Blog - Page 138 of 318 - John H Armstrong

How Otherworldly Should I Be?

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:18:17-05:00October 17th, 2010|Categories: Spirituality|

It seems to me that much of the emphasis of evangelicals on piety and Christian living is rooted in a false dichotomy, or dualism. Spirituality, at least the way I learned about it, meant to withdraw from the world. And devotional life, or quiet time as we call it, means to get my battery charged so I can function in the world without being overwhelmed by it. The image is much like that of a modern battery-powered car. You plug it in overnight and then it runs for so many miles during the day. If you want to go the distance you need to charge the batteries all the more, thus spend more time away from the world. There is almost an equation here: the more time you spend alone the further your car runs in the real world. I can’t remember how many times I’ve heard the quote from Luther that he had a busy day before him so he would spend “three hours in prayer” that morning. Honestly, that has created more than a fair share of guilt for me for a […]

The Human Art of Prospection

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:18:17-05:00October 16th, 2010|Categories: Books, Psychology|

I admit to a growing love for various kinds of psychology and psychological research. The human brain is simply amazing. And much of what distinguishes humans from lower primates, at least in terms of our brain, is in the frontal lobe of the human brain.

After viewing a PBS series on emotional life I was drawn to read the book written by the host of this three-part series. The book, Stumbling on Happiness, by Harvard professor Daniel Gilbert, is a delight. It is funny, well-written, fascinating and incredibly helpful to Christians, even if they reject his evolutionary biology.

If you were asked, says Gilbert, to name the human brain’s greatest achievement you might think of impressive artifacts produced: The Great Pyramid of Giza, the International Space Station, or perhaps the magnificent Golden Gate Bridge. These are great achievements but they are not, argues Gilbert, our “greatest” achievements. A sophisticated machine could produce all of these and much more. Gilbert writes, “Seeing the […]

How Does a Postmodern Understanding of Faith Relate to a Premodern Understanding?

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:18:17-05:00October 15th, 2010|Categories: Postmodernity|

All my early life I heard that premodern Christianity was intolerant and ignorant in comparison with the great teachers of the Protestant Reformation. This is simply not true. One illustration will suffice. Theologians such as John Duns Scotus (1270-1308) and William of Ockham (1288-1348) developed new ideas, often quite very different ideas, but they never started new churches or got excommunicated. Different ways of understanding the faith were not only tolerated in premodern time but they were, in so many ways, celebrated. The reason for this breadth in theology is clear. Truth was not thought of as narrow and precise like mathematics.

A primary reason for this premodern flexible approach to interpretation is that Christians argued that Scripture was the root of all truth but the Scripture did not have a single, univocal meaning. Listen to how St. Augustine, one of the greatest orthodox minds in the Western Church, put this regarding the church’s reading of Genesis:

Although I hear people say “Moses meant this” or “Moses mean […]

How Shall We Respond to Our Postmodern Context?

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:18:17-05:00October 14th, 2010|Categories: Postmodernity|

Postmodernism teaches us that human concepts are not God-given. Many postmodernists believe that some forms of understanding “may” be innate to our humanness but most are clearly the products of human conventions that were formed within particular cultures and historical events. This whole new way of thinking calls into question the very way that we use language. But if language no longer communicates objective reality then how can we rely on words themselves to faithfully communicate the truth of the gospel? Is this not a short cut to religious and moral relativism?

It would be helpful to define relativism at this point. It is the philosophical doctrine that all criteria of judgment are relative to the individuals and situations involved. It is the theory, especially as it is used in ethics or aesthetics, that conceptions of truth and moral values are not absolute but only relative. The term, especially when it is employed by Christians, refers to idea that there are no absolute truths; i.e. truth is always relative to some particular frame of reference, such as language or culture. This then leads to moral […]

What Happened to Modernity?

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:18:17-05:00October 13th, 2010|Categories: Postmodernity|

Yesterday I suggested that the words postmodern and postmodernity are being widely used by Christians these days. They are quite often used in pejorative and unhelpful ways. When I am asked if I am sympathetic to postmodernism I am not sure how to answer since I have no idea at all what the questioner means?

If the person asking me the question means, “Do you reject truth claims and moral absolutes and embrace relativism?” then my answer is unashamedly negative. But if the person means, “Do you believe Christianity is entering a new time in history when the way that we do theology, mission and ministry will change rather dramatically because the methods we will use to discover truth are changing?” then my answer is an unashamedly positive.

To understand this we need a working, but very simple, grasp of modernism itself. Modernity refers to the Enlightenment of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It was the world in which belief in enlightenment through science arose. This way of […]

Defining the Most Misused Word in Modern Christian Conversation

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:18:17-05:00October 12th, 2010|Categories: Postmodernity|

If you’ve heard the word once then you’ve likely heard it hundreds, if not thousands, of times: postmodern. It is used to describe the current cultural and social context of the West by many writers. It is used in college classes in philosophy and literature (which is where it seems to have originated actually). And it is now used in pulpits and Christian conversations almost every day. One can safely conclude that this postmodern discussion, pro and con, is nearly ubiquitous these days.

I picked up a publicity card in a Christian bookstore (there are less and less such stores these days) that promoted a new book from a very conservative evangelical publishing company. The card employed all the appropriate marketing ideas to try to get me to visit a web site, read excerpts from the new book and get acquainted with the author’s thought so I would buy his book. The exact same process was used by Zondervan to market my book, Your Church Is Too Small. This was not what caught my attention.

[…]

The Church Must Eschew Techno-Mastery For Biblical Mystery

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:18:18-05:00October 11th, 2010|Categories: ACT 3, The Church, Unity of the Church|

We live in the age of ever growing technology. The very fact that you can read my words via this post, view the attached video through YouTube and benefit from numerous advances in ways to learn is evidence itself. The problem here is one that does not appear so obvious to many in the church. Technology can never become a substitute for incarnation and the worship of a God who is not bound to such technology.

Having a wrist watch is generally helpful. (With cell phones even the watch is less needed these days!) But being bound by your wrist watch is to be enslaved to a tool. It is considered polite and important to be “on time” in our culture. To this end the watch can help you. But when you must have a $5,000 Rolex, purely as a symbol of power and status, something profoundly wrong has happened in this equation.

The church often thinks that spiritual and congregational “excellence” equals the best that technology can offer. We then substitute the technological method for human presence or weakness, since the human will […]

Paul Cedar & the Mission America Coalition

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:18:18-05:00October 10th, 2010|Categories: Evangelism, Missional Church, Missional-Ecumenism, The Church|

One of the great joys of the mission of ACT 3 is getting to know Christian leaders as friends and sharing my vision and life with these leaders. I am the one who always gets the greatest blessing from such meetings. This was true again on a recent trip I made to southern California, where I enjoyed a long lunch with Dr. Paul Cedar, the chairman and CEO of Mission America. Paul has previously served several churches as pastor and was the president of the Evangelical Free Church in America. He is a warm and encouraging person who loves Christ and people. He has a vision of the church living and praying as one. He is, in spirit, a missional-ecumenist!

Yesterday I mentioned the Third Lausanne Congress on World Evangelization in Cape Town, October 16-25. The First Lausanne was convened in 1975 in Lausanne, Switzerland. This first meeting produced the important work called The Lausanne Covenant. It helped to bring evangelicals together in a whole new way. It also centered their vision on Christ and his kingdom. The Second Congress was held in 1989 in Manilla. Various […]

A “Sleeper Film”: As It Is in Heaven

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:18:18-05:00October 9th, 2010|Categories: Film, The Christian Minister/Ministry, The Church|

Some films I come to love are sleepers. You hear nothing about them except by word of mouth or by sheer accident. Such is the 2004 Swedish film, As It Is in Heaven, written and directed by Kay Pollak. Nominated for “Best Foreign Language Film” at the 77^th Academy Awards in 2005 As It Is in Heaven is both romantic and funny yet provides a critical, and fair, look at religion and the tendency to be dour and joyless in the faith.

The lead role features actor Michael Nyqvist as Daniel Daréus. He is a successful and renowned international conductor who burns his life out through perfectionism. Through it all Daniel’s life aspiration is to create music that will open people's hearts. (This is indeed the real theme of the movie to the end!) His own heart, however, is in bad shape, both physically and emotionally/spiritually. After suffering a heart attack on stage at the end of a performance, he shocks his fans and […]

Son of Hamas

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:18:18-05:00October 8th, 2010|Categories: Books, Islam|

The popular Christian biography/memoir, Son of Hamas, is a genuinely moving story of betrayal, courage and true conversion. The young author, Mosab Hassan Yousef (now living in California), has given us an inside account of the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. But his conclusions will unsettle hopes for a lasting peace. When he decided to leave his role as a undercover agent for the Israeli secret service, Shin Bet, he told his friend:

“We’re fighting a war that can’t be won with arrests, interrogations, and assassinations. Our enemies are ideas, and ideas don’t care about incursions and curfews. We can’t blow up an idea with a Merkava. You are not our problem, and we are not yours. We’re all like rats trapped in a maze. I can’t do it anymore. My time is over” (236).

Mosab Hassan Yousef has been converted to living faith in Jesus Christ as his Messiah and Lord. His story is nothing short of remarkable. I read the book in only a […]