The way of imagination

       A “ruined” life.   A “kindred spirit” for me in my struggle to better understand and articulate “the gospel” is Rich Mullins (1955-97) , who was not a theologian , but rather a singer/songwriter who wrote, among dozens of others, the song “Awesome God”.   Rich suffered a tremendous amount of spiritual and emotional anguish during his not quite 42-years-long life.   And yet, +20 years after his death, Rich is still having a tremendous impact on people though his writings and especially through his music.   The purposes of God continue to go forward in spite of – no, scratch that – because of all of Rich’s pain.   Brennan Manning (1934-2013), an evangelist and a close friend of Rich’s, said this about him: “ Jesus of Nazareth ruined Rich Mullins’s life .   And out of the ruins he recreated a ragamuffin of startling originality; no human being who has crossed my path even remotely resembles him”. [1]      Th...

  1: The cross & the conversion of the imagination       The Church of Jesus Christ owes its very existence to “imaginative apologetics”. [1]   While for us, the challenge of apologetics may consist in finding imaginative “parallels” with the tenets of Christian orthodoxy (à la Aslan=Jesus) [2] or techniques to better communicate the gospel, for the apostle Paul, the irreducible content of his message demanded that his audience undergo what Richard B. Hays called “a conversion of the imagination”. [3]   As Paul himself points out, the message of a crucified Lord is an oxymoron, “foolishness” (Gr: moron ) to Greeks and a scandal to Jews (1 Cor. 1.18ff).   In God’s strange providence, Paul’s gospel did indeed accomplish its mission of converting imaginations and lives (cf. 1 Cor. 1.21; 2.1-5). [4]      Indeed, Paul’s gospel was not only logically absurd, it was also politically subversive.   Jesus’ crucifixion had not been...

       Does the Church have a future?   Does our church (PCC, presbytery, congregation) have a future?   Does the people of God have a future?   I believe we can confidently say that the Trinitarian God will always have a people in this world.   However, the survival of any individual denomination or local Christian community is far from guaranteed.   If a species of living creatures ceases to reproduce, that species is doomed to extinction.   If any congregation fails to “produce” a new generation of committed believers, that congregation is destined to disappear.   This language of “reproduction” comes straight from the New Testament – the apostle Paul told the Corinthians: “I am … writing this … to admonish you as my beloved children.  For though you might have ten thousand guardians in Christ, you do not have many fathers. Indeed … I became your father through the gospel .” (1 Cor. 4.14-15) When he wrote to the Galatian...