in a couple of weeks and hopeful for deeper partnership there… even English teachers??? We’ll see. Now there’s a place where you might ought to fear talking about the Gospel out loud, but they are not. So the answer to our fear about “gospeling” (proclaiming the news about Jesus as coined by Scot McKnight in King Jesus Gospel.

This is a talk I am taking around with me that is a reminder about what the Gospel actually is and what we are to do with it, why we don’t and how to fix the why. So there is the question… as far as proclaiming the news about Jesus, what are you afraid of?

Leave a Comment

Filed under definitions, experience, seeking understanding, spiritual questions/musings/wonderings, the self

September 3, 2011 · 13:41

the meaning of the gospel

I was just reading a blog in which the author thinks that one of the interesting theological questions of the not too distant future is the meaning of the Gospel. This idea intrigued me enough to decide to ponder it here.

As I think about it, I think about what one of my teachers taught us. That the message of the Gospel is to proclaim the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus. I also think about how widely used the word is these days to identify a curriculum or name a blog or website or clarify your mission.

When you think of the Gospel, what do you think about? How would you define it? What is your understanding?

2 Comments

Filed under definitions

November 18, 2006 · 14:24

evil

I picked up Tom Wright’s book Evil and the Justice of God (IVP, 2006). I was struck by this idea:

“This… is a kind of response to the problem of evil. Postmodernism, in recognizing that we are all deeply flawed, aviods any return to a classic doctrine of original sin by claiming that humans have no fixed “identity” and hense no fixed responsibility. You can’t escape evil within postmodernity, but you can’t find anyone to take the blame either.”

Wright goes on to give an example from England when no one was held responsible for a rail accident becuase you can’t find anyone to take the blame either…

This seems to match up with the idea of plurality that I think seems to be a “doctrine” of postmodern thought.

Leave a Comment

Filed under definitions, experience

November 2, 2006 · 00:17

another summary of modernism

as a modernist, i need further clarification of modernism so that i can further comprehend postmodernism… i have found this summary by Erickson helpful…

“In general, modernism was seeking for an explaination that would cover all things. So the great systems of the of the modern period were omniexplanatory. Darwinism accounted for everything in terms of biological evolution. Freudian psycology explained all human behavior in light of sexual repression, and unconscious forces. marxism interpreted all events of history in economic categories, with the forces of dialectical materialism moving history toward the inevitable classess society. These ideologies offered universal diagnoses as well as universal cures.” p. 164

Leave a Comment

Filed under definitions