Ask Anything Wednesday: Returning Next Week

Just to let everyone know, our weekly feature Ask Anything Wednesday will return next week. If you want to submit a question for consideration as an upcoming post to this series, just add it as a comment below.

The New Faces of Christianity 5: Good and Evil

Today the ACFAR Network continues reading through The New Faces of Christianity: Believing the Bible in the Global South by Philip Jenkins. If you haven't bought the book or signed up yet, it is not too late to join! This week we are discussing chapter 5: "Good and Evil."

Summary

Now Jenkins turns to understand what Christians in the Global South believe about evil and sickness. These are not unrelated concepts to them--both realities intersect in our world. Their worldview begins with a firm recognition of the existence of evil and the devil. Demonic forces are always present in our world, causing natural disasters as well as sickness and misfortune. And while some Southern Christians have no problem connecting their faith to older religions, other believers reject these practices and all forms of paganism as nothing less than devil worship.

At the same time, their pagan religions have left an inheritance of needing to manipulate the spiritual forces people battle. Because they realized the presence of spiritual menaces, paganism provided them with ways to fight these enemies. Contemporary Christianity often responds to these concerns globally by the practice of spiritual warfare and deliverance ministry. Rather than being fringe beliefs of extreme charismatics as in the West, spiritual warfare and exorcism are regular elements of Christian practice throughout the South.

Given the centrality of spiritual warfare, the use of biblical texts on conquering spiritual powers is much more prominent in their lives. So are prayer vigils and all-night services, which ward off the dark forces in late hours. Witchcraft is also a very real danger, with human beings advancing evil and harming others. Thus Christians often fight against diviners and sorcery.

With evil all around, struggling against the spiritual powers is connected with the healing of the body and mind. Both are forms of deliverance, and this deliverance can be found in Christ. As a result, the gospel is not simply concerned with our souls; it brings victory to all areas of our life. Again, this focus can be seen in the traditions of these societies before Christianity was introduced, but Jesus' superiority to all other powers give these churches a weapon against their pagan backgrounds and traditional religions.

What we see in Southern Christianity is the development of responses to their own particular experiences. Whether overcoming beliefs in ancestral guilt and generational curses or controlling other cultural practices, the Global South's attention to spiritual forces and evil causes them to bring their faith to bear in all aspects of their lives.

My Thoughts

I continue to have mixed thoughts regarding Christianity in the Global South. On the one hand, their recognition of the spiritual realm is exhilarating. They are right to recognize that "we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places" (Ephesians 6:12). Additionally, trusting in Christ to bring healing and restoration should be commended. After all, don't we all pray for God to give us health and healing, especially when we or others we know are going through difficult times?

On the other hand, the extent to which some believers seem to be devoted to these realities is problematic. Using Scripture passages as amulets (p. 108) and waiving handkerchiefs for an anointing of healing (p. 116) are two examples of many faulty practices found in this chapter. While Christians can debate the appropriateness of certain views regarding spiritual warfare and exorcism, focusing on them too much causes us to become self-focused and gives too much attention to Satan. The troubles raised by charismatic extremism in our country do not suddenly go away because these practices are taking place outside of the West.

Additionally, expecting God to heal us is never to be assumed by Christians. Can God heal us? Sure He can! But He is not some genie in the bottle that will produce whatever we want. We love God for who He is, not just for what He does for us. While I appreciate the author bringing out the fact that many churches do seek to control these expectations, physical healing is meant to point us to the ultimate spiritual restoration that comes in Christ. Healing is not central to the New Testament message, it directs us to the message--the gospel of Jesus Christ!

All of which makes me wonder, how do we bring the Bible more fully to bear on the spiritual realm that these Christians live in and are aware of? In what ways do these believers need to mature in their response to evil and suffering in this world?

Your Turn

What do you think? Your thoughts do not have to be profound or anything. Please feel free to contribute to the discussion!

Weekly Round-Up: Essential Beliefs, Mormonism, and Wheaton Change of Heart

Here's this week's round-up:

1) John MacArthur, "What Doctrines Are Essential?" Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3 on the Pulpit Magazine blog. What must a person believe as a Christian? How do we differentiate between the foundational beliefs we must all share as Christians and the views we can disagree with one another on? This series helps us to answer these questions.

2) Suzanne Sataline, "Mormons Dismayed by Harsh Spotlight" in the Wall Street Journal. A front page story on Mormonism in a nationally renowned newspaper? This is definitely must reading, especially in light of Mitt Romney's bowing out of the race for the next United States President.

3) Ted Olsen, "Wheaton College Administrators Remove Names From Christian-Muslim Statement" on the Christianity Today Liveblog. I have previously mentioned the controversy surrounding a recent document by evangelicals written to Muslims called "Loving God and Neighbor Together." It seems as if some of the signers have had a change of heart. I appreciate their honesty and courage in removing their names. May we all remain faithful to Christ as we proclaim His good news to Muslims around the world!

Ask Anything Wednesday: Prayer for Upcoming Trip

Welcome to Ask Anything Wednesday. This week I am answering another great question. Please keep them rolling in! Just submit your question--on anything!--in the comments section below and I'll consider responding to it in our weekly feature.

Question:
How should we pray for your upcoming trip to Uganda?

Answer:
For those of you who may not know, our ministry is currently planning an upcoming preparatory mission trip to Uganda in April. Since this visit will likely be the last time my wife and I will be able to go before moving our family over there, there are many ways that you can pray:

1) Please pray for our planning. There is so much to work through and coordinate in traveling half way around the world. From working out our schedule to connecting with our contacts, we have a lot to get through in the next couple of months!

2) Please pray that the Lord will provide for our needs. We still need financial support for some of our expenses. At the same time, we thank God for His continued provision and for many of our brothers and sisters in Christ who have been very generous.

3) Please pray that we will be very productive during our brief stay. We have so many details to work out! Everything from our future living arrangements to the specifics of our ministry will need to be hammered out while we are in Uganda.

4) Please pray for my ministry opportunities. I always look forward to teaching and preaching the Word of God. While this may lead to a full calendar, I wouldn't have it any other way!

5) Please pray for God to be glorified. Obviously, this is the most important of all! We are not simply traveling to Uganda to keep ourselves busy serving God--we are serving Him for the advancement of His kingdom and for His glory!

I know that my wife and I are excited to see what our Lord will do through us on this upcoming trip. Thank you for your commitment to pray!

Book Review: Bridging the Divide

Robert L. Millet and Gregory C.V. Johnson, Bridging the Divide: The Continuing Conversation Between a Mormon and an Evangelical (Rhinebeck, NY: Monkfish Book Publishing Company, 2007), 185 pp.

Can evangelical Christians and Mormons be friends? How should we relate to each other? And what about the differences between our faiths? This book was written to answer these and other questions, but in a distinct way--one author is a Mormon while the other is an evangelical. Robert Millet is the Mormon contributor and a professor at Brigham Young University. Gregory Johnson is an evangelical who began the ministry Standing Together. These two friends seek to understand one another and their differences, publicly sharing their ongoing conversation to help members of both faiths relate to each other.

The outcome of their discussions is Bridging the Divide, an edited transcript from one of their public presentations. This book is broken into four parts: 1) the background of both authors, 2) questions they ask each other, 3) questions they both answer from the audience, and 4) their conclusion. The result is an easy-to-read conversation between two knowledgeable friends of different faiths.

Let me begin with some words of appreciation. Developing relationships with people of other faiths is a good thing. All human beings are important to God, and Mormons are no exception. Personally, I welcome evangelicals building friendships with Mormons and seeking to understand what their LDS friends believe. Johnson and Millet give us a public example of this difficult but important process. If anything clearly comes through in this collaborative work, it is that these men genuinely care for and respect each other.

At the same time, I have some severe reservations about some of the conclusions they have drawn through their relationship. While I could devote a lot of time and space analyzing and critiquing many of the points made by both authors, I would rather deal with the foundational errors that Johnson makes in their book.

To begin, many of his statements of faith are couched in subjective terms. For example, as Johnson introduces this book, he states: "as one who used to primarily engage Latter-day Saint people with an 'apologetics only' mentality, seeking to prove them wrong by contrasting their claims with my understanding of biblical truth, that a dialogue approach is frankly more difficult but at the same time far more rewarding" (xxx, emphasis added). On the following page, he continues: "Thus, in frankness, it is really not my job, nor is it within my ability to make Bob Millet embrace the truth of Jesus Christ as I see it" (xxxi, emphasis added). We have been called by our Savior to proclaim His revealed truth, not simply to share our religious beliefs as best as we understand them. Johnson seems to miss this vital subjective / objective distinction, all too often leaving his arguments in the realm of his own personal religious opinion. Rather than recognizing the need to clearly proclaim God's truth, he is content to merely compare and contrast his beliefs with those of his Mormon friend.

Consequently, Johnson sees himself and Millet as truth seekers on a common journey to know God. He says: "my role is to love Bob Millet, be his friend, to pray for him, share life with him, and honor him as my fellow human being and fellow truth seeker" (xxxi). Later, he writes:

If we can imagine ourselves waling on a road, taking a long journey together, neither of us would be happy if the other one could not reach the final destination. Each of us might be happy that we made it but sad that our friend did not. Therefore the question you ask can never be answered in the spirit of "I'm right and you're wrong" or "I'm going to heaven while you're bound for hell," but rather that we both long to go to heaven together and must be willing to do whatever it would take to help each other discover the Truth (92).

And finally, he states: "It would be wrong to assume that neither Bob nor I are generally seeking truth and would be willing to embrace it wherever it might be found" (95). But is it really wrong to deny their common search? Biblically, no one seeks God unless he has been regenerated by the Holy Spirit. Evangelicals and Mormons are not travelling down the same path together--we have reached our destination in Christ while Latter-day Saints are running away from Him by rejecting the essential truths of who He is and what He has done.

Where do Johnson's errors lead? "If you were to ask me if my friend Bob Millet is a saved Christian, I would have to answer that I do not know for sure. But I can say that it is entirely possible that he and other Mormons could be saved Christians in that they have a sincere and genuine relationship with Jesus Christ" (89). Millet and Johnson go on to say together in their conclusion: "But we also know, as C.S. Lewis once stated, that there are many people even outside the ranks of Christianity who are being led by God's 'secret influence' to focus on those aspects of their religion that are in agreement with Christianity and, as he said, 'who belong to Christ without knowing it'" (128-129). This is nothing other than an open endorsement of inclusivism, a dangerous and unbiblical belief that ultimately casts aside the necessity of evangelism. With such ambiguity in evaluating Millet's spiritual condition, it is no wonder that Johnson shuns a more confrontational approach.

Thus Millet and Johnson's book is an unsatisfying conversation. While all evangelicals should strive to foster healthy relationships with our Mormon neighbors, we must not compromise our commitment to the exclusivity of Jesus Christ and His revealed truth. I pray that we will lovingly, patiently, and yet firmly proclaim the gospel of our Savior to Latter-day Saints.

The New Faces of Christianity 4: Poor and Rich

Today the ACFAR Network continues reading through The New Faces of Christianity: Believing the Bible in the Global South by Philip Jenkins. If you haven't bought the book or signed up yet, it is not too late to join! This week we are discussing chapter 4: "Poor and Rich."

Summary

As with the last chapter, Jenkins draws out how Christians in the Global South understand and apply Scripture. While many Americans and others in the West find the biblical world as different and foreign, Southern Christians feel at home in its pages. Social problems like famine and plague, poverty and exile, clientelism and corruption are usually very familiar to those in the South. The result is a connectedness between Southern Christians and the stories they read in the Bible.

Therefore, the author analyzes some of the most common links that are found between today's global believers and Scripture. These include being poor, living in agricultural societies, having debt and seeking debt forgiveness, facing natural disasters, suffering through hunger and famine, struggling with plagues and diseases, having tribal rivalries, and living in exile or being displaced. Those in the West may also deal with some of these challenges, but Christians in the South are surrounded by these realities constantly. It gives them an immediate connection to the biblical world.

Another feature of Southern Christianity is often its status as a minority faith. They are usually living among Hindus, Buddhists, or Muslims and tend to make up a very small if not marginal minority. Thus, they think differently about their faith than those in the West whose societies have been rooted in Christianity for centuries. In the South, there are normally two opposite responses to how believers should coexist with other faiths: either they separate or they cooperate. Either way, these believers cannot avoid wrestling through how they should live among and treat those belonging to other religions.

With Christians in the minority and experiencing so many challenges, they are often looking for a gospel that deals with this life and is not just focused on the hereafter. As a result, we are seeing globally the rise of the prosperity gospel. This belief teaches that Christians have the right and responsibility to seek prosperity in this world, obtaining the health and wealth they desperately need in their lives. Often using the Bible to support their gospel, these preachers find promises of prosperity given throughout Scripture and give hope to those with nowhere else to turn.

My Thoughts

On the positive side, I came away from this chapter recognizing that we have a lot to learn from our Global South brothers and sisters in Christ regarding the Bible. I enjoyed reading the insights they often bring out from the Word of God. The parables connect with them in a way that I have not experienced. While I all too often become focused on my involvement in this world, they recognize the transience of our lives and our dependence upon God. I love seeing God bringing together His people from around the world, all bringing their unique contributions together to glorify our Savior!

At the same time, I recognized a negative side in what I was reading. Two issues really stuck out, the first of which involved the relationship between Christianity and other faiths. Jenkins wrote:

When modern Christian thinkers consider these [other] faiths, they find it difficult to believe that God was not in Asia before the missionaries brought the gospel. In various ways, it seems, perhaps the Spirit was working in other religions. . . . Practical issues of survival apart, it is tempting for Christians to see their own religion as one voice among many, to stress commonalities with the mainstream Asian religions. . . . Conversion need not mean abandoning one's old faith as false (85, 87).

It appears as if these Christians do not recognize the uniqueness of our faith or the exclusivity of our gospel. We need not deny that there is any truth in other religions to realize that they are indeed false and cannot reconcile us with our Creator.

Additionally, the growth of the prosperity gospel is troubling. While the author tries to downplay the problems of this false gospel, it is a soul-damning counterfeit. God does promise to take care of us, but the prosperity we should ultimately seek is spiritual (Matthew 6:25-33).

With this in mind, how can we balance the positive and the negative here? How can we both learn from our fellow believers in the Global South while at the same time help them grow in their understanding of the true gospel and its uniqueness?

Your Turn

What do you think? Your thoughts do not have to be profound or anything. Please feel free to contribute to the discussion!

Weekly Round-Up: African Christianity, New Resources, and Mormonism

Here's this week's round-up:

1) Malita Wamala, "We were perfected all right!" in the Weekly Observer newspaper (Uganda). An African Christian gives a strange mix of ideas that are largely divorced from biblical revelation.

2) Harriette Onyalla, "Take god at his word - Marilyn Hickey" in the Sunday Vision newspaper (Uganda). Yet another problematic American charismatic is visiting Uganda. Not only does Hickey preach the false prosperity gospel, but she also frequently speaks about the need for deliverance from generational curses.

3) CounterCultSearch.com. A new search engine that should prove to be a helpful resource for researching cults and other new religious movements.

4) Towards 2010. A new blog from the Lausanne Movement as they prepare for the next worldwide meeting in South Africa in 2010. This blog will be a must-read for any believer interested in missions and the global church.

5) "LDS President Gordon B. Hinckley dies at age 97" in the Deseret Morning News nespaper (Salt Lake City). Given the leadership of the Mormon church, the President's death is always an important time of transition for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. As a former Mormon myself, I recognize the need for evangelicals to become more familiar with what is happening right now in the LDS church.

6) "As Mormon church goes global, a test to attract and keep new converts" in the International Herald Tribune. Another important piece on Mormonism, especially as the LDS church grows around the world. This article ends on a sobering note, especially in light of our ministry:

[LDS Church leader] Uchtdorf also said that in areas with fast growth potential, the church must grow "slowly and in a natural, healthy way" so that local congregational leaders are well grounded in doctrine.

"In some parts of Africa, we could baptize full villages," said Uchtdorf, 66. "We could immediately explode our membership. We're going slowly to have sufficient leadership."