Why should there be a separation of church and state?

If there is confusion between the two spheres, the first being the church, the second being the state, then there will be confusion about the role of the church in the world. Our sinful hearts want to distort the church's mission in this world. God actively calls the church to save sinners and showing the world Christ Jesus in deed and word. However, the state is not defined in the enormous detail or length like the church is. God gives liberty for men to organize themselves in democracies, monarchies or confederations, just not theocracies. To think that the church's mission is to govern the land, is to think that it is our duty to spread the ideals of our country to the rest of the world. Sound familiar?

[thoughts provoked from The Godless Constitution: A Moral Defense of the Secular State]

Frame on Unity

Frame comments on Christ's high priestly prayer, "that they may be one, as Christ and the Father are one."

Some exegetes understand Christ here to be referring to spiritual unity rather than organizational unity. Certainly organizational matters are not the emphasis of this prayer. The emphasis is on the vital union of the believers with Christ in the Spirit. However, that union is not wholly invisible; it is visible in the conduct of Christians in their relationships to one another as well as to God himself. Therefore the spiritual and the organizational cannot in fact be sharply separated. Our lack of organizational unity is caused by, and in turn causes, the lack of fellowship, harmony, and cooperation that are certainly aspects of, or manifestations of, spiritual unity. (Evangelical Reunion, pg. 28-29)

Reformission: Reaching Out without Selling Out

I promised a few days ago a review of Driscoll's book Confessions of Reformission Rev. This is not it, instead it is an overview of Mark's biggest theme which is in another book.

As Reformission combines the best aspects of each type of Christianity. (The Gospel, The Culture, and The Church) Living in the tension of being culturally liberal yet theologically conservative Christians and churches who are absolutely driven by the gospel of grace to love their Lord, their neghbors, and their fellow Christians. (pp. 15)

Driscoll has three basic presuppositions, one is about culture, the other about the church, and the last is about the gospel. And these assumptions all intertwine. It is the the gospel transforms people, creating the church, thus transforming culture. Driscoll teaches that Gospel Christians will take up the good news and live it out in their lives in a godly way. He is not alone on this presumption - Tim Keller, John Piper, Josh Harris, Mark Dever, DA Carson, and many others preach the same message.

It is a beautiful message to preach and certainly grasps the biblical understanding of how Christians are to reach the world. Driscoll sums it up as... reformission begins with a simple return to Jesus, who, by grace saves us and sends us into reformission. Jesus has called us to the gospel (loving our Lord), the culture (loving our neighbor), and the church (loving our Christian brothers and sisters.)

The Parachurch fails here being a simple formula that sacrifices the church (gospel + culture - church). And Liberalism skews Christ as it burns the gospel (Culture + Church - Gospel). And our fundamentalists say the church and gospel has nothing to do with culture (Gospel + Church - Culture). All in all it sounds a lot like R. Niehbur's Christ and Culture models.

some fun summer reading

A class I am taking in the fall has some 16 books on the reading list so I am getting a head start on it. (the class is modern Christian writers), one such book is The Cloister Walk by Kathleen Norris. It is a fictional autobiography... well more truth than fiction in a beautiful composed masterpiece. Two examples:

Listening to the Bible read aloud is not only an invaluable immersion in religion as an oral tradition, it allows even the scripture scholars of a monastic community to hear with fresh ears. A human voice is speaking, that of an apostle, or a prophet, and the concerns critical to biblical interpretation- authorship of texts, interpolation of material, redaction of manuscript sources- recede into the background. One doesn't forget what one knows, and the process of listening may well inform one's scholarship. But in the communal lectio, the fact that the book of Jeremiah has several authors matters far less important than the sense of being sought out, personally engaged, making it possible, even necessary, to respond personally to take the scriptures to heart. (pp. 33)

At morning prayer, we heard these words from Ephesians 2: "so you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God, built upon the founation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus as the cornerstone." The altar gleamed, bone white, before the dark wood of the monks choir, and I could dare to conceive of the church as a refuge, a place to find the divided self made whole, the voice of the mocker overcome by the voice of the advocate. It is still a sinful church- how could it be otherwise? - but the words of its prophets and apostles had led me to this sanctuary, and I could dare to imagine it as home, a place where there is no 'other.' (pp. 46)

PS> we raised $17,000 for Light of Life Rescue Mission today at WORD FM :-) YEAH!!