In the spirit of the Gospel meetings of yore, each post will represent a night of said meeting. I expect this meeting to run more than seven nights. You may also consider this gospel e-meeting, in part, satirical in form. The other part, I suppose, is a cultural re-adaptation. What's more culturally relevant than taking an old form of communication and putting an e in front of it, after all?
As with all first nights, I think we have to start off with the dirt, the fire and brimstone, the hellfire and Jonathan-Edwards-sinners-in-the-hands-of-an-angry-God-type thoughts. I mean, where else can you start except with pointing out why one needs any gospel in the first place? This makes sense to me. It's the classic salesman technique: you can't sell a solution until the customer is aware of the problem. Ladies and gentleman, I give you technology. It solves all the problems you never knew you had.
It's a crude metaphor, but it works. The analogy breaks down, however, when you being to consider yourself a salesman and the Gospel your trade. We don't peddle; we live. But that's getting ahead of 0urselves. Let's talk about why people and the world they live in are "bad..."
in the next post. Sorry, but James Wood says these posts are too long so I'm going to have to break them up into smaller chunks.
2 comments:
So now I have to read them! I should have kept my mouth shut :)
I've been running up against this issue of late and I think that we really need to give the fire and brimstone a rest. Most of the people I meet are pretty pessimistic about themselves to begin with. Usually if they are willing to have a spiritual conversation I find that they already know the stuff that they are doing wrong - they need to hear some good news about what they can and are doing that is right.
$0.02
I tend to the think the fire and brimstone approach is a far more appropriate internal technique, not an effective means of presenting the gospel to those who stand outside the kingdom. I find that in varying degrees, people understand the world is fundamentally flawed on some level, though I would disagree that most people know or accept that they are a part of the problem or have some guilt in this equation. However, people often are seeking the means to be a part of the solution, the opportunity to live life a better way.
Meanwhile, those who live rooted in the religious context could use some reminders about the power and mission of the "angry God" you mentioned. Too much pandering to the lukewarm masses in our world today in my opinion. Accountability is a tool for the corporate as well as the individual realm of spiritual discipline.
Probably only worth half a penny.
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