Was doing the daily office today using my daily office site (dailyoffice.novuslumen.net) and came across this hymn selection. Thought it was an apt reminder in our overly indulgent hyper-paced world. Enjoy!

Take Time to be Holy
Take time to be holy, speak oft with thy Lord;
Abide in Him always, and feed on His Word.
Make friends of God’s children, help those who are weak,
Forgetting in nothing His blessing to seek.

Take time to be holy, the world rushes on;
Spend much time in secret, with Jesus alone.
By looking to Jesus, like Him thou shalt be;
Thy friends in thy conduct His likeness shall see.

Take time to be holy, let Him be thy Guide;
And run not before Him, whatever betide.
In joy or in sorrow, still follow the Lord,
And, looking to Jesus, still trust in His Word.

Take time to be holy, be calm in thy soul,
Each thought and each motive beneath His control.
Thus led by His Spirit to fountains of love,
Thou soon shalt be fitted for service above.

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Post Series
0: Intro
1: Narrative Question
2: Authority Question
3: God Question
4: Jesus Question
5: Gospel Question
Theological Foundation Recap
6: Church Question
7: Sex Question
8: Future Question
9: Pluralism Question
10: What-Do-We-Do-Now Question
11: Final Thoughts

After setting down his alternative theological foundation, Brian launches into an exploration of “be-ology”—what it means to be as a Christian and human. (160) A natural first question after such a jarring experience with the first 5 questions is this: “What do we do about the Church?” Or more specifically: What is the Church?

Interestingly, up until this point Brian has not used the word church. I found this incredibly odd and disconcerting in a book that is supposedly exploring a new kind of Christianity. Odd that he would not use the very word Jesus Himself used to describe the group of people who are his followers, i.e. Christians; disturbing that his new theology and faith is not specifically for the Church. For someone who describes himself as “a lifelong churchgoer and a veteran pastor,” I wondered why in 160 pages (and beyond this chapter) he never utters the word. I think the reason becomes clear when we explore the answers Brian provides to his question.

He begins this section, and rightly so, describing the fear and antipathy modern culture has toward the church. The sentiments he describes reflect one which someone exclaimed in a conversation I describe in my book I had with a fellow Starbucks barista: “The church is fucked up!”¹ As Brian describes the current crisis, “When enough church leaders wake up and smell the Ben-Gay, when they realize that their faith communities are shrinking and wrinkling and stiffening, they start to ask the church questions very urgently: What are we going to do about the church?” (162)

He says that we should stop worrying about what forms the church takes (thanks you!) and start seeing “ourselves as servants of one grander mission, apostles of one greater message, seekers on one ultimate quest…What would that one mission, message, and quest be? Around what one grand endeavor can we rally? What one great danger do people need to be saved from and, more positively, what one great purpose do they need to be saved for?” (164)

In other words: Why does the church exist? According to Brian, “to form Christlike people, people of Christlike love…the formation of Christlike people of love naturally becomes the grand unifying preoccupation and mission of our churches.” (164, 165)

At one level this seems fine, but does the church in any way exist to save people as the earliest church themselves existed? Yes. According to Brian, the church exists to save people “from the great danger of wasting their lives, becoming something less than and other than they were intended to be, gaining the world but losing their soul.” (emphasis mine. 164)

In answering question 6, then, the Church must totally rethink the Her core mission and identify that mission along these terms. (165) That mission, then, is “forming people of Christlike love” (171) and “save them from…wasting their lives” (164)

That’s it folks.

It’s funny, because I thought the Church was a community of redeemed and rescued people sent on mission to reconcile the world to God through Christ.

Does not Paul explicitly explain the mission of the Church in 2 Cor. 5:11-21 when he explains the God gave “us” the community of believers the “mission of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them”? Are we not Christ’s ambassadors who have been committed the message of reconciliation: “Be reconciled to God”? Is not God making His appeal through the Church to be reconciled to Him through Jesus Christ? And is not the basis of that reconciliation that “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God”?

While I am with Brian at one level, that the mission of individual church communities is to form Christlike people. Christlike formation, however, is part of sanctification! In other words, forming Christlike people who follow the way of love happens only after that have been made new through individual “transformation moments.” What is that transformation moment? When a person choses to be “in Christ” (that incredibly key, distinctive theological rallying point for Paul throughout his letters) and the old person goes a ways and the new person begins.

For Paul humans are born “in Adam” and live out of the flesh, their sinful nature (Rom 5:12-20). They are alienated from God and His enemies and by nature people of His wrath (Col 1:21; Eph. 2:3). But “in Christ” Paul also makes clear that this condition is a past condition. “Once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds because of your evil behavior.” (Col. 1:21) “Like the rest, we were by nature deserving of wrath.”

These and other pieces of the Holy Scripture make plain that there was an old condition and a new condition; a moment when someone is not a believer/follower and when someone is. Even more important there is a time when someone is not reconciled to God and a moment when a person is through Christ. To put it in more exclusionary terms: a person is part of God’s community or they are not, part of the Church or not. Brian cannot voice this, however.

All of this is incredibly important to Brian’s definition and mission of the Church, which misses a vital, necessary piece: faith in Christ. The church is NOT simply a group of people who act like Christ and follow the way of love (though this is an important, vital part of having a real, genuine faith in Christ) and saved from wasting their lives. This is the Kiwanis, a great group of people who’s current motto is “serving the children of the world.” Service and love is not distinctive to the Church nor to Jesus. You could say the same thing for the PeaceCorp, though such Imperial comparisons might draw a lightning bolt or two from Brian.

No, the Church is the community of people who have been rescued from death through the forgiveness of their sins by faithing in the final sacrificial death of Jesus Christ, who by His own blood entered the Most Holy Place once and for all, thus obtaining eternal rescue and life for those who faith in Him. Consequently, those who are saved and believe in Jesus act as the continuing presence of Christ to spread His Kingdom Reign on earth.

That’s the Church, Brian McLaren.

As Paul writes in Ephesians 2: “Because of His great love for us, God, who is rich and mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions— it is by grace you have been saved. And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with Him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming ages He might show the incomparable riches of His grace, expressed in His kindness to us in Christ Jesus.”

The word “us” is used 4 times along side with/in Christ 4 times. Paul is speaking to the Church, the redeemed and the rescued and the reconciled in Christ. This is the message and banner of the Church: BE RECONCILED TO GOD IN CHRIST!

This is the very message of the earliest of the Church in Acts. They didn’t preach “live like Jesus” but “believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved.” (Acts 16) In the face of Jewish persecution and Roman imprisonment they didn’t proclaim “don’t waste your life” but “Repent and be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins.” (Acts 2) God raised Jesus from the dead, and the forgiveness of sins and freedom from sins in Christ was the consistent message of the Church, stemming from Her mission to go into all the world and make disciples of Jesus Christ. (Acts 13 and Matthew 28).

In reality, Brian’s church is not church at all, but a social club devoid of any power because it is disconnected from Jesus Christ as exclusive Lord and Messiah.

This Holy Friday I am reminded how important it is for the Church to boldly, confidently shout from roof-top to roof-tops that Christ has died, Christ has risen, Christ will come again! Through the Church God is dispensing His grace and forgiveness and reconciliation and rescue from sin and death, because it is through Jesus Christ and Him alone that all of this is accomplished. The power for forgiveness and reconciliation and life transformation and individual rescue from evil, sin and death is through death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, both of which are mysteriously missing from the mission and message of Brian’s church.

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1. the (un)offensive gospel of Jesus, 37. [↩]

Almighty Father, whose dear Son, on the night before he suffered, instituted the Sacrament of his Body and Blood: Mercifully grant that we may receive it thankfully in remembrance of Jesus Christ our Lord, who in these holy mysteries gives us a pledge of eternal life; and who now lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

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In the interest of full disclosure my wife works for Zondervan Bibles and was the lead manager for this Bible. I did hear about a new blogger program for this important new study Bible from her and I jumped on board to sign up. I am NOT being compensated for this giveaway, other than being married to greatest gal on the planet! The contest giveaway is after the review towards the bottom of the post.

The Review

I have to admit straight away that when my wife told me that she was working on a Bible with Lee Strobel I was skeptical. While I have appreciated Lee’s contribution to the Church and greater community for a while, I wondered why we needed yet another Bible product, especially one centered around a Christian celebrity. I thought, “There are Bible’s for moms, teens, dads, grandmothers, environmentalists, NASCAR fans, patriots, and even for horse lovers, why on earth do we need yet another one?”

As husbands often are (so I’m learning 6 months into marriage!), I was wrong: this is a sweet, needed Bible, which is why I wanted to write this review for The Case for Christ Study Bible!

Lee has written a much needed companion for the spiritual journeyperson. This is a Bible for both Christians seeking to better understand and investigate their faith AND seekers/skeptics who are trying to better understand Christianity and searching for answers to their spiritual questions. In a manner only he can pull off, Lee consistently presents his case along side the biblical text for the reality of God, reliability of Scripture, rescue brought through Christ, and reasons for putting our hope and faith in Him alone. I can see this Bible being given by a Christian to a seeking friend as much as Christian parents to their maturing teenager; those wondering about Christianity will pick up this Bible at their local Barnes and Noble as will the longtime Christian who needs better apologetical equipping.

Here are some of the questions this Bible seeks to help answer: How can there be a God if there is so much suffering in the world? Did Jesus claim to be the Son of God? Can we trust the New Testament? Does science point to a Creator? Why was Zerubbabel a significant ancestor of Jesus? When was Daniel written? Why did Jesus associate with the lowest people of society?Was Jesus sinless? Did Jesus intentionally fulfill the messianic prophecies? What’s the truth behind the debate regarding the number of differing Greek manuscripts? Who is the rider on the white horse in Revelation? Is Jesus the only way?

He also tackles such topics as: The Creator of Earth’s perfect location; Worshiping the Creator; Care for the needy; The accuracy of Ezekiel’s prophecies; Messianic prophecies and the integrity of the gospels; The plausibility of a virgin birth; Problems with the Jesus Seminar; Paul and Old Testament prophecies; The Bible and the truth about God.

These and other questions and topics are addressed and answered with the precision, accuracy, and care only a journalist like Lee Strobel could provide. Using new articles and material culled from his other works, Lee gets to the heart of the inquiries from the faithful and skeptics alike using 5 insightful features: The Case for the Bible; The Case for Christ; The Case for a Creator; The Case for Faith; The Verdict. As the information from the CFC Study Bible describes these features:

1. The Case for the Bible: The Bible is an extraordinary record of human history and these articles demonstrate the accuracy of this record. They explore the character of the Bible and the extrabiblical evidence that corroborates Scripture. They also tackle many tough questions and offer explanations for apparent contradictions within the Scriptural Text.
2. The Case for Christ: These articles provide an in-depth exploration of Jesus’ claims, deity, and resurrection. They also show how Christ can be found throughout the Old Testament. Included in these notes are Old Testament prophecies that point to Jesus as Messiah.
3. The Case for a Creator: If you look closely, it is easy to find evidence that the world was specifically designed. These articles highlight the many wonders of creation and provide specific examples from nature and science to illustrate how the scientific evidence points to one supreme Creator.
4. The Case for Faith: For most people faith is a complicated and personal subject. These articles attempt to address some of the most popular questions asked by skeptics and believers alike, such as “How can there be a God if there is so much suffering in the world?” and other critical questions about faith.
5. The Verdict: Through testimonies from well-known scholars and other Christians who have examined the evidence, discovered the reality of Jesus and put their faith in him, these articles provide the real and personal examples of true faith. They will challenge you to examine the evidence for yourself so that you can make your own verdict.

Here is what I like about The Case for Christ Study Bible:

• Uses the NIV text and includes the study notes from the main NIV Study Bible.
• Each book opens with a short information sheet, including: Major themes, Author, Audience, Date of writing, and setting.
• Lee tackles serious questions about serious issues of faith.
• The responses are well researched and reasoned, skipping the typical cheap platitudes and bobbing and weaving all too often associated with other so-called Christian apologetic resources.
• For a bible studies and theology student like me, Lee tackles subjects like inerrancy, OT prophecies, the Jesus Seminar/Historical Jesus studies, and even Q. Right on!
• With pastoral sensitivity, he even addresses hard-hitting subjects, like the personal pain of loosing his own child.
• The back includes really helpful charts I have not seen in other Study Bibles, such as: The Creeds and Hymns of the early church; Divine actions of Jesus; OT prophecies fulfilled by Jesus; Jesus’ claims about Himself; and Resurrection appearances of Jesus.
• Finally, the interior layout is nice and crisp, unobtrusively inserting the articles in such away that they don’t get in the way of the biblical text, but rather supplement it, which to me is an important “user-interface” feature.

All in all, this is one of the only Study Bibles I would give to a spiritually seeking friend or fellow believer who is interested in strengthening their faith. While I have always appreciated Lee’s writings and perspective, I am pleased with his latest efforts to see people encounter our risen Savior Jesus Christ. This Bible is a great tool for Christians and non-Christians alike who want to better understand and investigate the claims of Scripture for themselves.

You can purchase this bible for $23.09 at amazon, here.

The Giveaway

Contest is closed.

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Post Series
0: Intro
1: Narrative Question
2: Authority Question
3: God Question
4: Jesus Question
5: Gospel Question
Theological Foundation Recap
6: Church Question
7: Sex Question
8: Future Question
9: Pluralism Question
10: What-Do-We-Do-Now Question
11: Final Thoughts

After insisting that a new kind of Christianity demands a new reading of the biblical narrative, Brian McLaren argues for a new approach to the Bible, because as he argues, “we’ve gotten ourselves into a mess with the Bible.” (68). We are in trouble in three main ways:

1. Scientific—”Fundamentalism again and again paints itself into a corner by requiring that the Bible be treated as a divinely dictated science textbook providing us true information in all areas of life, including when and how the earth was created, what the shape of the earth is, what revolves around what in space, and so on…This approach has set up Christians on the wrong side of truth again and again, from Galileo’s time, to Darwin’s, to our own.” (68)
2. Ethical—”The Bible, when taken as an ethical rule book, offer us no clear categories for many of our most significant and vexing socioethical quandaries. We find no explicit mention, for example, of abortion…human rights…sexual orientation…global climate change…genetic engineering (among others). If we must steer our ship by wrestling biblical passages to bear on these issues in a simple “though shalt not,” way we will find ourselves stuck precisely where we are stuck now, and largely paralyzed in solving major life-and-death-of-the-planet issues and largely obsesses with narrow hot-button feuds that feuds…” (69)
3. Peace—”Many of us are afraid that the Bible is becoming a box cutter or a suitcase bomb in the hands of too many preachers, pastors, priests, and others. When careless preachers use the Bible as a club or sword to dominate or wound, they discredit the Bible in a way that no skeptic can.” He uses the the examples of pastors pulling verses to justify the preemptive strike against Iraq, declares you could “probably turn on a Christian radio broadcast today and hear a preacher deny human rights to Palestinians on…’biblical grounds,’” and trots out the example of “how the Bible was used by the defenders of slavery in contrast with the promoters of abolition” in Western Europe in general and American in particular.” (69-70)

In light of this “triplet of troubles” “we must find new approaches to our sacred texts (Interestingly, he doesn’t particularly identify the Holy Scriptures here, but generalizes it to, perhaps, include other “sacred texts,” like the Koran?)…” (70) In the end, “this habitual, conventional way of reading and interpreting the Bible that allowed slavery, anti-semetism, apartheid, chauvinism, environmental plundering, prejudice against gay people, and other injustices to be legitimized and defended for so long…we still use the Bible in the same way to defend any number of other things that have not yet been fully discredited, but soon may be.” (76)

And what exactly is “this habitual, conventional way of reading and interpreting the Bible”? Reading the Bible as a legal constitution. This constitutional approach, used “especially in conservative settings,” is defined as: “looking for precedents in past cases of interpretation, sometimes favoring older interpretations as precedents;” arguing “framers’ intent” (or author’s intent in biblical hermeneutics terminology); approaching the biblical text “as if it were an annotated code.” (78-79)

Instead, we need to see the Bible as it actually is: “a portable library of poems, prophets, histories, fables and parables, letters, sage sayings, quarrels, and so on…it’s the library of a culture and community—the culture and community of people who trace their history back to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The biblical library is a carefully selected group of documents of paramount importance for people who want to understand and belong to the community of people who seek God and, in particular, the God of Abraham, Moses, David, the prophets, and Jesus.” (emphasis mine. 79, 81)

At this point, I want to ask Brian these questions:

1. Is the Holy Scripture authoritative for defining how we are to relate to God and others?
2. Is the Holy Scripture God’s Textual act of Divine self-disclosure?
3. Are there other texts through which God reveals Himself?
4. Is the Holy Scripture Christocentric? Meaning: Does not the whole of the Holy Scripture center exclusively on Jesus Christ, rather than simply “the God of Abraham, Moses, David, the prophets, and Jesus.”

Let’s see how Brian answers these questions:

“The biblical library has a unique role in the life of the community of faith, resourcing, challenging, and guiding the community of faith in ways that no other texts can. It is uniquely valuable to teach, reprove, correct, train, and equip us for love and good works, as the apostle Paul says. It provides a kind of encouragement that is central and unique to the community of Christian faith.” (emphasis mine. 83)

He then goes on to acknowledge that Plato, Muhammed, and the Buddah “all say interesting and brilliant and inspiring things,” and he can “learn a lot from their words,” as much as from Clement, Luther, Calvin, Borg and Crossan. “But to say that God inspired the Bible is to say that, for the community of people who seek to be part of the tradition of Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebekah, Jacob, Moses, Ruth, David, Amos, John, Mary, and Jesus, the Bible has a unique and unparalleled role that none of these other voices can claim.” (83)

OK, Brian, but why does it simply have a unique role? And why does it have a central and unique role only for the Christian faith? Why isn’t the Holy Scripture the sole textual authority for the entire world?

Brian cannot (bring himself to) say that the Bible is inspired by God and is the sole textual point of God’s divine self-disclosure, only that it has “a unique and unparalleled role.” He also cannot say the Bible is for the entire world, but only for the “community of Christian faith.” Somehow, God “breaths life into the Bible, and through it into the ‘community of faith’ and its members, and into my soul,” without even explaining what this even means. While it sounds nice, it makes no sense. How does God do this? What is he “breathing?” Is He Himself even saying anything? This leads to a more important, fundamental question: Is God Himself revealed through the Bible itself?

Unfortunately, according to Brian, no. “This inspired library preserves, presents, and inspires an ongoing vigorous conversation with and about God, a living and vital civil argument into which we are all invited and through which God is revealed.” (83) The Living God then is not reveal through the Holy Scripture, but simply the “ongoing vigorous conversation” and “vital civl argument.” He says this very thing when he argues against reading the Bible in away that says “God’s message is supposed to be found in the plain words of the biblical text:”

“revelation occurs not in the words and statements of individuals, but in the conversation among individuals and God. It happens in conversations and arguments that take place within and among communities of people who share the same essential questions across generations. Revelation accumulates in the relationships, interactions, and interplay between statements.” (91-92)

Pay attention to what Brian has said here: McLaren believes revelation is about human conversation about God, rather than God Himself revealing Himself to humanity. He says that in the Hebrew Scriptures “we have so many voices, and voices of different kinds…in the Christian Scriptures we have several gospels…and we have many other voices as well.” In an effort to push this conversational framing of the Text, he uses the Book of Job as a rhetorical device, wondering aloud, “Could Job be a fractal of the whole Bible, then: many voices arguing, debating, stating, and counterstating, asking and answering?” He goes on to say, “Could it be that God’s Word intends not to give us easy answers and shortcuts to confidence and authority, but rather to reduce us, again and again, to a posture of wonder, humility, rebuke, and smallness in the face of the unknown?” (93)

While the Holy Scripture certainly does not give easy answers and does leave us in speechless wonder, Brian completely dismisses how the Church has views God’s revelation for centuries: God is not unknown and has deliberately disclosed Himself to humanity; God Himself is deliberately speaking to us through the Text. The Bible is not simply a conversation among many different voices, but one Voice speaking to us in a variety of ways. I do agree with Brian that the Bible is unlike any other book: it is a very diverse body of genres and voices through which God is speaking. Far from being simply a “record of a vibrant conversation, and a stimulus to ongoing conversation,” however, it contains the voice of God itself as He has chosen to speak to us about Himself.

Though it will become far more apparent in the next question—at which point Brian blatantly says that “the Bible is an ongoing conversation about the character of God“—let’s be clear: from the looks of it, according to Brian the Bible neither contains the real voice of God, but rather the voices of individuals speaking about God, nor is it a real, single authority for understanding God properly, since it is merely an evolving conversation about Him in which varying people give varying perspectives.

The greatest travesty of Brian’s perspective is this line on page 81:

It’s the library of a culture and community—the culture and community of people who trace their history back to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The biblical library is a carefully selected group of documents of paramount importance for people who want to understand and belong to the community of people who seek God and, in particular, the God of Abraham, Moses, David, the prophets, and Jesus.

Here Brian reduces the Christian faith to one among three who, “trace their history back to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.” Furthermore, somehow Brian reduces the Church simply to a pluralistic “community of people who seek God, in particular, the God of Abraham, Moses, David, the prophets, and Jesus.” The problem with his logic is that for Brian the Bible is really all about God, not Jesus Christ.

Like the biblical narrative itself, which he fails to exclusively root in Jesus Christ, Brian refuses to root the Bible’s self-disclosure of God in Him, too. According to Brian, the “community of people who seek God” in the Bible apparently are not seeking it in Jesus Christ alone, but rather simply the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. This allows Brian to include Jews and Muslims in his “community of people” tent of those seeking God.

Unfortunately for Brian, the Christian faith has insisted for generations that the God found in the biblical text is not simply “the God of Abraham, Moses, David, the prophets, and Jesus.” The God found in the Bible is Jesus; Jesus Christ is the God of the Holy Scripture around whom the Text itself pivots. And unless someone acknowledges this, they really are not seeking after the one true God.

The one true God has supremely revealed Himself in the person of His Son, Jesus Christ. Therefore, neither the knowledge nor revelation of God can be divorced from the knowledge and revelation of Jesus Christ. Indeed knowledge of Jesus Christ is the ultimate, only access to the knowledge and revelation of God. Why doesn’t Brian acknowledge this? Why does he divorce the authority of the Text and revelation of God found in it from Jesus Christ Himself? Why does he not simply say, “The Bible reveals God, in the person of Jesus Christ”?

So far, it is apparent that for Brian the Story and Revelation of God is not really about Jesus Christ, but about a generic, vanilla World-Spirit god. This will become far more apparent when Brian discusses God Himself in question 3, The God Question. Using the question, “Is God violent?” McLaren reveals his belief that the Bible progressively reveals an evolved understanding of God, rather than God Himself. This view ultimately cashes out in the person of Jesus, who is simply an evolved likeness and revelation of the character of God, rather than God Himself.

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