The Gospel is also a Comprehensive Worldview

Gospel means good new. The good news of Jesus was that he had come to save humankind from their own destruction. Sin is powerful and it was destroying humanity. Not only humanity but the environment. We are now well aware that humanity is not the only casualty of mans depravity. But the whole environment has suffered deeply and waits for restoration, just as man is looking for a time when he will be put right. The good news of Jesus is salvation has arrived.

One of the major problems with mans theology regarding salvation is that it is influenced by Greek or Platonic thinking. Salvation is nearly synonymous with escape. Salvation has become a way of escaping the destruction of the flesh as all flesh seems to be crumbling with all of nature, all or mans environment. Mans theology regarding God and his environment has been fatalistic. This too has its root in Platonic Greek Dualism.  That God will allow the destruction of the earth until all is completely ravaged.  But the good news of Jesus is that he was the ‘snake crusher’ that was spoken of in the garden before all of this crumbling began. He is here to put right what was put wrong beginning in Genesis chapter three.

The lens by which the Christian views his world is Platonic, or dualistic, or gnostic Christian. We need to remember that the good news is that Jesus coming was in part the commencing of his kingdom. Perhaps not in fullness but in part. That means that not everything had to do with souls being saved for heaven in the sky. But whole people being saved, whole nations being discipled, and the whole earth taking a big sigh of relief. All of creation is one step closer to redemption. Salvation is near not just for the human soul.

Finally, the gospel is not simply a message of salvation; it is a comprehensive worldview. It must not only move around the world, but it must penetrate and transform it.

Jesus, Paul, Peter, John, James and the other apostles did not simply give us a way to do what is narrowly seen today as “theology or doctrine” but they worked in communities to examine the cultural lenses of real people and help them live their lives based on truth that would transform individuals and communities. That is, they did not do “Modern evangelical theology” as we know it but they examined and challenged worldviews. They did this because God’s master plan was being unfolded from Christ, the plan was to redeem ‘whole communities’ starting with ‘whole people’.

The Great commission was to do all of this in the nations. They brought salvation, bot not the Platonic escapism. They brought salvation built on the idea that God had come to earth to transform it and that he came back from the grave to resurrect it. The disciples preached the good news of the resurrection which defied the dualism of the Greek worldview.

Discipling, transforming, and saving humanity begins with a biblical worldview.

Discipling, transforming, and creating communities begins with a biblical worldview.

Stewarding and nurturing nature begins with a biblical worldview.

Jesus’ kingdom coming to earth as laid out in the gospels is only the beginning. But it is the beginning of discipleship, transformation, salvation, of man, his community, and his environment.

What we do now to seek his kingdom will be part of the fullness of the kingdom of God when Jesus completes what he started.

That is part of the idea of the comprehensive nature of the biblical worldview. It has been Gods desire from the beginning to restore humanity, to restore creation, and restore family to its original place. This begins with the first sin, and continues with the coming of Jesus the Messiah, Gods son, initiating the kingdom of God on earth bringing salvation for mankind, for nations, and for all the earth. This will be completed later not with the destruction of the earth and the creation of heaven but with the recreation of heaven and earth.

Thus we begin to think like God about other people, about self, about nature. All of it is valuable and wonderful to God. All of it is in the grand scheme of Gods redemption. So we should treat nature, self, and communities with love and respect because God does.

My examination of western evangelicalism is that we have been very good at spreading the Platonic dualist gospel of Jesus around the world but we have not as often spread the holistic gospel of Jesus’ kingdom on earth as in heaven.

The good news for earth and everyone living on it is that God cares about its groans and pains and will one day restore it.

 

 

 

What is History?

WHAT IS HISTORY?

1. Shaped by human choice, but influence by God towards a final goal
2. Events reflect evolutionary or naturalistic process
3. Heaven’s mandate manifested in a harmonious society
4. Shaped by God who expects absolute submission to His will
5. Humans, possessing divinity, make history in an evolving world
6. Shaped by heroic persons with power
7. Human choice shapes history
8. On-going struggle with the spirit world
9. Endless cycle of birth, suffering, and death
10. We all have our stories, but there is no larger master story
11. History is about the meaning of events [1]

The answer may reflect; Confucianism, Islam, Buddhism, New Age, Hinduism, Naturalism, Nihilism, Post-Modernism, Animism, Existentialism, or Judeo-Christianity. The most common worldview frameworks worldwide.

So what is your view of what history is?

According to the great Enlightenment figure, Voltaire, “History, is the lie that everyone agrees on”. This is ironic, and probably not true. But this was his view. He of course is famous for his own works of historiography, along with his counterpart Edward Gibbon and their slander of the church. They are responsible for a number of Myths in regard to history. Just as they are responsible for some very decent history. Good history is informative as to what events took place, and maybe why.

Ancient historiography is about how deity shaped the human and cosmological events of the past.

Modern historiography is typically about how human choices and natural processes shaped the events of the past.

But the question remains, what if any is the level of Gods involvement in the process?

[1] 2013 Bob Osburn (based upon an earlier survey by David Montoya)

Ancient Mythology as Valid as Modern Science

Ridiculous title huh? Maybe not. This post is for people who are seeking to study the scripture with a per-cursor of historical background. I’ve recently read an amazing couple of books and listened to a few of the online lectures done by Professor John H. Walton. He is currently professor of Old Testament at Wheaten College in Chicago.

I have taught the book of Genesis 3 times for our Chronological Bible School in YWAM Mexico. I have taught on Genesis numerous times in churches, small groups, and our Discipleship Training School in YWAM as well. But until this past September I had made a crucial mistake. As I always attempt to relay a good understanding of “Background” Ive often failed to communicate just how the entire Ancient Near Eastern World “Thinks”. You can get caught up in religious practices, politics, geography but nearly miss this important step. And that is to take the risk of grasping how the ancient people thought about life around them.

One major error has been to outright dismiss the ancient Egyptian mythology. That its utterly nonsense to think of the sky as a god, the earth as a god, and so on. You have strange pictures taken from archaeology that depict the Egyptians cosmology (Their understanding of everything around them). I typically would mock a few aspects of it and then going on to discribe the biblical narratives of Genesis 1-2 as so far advanced truth about the world we live in. Though I still believe it to be truth I dont have the same sharp contrast in my mind from Egyptian cosmology to the Israelite cosmology we have in scripture. Instead what exists is a wonderful comparison from which contrast can be drawn out. But it first begins with similarities. On the surface you will see far more similarities then differences.

That is not something to be afraid of. Similarities from Ancient Mythology and scripture does not need to dampen our inspirational view of scripture. It may illuminate it and help us understand better how God communicates to man.

The primary similarity that has effected my thinking is in that area of how the ancients view ‘existence’. For something to exist it needed to have a function. For something to have a function their must be a power behind it causing it always to function in the way that it functions. For the ancients there was no natural cause, no natural world, and everything was infused with deity. That’s what made it all work. Just as today it has become more common to say, “there is no God, no supernatural, no miraculous, because we understand the world around us in terms of natural cause everything happens naturally, or anonymously of a higher power or powers. But for the ancients this was not so, everything worked the way it did because their was something, someone, some powers behind it all. Their myths were not nonsense just to be dismissed but a valid way of thinking about the world they lived in.

God validated this way of thinking by communicating not in terms of the natural world but in the terms they were familiar with -terms of function. Genesis 1 then is not just a story of how the natural world came into being. This is how we modern readers interpret as we read. But how did the ancients read Genesis 1?

Ancient readers were able to see simply that not only did God create the physical world but the physical world truly has a specific order given to all things. Only in the Hebrew story there is not a dysfunctional family of gods behind all elements of the universe but One God. Genesis one does not merely capture the creation but that God was planning, structuring, and developing a function for each and all things to exist and have meaning. The Ancient audience would be thrilled to hear that purpose is clearly laid out for all creatures.

And that brings us to a sharp contrast that can be drawn. The ancient audience gets drawn in because Genesis one communicates perfectly to ancient minds and the climax of chapter one is this. That of all things created and given a purpose, the greatest purpose and responsibility is laid upon mankind. This is radically different from their view as former slaves to Egypt, and slaves to the Egyptian worldview. Humanity has been given a job to care for and have dominion over all creation. Man is to steward all God made. Previously man was trapped by his surroundings, a slave to his circumstances. Circumstances that have been brought on by the gods, they are in control and nothing escapes their control not even mans choice. Man is clearly given a choice by God in Genesis one. So man has a choice not controlled by God, and man has purpose given by God. Man can reject Gods purposes and this begins the downward fall into meaningless existence. The ancient Egyptians are on track to find meaning behind everything, they are seeking meaning for their own existence. This is good. This is why God wants to communicate to the ancient audience that what man is missing, a true existence. One that holds meaning, purpose, responsibility, and brings order to the world around them. A world that has fallen into chaos.

Modern Scientist have come back to belief in ultimate chaos. Unlike the ancients there understanding of chaos lead them to seek order. Modern despair leads to scientists who no longer seek order but observe chaos. There is no fight to find an order for human purpose and existence. They seek to better observe the human experience as chaotic and without meaning. Both since the fall have always been a reality for the human situation. But science is not the only approach to finding meaning for our lives. Science on its own is anonymous of God, which makes it anonymous of meaning. To seek what power is behind the natural world may not be scientific but it is still a valid way of understanding the world we live in.

Scripture is the wonderful avenue through which man is privileged to engage with the power behind everything.