Last week I ran across this article, an interview with Tim Keller, in Christianity Today. This week in my blog I decided to look at the questions he was asked, pull a quote from his answers, and share some thoughts.

Q: You reject marketing apologetics like, "Christianity is better than the alternatives, so choose Christianity." Why?

A: Marketing is about felt needs. You find the need and then you say Christianity will meet that need. You have to adapt to people's questions. And if people are asking a question, you want to show how Jesus is the answer.

What strikes me as odd about this, is that Keller really is working with a, "Christianity is better than the alternatives" apologetic here, it's just being done from a position of service rather than one of authority.

After all, what he's arguing is coming alongside somebody who is feeling the effects of the law in their life, and offering them a Gospel solution to that felt-law experience. However, in addressing that need with the Gospel, he's also saying, "What you're doing, the alternatives, don't meet that need like the Gospel does." In other words, there's the other stuff, and then there's the Gospel.

In the Spring of 2006, a guy from Genesis suggested that I write a book about the basics of the Christian faith and how Christians view the world around us. It seemed like a good enough of an idea, and now, a couple of years later, the elemental life is in print. Here's the book description:

Life, the decisions and challenges we face concerning work, recreation, money, relationships, and the future can become complex and overwhelming. But they don't have to be.

The elemental life uses the four ancient elements of earth, water, fire, and wind to take a fresh look at historic biblical Christianity. In the process, the elemental life offers a different way of looking at the world around you ... a way that provides clarity in the midst of chaos, speaks words of forgiveness when confronted by failure, makes the most of the struggles of life, and gives meaning to the mundane moments of your everyday experience.

It's not easy, but it is elemental. Find a friend and talk, challenge, encourage, and discover together. Get back to the elemental life.

Because the whole thing was written with the goal of getting people to ask questions and explore deeper, I've also developed a website to go with the site where readers can ask questions and I'll dig deeper into the ideas behind the book through the eLife podcast.

As I begin, I think it's important to define intolerance. Essentially, it means to "not tolerate" someone or something else. Now, to tolerate means to put up with something that you disagree with. So, by definition intolerance demands that you disagree with something. I have no problem with people disagreeing, but I do have issues with intolerance because that means other views aren't just disagreed with, they're mocked, ridiculed, and even banished.

Moving on, yesterday I started to write a post titled, "The New Colonialism", but then, for whatever reason, I decided to stop. It began to argue that there is a new dominant worldview that, much like Colonialism in ages past, is intolerant towards all other worldviews. Colonialism was largely cultural and, because it viewed Western Enlightenment culture as the pinnacle of culture, it's set out to reshape, suppress, and destroy all other cultures.

So, what's the new Colonialism? It's called naturalism, which basically says that our knowledge and understanding of the world is limited to what we can experience in space and time.

I'm glad I stopped writing yesterday, because today I was sent the link previewing Ben Stein's new movie, EXPELLED: No Intelligence Allowed which explores the natural pointing us to something beyond the natural. Here's the preview:

It looks like I'm not alone in seeing the intolerance.

It's interesting to read people's responses to yesterday's SuperBowl. The general feel seems to be that the game was horrible until the 4th quarter when most of the points were scored. I have a different take. You see, I love great defense. I love the trenches where the big men fight it out. I love physical, puch 'em in the mouth football. That's what yesterday's game was, especially on the part of the Giants. To watch the Giant's defensive line dominate the game and manhandle Tom Brady was incredible and, for me, made a great game to watch.

I think my love of this kind of football is actually a reflection of my approach to life in general. When it comes to my faith, I'm not a huge fan of the mystical, but would much rather focus on the mundane ... because that's where we find ourselves at the foot of the cross. When it comes to ministry, I'm not a huge fan of the sexy, but I'd much rather connect with everyday people and wrestle with the struggles of everyday life.

How about you? Does your appreciation or lack of appreciation of yesterday's game reflect your personality and lifestyle? What does it say about you?

I recently started reading the book, "Telling God's Story: Narrative Preaching for Christian Formation" and, after a little more than a chapter, it's rocking my world.

The basic premise of the book is that too much of preaching tries to conform Christianity to people's existing worldview. To address this issue, the majority of the book offers a new rhetorical approach for homiletics (aka preaching strategy) that seeks to challenge existing worldviews and replace them with one shaped by the biblical narrative. Here's a great quote:

"American Christianity" ... arose at a time when a fundamental shift occurred within the underlying narrative horizon of the church's life and practice. Whereas the church had historically lived out of the biblical story of God's promise to Abraham and Sarah fulfilled in Jesus and made manifest in the life of the Church, this new narrative placed the individual's movement from sin to salvation to service at its center. As the traditional Christian typology between Israel and the church collapsed, a new type of Israel arose - the modern American nation-state. These two distinct narratives ... have become deeply embedded within the cultural horizons of North America.

So, what does this mean? As an analogy I offer the Firefox web browser and it's collection of plug-ins. In this analogy, the browser functions as the foundational worldview. In the case of America, this includes our love of the autonomous individual, concepts like manifest destiny that drove our early history, and of course consumerism and capitalism.

Now, with Firefox, you customize your web browsing experience by downloading a variety of plug-ins, each of which adds something to the browser, but, in the end, has to work within the browsers limitations. This is essentially what has happened to Christianity in America. Rather than being the browser and having a biblical worldview, we've plugged Christianity into the American experience and forced it to live within that worldviews limitations. To put it crassly, most American Christians are Americans who have Jesus serve as an added perk in their life and, when the Biblical narrative doesn't seem to work within our American worldview, it's Scripture that's expected to give.

To continue the analogy, there are various Christianity plug-ins you can add in. You have the democratic form of governance where every member has an equal say in the workings of the congregation so you have to have boards and voters meetings if you're going to do anything. You also have the Christian nation plug-in that always seems to be downloaded with a fanatic devotion to Israel. If you're more into politics you can grab the Republican plug-in where, until '08, it's all about the issue of abortion, or maybe you're more progressive and want the new Democrat plug-in where you talk about loving poor people.

The fundamental problem with all of these is that Christians are still Americans first and Christians later. The American worldview remains the browser and Jesus a plug-in. The emerging church formed out of a longing to let Christianity be the browser, but it too seems to be going the way of the plug-in. Maybe this book will help me in my longing to form faith communities where Christianity is the browser and America can become the plug-in.