Abandoning or Transforming Culture: Do we have a choice? Notes from Jerram Barrs

7 days ago Jerram Barrs came to speak here at the Grove. I sat down and enjoyed a lovely conversation with him over lunch. I greatly appreciated the time he took to answer every question deliberately. He spoke on three occasions; I made it to two of them. The most invigorating lecture/talk however was entitled Abandoning or Transforming Culture: Do we have a choice?

After outlining the various ideas of Christ and Culture, he laid down an argument for culture transformation. Three Principles and three "how to" guidelines for each.

1.) Affirmation - activities of culture is to respond to the Creation Mandate (reaffirmed in the Noahic Covenant) and the fact that mankind is made in the image of God (Psalm 8)

• Appreciation - delight what is good in culture (Philippians 4:8). John Calvin, "It is not blasphmey of the Holy Spirit that Pagans speak good and give good gifts."
• Incarnation - incarnate the gospel in every culture, adopt whatever you can from, and of, every culture. This is to live as fully human as you can. Love the culture and love the people of that culture.
• Bridges into Culture [Common Grace] - recognize all kinds of truth, justice, and beauty to communicate the gospel of Christ.

2.) Sober Realism of Reality

• Nonidentification - there is no such things as a Christian culture. What grows from transformed hearts are the firstfruits of what is yet to come.
• Christian Identity - in relationship to Christ and place in the kingdom of God
• called to humility and to challenge the culture we live in and within ourselves - transformation occurs by bringing Scripture to bear on reality and life. To do this read scripture and whenever you find a passage you do not like or want to reinterpret, you are dealing with sin, or you have given in too much to the culture you live in

3.) Solemn Warning - culture expresses the religious elements of the human heart. In the words of TS Eliot, "Culture is the incarnation of her religion."

• count the cost - there are things that are off limits
• cultural embodiment - encourage new believers to put on and live in the cutlure
• the transformation of Culture - salt and light in every aspect you can and your work

---- [Robbie's thoughts] ----

A lot of what Barrs said would throw Christendom in an uproar. Which is sad. How can I incarnate the Gospel? By admiring the creation around me to start. Look and enjoy the arts, music and movies. Incorporate the creativity of the community in which I live into my life. (I am drawing the line at The Scream.) Hang outs such as coffee houses, java cafes, internet cafes, some small restaurants, and many others are excellent examples to start. At the Crazy Mocha this summer the art on display was by those who lived in the community. Why can't the church do that? Why can't I do that?

redeeming more than our souls

For one of my classes my professor requires us to read several chapters and one full book of agrarian thought. Agrarianism is a practical philosophy (how to live life) that is centered around agriculture as the basic mainstay of work and occupation. They are excellent critics of modernity and their educational polemics are invaluable.

Wendell Berry, an agrarian, suggests that the Amish are the most technologically intelligent people because they are incredibly discerning with regards to the technology they incorporate into their lifestyle. Very provacative stuff.

I hold a dear appreciation for these guys as they genuinely are counter cultural. That is something we Christians sturggle with. But at the same time, I wish the agrarians would offer a transforming element pertaining to culture in their criticisms.

Counter cultural Chrsitianity would say no to a lot of baggage in this messy world (premarital sex, adultery, consumerism, selfishness and self-love, many more), yet the gospel redeems various elements of creation (sex is good not bad, marriage and family governed as a ministry and reflecting Christ and the church, moderation with alcohol and smoking, the arts and music - do our churches reflect this?, work - it is effective and enjoyable). Christians should celebrate such a gospel, it redeems more than our souls.

One may start by asking God to redeem our days, time and activities in whatever we may be doing.

[this thursday Jerram Barrs is speaking on this very subject up here at 4pm]

The Discipline of Grace.

God is no longer our judge. Through Christ He is now our Heavenly Father who disciplines us only out of love and only for our good...

Your worst days are never so bad that you are beyond the reach of God's grace. And your best days are never so good that you are beyond the need of God's grace...

God looks to see if we are trusting in the merit of His Son as our only hope for securing His blessing.

If the love of Christ for us is to be the motivating force for a life of discipleship (2 Cor. 5:14), how then can we come to the place where we are acutely conscious of His love? The answer is, through the gospel. It is, of course, the Holy Spirit who pours out His love into our hearts, but He does this through the message of the gospel. The good news of the gospel is that Jesus paid for all our sins on the cross and that we are thereby forgiven. As we continually reflect upon that gospel, the Holy Spirit floods our hearts with a sense of God's love to us in Christ. And that sense of His love motivates us in a compelling way to live for Him.

Church is for Sinners (pt. 3)

It is amazing God builds His church.

Ever wonder why the church grows? It truly is nothing short of a miracle. The other day I was sharing the gospel with a young lady and boom! She took every rabbit trail possible that I fell for. Yesterday I was giving the gospel message in chapel at the mission. It was my first time really giving an effort at preaching.. if we can call it that. Responses varied from sitting still to a few attentive faces. I guess that is what happens on any given Sunday in church. This makes sense though when everyone wants a god to fit in our god shaped hole in our hearts, yet people choose anyone and everyone else other than the true King of Kings.

Another miracle is that the church does not fall apart. I believe that anyone who understands sin and the heart of men believes this, and which is why grace is so amazing in biblical theology. It is God's precious grace and His love that keeps men from sin and idolatry even though we do struggle. Matthew 16:18 offers a great promise, "I will build my church and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it."

You really do need to love the great sovereignty of God, specifically in light of how everything falls together despite of our sin. God is sovereign. Here is the beauty of biblical theology (Its commonly known as Calvinism). God ordains what we are all going to do, He ordained that I would work at Light of Life, my relationship with Jen, my love of rice krispees and orange juice, to my feet being tired at the time I am writing this. God's sovereignty and faithfulness to His promises is what builds the church. Not us, for we are sinners. Not the latest fads and trends in the church. Its all about Christ and the gospel. Its Jesus Christ Himself who brings people to salvation, not us or the preacher.

humbling isn't it?

It is a completely weird religion we have; all other religions have a god that requires merit or a sacrifice at least. For a baby sin you bring a mouse, for a big sin you bring an elephant. But in Christianity you have God who says sin is sin, you cannot bring anything to atone for it. God is pissed at me but He loves the world He created and sent His son to atone for you. God presents the wrath-bearer for us on His own initiative.

Dr. Schaefer

Together for the Gospel and the Gospel Coalition

I love a few trends in the church today. One focus is on the missional duty and calling of the church. (Simply being missionaries to the local community your congregation is in.) The other trend that I certainly love is how churches, denominations are finally focusing on the gospel. Congregations of the SBC, OPC, PCA, and Sovereign Grace Ministries are saying, "Hey we are one church." Denominations are losing their distinctives to come together for the gospel. Most people who read my blog, you are quite familiar with the Together for the Gospel Conference, but a few months ago there was another groundbreaking conference entitled The Gospel Coalition. One is much more organized than the other but the focus is the same, the gospel of Jesus Christ. In the coming days I hope to watch the videos on the Coalition's site (they are making all their media freely available!!!) That includes workshops led by men like Mark Driscoll and Phil Ryken, plenary talks by Carson, Piper, and Keller, including several speaker interviews and panels.

From the Gospel Coalition's website:

The evangelical church must stay true to its Biblical foundations, and it must maintain and enhance the effectiveness of its expository preaching, the holiness of its members, the ‘thickness’ of its counter-cultural community, the fervor of its evangelism. But if it doesn’t learn how to do this in our biggest cities then we don’t have much hope for our culture.

If our cities are largely pagan while our countryside is largely Christian, then our society and culture will continue to slide into paganism. And that is exactly what is happening. Christians strengthen somewhat away from the cities and they have made some political gains, but that is not effecting cultural products much. It is because in the center cities (NYC, Boston, LA, Chicago, Seattle, San Francisco, Washington DC) the percentages of people living and working there who are Christians are minuscule.

Jim Boice proposed that evangelical Christians need to live in the major cities at a higher percentage than the population at large (See Two Cities, p.163ff.) Currently 50% of the U.S. population live in urban areas (and 25% lives in just the 10 largest urban areas.) Boice proposes that evangelicals should be living in cities in at least the same percentages or more. As confirmation of Boice’s belief consider how much impact both the Jewish and the gay communities have had on our culture. Why? Though neither is more than 3-4% of the total population, they each comprise over 20% of the population of Manhattan (and in other center cities. )

So we have two problems. First, evangelicals (especially Anglos) in general are quite negative about U.S. cities and city living. Second, you can’t ‘do church’ in exactly the same way in a city as you do it elsewhere, not if you want to actually convert hard-core secular people to Christianity. There are churches that set up in cities without adapting to their environment. Ironically, they can grow rather well anyway in cities by just gathering in the young already-evangelicals who are temporarily living in the city after college. But that is not the way to make the cities heavily Christian—which is the crying need today. (Tim Keller)

In the meantime I picked a book from a friend, Sam DeSocio. It is entitled Confessions of a Reformission Rev: Hard lesions from an Emerging Missional Church. I will certainly review it when I finish it.

Church is for Sinners (pt. 2)

Luke's gospel is an amazing account of the life of Jesus Christ. Our dear doctor accounted many accounts of when and how Jesus healed others. One such account is in Luke 13:10-17...

Now he was teaching in one of the synagogues on the Sabbath. And there was a woman who had had a disabling spirit for eighteen years. She was bent over and could not fully straighten herself. When Jesus saw her, he called her over and said to her, "Woman, you are freed from your disability." And he laid his hands on her, and immediately she was made straight, and she glorified God. But the ruler of the synagogue, indignant because Jesus had healed on the Sabbath, said to the people, "There are six days in which work ought to be done. Come on those days and be healed, and not on the Sabbath day." Then the Lord answered him, "You hypocrites! Does not each of you on the Sabbath untie his ox or his donkey from the manger and lead it away to water it? And ought not this woman, a daughter of Abraham whom Satan bound for eighteen years, be loosed from this bond on the Sabbath day?" As he said these things, all his adversaries were put to shame, and all the people rejoiced at all the glorious things that were done by him.

And later with the account of Zacchaeus and the 10 lepers, we clearly see God's acceptance of sinners who repent of their sins and believe in the work of Christ. That work being that He can heal them from their ailments. It is this group of people that Jesus came to save, to heal those who need a doctor. People stood back in judgment as Christ called upon Zacchaeus, that he may stay that night at his house. Definitely not a big deal. But it was (to the pharisees) for Zach was a chief tax collector, the boss of the Roman IRS. He stole a lot of money. (he was a thief.) Read more about Zacchaeus here. [Josh Harris' site]

The religion (read Pharisees) at that time did not want thieves to come to church (or prostitutes, lepers, or any one who was rejected). It was outside their comfort zone, and by their saved by works mentality, it was simply unacceptable. But Christ accepted the prostitute, the lepers, a tax collector, and many others. Christ accepted those who saw their need for a savior, saw that they sinned; He did not accept those who were self righteous, stuck up (proud), jerks (unloving), and arrogant.

I love Christ's last words in this passage. After healing and dealing with the Pharisee's Christ replies, "You hypocrites! Does not each of you on the Sabbath untie his ox or his donkey from the manger and lead it away to water it? And ought not this woman, a daughter of Abraham whom Satan bound for eighteen years, be loosed from this bond on the Sabbath day?"

Here we see the purpose of Church. A place were Christ may be preached, be seen, be worshiped, and in the midst of everything going on.... that sinners may be like Christ. That is why Christ should be and must be worshiped. Church is clearly for sinners.

Driscoll on Idolatry and Religion

You really gotta like this guy. Why you ask? Well he is easy to understand, he is honest and blunt, basically says what needs to be said, he finds great pleasure in God and Christ, he is orthodox and he is a theological calvinist. Mark Driscoll says somewhere, "some of us are ex- fornicators, some of us are ex-adulterers, some are ex-theives, some are ex-gluttons, some are ex-pedifiles, we are all sinners." He preaches the gospel of amazing, relentless grace.



warning it is long... (43 minutes) I recommend watching it though :-)

touche

A few weeks ago a certain blog caught my eye that was linked off of Justin Taylor's Between Two Worlds. Then just this past week Tim Challies awarded this blog his distinguished King for a Week. This blog that I am talking about is the IrishCalvinist.com. The author's name is Eric, he is a pastor at a Baptist church out in Nebraska- I have not listened to any of his sermons, as my ears do not have the time to hear all of Joel Beeke's, John Piper's, Derek Thomas's, and Teddy Donnelly's on the web. But I do have time to read his words as I take a break from my studies. His goal for blogging is that his readers would be more impressed with Jesus Christ.

This past week a few words hit me like a 2x4. He writes,

"Too many people today look at Jesus upon the cross like a spiritual piñata that God has set forth to take a beating so all of us good kids could get all the candy we deserve. This is heresy! Jesus Christ willingly hanging upon the wooden cross in utter humiliation while also maintaining and displaying all of his manifold perfections is the indictment upon all of our manifold imperfections. He is there because we are so bad.

So look at him and see everything you are not but, by grace, long to be. Love him because he is so different to you. Love him because he is so appealing to you. Love him because upon that cross heaven’s artillery was emptied upon him that the reservoir of mercy and grace might justly be opened to you."

Robert Murray Mc'Cheyne once said, "for every look of yourself, look ten times to Christ."

Check it out... I believe you will see Christ magnified and exalted

Look, See, and Behold!

More Spurgeon Quotes

"The hearing of the gospel involves the hearer in responsibility. It is a great privilege to hear the gospel. You may smile and think there is nothing very great in it. The damned in hell know. Oh, what would they give if they could hear the gospel now? If they could come back and entertain but the shadow of a hope that they might escape from the wrath to come? The saved in heaven estimate this privilege at a high rate, for, having obtained salvation through the preaching of this gospel, they can never cease to bless their God for calling them by his word of truth. O that you knew it! On your dying beds the listening to a gospel sermon will seem another thing than it seems now."


"Do you know, my dear unsaved hearer, what God’s estimate of the gospel is? Do you not know that it has been the chief subject of his thoughts and acts from all eternity? He looks on it as the grandest of all his works. You cannot imagine that he has sent his gospel into the world to be a football for you to play with–that you may give it a kick, as Felix did when he said to Paul, "Go thy way for this time; when I have a convenient season, I will call for thee" (Acts 24:25). You surely cannot believe that God sent his gospel into the world for you to make a toy of it, and to say, as Agrippa said to Paul, "Almost thou persuadest me to be a Christian" (Acts 26:28), and then put away all thought of it out of your souls. You cannot even speak of it irreverently without committing a great sin."


"Avoid a sugared gospel as you would shun sugar of lead. Seek the gospel which rips up and tears and cuts and wounds and hacks and even kills, for that is the gospel that makes alive again. And when you have found it, give good heed to it. Let it enter into your inmost being. As the rain soaks into the ground, so pray the Lord to let his gospel soak into your soul."

"Never lose heart in the power of the gospel. Do not believe that there exists any man, much less any race of men, for whom the gospel is not fitted."

"Let this be to you the mark of true gospel preaching - where Christ is everything, and the creature is nothing; where it is salvation all of grace, through the work of the Holy Spirit applying to the soul the precious blood of Jesus."

"If God does not save men by truth, he certainly will not save them by lies. And if the old gospel is not competent to work a revival, then we will do without the revival."

"On Christ, and what he has done, my soul hangs for time and eternity. And if your soul also hangs there, it will be saved as surely as mine shall be. And if you are lost trusting in Christ, I will be lost with you and will go to hell with you. I must do so, for I have nothing else to rely upon but the fact that Jesus Christ, the Son of God, lived, died, was buried, rose again, went to heaven, and still lives and pleads for sinners at the right hand of God."

"We have an unchanging gospel, which is not today green grass and tomorrow dry hay; but always the abiding truth of the immutable Jehovah."

"If the Lord's bearing our sin for us is not the gospel, I have no gospel to preach."

"The heart of the gospel is redemption, and the essence of redemption is the substitutionary sacrifice of Christ."

"When we preach Christ crucified, we have no reason to stammer, or stutter, or hesitate, or apologize; there is nothing in the gospel of which we have any cause to be ashamed."

About...

::about the site

Thank you for stopping by Relentless Grace. It is my desire that as you read these words on this site, you will be encouraged in your own personal walk with Christ, if you do not have one - I hope that you may come to know Christ more fully and deeply in a way that you can only experience when He is your lover and savior. May Christ be glorified and may you see the Cross and the relentless grace shown to sinners.

::about me

My name is Robbie Schmidtberger, and am the worst sinner that I know. Living in the Pittsburgh area is an eye opening experience as I learn daily of how much mankind needs redemption. My fulltime job is a student at Grove City College as a religion major. On the side I am an assitant to Dr. Iain Duguid, who is one of the best preachers I have ever heard. A lot of what you read on this site are ideas from books (textbook and fun books), sermons, classes and daily experiences as I seek to know Christ more fully and trust in His precious work, along with a personal twist of my life. (movies, friends and job related things)

::about the name

Admittingly I got the phrase from one of Dr. Duguid’s book titles. (Living in the Grip of Relentless Grace, published by P&R) As I read the book and studied God’s word I came to see God’s love for His people as relentless. He pursues us and His commitment to His bride is unwavering, even after she runs away and worships money, sex and pride. He holds me in His hand and refines me very carefully that I may be a reflection of His being and character.

This grace that God gives us is amazing. God bestows Grace upon those He loves and the manner in which He does is like a hound chasing a boar in a great medieval hunt, this grace that is shown to unworthy men and women, of which I am one of them… this grace is nothing less than Relentless. Welcome to Relentless Grace.