Last night I finished reading The Last Word. (I couldn't hold back any longer!) We'll see if that helps or hurts my discipline of posting on each chapter - I'm about half way through.
As I've already pointed out in the last few chapter posts, we've pretty much hit the end of the line for those who absolutely require propositional truth to form the backbone of their gospel rationale. This morning as I surfed around I came across this Eugene quote on Tom's site that has something to say about that:
"The great attraction for distilling Scripture into truths and morals and lessons is simply laziness. The lazy pastor no longer has to bother with the names, the cities, the odd embarrassing details and awkward miracles that refuse to fit into a modern understanding of the good life. Across this land pastors have turned their studies into "stills," illegal distilleries that extract ideas and morals from the teeming narrative of Scripture. People, of course, love it. They come to get their Mason jar lives filled with pure truth so that they won't have to deal with either the details of Scripture or the details of their own lives. Drinking this pure white lightning bypasses the laborious trouble of hoeing the garden, digging the potatoes, preparing and cooking the meals, eating and digesting. This distilled liquid goes directly to the bloodstream and gives a quick rush of exhilaration. But it is, in fact, poison. We are not constructed biologically or spiritually for ingestion of this 100-proof stuff. We have mental-emotional digestive systems with complicated interconnections that notice and savor an enormous variety of words and sentences, stories, and songs, runinatingly take them in and assimilate all the vitamins, enzymes, and calories that give us healthy lives."
Living the Message, p.95
As always, Eugene tells it like it is.
Recent Comments