Marginal Christianity

Royal Priests I’m not a prophet nor the son of a prophet. But I know who you are and what you are to do with your life. Let me say that again: I know who you are and what you are to do with your life. And if you’ll give me 10 minutes I tell you. That’s all, 10 minutes. I’m not selling anything or asking you to support anything. I want only 10 minutes of your time. If you don’t want to hear what I have to say, fine. Go on your merry way. But if you’ve spent any time wondering who you really are and whether you’re doing something that aligns with who you truly are, take a listen. It might be the most important thing you ever hear. Not because I’m saying it – heavens no! But because of what is said. It’s nothing I thought up on my own, I’m not that smart. Nor did I receive it directly from God. I’m not that holy. I got this from a variety of folks who in the last 30 years or so have taught us to read the Bible better than we ever did before. I borrowed freely from them and that’s w...

God's Big Picture Three now widely accepted truths about the creation stories (Gen.1-2) 1 : -they narrate the divine construction of a temple in which God will dwell on earth with his creatures, -God intends the Holy of Holies (where God dwelt in the temple) to extend from its embryonic beginning in the mountain garden of Eden to finally cover the while earth, and -that God intends and commissions his human creatures to be agents of this extension of his creational temple and to serve in it as “royal priests.” This view of God's ultimate purpose in creating us and our world reorients the way we need to think about -what God wants, -what God has done for us, and -who we are and what we're supposed to do here. This “big picture” of God's purposes and intentions allows us a glimpse into God's mind before sin ever enters the picture. That doesn't happen till Gen.3. So what we see in the first two chapters is before and apart fro...

3. Did You Know You Are a Royal Priest? I am neither a prophet nor the son of a prophet but I know who you are, all of you, and what you are to be doing in the world. It’s true. I do. Not because of my wisdom or insight, mind you, but because the Bible teaches it though we’ve often forgot or ignored it. Yes, it’s right there in Genesis 1-2 if we read them in the light of their cultural context. When people of nations surrounding Israel wrote up their creation stories they did not do so provide what we would consider a “scientific” record of their origins. They did so to announce to readers whose they were, who they were, and what they were to do in the world. Gen.1-2 do the same thing. -First, their creation story narrates God’s building a temple for him to dwell on his creation in (as do those of the surrounding nations). And where else would God dwell but a temple (which also is a palace, a dwelling for the Great King)? So Israel’s God is present amid his creation (remember ...

Ch.2: What is God’s will for Our World? For Me? Knowing God’s Will One of the great mysteries of Christian faith eddies around knowing God’s will. We pursue it like the holy grail, grasp onto any new spiritual technologies that promise us insight into it, or gurus who claim special competence in discerning it. We worry that if we miss God’s will for us our lives will drip away into a puddle of inconsequence. And no one wants that, do they? Nevertheless, many of us give up on ever really knowing God’s will for the world and especially for themselves. The technologies don’t work and the gurus fail to deliver really satisfying results. So we muddle along or charge ahead doing the best we know how. Yet still we wonder about the big picture of God’s intent and purpose for the world. And what God really wants us to be about here. Well, I’m neither a prophet nor the son of a prophet, but I do know what God’s will for this world is and what role(s) he expects you to play in it....

What if we preached the gospel as the good news it is: That God has defeated all our enemies in Jesus Christ and we are free to be who God created us to be? What if? And what if who God created us to be is “royal priests” in his temple of creation mandated and gifted to represent our Great King and extend and prepare the whole creation to be his eternal habitation with us? What if? Again, what if being “royal priests” in a defeated but still-not-yet-fully-pacified world entailed God’s people being a “subversive counter-revolutionary movement?” A community of Christ-followers committed to undermining the attitudes, actions, patterns, and systems inscribed by the fall into the world and beginning in Christ to live out the same in accord with the creational design of God which is the world’s future and destiny? What if? What if Jesus’ life of pouring himself out for the world in love resulting in the cross and climaxing in the resurrection is the very life of God liv...

For some time now I have been pondering what the presentation of the gospel to the world might look like in light of some of the changes in biblical and systematic theology over last several decades. I don’t intend to rehearse those changes here. Others can and have done that better than I ever could. However, how to articulate the gospel as an evangelistic message in light of these changes has received less and more piecemeal attention. I will attempt here to draft a sample of what such proclamation might look like today. Most of us realize that simple formulaic approaches to sharing the gospel (e.g., The Four Spiritual Laws, The Romans Road) no longer suffice (for a variety of reasons I’ll also forgo exploring here). Theology has made a decisive turn to a narrative or dramatic mode, and evangelistic proclamation must follow suit. Biblical theology has reshaped our understanding of the “story” the Bible tells in its many moods and modes. Thus, the evangelistic message must r...