A Slightly Cathartic Post in Response to Josh McDowell
While I was at youth conference this last week Josh McDowell came to speak for one day. This was especially serendipitous as I have been in the midst of reading his book “The Last Christian Generation.” (Yes, I did pick it up after I mentioned it in a previous post.) As I have been reading through his book, having heard the message he delivered, and thinking through the problems he addresses I have a couple observations (surprise, surprise). Furthermore, as usual, I think there are some ways in which this is indicative of a broader problem.
Sometimes Christian authority is too concerned with providing answers to life’s questions. In chapter 10 of his book “The Last Christian Generation” McDowell makes the following statement after having elucidated the more depressing points of our society (the pain of death, the hopelessness expressed in music, the tragic rate of teen suicide):
“Our young people need hope. They need a biblical worldview with a mission in life that will help them weather the storms of adolescence. A biblical worldview is nothing more than seeing life from God’s perspective.”*
I do not deny the helpfulness of having a biblical worldview, whatever that might mean. I do not deny that it is helpful to see our lives in light of the perspective of God. However this does not meet with reality or for that matter with certain portions of Scripture.
Maybe the psalmist needed to read Josh McDowell’s book. Maybe he needed to just get God’s perspective when he wrote Psalm 44. He certainly didn’t have what others might call a right understanding of God’s nature.
Forgive me; I got a bit sarcastic there for a minute. The point remains. Sit down with a teenager who is struggling with the reality of death. (This summer my youth group has seen one student die in a swimming accident and has within the last week watched as two of their friends lost their fathers unexpectedly.) Sit there with some kid who is going through the throws of depression, who has wrapped themselves in music that continually reinforces a pessimistic view of life. Tell them that they need to have God’s perspective, recite some Scripture and see what happens. They don’t need answers to their questions, they need a safe place to ask those question. They need, as the students in the youth group needed this summer, time to process and work through the issues they are facing with helpful support and counsel available, but not pressed.
I am fearful for the system which McDowell-style thinking creates. It is here, in this flavor of Christianity, that our faith loses its humanity. It is here that critics have something to pick on. Breath in, breath out, sit down, shut up, and listen to the people you are trying to help. Your answers are no good here.
Grant me one question,
a hint, a nudge.
Set me on a path that leads upwards and let me run
until I find what I have been searching for;
until I reach my destination.
If you want me to have the faith of a child,
treat me like a child and set me in Sunday School once more.
*Pg. 143, McDowell, Josh and David Bellis, The Last Christian Generation, Green Key Books: Holiday, FL. 2006.
Sunday, 6 August 2006 at 10:15 pm
good words bro… appreciate the critique… and appreciate you
Wednesday, 27 September 2006 at 7:12 am
Truth delivered absent of compassion is, more likely, caustic in its affect as it touches the soul of one who is suffering. A person, who, for a lifetime, has structured the whole of their lives around the organizing truths that flow from the fountain of truth that is His revelation, when suffering, desperately needs that which you speak of so eloquently, Nathan.
They need one capable of expressing that which revealed truth has made available, but to deliver it with even a hint of arrogant omniscience, on the part of the counselor, pretending there is no mystery, no demand on the part of us all to confess that, yes, the tapestry may be beautiful, but from our perspective, there are endless hanging threads that a thinking person strives to untangle…this is not the behavior of one who is seeking to love.
Celebrate the soul who confesses their pain, who is honest about their struggle to fit the minutiae of their existence into the seemingly romantic ideal of a Sovereign God whose truth and purposes promise to, one day, give account for that which has been, all that is, and all that ever will be.
To reason together, to question, to cry, to sit quietly alongside of, to pray for or patiently abide the honest groanings of one whose life has become tangled up in those hanging threads…this is ministry. This is the church, this is community, and this is why we have been created to need both Him and one another.
If we stand only behind podiums, pronouncing, pounding and prophesying…then we have only followed the pathway of Job’s friends.
Before I was called to suffering in my own life, I was ignorant of how superficially I held the truths around which I had organized the whole of my life. Ashamed, now, of my own arrogance as I, seemingly, held to the notion that intellectual apprehension of a truth, apparently understood by the mind, was sufficient. I was wholly ignorant that that very truth is virtually useless until it has been applied to the soul. A treacherous inevitability, I’m afraid, that ignorance would result in arrogance.
Nathan–your contemplations give me hope for the church going forward. I am thankful for a young mind, so capable and so active, applied to testing that which is proclaimed and practiced by those who share the profession of faith, those who would follow after the teaching of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.
I pray that your heart would continue to expand, even as you apply yourself to the expansion of your mind. May you always see the soul of the one who questions, recognizing that their carefully held beliefs are being tested. They, in their suffering, are resting on the knife’s edge, where truth, as one knows it, is meeting up with the hard reality of what it is to live our, frankly, fragile lives in a fallen world.
Hope in Christ…is either everything, or it is nothing. When one is called to true suffering, in this life, it is there one decides for oneself, in the company of His Spirit, which of those statements they believe to be, objectively, true.
Having read through your entries, I am impressed by the eloquence with which you express your thoughts and opinions. May the whole person, body, mind, soul and spirit find its calling, in due time, and may you see, all along the way, the true hand of a Sovereign God who will accomplish that which He wills.
Col. 1:9-12
Wednesday, 8 November 2006 at 1:34 am
Nathan, I can’t tell if you’re a student in the youth group or a leader. It sounds as though you may be a leader or at least one of the older youths. I have worked as a leader and teacher for a number of years with youth. I have watched teens struggle with understanding right from wrong, struggle with why our world is in the condition it’s in and even why their own “up-close” world is so messed up. I have sat and listened to many youth as they vented their frustrations, fears and tears and I would agree with you that this is a time for compassion and a sympathetic ear. However, once you’ve listened the only thing that helps them sort through life is the truth of God’s Word. Once they are able to see things from God’s perspective their own situation begins to make sense. Yes, many teens are troubled but they are no different from adults in the fact that a sympathetic ear followed by truth is the only real way to truly help them along the road to recovery. The only way to make sense of anything in this life is to filter it through God’s Word. In all my years His truth has never let me down but man’s “invented” truth has failed every time.