April 2007

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How can Christian live out the commands of Mathew 25 - without the pity? "I was just at church, and they were praying for the homeless," Larry said, holding the day's belongings in a bag beside him. As the subway screeched to a halt, I heard him quip, "I decided that I should pray for the housed." Larry was sick of handouts, sick of condescension. To Larry, as a longtime guest at the homeless shelter at which I worked, Christian compassion seemed like little more than a masquerade, a power trip for those fortunate enough to be in the seat of the "giver" rather than the "receiver." Larry's complaint about Christian compassion resonates with Friedrich Nietzsche's depiction in Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Through the voice of Zarathustra, Nietzsche diagnoses Christian compassion as "pity"—a belittling, demeaning approach to the sufferer that shames rather than restores. Sufferers do not want pity, according to Nietzsche; they don't...

01 April, 2007

by J. Todd Billings From the Church Herald, April 2007 (denominational magazine for the Reformed Church in America) There is a new buzz in the neighborhood, called "emergent churches" or the "emergent conversation." Whether they self-identify as "younger evangelicals" or "postmoderns" or "post-evangelicals," this group of Generation X and Y Christians moves to a different dance from the "baby boomer" generation. No more seeker-sensitive, boiled-down Christianity, with its obsession with "relevance"--as if the New Testament was written in 1970 or so. Instead, "ancient" is better, and "tradition" is becoming a good word again. While we should be cautious about passing trends, the movement known as the emergent church has begun to capture the attention of the RCA. Brian McLaren, a key emergent leader, addressed the 2006 General Synod on how to become a missional church. In west Michigan, steeped in Reformed perspective, 12,000-plus persons flock weekly to Mars Hill Bible Church, with emergent...

01 April, 2007