Good News for Anxious Christians , livre ebook

Baker Publishing Group - Phillip Cary

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106 pages

English

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Like a succession of failed diet regimens, the much-touted techniques that are supposed to bring us closer to God "in our hearts" can instead make us feel anxious, frustrated, and overwhelmed. How can we meet and know God with ongoing joy rather than experiencing the Christian life as a series of guilt-inducing disappointments?Phillip Cary explains that knowing God is a gradual, long-term process that comes through the Bible experienced in Christian community, not a to-do list designed to help us live the Christian life "right." This clearly written book covers ten things Christians don't have to do to be close to God, such as hear God's voice in their hearts, find God's will for their lives, and believe their intuitions are the Holy Spirit. Cary skillfully unpacks the riches of traditional Christian spirituality, bringing the real good news to Christians of all ages.

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Philosophie et théologie

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Publié par	Baker Publishing Group
Date de parution	01 octobre 2010
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781441213976
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0518€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

© 2010 by Phillip Cary
Published by Brazos Press a division of Baker Publishing Group P.O. Box 6287, Grand Rapids, MI 49516-6287 www.brazospress.com
Ebook edition created 2010
Ebook corrections 12.01.2015, 03.13.2017
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—for example, electronic, photocopy, recording—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.
ISBN 978-1-4412-1397-6
Unless otherwise indicated, Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version® (ESV®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved. ESV Text Edition: 2007.
Scripture quotations labeled KJV are from the King James Version of the Bible.
Italics applied in Scripture passages indicate emphasis added by the author.
For my students, who have taught me love for the gospel of Christ by the way they have flourished in it
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Preface
Introduction: Why Trying to Be Christian Makes Us Anxious
1. Why You Don’t Have to Hear God’s Voice in Your Heart
Or, How God Really Speaks Today
2. Why You Don’t Have to Believe Your Intuitions Are the Holy Spirit
Or, How the Spirit Shapes Our Hearts
3. Why You Don’t Have to “Let God Take Control”
Or, How Obedience Is for Responsible Adults
4. Why You Don’t Have to “Find God’s Will for Your Life”
Or, How Faith Seeks Wisdom
5. Why You Don’t Have to Be Sure You Have the Right Motivations
Or, How Love Seeks the Good
6. Why You Don’t Have to Worry about Splitting Head from Heart
Or, How Thinking Welcomes Feeling
7. Why You Don’t Have to Keep Getting Transformed All the Time
Or, How Virtues Make a Lasting Change in Us
8. Why You Don’t Always Have to Experience Joy
Or, How God Vindicates the Afflicted
9. Why “Applying It to Your Life” Is Boring
Or, How the Gospel Is Beautiful
10. Why Basing Faith on Experience Leads to a Post-Christian Future
Or, How Christian Faith Needs Christian Teaching
Conclusion: How the Gospel of Christ Is Good for Us
Back Cover
Preface
I suppose in some ways this book is a stealth attempt to preach the gospel, disguised as an attack on what I call “the new evangelical theology.” So let me give away what I’m doing right at the beginning, so no one will be misled by the disguise and think the whole purpose of the book is negative.
I’m trying to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ to Christians. I’d like us all to be free to rely on the gospel rather than put our trust in a bunch of supposedly “practical” ideas that are actually doing us harm. Some folks may find it odd when I say Christians need the gospel, but this is something I firmly believe. I don’t think you just accept Christ once in life, and then move on to figure out how to make real changes in your life that transform you. It’s hearing the gospel of Christ and receiving him in faith, over and over again, that makes the real transformation in our lives. We become new people in Christ by faith alone, not by our good works or efforts or even our attempts to let God work in our lives.
This is something I learned from Martin Luther, the great sixteenth-century theologian and Reformer. He emphasized that the good news of the gospel is that God has already decided to do something about our lives—whether we let him or not, whether we do anything about it or not, whether we believe it or not. He has sent his only Son to live and die for us, to be raised from the dead and sit at his right hand, all for our sake—but without us having any say in the matter. That’s really good news, and believing it is what makes all the difference in our lives. For it is Christ who redeems us, makes us new, and transforms us. Our practical efforts to transform ourselves—our good works—are just not relevant to this task. Our good works are for our neighbors and provide various outward disciplines that are needed to give order to our lives. The inward transformation of our hearts, however, happens not through anything we try to do but through faith in the gospel, because that’s how we receive Christ. He is the one who really changes us.
“The new evangelical theology,” which I criticize at length in this book, is my name for a set of supposedly practical ideas about transforming your life that get in the way of believing the gospel. They are the result of a long history of trying to be “practical” in evangelical theology, which has now thoroughly adapted itself to consumer society. There are some interesting things to say about that history, but I’m not going to try to say them in this book. I’m just going to identify some key ideas that I’ve been hearing from students and pastors and other Christians for many years, ideas that I think get in the way of hearing the gospel. They’re ideas that promise practical transformation, but in real life they mainly have the effect of making people anxious—not to mention encouraging self-deception, undermining their sense of moral responsibility, and weakening their faith in Christ.
As you may already suspect, I’m going to be unsparing in my criticism of these ideas. It’s not just that I think they’ve got nothing going for them; I think they do real harm to people’s lives. So I want to do my best to free Christians from the burden of believing these ideas and trying to put them into practice. I want to convince you, first of all, that these ideas are not really biblical, despite the fact that they are often dressed up in biblical language. I figure once you realize that you don’t have to accept these ideas as biblical, it will be much easier to see how harmful they are to your life.
So here’s how it goes. To start with, in the introduction and the first four chapters I try to identify the core of what is distinctive about the new evangelical theology. This is essentially a set of interconnected techniques or ritual practices for making God real in your life, establishing a relationship with God, and so on—as if all that kind of thing really depended on you . The techniques all have the characteristic that they turn you away from external things like the word of God, Christ in the flesh, and the life of the church, in order to seek God in your heart, your life, and your experience. Underneath a lot of talk about being personal with God, it’s a spirituality that actually leaves you alone with yourself.
Then in chapters 5 through 8, I tackle some bad ideas that are not unique to the new evangelical theology. Most of them are widespread in our culture, in one way or another, because they fit so neatly into the needs of consumer society. (One of them, the idea that you’re supposed to make decisions based on your motivations, goes back a little further, to the Enlightenment philosopher Immanuel Kant.) But they are not purely secular ideas. You encounter them all the time in sermons and Bible studies and spiritual self-help books, so I’ve included them on the list of “practical” ideas that make Christians anxious.
Finally, in the last two chapters I switch gears a bit and talk about preaching and teaching, and why the best way to change our lives is to hear Christ preached, learn who he is, and put our whole trust in him. The alternative not only leads away from Christian faith over time, but in the present it has the drawback that it’s really boring. Here I think is where pastors have been most seriously misled by the new evangelical theology. Of course they want to be “practical,” to change people and transform their lives, but they make the terrible mistake of thinking that the way to do this is to preach all about our lives, our experiences, and our hearts—as if the only reason we came to church was to hear about ourselves . The secret about this, which would be really liberating for pastors to learn, is that hearing about ourselves rather than Christ all the time is dreary and disheartening. It doesn’t do much to change our lives because fundamentally, it’s just not very interesting.
In all the chapters I start by targeting one of the ideas promoted by the new evangelical theology, but end up by turning to the word of God and looking at his commandments and promises, which is to say, the law and the gospel. I want to give readers a good sample of what I think is the alternative to the new evangelical theology; I hope it will remind them of the taste of good things they have known before and are hungry for still.
The chapters build on one another in what I hope is a reasonably logical progression. However, there is more than one order in which these ideas can be connected, and you won’t miss much if you skip around and read the parts you’re most interested in first. Please just be aware that if I sound like I’m coming from way out in left field, I probably did explain how I got there in some earlier chapter.
Nearly everybody I’ve talked to in the past decade will have heard parts of this book before. This book grew out of conversations with students, pastors, colleagues, and friends. Most important are my students, for it is young people who are most oppressed by the new evangelical theology and most in need of permission not to believe it. Growing up is hard enough already without trying to apply these bad ideas to their lives. I have learned much from their pressing questions, and it is great to see them mature and think their own thoughts. Several of them have helped me by reading drafts of chapters from the book.
An abbreviated list of some of the people who have talked with me and helped me formulate the thoughts in this book would have to include Beverley Berry, Greg Brewer, Todd Cederberg, Paul Charles, Randall Colton, Eric Flett, James Foster, Amy Gilb