March 17, 2014

From Jim McGuiggan... Close the Church shop? (1)


Close the Church shop? (1)

Who cares that Solomon built a glorious temple for God (and a more glorious house for himself)? Who cares that Judah's most powerful king, despite his upright life, ended it as a leper? What difference does it make that some old-timer called Abraham and his childless wife moved from the centre of civilization to half a dozen locations in the middle of nowhere? Why bother reading up on, or listening to, titbits of geography and history—even presuming they're true? Who cares what Nebuchadnezzar did or didn't do or that Rome established a system of "client kings" to govern their territory? Why bother? What difference does any of it make to how I treat my wife and children, whether I'm honest in business and generous in sharing what I have with the less fortunate or genuinely interested in the freedom and prosperity of my fellow-humans? We already know enough about decency and uprightness—who needs Bible study?
I wonder about that a fair bit. Harry E Fosdick was right when he said that people were no longer interested in what happened to the Hittites. Why don't we just close up the church shop and encourage everyone to live up to the moral standard they've accepted since childhood? Who cares if we can go through an ancient book verse by verse and get a reasonable understanding of what the ancient writer of those ancient verses meant when he said them?
Okay, so we can go to one of the 31,000+ verses that tells us we should be good to one another or to one of the stories that would illustrate the point; we can go just about anywhere to find that kind of thing. The Reader's Digest has plenty of that; so why rant and rave about the Bible and look down our noses at those who miss Bible class too often or don't bother at all?
Does Isaiah, nearly eight hundred years before Jesus, condemn empty religion and crooked dealings? Big deal—so do many modern people who've never darkened a church door! Who needs Isaiah or Amos?
Non-church-goers (and many non-believers) love their families at least as much as those that attend Bible classes.
It seems like every time you go to a church service you're being told,
        "You ought to treat your family right,
        you ought to be honest in your work,
        kind in your relationships,
        pure in your sexual life,
       clean in your speech,
       fair in your judgments"
       and "Here are ten Bible reasons why you should and here are three Bible illustrations of people  
       who did/did not do it."
What's new about that? For pity's sake how often do we need to tell that to people who've heard it and believe it since childhood? And the fact is, we do hear it, day in and day out, from non-church people and even secular sources and many of them say it a lot better and more passionately than many of those who are handing out the ceaselessly same divine bulletins every week.
What are the Bible and Bible studies offering that isn't being offered everywhere and by everyone with a heart and half a brain?
That's what I want to know!  
And now we're hearing popular preachers calling the world to compassion and courage and to dream dreams without a word about the gospel of God in the Lord Jesus. Our Story is NOT the same as the humanist and secularist story! The gospel is NOT to be sidelined.

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