8.15.2007

The only way to rescue our world. (is the gospel)

if you have some thoughts on church leadership, check out my previous post.
Words from Mark Driscoll, Radical Reformission (pp. 108)

St. Paul calls sin the mystery of iniquity, and human history has proven him right. The problem with every culture is not ultimately out there in the culture, but is within the people of the culture. This mystery of the crookedness of the human nature has puzzled lost people in the culture so fully that we now have a veritable army of counselors and psycologists armed with some two hundred different therapeutic systems trying to straighten people out. These systems speculate that the causes of our imperfection range from an unconscious mind filled with primal urges (Sigmund Freud), to a collective unconsciousness from our racial history (Carl Jung), to our environmental (emotional and physical) conditioning (BF Skinner), to the lack of awareness of our inner goodness (Carl Rogers). All we are missing is a theory in which a magic bunny - hidden deep in the drink cooler of a Provo, Utah, convenience store - is the center of an invisible web of mind control causing human beings to do terrible things to one another. Reformission requires that God's people address sin theologically.

First to change a culture, we must change the people in that culture. The question that arises is whether people do what they are, or if they are what they do. The answer to this is imperative, because if we are what we do then all we need to do is train people to act differently and they will change themselves. ... The unredeemed heart is a glutton for sin and death. Only God can give a person a new heart, one with new desires for a redeemed life that contributes to a transformed culture

We must begin by bringing the gospel to people so that they can be given a new heart out of which a Christian life flows. As more people live out of their new heart, new families, churches, businesses, and governments will result that together will transform culture.

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