alien gospel

Dieter Zander was referenced as a trigger for some to accuse Emergents of preferring myths to ease our minds rather than deal with truth. I later learned through Frank Turk that a more horrible article, Abducted By and Alien Gospel, by Zander existed. To quote Cent, "Notice how he is trying to talk about the work of Christ and the value of what Christ has done."

Let's take a look at it, I found it informative and something I could relate to. Zander starts by relating how he was caught in a lie when he was 11 years old. In that he was told that lying was sin and if your sins aren't forgiven, you go to hell. From fear of hell, Zander prayed for forgiveness and salvation. Since then he has grown in sanctification and now, thirty years later, he is asking how really effective was this step taken at age 11 and the methodology that got him to that point.

Good question!

He's grown a lot since that 11 year boy so he summarizes that familiar experience with these versus:

• The Son of Man came to seek and to save what was lost. (Luke 19:10)
• For God so loved that world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. (John 3:16)
• Believe in the Lord Jesus and you will be saved. (Acts 16:31)

and traditional definitions:

• Lost — someone who is going to hell because he has not believed in Jesus for the payment of his sins.
• Saved — someone who has eternal life because she has believed in Jesus and asked him to forgive her sins.
• Believe — to agree with the proposition that Jesus, God's Son, paid for our sins, thereby giving us eternal life. Generally we show that we "believe" in Jesus by praying a prayer asking him to forgive our sins and come into our lives.
• Eternal life — life in heaven with Jesus when I die. As millions of evangelicals have been taught to ask: "If you were to die tonight, are you sure you would go to heaven?"

I think he rightly states:

This understanding of the gospel is essentially concerned only with how to deal with sin and death, with wrongdoing and its effects. We've got the past covered — past sins are forgiven. We've got the future covered — heaven when we die. But what about the present? Life, our actual daily existence, is strangely absent from this version of the good news.

This presentation of the Gospel is not the Good News. It is a part of the Good News but it is lacking. Zander later writes that he came to understand that "repent" in Mk 1.15 didn't just mean be very sorry. As I've written before, it means to "to turn around from the way you are going." We are to turn from our way living to live His way of living. I recently quoted John MacArthur as saying, "If I could change modern evangelism in one way, this is it: that we would stop reasoning people to a commitment or decision, and we would start calling people to deny their life, and follow Christ."

Zander also realizes that the Kingdom of God does not equate to arrival into heaven after our demise. He rightly suggests that the Good News of the Kingdom is "to be nearly the whole substance of Jesus' proclamation — the arrival of a different kind of life, under the reign of a present and powerful God who, according to another version of Jesus' good news in Luke 4, was intent upon restoring, healing, redeeming, and reconciling all of creation."

Because of this he offers us more complete definitions:

Lost — to be out of place, as Jesus makes clear in his series of stories in Luke 15. The sheep is not in the fold with the shepherd. The coin has rolled under the couch. The Jewish son is living with pigs rather than at home with his father.

I'm discovering that people around me actually do feel lost. They don't know who they are, they don't know what they're supposed to do, and they don't know what is going to happen to them. Jesus' gospel is good news for these people because it addresses the present in which they live, not just an afterlife that only occupies the realm of occasional consideration.

Saved — if a person is lost, then being saved means being found: brought back to a place of belonging. This happened to the sheep, the coin, and the son. In each parable, that which was out of place (lost) was brought back into the right place (found) — a return worth celebrating. So "being saved" isn't primarily about some eternal disposition - it's about accepting an invitation to return to the right place, as a subject of the kingdom of God.

Believe — to trust or depend on someone or something. This is different than professing to believe something. I can say I believe the chair will hold me up when I sit in it, but that is merely professing to believe something. To place myself in the chair, to put my full weight on the seat, is to believe.

So when we ask people to repent and believe the good news, we are not primarily asking them to intellectually assent to something; we are inviting them to place their full confidence in Jesus for their whole life. In fact, this is how many people responded to Jesus in the New Testament. Matthew left a lucrative business to follow Jesus. The sick and disfigured journeyed to be near Jesus and risked public ridicule, confident Jesus could heal them. After meeting Jesus, Zaccheus gave away half his wealth and repaid those he had cheated, completely reorienting his life.

Naturally, this kind of trust involves acknowledging the ways we have lived without trust. Jesus' death paid for our sins — our daily choices to trust self and to mistrust God — and forgiveness is available. But forgiveness from our sins is just the precursor to the real drama of salvation. Salvation is not just from death, it is for life — a life lived with Jesus in the kingdom of God.

Eternal life — Jesus himself defined this one. "Now this is eternal life: that they [my disciples] may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent" (John 17:3). Eternal life, a life in intimacy with God, starts now and continues as we move from this life to the next. Eternal life is not just a promise related to our future destiny; it is news about what God is offering us in the present.

Sorry Cent, this seems like solid stuff and even if you manage to find a point of disagreement, I miss the basis to begin mockery and causing others to have a false understanding through you misrepresentation.

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