The other book I just finished reading is The Challenge of Jesus by N.T. Wright. I had been working on this book off and on for 6 months. Most of the book had been very scholarly, much more than it was applicable and usable to me. Even though it was laborious to read, I had finished the first six chapters and laid it aside. This past week I picked it up, determined to finish it (because I would not start a new book that I had ordered until it was finished).
What a pleasure it was to find such good stuff in the last two chapters! Let me share a couple of things that I liked.
The first thing I liked was a brief but clear explanation of post-modernism and what changes have occurred in our thinking in the transition from modernism. If you would like a better understanding of this, I would highly recommend chapter seven.
Chapter 8 calls us to be "the light of the (post-modern) world."
"Part of the point of postmodernity under the strange providence of God is to preach the Fall to arrogant modernity."
"And our task, as image-bearing, God-loving, Christ-shaped, Spirit-filled Christians, following Christ and shaping our world, is to announce redemption to the world that has discovered its fallenness, to announce healing to a world that has discovered its brokenness, to proclaim love and trust to the world that knows only exploitation, fear and suspicion."
"What should we be doing in God's world that would call forth the puzzled or even angry questions to which [the Scriptures] would be the right answers?"
"Your task is to find the symbolic ways of doing things differently, planting flags in hostile soil, setting up signposts that say there is a different way to be human. And when people are puzzled at what you are doing, find ways--fresh ways-- of telling the story of the return of the human race from its exile, and use those stories as your explanation."
"Do not despise the small but significant symbolic act."
"[The way of the Christian witness] is the way of being in Christ, in the Spirit, at the place where the world is in pain, so that the healing love of God may be brought to bear at that point."
"Learn new ways of praying with and from the pain, the brokenness, of that crucial part of the world where God has placed you. And out of the prayer discover the ways of being peacemakers, of taking risk of hearing both sides, of running the risk of being shot at from both sides."
"As C.S. Lewis said in a famous lecture, next to the sacrament itself your Christian neighbor is the holiest object ever presented to your sight, because in him or her the living Christ is truly present."
"God forgive us that we have imagined true humanness, after the Enlightenment model, to mean being successful, having it all together, knowing all the answers, never making mistakes, striding through the world as if we owned it. The living God revealed in his glory in Jesus and never more clearly than when he died on the cross, crying out that he had been forsaken. When we stand in pain and prayer, following Christ and reshaping our world, we are not only discovering what it means to be truly human, we are discovering the true meaning of what the Eastern Orthodox Church refers to, yes, as 'divination.' Ultimately, if you don't believe that, you don't believe in the Holy Spirit. And if you think that sounds arrogant, imagine how arrogant it would be even to think of trying to reshape our world without being indwelt, energized, guided and directed by our God's own Spirit."
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