Derek (also see this post) has this older cd that Ivy told me about entitled, “House Show,” in which he plays 10 songs to a live audience, with some pretty challenging and interesting things to say inbetween. If you know anything about Derek Webb, well…I was just going to put in a phrase or two to encapsulate what I think of him and what he’s trying to do/say, but I should let you research that and decide for yourself. Anyway, there is one particular segment of his discussion about the Gospel that I especially thought about today, and I basically typed it out, not quite word for word, but it’s close.

(This is a smidgen of track #12, “Intro to Wedding Dress”)

“I think that so often we try to make it our job to make the Gospel easier for us to preach and easier for people to hear in order to not get into trouble and to not be confrontational. See, here’s the truth: you can’t just preach the Gospel and not get into trouble. You just can’t do it. As hard as you might try, you can dress it up anyway you want. But if you’re really preaching the Gospel, you’re going to get yourself into trouble and you’re going to be in trouble as well, because, again, the cross is both beautiful and offensive. It must be both. It is both, there is no other Gospel for you to preach. So in the ways that we seek to dress it up, or to “neuter” the Gospel, to rob it of it’s great offense and therefore it’s great beauty, then we’re no longer preaching the Gospel. We’re not doing anyone any favors by making the Gospel easier to hear, because it ceases to be the Gospel. It’s not safe to bodly preach the Gospel, it’s not. You might as well just get to preaching it and getting into trouble; our same Gospel that we’re told will literally set mother against daughter, son against father, not bringing peace but a sword. Dangerous work we’re in as believers, perilous work, that we have before us to preach the Gospel, not only to each other, but to the outside world, the unbelieving world. It’s not safe work. Safe is not a word that I would use to characterize Christians, or Jesus or the Gospel, it shouldn’t. If it is, then it might not be the Gospel we’re preaching. And it makes me think about the great work by C.S. Lewis, “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe,” where these children…find themselves in this other, kind of magical world where all these incredible things begin to happen, and they meet this great lion, Aslan, the Christ figure in the story, and these children when they see him, you can imagine, this huge lion, they’re terribly frightened, they’re scared to death. And they know that he’s king, but they have all these questions, so they go to some that live there that know more than they do, and they say, you have to tell us more about this king, we’re frightened by the sight of Aslan the Lion. Can you tell us, is he safe? Is he safe?? The response that the children receive is not, “Yes, he’s safe. In fact he’s safe for the whole family.” That’s not the response. The response is, “No! No, he’s not safe. But he is good. And he’s the king.” Jesus is not safe, He is not manageable. He’s a wild lion, you cannot tame him. He is not safe, but He is good, and He is King, and you can trust Him…The Gospel we carry is not safe, it is not. It’s not manageable, it’s not efficient. Loving people is not efficient. But the Gospel is good, it is true. But it’s not safe. And so this next song offends its author, as well it should, because it wouldn’t be the Gospel if it didn’t.”  

~Derek Webb

I’ve updated my photos page with pictures from China and Paris, and I’ve also updated my “about” page. ALSO, I have gone back in time and redone the posts that existed before my website changed, and have put the photos back into those posts. If you want photos that you see, please email me or comment here and let me know and I can send them to you.

So, feel free to journey back in time, I know…it’s just so interesting.

Ahem…

But, on that note, please continue to comment on the post below about salvation and anything else you would like to comment on. Thanks!

I’d really love to hear thoughts on this one. Do you believe that a person can lose salvation? And if so, how? And if not, why not?

Let’s take my term of salvation to mean what I believe, which is that by faith in Jesus Christ we are reconciled to God both now and for eternity, and given the Holy Spirit as a gift, testimony, and voice to us and others. Someone that has confessed with their mouth their belief that Jesus is indeed Lord and believes in faith that He has been raised from the dead and that we are justified through His work and not ours (Romans 10:9)….someone who understands the crazy magnitude of the Gospel as an all-encompassing “Good News” that reaches into every aspect of our lives.

So, coming from something similar to what I’ve written above, regardless of whether you believe this or not, do you see problems with this? Do you think that someone can “lose their salvation”? I know that there are people that believe in the Gospel and Jesus as Lord who believe their salvation is not assured, and they back this up with verses from Scripture.

I know people that would say that they used to believe in Jesus, but now they’re not sure they want any part of it, and they wouldn’t say their “Christians” anymore. What do you think about this? Do you think someone can firmly believe it at some point and then decide they don’t, and would this mean they’re no longer “saved”? Do you see where I’m going? I hope so, because it’s hard to articulate right now.

I’d love to hear what you think, why, and even arguments you’ve heard the other way that don’t make sense to you. Or things you’re not sure of.

Let’s engage…if I get discussions going, I’ll give my thoughts, but if not, I’ll post them some other time soon.

I’m working on some things, especially putting up pictures from China and Paris on my photos site. That should be done hopefully soon, as well as some other thoughts and things I want to write about.

But right now, I just wanted to throw something interesting out there if you are interested. It is an article the pastor of my church wrote for a book, regarding his conversations with a transsexual man. If you are interested, it’s definitely worth the time, regardless what you believe. He talked about it at a theology class/discussion we had last night. Here’s the link. The website for the church (Coram Deo) also has a lot of other resources, and mp3’s of the different messages given, which are pretty powerful.

I was reading today on a website titled “Resurgence,” and this paragraph caught my attention.

“Both traditional religion and the new spirituality are forms of self-salvation. The religious way of being our own savior leads us to “keep” God’s laws, while the irreligious way of being our own savior leads us to “break” his laws. The solution is the gospel. The gospel shows us a God far more holy than a conservative moralist can imagine–for he can never be pleased by our mere moral performance. Yet it also shows us a God far more loving than the liberal relativist can imagine–for his Son bore all the weight of eternal justice. His love for us cost him dearly. Practically speaking, this means in our preaching we must be extremely careful to distinguish between general moral virtue and the unique humility, confidence, and love that flow from the gospel. I’m convinced we must learn carefully from Jonathan Edwards: “An experience of God’s grace is the only basis for ultimate and enduring … true virtue.”

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It’s interesting to me sometimes how I can get so introspective and think and analyze and discover and wrestle with Christianity and God and all these complexities, but then it all comes back to such simplicity at the same time.