With the world swirling with a bajillion competing narratives, including the superimposing of the name of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, the name of Jesus, who by the way is the ONE God of the Bible, onto actions and beliefs that are contrary to his word, we must make sure that we focus on THE narrative that judges and flushes all other narratives.
What narrative is that? It’s the good news of the kingdom of Jesus Christ, his reign, his saving, his ethics, and his tactics.
I am absolutely sure that many Christians are suffering from Bible deficiency in their personal lives AND Bible deficiency from sermons that are usually heavy on life application apart from demonstrating HOW to get to life application through solid interpretation that can be imitated at home. We are theologically anemic for a multitude of reasons, which would make for another post.
We have focused for so long on little substance to keep masses happy, entertaining in order to attract, preaching to attention span, failing to do efficient and robust theology, saying spiritual platitudes that are nice and easy but missing any depth of thought and practice, accepting as part of our practice competing narratives that vie for national power in the world but are missing spiritual authority over dark forces, and abdicating our place in the public square that we have, I fear, syncretized Jesus and his kingdom with other gods and the kingdoms of the world. I wonder if we can tell each apart anymore.
Permit me to brag on my church. I don’t believe this to be the case with Three Rivers Church. TRC, you have been taught the metanarrative of the good news for so many years, even taught the language of metanarrative. Therefore, that word does not take you by surprise. You CAN recognize and flush narratives of the dark kingdom. You have been doing it well this year. Keep doing that! We are proud of you!
You were made for such as time as this, so keep pressing into THE narrative of Jesus and his kingdom, reject counter-narratives, flush the narratives that want to drown out Jesus or replace the Biblical Jesus with some cheap knock off, and I’m convinced that we will have internal peace, love, unity, joy and be on mission even if the outside world is imploding. We will, by God’s grace, be a city set on a hill so that folks can see God’s glory, come to Jesus and be forever transformed.
Here is a short video reiterating the points made above. Please pardon the paint on my arm and fingers. Oil-based paint touch up work at Casa de Jolly, and having some trouble getting the paint off 😦
Also, don’t hate on my Los Pollos Hermanos t-shirt. Yes, it’s from Breaking Bad. Don’t hate, just appreciate.
Have a great day!
Theology in the Dirt 