Talking about the BIble

A little something different for you this Friday. I had the chance to see Disney’s new movie, The Haunted Mansion, last weekend, really enjoyed it, and will plan to review it next Friday, Lord willing. Today, though, I wanted to share with you a bit of inside baseball. Yesterday I was invited to deliver a message to our local Baptist association’s monthly pastor’s gathering. It gave me the chance to say to a bunch of pastors some things I think a bunch of pastors needed to hear. I shared with them some thoughts on how to go about keeping the main thing of the church (the Gospel) the main thing of the church. What I had to say may not be what you expect. Read on to find out what three suggestions I had with the help of Paul’s first letter to the Corinthian church.

Keeping the Main Thing the Main Thing

Karl Barth was one of the giants of Christian theology in the 20th century. That doesn’t mean he was always right—he very often was not—but in terms of the people who shaped Christian theology in a profound way and whose influence absolutely cannot be ignored when taking stock of how the world thinks about God today, Barth sits on a very short list. Now, in spite of that, I’ll be the first to admit that my knowledge and understanding of Barth’s theology is pretty limited because his influence tended to be much stronger outside the evangelical world, but neither was he simply a theological liberal. He carved out his own space on the theological map.

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“Let your speech always be gracious and seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you should answer each person.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

I don’t tweet. I never have. I hesitate to say, “I never will,” because who knows what the future holds. I was a hold-out on texting until long after it had caught on pretty widely and my lack of texting was actually causing frustration for people close to me. Now I send dozens, if not hundreds, of texts a day. But tweeting is different to me. I understand you’re not limited to 70 or even 140 characters any longer, but it is intended to be a short-form type of communication. I don’t really do short-form communication. Especially when it’s digital. The risk of being misunderstood or misinterpreted or taken out of context is just too great. Even when I text, I use full sentences and punctuation, and my texts tend to have more words than fewer. Also, I write like I talk, and I don’t talk in soundbites. But I am aware that tweeting is pretty popular, that some tweets generate multiple responses, and that sometimes, to be engaged culturally, you have to at least be aware of Twitter. With that in mind, I recently saw a tweet to which someone responded publicly, and this response generated quite a few comments. Normally I don’t give much credence to that kind of thing, but for some reason this one caught my eye…and what I saw bothered me. What bothered me was not so much that I disagreed with the response to the tweet along with most of the comments, but rather that they were generally posted by people I know and respect. Still, jumping into a comment-train is a little like jumping into a swimming pool filled with concrete – there’s no good way to swim across it, and eventually you get stuck without accomplishing very much – so, I held my digital tongue. But as I’ve continued to process the whole thing, I feel like I need to respond. This may or may not advance the conversation, but I am going to be as clear as I can, as charitable as I can, and thorough (remember: I don’t do short-form communication). Here goes.

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