Truth is ancient; it's grey hairs may make it venerable;
it comes from Him who is the ancient of days. --Thomas Watson

 

14 January, 2008   comments: (0) Athenian Awards   Paraphrasing Relevance: Pop Goes The Bible Whether it be the thundering of a t-shirt cannon in their worship service, or their recent Christmas according to John, Paul, George and Ringo sermons, the leadership at Granger Community Church, with their books and pastor training seminars, certainly know how to push the envelope of 'church'. Surprisingly, they have not been awarded the Old Truth Athenian Spirit Award, up until now. Specifically the trophy goes out to Tim Stevens, who may be their most 'innovative' thinker, for perhaps finding the only way to make a paraphrase like The Message less reliable than it already is. Tim accomplished this by writing his own pop-culture paraphrase of part of the bible, by basing his paraphrase on The Message paraphrase. In addition to the Athenian Spirit Award, I'm also using the blinded by relevance theme on this post, since Tim Stevens' bible translation instructs us to: "always be looking for God in the culture" which he suggests we should do through our use of movies, watching TV, listening to your XM radio, and flipping through the pages of People Magazine. We've been hearing Granger Community Church talk about God "being in" the world's entertainment system for some time now. I first noticed it when they ran their Finding God in Your iPod sermon series which featured various secular songs that are hot on the charts, including some groups with highly questionable lyrics. Last week we linked to a Tim Stevens post about Finding God on TV. Previously Tim posted about the importance of not despising the culture, which sounded a little too much in opposition to the bible's warning of "If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him" for some people; Tim had a lot of incoming fire, and ended up shutting off his comments after a while on that post. Another post suggested that Christians might watch a cultural program with nudity, profanity, and adultery. All of this from the leadership of one of our country's most popular churches; and a church which holds seminars to train pastors how to think and behave the same way that they do. Our Old Truth trophy is based on the Athenians of Acts 17 who always spent their time seeking something new. Likewise, Tim Stevens seems to be on a similar path with his drive to innovate Christianity right up to the brink of what scripture allows, and many would argue, even past that brink. The Athenian spirit comes out in one of his latest posts; it's his paraphrase of a paraphrase of the beginning of Romans 12. He plans to release it in his upcoming book Pop Goes The Church, which is to be forwarded by Ed Young (I'm grateful JI Packer took the day off). Before we look at Tim's pop-paraphrase, let's read one of the more reliable bible translations for Romans 12:1-2, in the English Standard Version: I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. Now let's look at it in The Message Paraphrase: "Take your everyday, ordinary life--your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life-and place it before God as an offering... Don't become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You'll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you." And finally Tim Steven's Pop Culture Paraphrase: "Take your everyday, ordinary life--going to the movies, watching TV, listening to your XM radio, flipping through the pages of People Magazine--and place it before God as an offering. Don't become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, always be looking for God in the culture. You'll be changed from the inside out. While sitting on the couch surfing channels or listening to the Top 20 on the radio, always be looking for what God wants you to do, who He wants you to be, and quickly respond to it. Don't let the culture drag you down to its level, but maintain an awareness of God in the culture and keep watching for the next step you can take toward Christ." This is one of those posts that doesn't require much commentary on my part; I would suggest that some of Tim Stevens' own commenters have raised enough red flags for him to be able to realize that he may be blinded by relevance in his view of this section of the bible. Unfortunately, at the time I'm writing this, Tim's last comment in response to them is: "If I need to repent, then Peterson, Taylor and Phillips need to repent along with me." What do you think? Should Christians become intimately connected with 'culture' so that we can be looking for God in it, and so that we'll be a better witness to fans of MTV and Desperate Housewives? At what point do you think religious innovators like Tim Stevens should stop looking for God in a fallen world; a world that enjoys entertainments like strip shows, crude humor, and the music of Marilyn Manson? Where should we draw the line and say "God is not in that particular aspect of culture" or specifically "I won't look for God in THAT movie, that show, that music, and THAT magazine"? Or as one of Tim's commenters suggested, maybe we should just look for God in the bible (an accurate translation of it that is). Posted by: Jim B.   Link: http://www.oldtruth.com/blog.cfm/id.2.pid.908   Be the first to post a comment about this article        Home  |   About  |  Videos   |  Calvinism