Midlife Meditation

Portrait of Faith: Victor, Elam Sr., Elam Jr., Colena, and Frances Anderson, c. 1932. Christianity was never meant to be a legacy faith. Reading the oldest portions of the New Testament, it becomes clear that the first generation of Jesus' followers never expected a second generation to arise. In Mark 9:1, Matthew 16:28, and Luke 9:27, Jesus says that "there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see that the kingdom of God has come with power." In 1 Corinthians 7, Paul counsels the church to practice celibacy, so as not to be caught in flagrante delicto by the parousia . Of course, the Second Coming never happened, at least not in the way it was expected to, and every generation of Christians since has had to find a way to live eschatologically in a world that isn't going anywhere. The evangelical urgency of the gospels--of converting the entire world in fear of the wrath to come--lost much of its edge as churches had to shift their fo...

  This. Is. A. Book.   So spoke the seminary professor after throwing a Bible to the floor and stomping on it. I never witnessed this act--it was years before my arrival at Perkins--but it was a story the professors I knew loved to tell. I don't remember the name of this particular professor, but I wholeheartedly agree with the point he was making to a shocked classroom of East Texan Methodists: idolatry is a sin. Anything besides God can be made into an idol, including, perhaps especially, this book. And yet Christians of every persuasion routinely assign it more weight, power, and authority than the God it supposedly tells them about--the one this very book quotes as saying not to make idols of anything, including books.   You may, like those East Texan seminarians, be in a state of shock that I am casting aspersions on this book. You may consider it the Word of God. You may even consider it the inerrant Word of God. If that's the case, it's best you s...