Above All Earthly Powers #1

Now we've been in Landod a while, I'm going to return to the blog and keep updating it regularly(at least that's the plan). I'd thought I'd do something I've been thinking about for a while.

At the end of last year I read 'Above All Earthly Powers' by David Wells. The book is a look at Christ and postmodern culture, and has look at how a postmodern mindset is affecting evangelicalism. Wells is asking how we communicate the person of Christ in a spiritual, decenter-ed and meaningless world.

I'm not an intellectual so I can't over an in-depth interaction with all his arguments. However, there were bits that really made me think, so I'd thought I share about four or five passages from it, with some reflections. I actually stopped reading it for a bit cos I found it hard going, but I was inspired to keep going by a review I read in the Briefing. I just got given 'The Supremacy of Christ in a PostModern World' edited by John Piper and Justin Taylor. The first chapter of that seems to be David Wells giving a summary of his book. So I needn't have read it all!!!

Any how, I'll begin by quoting Wells view of the response of evangelicalism in America to 9/11:

'This moment of tragedy and evil shone it's light on the Church and what we came to was not a happy sight. For what has become conspicuous in it's scarcity, and not least in the evangelical corner of it, is a spiritual gravitas, one which could match the depth of horrendous evil and address issues of such seriousness. Evangelicalism, now much absorbed by the arts and tricks of marketing, is simply not very serious any more'. (p4)

This made me think: How serious am I? How serious is the gospel I preach and live by? The Biblical gospel stands up in the face of such horror and tragedy, do I believe and proclaim that gospel? Do you?