Tim Keller posted a few days ago at the Resurgence blog about five issues facing the western church. It is all good, but 3, 4 and 5 were especially intriguing.
Here is No. 4:
4. The growing cultural remoteness of the gospel
The basic concepts of the gospel—sin, guilt and accountability before God, the sacrifice of the cross, human nature, afterlife—are becoming culturally strange in the West for the first time in 1500 years. As Lesslie Newbigin has written, it is time now to ‘think like a missionary’—to formulate ways of communicating the gospel that both confront and engage our increasingly non-Christian Western culture.
How do we make the gospel culturally accessible without compromising it? How can we communicate it and live it in a way that is comprehensible to people who lack the basic ‘mental furniture’ to even understand the essential truths of the Bible?
This is the one that I feel deeply as I try to teach scripture to my family, the guys at Bible study and the Friday night group. There is a disconnect at the conceptual level. in our culture today, we have a real problem believing that we, as humans, are anything more than “slightly off center.” there is real resistance to the concept of depravity or original sin, even if the group says they believe in these concepts. when you spin out what these concepts mean theologically, the resistance begins to build.
If we don’t really believe in original sin and depravity, then we don’t really need much of a salvation. In addition, if we are trying to live our Best Life Now, then who cares about investing in the life to come (laying up treasure in Heaven)?
Anyway, read all five of the issues Keller sees facing the church and tell us what you think.