Talking About A Great Book: When God is Cool and We are Cheesy
Here is what I've learned about God so far in The Knowledge of The Holy: God is cool. I'm not alone. Many I know are sick of the cheesy church culture trying too hard to make God cool. He already is. He's big and mysterious and transcendent. But he's intimate and knowable and close. He's all of this at the same time. Not in flux, but steady. He is unlike anything or anyone I know. The church has ran from this mysterious almost mystical view of God that Tozer shows us so well. Why? Why do we try and make God cool by preaching a series using TV show titles? I mean if I see another preaching series called "Deal or No Deal" or "American Idols" I think I'll cry. I love creativity in communication, but do people really think that's clever? We live in a culture where people are hungering for a real countercultural God. I think that's why a ton of folks I talk to these days want to discuss Eastern philosophies. They don't try to be like Walmart or Starbucks. God and our understanding of God is deep and hard at times. I love it! Let's teach it and wrestle with it, and even better, let's try and live it. Let's learn of Him, let's relate to Him, and even better, live with Him. Sally Morgenthaler ask a great question: "Can the church escape the happy song silk plant ghetto and minister to a cheese intolerant, spiritually self sufficient culture?" Tozer's answer in chapter 3 is--not only can it, but we're the only one's who can. I love what a fella named Mark Driscoll has said: "I hope for an uprising of cool Calvinists who can preach the Bible, teach the truth, fight the heretics, plant churches, evangelize the lost, comfort the afflicted, afflict the comfortable, and compel men to be manly." Me too.
posted by Josh Perry at
4:18 PM
9 Comments:
huh, a counter culture Jesus...I think it works, but it may get you crucified.
http://www.myspace.com/scargut
Sometimes I feel trapped in the "happy song silk plant ghetto."
I cringe when I hear the Christian slang come from my lips and I want to scream when I see the cheesy slogans on t-shirts and church signs. I believe in cultural relevance and relating topics but I think it just goes too far. We are advertising Jesus!?! That just doesn't sound right does it... I mean What Would Jesus Do?!!
according to the Homogeneous Unit Priniciple (yeah I know I just threw up too)...Cheesy people reach Cheesy people! But never forget that cheesy people need Jesus too. Crew Community is cool people....so Crew Community will reach cool people. And while it seems that the Church today has pretty much cornered the market on Cheesy people, let's not spend too much time complaining about our culture...let's change it! I believe Crew Community Church will be a huge factor in ascribing Jesus the "coolness" he is due. And as they do...they will attract both Limburger and Sharp Chedder and everything in between. We're all cheesy next to Jesus....embrace the cheese.
.......And embrace JESUS!
Oh great, Josh. Just as I get ready to begin my new sermon series on "Home Improvement!"
Does old rerun cheese count?
“Every teacher, every preacher with the very best intent found new ways to hide the mystery replaced by common sense, and to know you was to keep you in my pocket so easy to hold. I know I can’t explain you, I would not even try to, and yet it is clear that you are here beside me. I marvel and I wonder, so near and yet so far. What makes you who you are? It is easy to insist on what is packaged and precise and dismiss the clear suspicion that you are bigger than we’d like. It is tempting to regard you as familiar in so many ways. I’ve tried to draw these lines around you, a definition or an absolute. But I could not be satisfied with black or white, there is so much more, there is so much You.”
Nichole Nordeman, “Who You Are.”
I heard this song a day or so after I had finished reading chapter 3 of the Knowledge of the Holy and it seemed that it did well to describe my thoughts as I had been reading this book. Tozer had a great line in this chapter, “God exists in Himself and of Himself. His being He owes to no one.” I was reminded of what God said about Himself when He was introducing Himself to Moses. “I am Who I am,” is what He told Moses (Exodus 3:14). No one created Him. He has always been. That is hard for me to wrap my mind around, but it is nonetheless true. This is part of that mystery that we are tempted to replace with common sense. We cannot contain God or fully explain Him. I love Nichole’s statement that God is bigger than we’d like. We are uncomfortable with things that we cannot understand or at least control. God is definitely beyond both, praise be to Him.
This chapter sort of ends the introduction to this book. From here on out, Tozer will be taking a look at individual attributes of God. We will see that God is big and that He is good. Hopefully, we will still maintain the mystery even as we learn more and more. God help us to accept your “bigness” and to be OK with the fact that there will be times that we cannot fully explain You to ourselves or to others.
I was reminded of the Magic Eye Books as I was reading this chapter.
I don't know if you've ever seen these, but the idea is that you look at these jumbled up pictures the right way and a 3-D shape of something will emerge. You don't really see the detail, the color, or the complete essence of what it is, but you can at least make out the basic shape of what it is.
I remember one page had a clown hidden in the image. I crossed my eyes just right, and sure enough, there came the shape of a clown out of the page. It certainly wasn't as good as seeing a clown in person, but I could make it out.
Here we are, as Christians with our eyes crossed just right, staring into the pages, trying to find that image of God. Trying to let it take shape before us.
We can't see all the detail, so we fill it in with our minds. We make up things, we assume things, and we draw a picture of what we see and say, "That's God!".
When we see Him truly revealed, when we can get a glimpse of Him without crossing our eyes, I imagine we'll be pretty amazed out much greater and more beautiful He has always been.
Pretty creative illustration BP. Does the picture ever get a little clearer the better we get to know Him?
Yes, I think the picture gets clearer, the more God reveals Himself to us. Just as He became so much more clear to us through the life of His Son.
I think the important thing to remember is that His revelation is sought after by man, but not influenced by us at all. He chooses to reveal what He reveals. When we try to take over that control and say, "GOD HAS REVEALED THIS TO ME", be on high alert. We are competent at messing up perfect things, all the way back to Eden.
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