sarah masen
Blue Like Jazz the Interview
by geoff on Wed Jun 23 19:49:27 +0000 2004 in Unveiled Faces
huge thanks, Cap. very good.
“Don Miller: I went into a Bible College Class recently and presented a ?gospel? to them, telling them it was the gospel of Jesus. I told the class, however, that I was going to leave one important idea out, and asked them to try to listen carefully and figure out what I left out. I told them that man was sinful, and read scripture and told stories which elaborated on the idea, then I explained our need to repent and turn back to God, presenting more stories and more scripture, then I talked about the great reward of being with God in heaven, and how this will complete and fulfill us. The whole thing took me about ten minutes. When I was done, I asked the students to tell me what I had left out. There were 45 students in the class, and none of them, after several minutes, realized I had left out Jesus. I had said nothing about His love, His life and incarnation, His death or His resurrection. I had said nothing about our need to become one with Him through an act of our hearts, to be associated with Him, and have His righteousness cover us. These students had grown up in Christian homes and taken four different theology classes before I arrived. In my opinion, I could go into almost any Christian church in the country and present a gospel without Jesus from the pulpit and very few people would notice, and even fewer would be upset about it. So, all that to say, I believe we subscribe to a false gospel, a gospel of technical truths rather than a relational invitation. This is why we love steps, bullet points and formulas so much. We think they are getting us somewhere.”
