More Criticism of Me Generation Theology
Followup to a prior post that dealt in part with criticism of the Four Spiritual Laws. Here's something from Rich Vincent at theocentric.com (you can already guess this site's views on 4SL):
Following are a few examples of popular contemporary attempts to communicate the gospel:
The Four Spiritual Laws. This presentation consists of four simple statements: (1) God loves you and offers a wonderful plan for your life. Man is sinful and separated from God. (2) Therefore, he cannot know and experience God’s love and plan for his life. (3) Jesus Christ is God’s only provision for man’s sin. Through Him you can know and experience God’s plan for your life. (4) We must individually receive Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord; then we can know and experience God’s love and plan for our lives.
The Roman’s Road. This presentation involves stringing together a series of texts from Paul’s epistle to the Romans. The following passages are usually cited: “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Rom. 3:23); “For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom. 6:23); “But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom. 5:8); therefore, “If you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you shall be saved” (Rom. 10:9).
Evangelism Explosion. This presentation hinges on two questions placed before the prospective convert: “Do you know for sure that you are going to be with God in heaven. If God were to ask you, ‘Why should I let you into My heaven?’ what would you say?” These two questions are followed by a presentation that loosely follows the four spiritual laws with an emphasis on the insufficiency of human works to achieve salvation.
All of these contemporary gospel presentations are true. All of them bring up significant issues. And yet, none of these presentations are the gospel according to Jesus!...
When we contrast Jesus’ gospel with the contemporary presentations, we note significant differences between them.
The contemporary gospels are personal and individualistic. The gospel according to Jesus is universal, historic, communal, and global. The scope of Jesus’ gospel is not simply reduced to an individual and his or her relationship with God; the scope is an event in history that has global – even universal! – significance. The gospel does not begin with “God loves you and offers a wonderful plan for your life.” The gospel begins with “God loves the world.”...
The contemporary gospels are narcissistic. They appeal to an individual’s self-interests. They invite an individual to weigh the risks and benefits of salvation. The gospel according to Jesus calls an individual to self-denial for the sake of the world....
The contemporary gospels are rational. They emphasize believing certain propositions. The gospel according to Jesus is holistic. It calls us to indwell God’s story and share God’s mission. The invitation is not simply to believe a few facts, but to follow the living and reigning Savior in the power of his Spirit for the glory of God and the sake of the world....
The contemporary gospels are future-oriented. They are primarily concerned with guaranteeing that the prospective convert makes it to heaven and escapes hell. The gospel according to Jesus is oriented in the present. The kingdom of God is at hand....
The contemporary gospels marginalize the church. It is assumed that the church has no place for the prospective convert before conversion. After the “convert” receives Jesus, they are sometimes (but not always) encouraged to find a church. They are told that the church exists to feed, support, and maintain their own individual relationship with Jesus. Participation in the church is a support to their personal and individual faith, but little more. The gospel according to Jesus is explicitly ecclesiastical. Jesus calls his followers to share his mission in community. He made it clear that his mission was to build a body of people who shared his mission....
Finally, the contemporary gospels are non-missional. The call they give is not to share God’s mission but to possess personal salvation. The gospel according to Jesus is a call to share God’s missionary heart – to witness in community of God’s good, gracious, global, and peaceful kingdom....
The contemporary gospels allow us to retain without critical examination many negative elements. We can embrace Jesus as our “personal Lord and Savior” and continue to embrace rugged individualism, narcissism, rationalism, and anti-institutionalism. We can speak of how much God loves us personally while forgetting that God loves the whole world passionately. We can pursue pious private devotions and forget devotion to God’s corporate mission in and through God’s church. We can justify violence, nationalism, and moralism without realizing that these are the very things Jesus’ kingdom rejected – and the very things that got him killed!
We desperately need to embrace afresh the gospel according to Jesus. We must allow it to challenge the status quo and free us from cultural captivity. God’s kingdom will always challenge our kingdoms – both personal and corporate.
More of Rich Vincent's writings are available here.
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