Same Gospel? Part II

Whatever did we do prior to YouTube?

Here are some clips of Micah Armstrong during his recent mission trip to the University of Alabama as he riffs on the topics of:

By way of contrast, here’s a clip of N.T. Wright at Seattle Pacific University as he weaves a very different-sounding Christian narrative.

Like I said, two different men, two different tactics. It seems to me, though, that there’s a difference between being a “fool for Christ” and being a clown. No wonder everyone’s so confused these days.

15 Comments
  1. JAW

    N.T. Wright seems like one of the kindest, most down-to-earth scholars I’ve ever heard. Forgive my shameless plugging, but if you go here:

    http://seaver.pepperdine.edu/dean/lectureseries/

    and scroll down to January 2005, you can there watch 3 of his lectures he delivered then, too.

  2. JAW

    Oops, my apologies. Looks like they’re just audio files; someone must have goofed in the Seaver dean’s office…they’re more often video archived.

  3. Mike the Eyeguy

    No worries, I’ll still give them a listen later on. And thanks for the links.

    First Boo Mitchell, now N.T. Wright. You guys are landing some big ones out there. I’m guessing that it’s only a matter of time until President Lowry and Lipscomb start doing the same.

    Meanwhile, back in Searcy…

  4. reJoyce

    Hmm. After some deliberation, I’ve decided to skip Armstrong’s YouTube clips and just watch and listen to NT Wright. (Thanks for the links, JAW.) I’m not sure I’m up to Armstrong today.

  5. Double vision

    Why did he show up at Alabama to rip whoremongers, masturbaters, and hellgoers???????

    I’ve felt that way about the tide for years!!!!! No not really.

    Definitely not going to win many converts at any college or anywhere else for that matter. Probably driving many into the cave for longer periods. Everyone knows that most drift away in college for awhile and then come out of the cave at some point down the road.

  6. Mike the Eyeguy

    reJoyce–I understand completely. Probably a wise move.

    DV–if you think that’s bad, you should see the clip of him at Auburn. That place looked like it had been it by a meteor shower after he was done.

  7. Bill Gnade

    Shock and awe indeed. I am particularly shocked and awed by the level of spelling I find in the Open Air Preachers’ writings. Of course, we know that God spoke/wrote Hebrew — without punctuation, vowels, or word breaks. So perhaps this is a spirited return to something I’ve overlooked in the hardness of my heart.

    Several years ago I confronted an open-air preacher in Peterborough, NH, the little town where I and my family live out much of our lives. The middle-aged man, I am sorry to say, was scaring everybody. But he wasn’t scaring the hell out of them (or so I felt); he was scaring the heaven out of them. I spent an easy half-hour battling the man, pleading with him to leave. I can’t say it was easy or fun or rewarding; the dark night of the soul that ensued for me struck my very heart. But I believed the man was missing much of the soul of preaching, and he was injuring the cause many of us had fought hard to defend.

    The good news is not that God is mad as hell and everyone is one breath from damnation. If that is the good news, then what is the bad? Moreover, Christ told his disciples to evangelize this way: Be as cunning as serpents, and as gentle as doves. In other words, Christ calls us to be crafty, subtle, smart; he wants us to slither in, not rail and remonstrate in the center of the public square. These open-air preachers have an extremely naive view of the preaching life: they believe it to be some hybrid of Jonah, Jeremiah, Samuel and John the Baptist. There is no craft here, just show and belligerence: Thus, saith the Lord, you shall writhe like worms on the floor of hell’s sewers! Repent, ye blind! The hour has come for you to choose between the God of your fathers, or the god of your loins! Turn or burn! There is no time to waste! Flee the maggots that are your very hearts; turn to the burning love of God before His righteous wrath burns your wickedness to ash! Just one look at Moses’s manner with Pharaoh proves the emptiness of the open-air manner: Moses was given power, and yet he approached Pharaoh with gentleness of speech, asking him to release the Israelites. And when Moses stood up to call forth God’s judgment, he did so with a manner that can only be described as reluctant. Or so I believe. Moses took no pleasure in judgment. Sadly, too many Christians do. Oiks, even I find myself burning with anger at the spirit of the age; but I must fight the urge to turn God into the image of my own rage and indignation. It is not my place to hurl firebrands at the lost. But it is my place to unfurl the road map, to mark the way-points and the road signs, the trail markings and cairns.

    (Even the last prayer of the Bible suggests a resigned reluctance: Even so, come Lord Jesus. Hardly an enthusiastic plea for God to scorch the earth.)

    Is this a cop-out? Is this a compromise with the devil? Am I wrong? Perhaps. But I believe what most of these preachers fail to realize is that the world they are preaching to is not the world confronted by St. Paul. When Paul took to the synagogues and streets, he was preaching to a world that had never heard of Jesus Christ, of a crucifed God, of substitutionary atonement, of a resurrected King. But America, especially in the south, has been fed up to the eyeballs with Christian language, Christian jargon, and a Christian ethos. In Paul’s day, Jesus Christ was the new name of salvation given among men. Today, Jesus Christ is a swear word, even used among those who call themselves Christian. Screaming insults and hurling invective at the post-Christian man or woman is not the answer the Church needs, nor is it the key to post-mod evangelism. Wisdom is required, the loving and crafty wisdom of the Holy Spirit. That Spirit is indeed a Spirit of power, the very power that worked in raising Jesus from the dead. But Jesus was raised, not with a scream or great show, but in the powerful silence of the night. A silence that refired a dead heart, that raised pierced wrists; that rolled away a stone.

    Such silence speaks louder than any remonstrance screeched from a soapbox. Tongues of fire, yes. But tongues as gentle as the dove that descended on our Lord.

    Peace in the Fire that restores,

    BG

  8. Stoogelover

    “Bro. Micah” is quite the circus show, isn’t he? I, too, noticed the misspelled words and incorrect grammar on the web sites of these guys. Their ignorance of even the basics of communication is evident. But then I’ve been called a grammar nazi so there may be some bias here.

  9. Mike the Eyeguy

    Bill, thanks for stopping by and weighing in on this. You said a couple of things that especially stand out to me:

    “The good news is not that God is mad as hell and everyone is one breath from damnation. If that is the good news, then what is the bad?”

    Exactly. And if I were coming to Christianity for the first time and listened to this babble, then I’m quite sure I would walk away. It’s little wonder that so many do.

    “Is this a cop-out? Is this a compromise with the devil? Am I wrong? Perhaps.”

    I recognize that I could be wrong. But if this really is the essence of Christianity (and all the other is fluff), then I want nothing to do with Christianity.

    But as you have eloquently pointed out, that’s not the case at all. But still, I feel for those who don’t have the breath of experience that we do, who see this (and correctly turn away) but not the spirit of peace, reconciliation and regeneration that is at the heart of true Christianity.

    Oh what a mess we’ve made of things. God help us–truly.

  10. Mike the Eyeguy

    Sl–yes he is, and there were times that it seemed that he realized that he was simply parody personified and almost laughed himself.

    I’m not convinced he even believes half the stuff he says. What the motivation then? Probably the need for center stage and the desire for power and control.

  11. Bill Gnade

    Oiks! I want nothing to do with it either. There is a Christianity that is too acerbic, too acrimonious, to ever lure me towards it; and there is a Christianity so insipid and tepid I’d rather drop acid and leap on the third rail. Somewhere, not necessarily in between these two extremes but outside them altogether, is a Christianity that is muscular and gracious, that is strong and delicate, that is fire and water, that is light and more light. If I know anything it is this: if we were to whittle the Faith down to its epistemological nub, its knowable core, we would find nothing but Paradox. But there is nothing paradoxical in the faith of the fiery fury of open-air bombast, and there is nothing paradoxical in the Christ of the United Church of Christ or the Unitarian Society of Wooster. Both have missed something essential, radical and transformative. We too often forget that the Grand Canyon was created by the mere flowing of water; or that the earth is made whole by Vulcan’s fires beneath our feet. The brimstone preacher forgets the force of a gentle stream; the Unitarian forgets the balm of molten stone pouring down a Hawaiian hillside. Christ is not one exclusive of the other, and He is not both. He is much MORE than justice and wrath, love and grace; He is much more than judge and shepherd. He is God Incarnate. He is Law Incarnate. He is Grace Personified. He is Life Everlasting. He is the Water that burns and the Fire that drowns.

    Peace.

    BG

  12. Mike the Eyeguy

    Amen. Especially regarding Paradox.

  13. Tarwater

    “If I know anything it is this: if we were to whittle the Faith down to its epistemological nub, its knowable core, we would find nothing but Paradox”

    Care to elaborate on this?

    What is your epistemology? What is knowable? What is Paradox?

    Regards

  14. Mike the Eyeguy

    “Care to elaborate on this?

    Speaking for myself (but not for Bill): not really.

    But regarding Paradox, how about this:

    “Whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it.”

    or

    “But many who are first will be last, and the last first.”

  15. Cindy Newkirk

    Please keep those affected by the horrific earthquake in Japan in your thoughts and prayers. Donate!

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