Yesterday, Monday night, I went to the Living Room, which for those who don’t know, is a college Bible study. The author from the book unChristian came and spoke about his book and about some of the issues his book talks about. His book, from the way he described it, is a lot of stats on the way Christians are perceived. But he also said it sort of gave people an idea maybe of how the gospel was supposed to be preached.
When he was speaking last night, I was just blown away by what the author had to say. He had so many great things to say about the perceptions of Christianity. He talked about how the gospel, over the past 500 years or so had been severely abridged. He said, the original gospel that was preached from the time Jesus left until about 1500 or so, was the full story. It was creation-fall-redemption-restoration. However, over the past 500 or so years, the gospel has been shortened for convenience purposes, and has gone from the full story to the half story: fall-redemption. Basically, as we have moved into an age where its all about how fast we can do something, we have unfortunately applied the same thinking when talking about the gospel. We have severely cheapened the gospel message to merely half of what it was intended to be.
The inherent point here is that if we are only concerned with “getting people saved” and “getting them into heaven” then we are missing the boat. There is a whole other part of the story which talks about the way we were created, and about how after we accept Christ, we are to be motivated not just to save someone, but to attempt to restore God’s creation. I mean, isn’t that what Jesus did? He didn’t just go up to every person and save them…. He healed their physical needs. He made and cultivated relationships. Then, and only then did He have the opportunity and the proper influence to speak to them about the gospel.
If I tried to write everything that stuck out to me, it would take me all week. But this was just one thing from the talk this guy gave that stuck out to me. But hopefully, this stuck out to you a little bit. I would definitely encourage you to go out and get the book. I believe it contains vital information that every person who calls themselves a Christian and who wants to have influence should read. Because the problem we have found ourselves in is that we have messed up big time, and now people are much less willing to listen. The perceptions people have of Christian are staggeringly bad. I didn’t realize that people thought that badly of Christians. So, our job is a tough one (to change our perception), but it can be done if more people become informed and attempt to live out the full gospel story.
