Everyday Christianity: A Faith Free From The Accidental Pharisaism of Missional, Radical, Crazy and Other Superlatives

Every day matters. This is the very simple message of what it means to be made in the image and likeness of God and to live one’s life to the glory of God. You don’t need to be “missional.” You don’t even need to be “radical” (especially since radical commonly means “very different from the norm”). 

In fact, the Bible does not encourage superlative adjectives to describe following Christ at all. Adjectival superlatives tend to create new forms of legalism whereby the work and person of Christ is no longer sufficient to be in right relationship with God. The norm is not enough. Although those promoting various adjectives have no intention of doing harm, hearers often embrace the adjective as the basis of genuine faith instead of the language of Scripture.

Young Christian adults are torn in a sea of modern adjectives that tend to become shame-filled and often debilitating burdens. Larry Osborne warns about five tribal communities that may be accidentally doing harm: 

(1) “Radical” Christians, 

(2) “Crazy” Christians, 

(3) “Missional” Christians, 

(4) “Gospel-Centered” Christians and 

(5) Revolutionary and Organic Christians. According to Osborne, each of these tribes has inadvertently created accidental pharisaism because if one does not live out one’s Christian life according to the norms and codes of their respective tribe one will be looked down upon. Moreover, for those within each tribe, it leaves them vulnerable to the arrogant narcissism that believes “our” tribe gets Christianity “right” while the others are substandard.   Continue at Anthony Bradley

The New Legalism: Missional, Radical, Narcissistic, and Shamed

Anthony Bradley, Associate Professor of Theology and Ethics at The King’s College in New York City, has an excellent article today over at the Acton Institute’s Power blog. He starts with an observation he made recently on Facebook and Twitter:

Being a “radical,” “missional,” Christian is slowly becoming the “new legalism.” We need more ordinary God and people lovers (Matt 22:36-40).

He goes on to explain his comment:

I continue to amazed by the number of youth and youth adults who are stressed and burnt out from the regularly shaming and feelings of inadequacy if they happen to not being doing something unique and special. Today’s Millennial generation is being fed the message that if they don’t do something extraordinary in this life they are wasting their gifts and potential. The sad result is that many young adults feel ashamed if they “settle” into ordinary jobs, get married early and start families, live in small towns, or as 1 Thess 4:11 says, “aspire to live quietly, and to mind [their] affairs, and to work with [their] hands.” For too many Millennials their greatest fear in this life is being an ordinary person with a non-glamorous job, living in the suburbs, and having nothing spectacular to boast about.

Dr. Bradley goes on to explain two major factors in how this happened:   Continue at Rachel Miller

The Call to Radical World-Changing Discipleship

Usually, the call to be world-transformers comes from church leaders: pastors and theologians. It comes in different forms. Sometimes it’s the biblically defensible application of Christ’s announcement that his church is a city on a hill, his followers “salt and light” in the world. They are to be what they are where God has placed them, in their many different callings in life. 

On other occasions, though, it is a more general and somewhat vague but nevertheless urgent call to a deeper, broader, and collective activism. On the right, it tends to be a call to greater personal and public morality. Reacting against a familiar agenda, many younger evangelicals don’t want to be the Fox Network at prayer; whatever their politics, they want to make a difference in the world by radical discipleship, sacrificing their personal comforts for suffering neighbors at home and around the world. No doubt sociological demographics plays a role in where one lands. Younger people, either single or without children, are freer to focus their energies on a broader range of neighbors, while later they find themselves focusing on the family, both at home and in the public square.

Maybe the obsession reveals more about the dangers of ministers stewing in our own juices—perhaps even suffocating in the caverns of regular ministry—that we don’t get out much. But what about their parishioners? Is the most important thing we have to say to them that they are not making a difference in the world, making touchdowns for Jesus, and transforming culture?

Think of the nurse who dragged herself out of bed to attend the means of grace after having worked a fifteen-hour shift. Ministers shouldn’t feel guilty for not having cared for the physical needs of hundreds of neighbors in the hospital this last week. But why should they load down this nurse for failing to “live her faith” because she extended hours of neighbor-love in her ordinary vocation rather than as an identifiable church-related “ministry”?  Continue at Michael Horton

In His Own Words: A Radical Pro-Abortion President

When Barack Obama was running for President, he was described by some observers as one of the most radical candidates in the nation’s history, in terms of support for abortion. Once in office, President Obama has done little to dispel that judgment. Even as the President is tracking to the middle on many issues, this is not the case when it comes to abortion. 

This past Saturday, on the 38th anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision, the President issued a statement that is remarkable, even for presidents who support legalized abortion. The President’s statement included not one word that indicated any recognition that abortion in in any case or in any sense a tragedy. There was not even a passing reference to the unborn child. President Obama did not even use the language used disingenuously by President Bill Clinton — the pledge that abortion should be “safe, legal, and rare.” Keep Reading>>>