brint and bell

i just added a link to a blog by a former professor of mine, brint montgomery. he's a super bright philosopher with a sharp wit, and it comes across well in his writings. hope you'll take a few minutes to peruse his most recent post regarding "the real problem in afganistan."

also, i recently started reading rob bell's first book velvet elvis. i'm curious who else out there has already read it - i know it's been on my list for a couple of years and i'm just now getting around to it. like most of rob's stuff, it manages to strike a strong balance of challenging, compelling, and amazingly sensical.

the thing i like about rob bell is that he seems very...i don't know, real, or normal, or something. he asks questions, he expresses doubts, he takes a pretty open approach to the faith. and sure, maybe he's not - maybe it's just a fancy front he puts up to attract people to what he's doing so that they'll buy his stuff and he can get rich.

the thing is, and i think we're all aware of this, is that this type of behavior - being transparent, being open & honest, being willing to say that we don't have all the answers - that is attractive to others. i appreciate rob that maintains an appreciation for the mysticism that our judeo-christian heritage promotes while also acknowledging that throughout history, the church has gotten things really wrong many times.

for example: in 1633, galileo was excommunicated from the church for teaching that the earth revolved around the sun. think that's silly? the catholic church didn't formally apologize and admit that galileo was correct until 1992.

i have no doubt that the church will continue to flex and stretch with culture. if it doesn't, it will surely die, and if there's one thing the church wants to do more than anything else, it's live.

which raises another thought: i'm making a distinction between the goal of the church and the purpose of the church. the purpose of the church has forever been to spread the good news of christ by teaching his prescribed way of life - the goal of the church has pretty much been to not die, which is done primarily by getting more people to agree with what they're saying. ideally, fulfilling the purpose ensures the goal will be achieved, but there are so many occasions where the church's direction strays from the original purpose and instead treats the goal as the purpose.

i have some thoughts on what the church needs to do in order to stay alive in our culture, but i'll wait to get some comments on this post before i post that. until then, here's a ridiculous anti-obama video that is definitively not the right approach to things: