Blind Spots E-Book

Collin Hansen

• Herausgeber: Crossway
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Serie: Cultural Renewal
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015

Seitenzahl: 146

Beschreibung

Christians talk a lot about church unity. Unfortunately, however, God's people are often better known for their divisions and disagreements than for a common commitment to the gospel. At the root of this disunity are the Blind Spots that prevent us from seeing other points of view and reevaluating our own perspectives. In this provocative book, Collin Hansen challenges Christians from various "camps" to view their differences as opportunities to more effectively engage a needy world with the love of Christ. Highlighting the diversity of thought, experience, and personality that God has given to his people, this book lays the foundation for a new generation of Christians eager to cultivate a courageous, compassionate, and commissioned church.

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BLIND SPOTS

Becoming a Courageous, Compassionate, and Commissioned Church

COLLIN HANSEN

Foreword by

TIM KELLER

Blind Spots: Becoming a Courageous, Compassionate, and Commissioned Church

Copyright © 2015 by Collin Hansen

Published by Crossway1300 Crescent StreetWheaton, Illinois 60187

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher, except as provided for by USA copyright law.

Published in association with the literary agency of Wolgemuth & Associates, Inc.

Cover design: Josh Dennis

First printing 2015

Printed in the United States of America

Scripture quotations are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Trade paperback ISBN: 978-1-4335-4623-5ePub ISBN: 978-1-4335-4626-6 PDF ISBN: 978-1-4335-4624-2Mobipocket ISBN: 978-1-4335-4625-9

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Hansen, Collin, 1981–

Blind spots : becoming a courageous, compassionate, and commissioned church / Collin Hansen ; foreword by Tim Keller.

            1 online resource. — (Cultural renewal)

      Includes bibliographical references and index.

      Description based on print version record and CIP data provided by publisher; resource not viewed.

      ISBN 978-1-4335-4624-2 (pdf) – ISBN 978-1-4335-4625-9 (mobi) – ISBN 978-1-4335-4626-6 (epub) – ISBN 978-1-4335-4623-5 (tp)

1. Church—Unity. 2. Evangelicalism. 3. Christianity and culture. 4. Mission of the church. 5. Edwards, Jonathan, 1703–1758. I. Title.

BV601.5

280'.042—dc23                                2015004708

Crossway is a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.

Contents

CopyrightForeword by Tim KellerAcknowledgmentsIntroduction  1     Pointed Fingers and Helping Hands  2     Compassionate  3     Courageous  4     Commissioned  5     The Counterrevolution Will Not Be TelevisedNotesGeneral IndexScripture Index

Foreword

Tim Keller

Jonathan Edwards was keenly interested in the philosophy and thought of his day, and at the same time he was fully committed to the absolute authority of the Scriptures. As a result he was, as Richard Lints put it, “arguably the most creative and the most orthodox theologian [at once] that America has ever produced.”1 Edwards was also as deeply committed to sound, systematic biblical doctrine as he was fascinated by the workings of the heart and how the emotions and senses relate to our reason. This meant, “He stands with Augustine and Luther in the depth of his analysis of religious experience, [and] he stands with Aquinas and Calvin in the breadth of his intellectual grasp of the gospel.”2

This breadth of interest is, however, extraordinarily hard to maintain. Historian Mark A. Noll demonstrates this in his essay “Jonathan Edwards and Nineteenth-Century Theology,” in which he traces out Edwards’s legacy in the American church over the hundred years or so after his death.3Old Princeton, including Charles Hodge and B. B. Warfield, were the most true to Edwards’s orthodox Reformed theology. However, not only were they “far from independent or original thinkers”; they were increasingly inattentive to matters of revival and spiritual experience.4 Edwards’s New England disciples such as Samuel Hopkins, Jonathan Edwards Jr., and later Nathaniel Taylor were social activists, abolitionists, and creative theological thinkers, but they left behind much of Edwards’s biblically faithful doctrine. So did Charles Finney, an enthusiastic reader of Edwards on revivals who strongly rejected his Reformed theology.5

Noll’s essay demonstrates that there were some who maintained Edwards’s doctrinal orthodoxy, some who adopted his creative cultural engagement, and some who kept his enthusiasm for revivals and mission.6 Ironically, each of these parties claiming Edwards as inspiration was hostile and critical toward the others during much of the early nineteenth century. Some theologians and ministers kept these various strands—doctrine, cultural engagement, and revival—interwoven and integrated, but that was not true of most.7

You must not think by this foreword that Collin Hansen’s book is about church history or the historic schools of American Reformed theology. It is not at all. Rather, it is an extended essay on how Christians in Western societies today are responding and how they need to respond to a culture quickly growing post-Christian. Christians have not come to consensus on how to respond to this new world. Collin sees us fragmenting into at least three distinct responses, each with its own peculiar blind spots, and each one highly critical of the other two.

The three parties of Edwards’s followers correspond roughly to the groups that Collin discerns on the scene today. This is evidence that these fissures within our ranks have been with us for a long time and that each party has latched onto some true aspect of what it means to live the Christian life. The “courage” group stands valiantly for the truth; the “compassion” people stress service, listening, and engagement; while the “commissioned” folks are all about building up the church and reaching the lost. Once things are broken down like that, it becomes clear that these should be strands in a single cord. Each group goes bad to the degree it distances itself from the others.

I am, of course, here making this much simpler than it is. Within the pages that follow, Collin Hansen judiciously weighs and discusses the complexities of where we are and what must be done.

Acknowledgments

I’m honored that so many trusted friends and colleagues would read this book and offer detailed, constructive feedback. Turns out you need this critical insight even more when you dare to write a book about blind spots in the church, because these friends help you see your own.

My editor Justin Taylor has always modeled Christlike friendship and genuine humility in an industry where you can’t take it for granted.

Supremely gifted writers Trevin Wax and Kevin DeYoung saved me from some of my most egregious oversights. I’m privileged to read and share their writing on a nearly daily basis through The Gospel Coalition (TGC).

Andrew Wolgemuth somehow found time to shape the organization and tone of this book between our discussions about the Kansas City Royals.

Betsy Childs has generously shared her friendship and professional expertise as we work together at Beeson Divinity School.

My fellow TGC editors inspired this work before I knew I wanted to write it. John Starke and Matt Smethurst, in particular, sharpened my thinking through countless conversations about the kind of churches we hope TGC can support. All of us look up to D. A. Carson and Tim Keller, who were living out the hope of a revived and reformed church before any of us was born.

I doubt I would have captured the positive vision for this book apart from the example of the pastors and my fellow members at Redeemer Community Church in Birmingham, Alabama. I write because I’ve seen what’s possible when a local church dares to strive in the power of the Spirit toward obeying everything Jesus commanded.

As always my toughest and kindest editor was the matchless Lauren Hansen. During the two and a half years that this book was in the works, our lives reached excruciating lows and climbed to unexpected heights. We dedicate this book to our son, Paul Carter Hansen, in the hope that he might learn to love and trust the Lord Jesus Christ in a courageous, compassionate, and commissioned church.

Introduction

I wrote this book because my arguments stopped working.

I pointed to Bible verses. I appealed to reason. I turned to church history. Nothing changed with my opponents.

Courage, I concluded by their lack of desired response, must be sorely lacking among Christians today. And that may well be true, at least when compared to our courageous hero Jesus Christ, who conquered sin by his selfless sacrifice on the cross and triumphant victory in the resurrection.

Maybe you’re like me and inclined to think that courage is the chief need of the church today. We like to think of ourselves as brave and therefore willing to stand by God’s Word and stand up to enemies of the gospel. So when we think of contentious issues such as homosexuality, we tend to see two camps: those who have courage and side with God, and everyone else, who sides with the world against God.

So how do we proceed when our arguments don’t work? How do we persuade friends, family, and neighbors who just can’t agree? You can yell louder. You can type faster and in ALL CAPS. You can threaten. You can accuse. You can make the argument personal. But you and I both know these approaches usually don’t work. We’ve tried them. And we have the scars to show for our well-intentioned folly.

I don’t know the exact details of your story. So let me tell you a little about mine to see if you can relate. I grew up in a stable family in a close-knit community, as someone bred to appreciate history and respect authority. I learned about God in Sunday school classes and children’s sermons, but I was not raised in a home that talked about Jesus or in a church that preached the gospel. So imagine the shock of my friends and family when at age fifteen I was born again to new life with Jesus. They were more perplexed than angry. Even so, I learned at an early age that I must choose either to deny my Savior or defy my loved ones’ expectations. In short I learned that to follow Jesus demands courage. Not coincidentally I bonded in college with the woman who would become my wife, as she shared a similar experience of turning to Christ at the end of high school. And in this private university, where our faith felt regularly under attack by classmates and professors, we typically befriended other Christians who followed Jesus with passion and courage.

I thank God that when he called me, he showed me the cost of discipleship. But many years passed before I truly understood that my experience is not normative for every Christian. I had a hard time relating to Christians who grew up in churches with hypocritical leaders who shackled them with unbiblical traditions. If these believers stayed in the church, they tended to practice a softer kind of Christianity, more enamored with the compassionate Jesus who pardoned the woman caught in adultery (John 8:1–11) than the righteous Jesus who overturned tables in the temple (John 2:13–22). And don’t get me started on the Christians I met in churches who never seemed to move on from the basics about Jesus. They were so busy hyping Jesus with high-energy sermons and upbeat music and message-driven T-shirts that they didn’t make any time to talk with me about theology, church history, or the challenges of following Jesus in our consumeristic culture.

With my highly attuned gift for discerning others’ motives, it didn’t take long for me to see what’s wrong with everyone else. Then I blamed them for not seeing the wisdom in my arguments. It took longer to realize that my experience does not exhaust the example of Jesus. And when I finally compared my life to Jesus, as he’s revealed across four multifaceted Gospels and the rest of the New Testament, I began to see my own sin, my blind spots. Because I had understood my experience as normative for everyone, I couldn’t see how God blessed other Christians with different stories and strengths. Yes, they needed to develop discernment, knowledge, and courage. But God wanted me to see how we would be stronger together in the body of Christ as we worked according to our unique gifts.

I may not share or even understand your experiences. Maybe you’re more successful than I am when arguing with people who are different from you. In any event, I know that unless we can both step outside ourselves to hear our arguments from another vantage point, we won’t enjoy church unity and an effective gospel witness in the world.

You and I have been conditioned by our various cultures and experiences to hear certain aspects of the gospel more clearly than others. When I first responded to the gospel, I didn’t hear the good news about Jesus in its fullness. In fact, no one really told me anything about repenting of sin. But as an insecure high school sophomore, I wanted to fit in with older teenagers I admired. I only knew they radiated joy I had never seen before. They saw beauty in God that had never been apparent to me in years of churchgoing. And I wanted what they had—whatever the cost.

Wherever you come from, God doesn’t leave you where he found you. This process of growing in grace and holiness can be painful. I know that in my nearly two decades of following him, Jesus has been less concerned with bolstering my self-esteem and helping me fit in with friends than with putting to death my sin and any other hindrance to trusting him. Likewise, your growing love for the gospel will not remove you from your history, experience, and culture. As Jesus progressively reveals himself to you, however, his glorious light will help you see yourself a little more like he does—as God’s beloved child eagerly awaiting Jesus’s triumphant return.

Compared to Christ

I didn’t write this book so you could find popularity with the world or make peace with one another at the expense of the revealed truth of God’s Word. Controversy, disagreement, and persecution do not necessarily indicate sin on our part. They will often result from obeying Scripture and opposing false teachers (1 Tim. 1:3–11; 6:2b–10; 2 Pet. 2:1–22; Jude 3). And, actually, when we consider church unity more important than gospel truth, we end up pointing fingers and naming enemies. Consider the ecumenical movement of the twentieth century, which actually resulted in much sinful division as many churches abandoned the gospel and criticized congregations that did not follow them out of Christianity.

Nor did I write this book so I could criticize the famous Christian leaders you have in mind. Don’t expect me to name names here. In what follows I am not so much thinking about the Big Name Leaders as I am about you and me. I’m aiming to help you in self-diagnosis. I wrote this book so you might learn to compare yourself more to Christ than to other Christians. When you and I compare ourselves to Christ, we get unity because we see our sin and forgive one another as God forgave us (Matt. 18:35; Eph. 4:32). When you and I compare ourselves to Christ, we reserve final judgment—your differences will primarily help me test whether I’m missing anything about the character of Jesus. When you and I compare ourselves to Christ, we’re more impressed with the grace he lavished on us than with our own contributions to the kingdom.

“Jesus Christ, being himself the only God-man, who gave himself as the only ransom for sinners, is the only mediator between God and people,” the Lausanne Covenant explains. “When people receive Christ they are born again into his kingdom and must seek not only to exhibit but also to spread its righteousness in the midst of an unrighteous world.”8

I wrote this book with the hope that you would understand the power of the gospel to expose our blind spots so that we could see our differences as opportunity. It is the will of God to put to death our sin and unite our hearts with his so that we can love our neighbors as ourselves. For example, my heart is full of thankfulness to God for the testimony delivered by a woman who began coming to our church about a year ago. She didn’t know her need for Jesus until she saw community in the fellowship of the redeemed. After her first visit to our home group, she asked the friend who invited her, “That can’t be what church is really like, is it?” She knew nothing but the stereotypes. She knew nothing of the grace and forgiveness.

When she recently returned to her hometown for a visit, she met with a group of friends from her former life. At first she enjoyed their company, but when the small talk ended she recoiled at their judgmental, critical attitudes. She knew she’d been no different before Jesus saved her from her sins. And she gave thanks for the abundant life she now enjoyed as a Christian in fellowship with the church. As a new creation in Christ (2 Cor. 5:17), delivered from the domain of darkness and transferred to the kingdom of Jesus (Col. 1:13), she’s growing in holiness and sharing the gospel with family and coworkers.

You won’t see this woman’s story on the evening news. The evangelical website I edit probably won’t even feature her. But if we have the eyes of faith, we can see righteousness spreading through this unrighteous world.

Reposition and Repent