John Frye on "USAmerican Evangelicalism: Ritalin* for the Soul"

http://www.jesustheradicalpastor.com/usamerican-evangelicalism-ritalin-for-the-soul

USAmerican Evangelicalism: Ritalin* for the Soul

Mar 23rd, 2009 by John

ScienceDaily (Dec. 17, 2006) — Social stigma and feeling lifeless and/or alienated from one's peers are some of the reasons why children and adolescents stop taking prescription stimulant medications used to treat attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), according to a new study published in the Journal for Specialists in Pediatric Nursing.

"Social stigma" has produced the 'secret service' Christian…no one knows but God.

"Feeling lifeless" has produced the stimulate me on Sunday morning Christian. That's the church's job.

"Alienated from peers" has produced the tribal units–Calvinists don't like open theists, KJVers don't like TNIVers, Vineyard experiencers shy away from the dogma-driven, "feed me, feed me" whiners populate most pews and a myriad of other ghetto Christian groups exist in blissful isolation from the others.

Aaah, popular USAmerican evangelicalism. Ritalin* for the soul. No one gets too excited about the faith. No fanatics allowed. The term "extreme" must never be used of Jesus-followers, especially those dwelling in suburbs. The closest anyone gets to "fire in the belly" is a glass of warm milk at bed-time.

Evangelicalism in America is a "market" or an entertainment industry. God and Jesus and the Bible are products and worship services are shows.  If I'm in the market for a solemn,  sacred spirituality, I can go to the Episcopal service. If I'm shopping for the latest feel good, spiritual high, I can buy a ticket to the charismatic service. If I just want "the facts, M'am, just the facts," I can go to a good Bible-teaching church. If I want Starbucks and brie, I can go to the emerging church. Get it? Isn't it great to be an American Christian?  But it's all Ritalin* for the soul. Just keep calm.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer explored "religionless Christianity;" popular USAmerican evangelicalism exports passionless Christianity. "Balance" is the mantra of the bored masses. We must live a "balanced" life. As if. Balance is just a code word for bland. Bland is beautiful. Bland doesn't rock the boat. Bland can sing about "the blood," but can't or won't shed a drop for another person. Bland likes to baaaaa like sheep.

Balanced, bland lives don't get crucified; they get homogenized and are remarkably self-absorbed…"Am I balanced? Am I balanced?" Balanced, bland lives are always looking for the boundary lines–can't get out of step with the herd. What are the rules? Am I keeping them?

The authentic individual zealous for God is an embarrassment to the balanced ones. I know, conformity to the world is absolutely taboo to the balanced ones. Yet, unquestioning conformity to their sheer balanced boredom is deemed really wise. Go figure.

Young people fleeing evangelicalism's "balanced" life like rats fleeing a sinking ship are considered misguided at best and rebellious at worst. But what if these youth have gotten in touch with the unbalanced Jesus of the Gospels and want to follow him even if it costs their lives? What if they have caught just a glimpse of the Jesus Who never heard of Ritalin*? These youth aren't drinking the kool-aid of nice, conformist evangelicalism.

A whole generation of USAmerican young people are seeking and finding and following a first century Jew named Jesus. They are discovering that this Second Temple Judaism prophet whose words and ways whipped his culture into a frenzy is breathtakingly magnetic. Jesus offers a life like no one else or nothing else offers. The backwoods nobody from Nazareth is a man on fire, a dynamo of love and truth, a grenade with its pin pulled. The last thing Jesus was, was balanced. God is Jesus, walking and talking, teaching and healing, provoking and troubling. They didn't have Ritalin* to deal with Jesus. They did, however, have a cross.

A whole generation of USAmerican young leaders are bearing the scorn of the boring wise ones, bearing the label "heretics" because they dare to be obedient to Jesus, bearing the rejection of those whose minds are petrified by a theology of the 1500s. These young leaders rather not mindlessly spout the blandness of the current, popular evangelical party line. There's no fire in it. It's cool…really cool, and it's brought the USAmerican evangelical church to its weakest place in its brief history.

 

Ritalin* is one of many stimulants prescribed to help those who are diagnosed as ADD, ADHD, etc. With this post I do not intend to criticize those who need or use Ritalin or Adderall, etc.

C.J. Mahaney on "Biblical Productivity" (Index of Posts)

Biblical Productivity

1. Are You Busy?

2. Confessions of a Busy Procrastinator

3. The Procrastinator Within

4. Just Do It

5. In All Thy Ways

6. The Sluggard

7. Time. Redeemed.

8. Roles, Goals, Scheduling

9. Roles (Part 1)

10. Roles (Part 2)

11. Goals (Part 1)

12. Goals (Part 2)

13. Goals (Part 3)

14. Goals (Part 4)

15. Scheduling the Unexpected

16. The To-Do Lists Are Never Done

17. Self-Sufficient

Peter Kreeft on Beauty and the Existence of God

http://www.peterkreeft.com/topics-more/20_arguments-gods-existence.htm#17

17. The Argument from Aesthetic Experience

There is the music of Johann Sebastian Bach.
Therefore there must be a God.

You either see this one or you don't.

Scot McKnight Briefly Summarizes the New Perspective on Paul

http://blog.beliefnet.com/jesuscreed/2009/04/the-new-perspective-and-resurr.html


...Now the New Perspective in three lines, though mine are not as funny or clever:

1. Judaism was not a works-earns-salvation religion.
2. Paul was therefore not opposing a works-earns-salvation religion.
3. Therefore, the Reformation's way of framing the entire message of the New Testament as humans seeking to earn their own redemption rests on shaky historical grounds.

What do you know about the New Perspective? How do you summarize it? Do you think my three lines gets to the heart of it? What light has the NPP shed for you? What do you think are its major weaknesses?

Another way of summing up the NPP is this: the Augustinian anthropology that undergirds much of Reformed theology (humans as depraved and totally dead and in need of grace and humans, in true Pelagian fashion, want to prove themselves before God) may well be true but it is not what Paul was talking about.

Willimon & Wilson on The Busy Church

From http://reformedreader.wordpress.com/2008/02/20/willimon-on-the-busy-church/

William Willimon & Robert Wilson, Preaching and Worship in the Small Church (Nashville: Abingdon, 1980), 39-40.

"'What you do outside the church is more important than what you do inside the church,' was how the slogan went.  Church school classes, youth-fellowship meetings, weekly prayer and Bible study groups, social action programs, elaborately designed educational activities, and seemingly endless committee meetings, all conspired to convince the people that worship was only one small part of the full program."

"Such thinking had an undeniable appeal to the pragmatic, utilitarian, work-oriented society, such as we have in the United States.  Time spent in worship tends to be thought of as idle time–unused time.  We are a nation of doers and achievers.  How can the 'acts' of worship compete in importance alongside activities such as Christian education, counseling, youth programs, board meetings, Bible study groups, and charitable work?  The 'active' church with its doors always open, meetings in progress every night of the week, newsletters recruiting participants for a host of activities, insuring that every person is kept busy during the week (provided that person truly wishes to be an 'active' church member), has become the paradigm for any church that aspires greatness."

"The 'active' pastor, with a full round of weekly meetings, community activities, and supervisory chores, which keep all the machinery oiled and running smoothly at the full-program church (provided that the church truly wishes to be a 'viable' church), has become the paradigm for any pastor who aspires to greatness.  Somehow the centrality of Sunday worship has been lost amidst these pragmatic, program-oriented, organizational images of success."

That's what happens when "work ethic" has a say in the church.  Good thing a huge theme of Scripture is "rest" instead of "do;" that is what we must emphasize, even though it goes against what is written on our DNA!  Actually, Willimon and Wilson say it better: they say such a busy church looks more like the local YMCA than a church, and the pastor looks more like a program director than a preacher (p. 42).  Here's the deal-sealer: "Theologians have noted that our Pelagian busyness is frequently a works/righteousness cover-up for our spiritual emptiness" (Ibid.).

R. Scott Clark's Helpful Definition of "Reformed"

[T]he most reasonable definition of the adjective "Reformed" is, "the theology, piety, and practice confessed by the Reformed Churches in their public, ecclesiastically sanctioned, summaries of God's Word, i.e. their confessions and catechisms."


http://heidelblog.wordpress.com/2009/04/04/is-there-a-monolithic-reformed-view-of-justification/#more-3979