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January Blog Highlights: Top 7 Posts, other Posts of Note

Jan 31

January saw a flurry of posts on the blog, and I (Adam) will do my best to keep it up. Here are highlights from the month.

10 More Posts of Note

1. Martin Luther King & Jeremiah the Prophet – The similarites between the prophet and MLK are considerable, as shown by Jeremiah experts Tremper Longman III and David E.

2. Sloth, aka "The Noonday Demon" An experiment in personifying sloth, so we may more easily detect it in ourselves and resist it.

3. Eight Surprising Ideas about Humility + Joe Louis's Punching Power A post inspired by the boxing champion and the writing of John Dickson (@johnpauldickson), whom I personally believe is on his way to becoming a heavyweight champion of biblical scholarship.

King Jesus, His Gospel, and Us: Recap of N.T. Wright’s January Series Message

Jan 25

Yesterday the venerable N.T. Wright concluded the 2012 January Series of Calvin College with a message on Christ's kingship, and its import for the daily life of his followers. I couldn't attend the event, but Press reporter Matt Vande Bunte offers a pithy recap of Wright's presentation.

Image via MLive Media Group. View Original

In one of his more provocative points, Wright suggests that Christians inadvertently water down the gospel if they fixate on the death-and-resurrection part of the story. Here Vande Bunte quotes Wright:

*While some [secular thinkers] downplay Christ's divinity [by imagining] Jesus as a great social worker "being kind to old ladies, small dogs and little children," orthodox Christianity "has not wanted Jesus to have a political message." Christians have turned off parts of the gospel, like turning down the volume on a song. But the biblical gospels must be listened to in symphony, "like a musical score that demands to be played."

*Heard in full sound, the gospels tell about the establishment of a theocracy, and portray what theocracy looks like with Jesus as king. The body of the texts – the parts between Jesus' birth and death – present "an entire agenda for renewed humanity. When God wants to reign, he doesn't send in the tanks. He sends in the meek, the broken-hearted, the crushed in spirit. We've all got it horribly wrong in all sorts of ways."

In other words, Wright says that to limit our gospel proclamation to the death-and-resurrection story would be like fast-forwarding through Handel's Messiah to the Hallelujah Chorus, then playing that part over, and over, and over again. As we limit our study and consumption of the gospel in this way, we truncate the gospel's power in our lives and in our world.

Wright's call to a more full, symphonic view of the gospel reminds me of Scot McKnight's latest book, The King Jesus Gospel, to which Wright actually contributed a foreword. You can read Wright's foreword in this excerpt of The King Jesus Gospel.

If you read Matt Van Bunte's full report of Wright's January Series appearance, I would be very interested in hearing your reaction to Wright's message. Leave your comments on this post.

Also of Interest

Learn More

1. Watch Session One from Wright's Surprised by Hope DVD Study. Discussed: The source of Christian hope; Jesus as king; the church as people of hope.

2. Watch N.T. Wright's presentation How God Became King at Moody Bible Institute in November 2011.

3. Interested in Scot McKnight's The King Jesus Gospel? Read this unconventional yet appropriate review, Interview with a Christian Vampire. (Full disclosure: I wrote the review.)

4. Update 1/26/12 – Find comprehensive coverage & commentary on Wright's appearance in So, who's up for a little theocracy?, a fine blog post by Ben Irwin (@benirwin).

- Adam Forrest, Zondervan

(This post does not represent the views of Zondervan or any of its representatives. The writer's opinions are their own, and are shared for information purposes only. To receive new blogposts in your reader or email inbox, subscribe to Zondervan Blog.)

0 Responses bunte, gospel, january, jesus, king, mlive, nt, series, tom, wright Read & Comment

Disciples of Distraction: Reflecting on Technology, Hope and Despair

Jan 09

The annual January Series of Calvin College in Zondervan's hometown of Grand Rapids, MI, is a delight for anyone excited by the intersection of faith and culture.

If you're intrigued by how technology transforms our behavior and brains, this year's January Series boasted a special treat. The presentation delivered by Sherry Turkle, MIT professor and clinical psychologist, was called "Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other." (The lecture was related to Prof. Turkle's book of the same name.)

While I was not able to attend the presentation, Zondervan author Mike Wittmer was there, and he published an excellent summary of Turkle's points on his blog. I found this point particularly stirring:

[Turkle says] People who must constantly check their phone for new messages say that their mobile device feels like a place of hope. They desperately want the message they find there to make their lives interesting.

[Wittmer adds] This reminds me of what the medieval Christians called sloth. Sloth … is the sin of distraction, which is rooted in despair. Is it a coincidence that our Age of Distraction is also an Age of Despair?

People see their mobile device as a place of hope? I have felt a little tingle of hope before logging on to Facebook, and my shoulders slumped whenever new activity failed to deliver whatever abstract commodity I was looking for. I didn't think I was looking for sources of hope and joy, but I think that was (at least part of) my motivation.

Learn More

But before we all throw our iPhones on a pyre, let's remember some salient points from Tim Challies's recent book on technology, The Next Story:

"[It] is not the technology itself that is good or evil; it is the human application of that technology."

"Rather than changing the technology to fit our understanding of what is right and wrong, we change ourselves and our society's rules and mores, and we reshape ourselves in the image of the mobile phone."

"That iPhone in your pocket is not an 'evil' device. Yet it is prone to draw your heart away from God, to distract you and enable you to rely on your own abilities rather than trusting God."

"Our task, then, is not to avoid technology but to carefully evaluate it, redeem it, and ensure that we are using it with the right motives and for the right goals."

From the 50-some pages I've read of Challies' The Next Story, it's valuable for helping us see how our favorite technologies affect us. (That's just my opinion. You can read an excerpt of The Next Story on Scribd.)

What do you think about all of this?

Are you more distracted, or less distracted, than you were ten years ago?

Mike Wittmer reminds us that medieval Christians linked distraction to despair. Do you think despair is a motivation behind some of your technology habits?

More about Tim Challies & The Next Story

A pastor, speaker, and author, Tim Challies (@challies) is a pioneer in the Christian blogosphere. Over 20,000 people visit Challies.com each day, making it one of the most widely read and recognized Christian blogs in the world. Tim is also the editor of DiscerningReader.com, a site dedicated to offering thoughtful reviews of books that are of interest to Christians. Tim is the author of The Discipline of Spiritual Discernment and Sexual Detox. (Learn more about Challies's books and eBooks.)

More about Mike Wittmer

Michael Wittmer is professor of systematic and historical theology at Grand Rapids Theological Seminary, and his books for Zondervan include Heaven is a Place on Earth: Why Everything Matters to God, and Don't Stop Believing: Why Living Like Jesus Is Not Enough. Visit his blog at mikewittmer.wordpress.com.

Hear author Gabe Lyons & N.T. Wright at the January Series 2012

Listen to these Zondervan authors' presentations live-stream online:

Gabe Lyons on January 11 (Learn more about his The Next Christians DVD Study)
NT Wright on January 24 (Learn more about his his Surprised by Hope DVD Study).

4 Responses 2012, calvin, challies, despair, digital, disciples, distraction, january, series, story, technology, turkle, wittmer Read & Comment

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