Truth, Gospel, and Hope
The Father "chose to give us birth through the word of truth" (James 1:18)
Truth--not a word like today. Yet, the word of truth--the gospel--is the only power for salvation (Rom. 1:16-17). A statement like this brings out cries of oppression and intolerance. Yet, do they reailze they are seeking "salvation" in other "gospels"? Do we realize that as well? Do we grieve over their lostness and seek to love them? Do we weep over our "Jerusalems" like Jesus did? All around us, people are turning to false gospels.
David F. Wells in his Above All Earthly Powers: Christ in a Postmodern World (1) notes that modernism served as a replacement for the religious system of Christianity. They proclaimed the death of God. Instead, revelation is from natural reason; salvation is that grand, noble task of moral striving for human perfectibility; grace is additional help so one can achieve self-sufficiency; faith is the hope of personal growth; eschatology is progress; meaning and morality is self-defined by humans. Indeed, human beings as autonomous creatures become god. The Trinity is displaced by the trinity of reason, nature, and progress. It is a gospel of human progress and autonomy that offered, in its time, a gleam of hope for a "salvation" from our broken world.
While Wells did not venture there, I speculate that postmodernism offers its own religion as well. Revelation is no longer from an authoritative God (or from any objective truth, metanarrative, or any authority at all), but is from the self, a subjective feeling. Salvation is probably best defined as "happiness in the now," as the postmodern emphasis on the journey seems to beg the question "Salvation to what? For what?" Eschatologically speaking, postmodernism has popped the modernistic eschatological bubble of human progress, yet offers no answer to fill in the void. Their eschatology seems to be a void--there is no destination, there is just the now. Faith can almost be said to be faith in uncertainty--there is only a pastiche of doubt, constructions, interpretations, meaninglessness, and decenteredness. As Wells points out, this nihilism brought despair to previous generations; today we take it with a snickers. The world has been stripped of meaning and morality by reducing the world to one of cause-and-effect or radical relativism (one can only say something is "good" or "bad" if there is a purpose, which has been removed by reducing the world to one of cause-and-effect). Any absolute story speaks of "oppression." God becomes self--the ludicrous heightening of the modernistic self. In this postmodern world, many are turning to spirituality again, but one that is focused on self-fulfillment. What "gospel," good news, there is is defined by self.
There are other "gospels" of "salvation" as well. Consumerism offers the chance to define self by what one buys--salvation in fashioning one's own image and in the amusement of materialism.(2) Curtis Chang in Engaging Unbelief acknowledges that technology and science still broadcast messages of hope--their own gospel--to make things better in some way (3). Each of us can fashion our own means of salvation, whether that is in power, comfort, control, or freedom. On the surface level, it can look like self-justification via career, having the perfect family, the pursuit of money, being a goth to find "righteousness" (i.e., read "acceptance" and "approval") with a certain group (4).
Are we aware of these other gospels--and that they are presented as "gospels" in a way? They lull people into thinking they are okay. Yet, they enslave people as well. Peter, in the first two sermons recorded in Acts (ch. 2 and 4), recognized the alternative ways that his audience were trying to earn salvation: by following the law. He challenged them, showed them their sin--he used their own sources of truth to do so (i.e., the Old Testament). He was passionate that they be saved and know the real gospel. For only the true gospel is a gospel of good news. The others may offer "hope"--but it is a hope that will fade away. Will we offer the true hope?
NOTES
(1) David F. Wells, Above All Earthly Powers: Christ in a Postmodern World. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2005.
(2) Ibid.
(3)Curtis Chang. Engaging Unbelief: A Captivating Strategy from Augustine and Aquinas. Downers Grove, IL: Intervarsity Press, 2000.
(4) Tim Keller writes about these ideas in both Prodigal God and Counterfeit Gods; also taken from some of his sermons.
Truth--not a word like today. Yet, the word of truth--the gospel--is the only power for salvation (Rom. 1:16-17). A statement like this brings out cries of oppression and intolerance. Yet, do they reailze they are seeking "salvation" in other "gospels"? Do we realize that as well? Do we grieve over their lostness and seek to love them? Do we weep over our "Jerusalems" like Jesus did? All around us, people are turning to false gospels.
David F. Wells in his Above All Earthly Powers: Christ in a Postmodern World (1) notes that modernism served as a replacement for the religious system of Christianity. They proclaimed the death of God. Instead, revelation is from natural reason; salvation is that grand, noble task of moral striving for human perfectibility; grace is additional help so one can achieve self-sufficiency; faith is the hope of personal growth; eschatology is progress; meaning and morality is self-defined by humans. Indeed, human beings as autonomous creatures become god. The Trinity is displaced by the trinity of reason, nature, and progress. It is a gospel of human progress and autonomy that offered, in its time, a gleam of hope for a "salvation" from our broken world.
While Wells did not venture there, I speculate that postmodernism offers its own religion as well. Revelation is no longer from an authoritative God (or from any objective truth, metanarrative, or any authority at all), but is from the self, a subjective feeling. Salvation is probably best defined as "happiness in the now," as the postmodern emphasis on the journey seems to beg the question "Salvation to what? For what?" Eschatologically speaking, postmodernism has popped the modernistic eschatological bubble of human progress, yet offers no answer to fill in the void. Their eschatology seems to be a void--there is no destination, there is just the now. Faith can almost be said to be faith in uncertainty--there is only a pastiche of doubt, constructions, interpretations, meaninglessness, and decenteredness. As Wells points out, this nihilism brought despair to previous generations; today we take it with a snickers. The world has been stripped of meaning and morality by reducing the world to one of cause-and-effect or radical relativism (one can only say something is "good" or "bad" if there is a purpose, which has been removed by reducing the world to one of cause-and-effect). Any absolute story speaks of "oppression." God becomes self--the ludicrous heightening of the modernistic self. In this postmodern world, many are turning to spirituality again, but one that is focused on self-fulfillment. What "gospel," good news, there is is defined by self.
There are other "gospels" of "salvation" as well. Consumerism offers the chance to define self by what one buys--salvation in fashioning one's own image and in the amusement of materialism.(2) Curtis Chang in Engaging Unbelief acknowledges that technology and science still broadcast messages of hope--their own gospel--to make things better in some way (3). Each of us can fashion our own means of salvation, whether that is in power, comfort, control, or freedom. On the surface level, it can look like self-justification via career, having the perfect family, the pursuit of money, being a goth to find "righteousness" (i.e., read "acceptance" and "approval") with a certain group (4).
Are we aware of these other gospels--and that they are presented as "gospels" in a way? They lull people into thinking they are okay. Yet, they enslave people as well. Peter, in the first two sermons recorded in Acts (ch. 2 and 4), recognized the alternative ways that his audience were trying to earn salvation: by following the law. He challenged them, showed them their sin--he used their own sources of truth to do so (i.e., the Old Testament). He was passionate that they be saved and know the real gospel. For only the true gospel is a gospel of good news. The others may offer "hope"--but it is a hope that will fade away. Will we offer the true hope?
NOTES
(1) David F. Wells, Above All Earthly Powers: Christ in a Postmodern World. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2005.
(2) Ibid.
(3)Curtis Chang. Engaging Unbelief: A Captivating Strategy from Augustine and Aquinas. Downers Grove, IL: Intervarsity Press, 2000.
(4) Tim Keller writes about these ideas in both Prodigal God and Counterfeit Gods; also taken from some of his sermons.
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