A Humbled Resistance

A Response to The Irresistible Revolution and Jesus for President

 

Theology (cont.)

 

What is Repentance?

 

Claiborne and Haw characterize John the Baptist’s message of repentance this way:

 

And John preached, “Repent,” a message stronger than a neon sign outside a soup kitchen. It was a radical invitation to rethink the way we live.  (JFP 79)

 

They give a footnote description of repentance:

 

Repent (metaoeite) has nuanced meaning, translatable to “change your mind,” “rethink your life,” “think about the way you think,” or “turn your life around.”  Consider the connected word pensive in English or pensar in Spanish, which both relate to thinking.  (JFP 79)

 

Given the prominence in both the Hebrew and Greek Scriptures of the call to repent30 , what is it that we have been called to turn away from?  Claiborne and Haw would have us to believe it is an issue of imperial economics or lifestyle, but if we study the message of the early church, we can see that the call to repent is over personal sin and rebellion against God.  Far from an “invitation” (something that could be refused without consequence), it is a somber command. 

 

Claiborne and Haw simply offer an updated version of the felt-needs, seeker-sensitive, pop-gospel of “Jesus loves you and offers a wonderful plan for your life31 ” easy-believism-cheap-grace-gospel has produced generations of nominal Christians.  Those church folk with the very problems Claiborne laments in TIR. 

 

 

What is Conversion?  (Rebirth, Regeneration, to be Born Again)

 

Claiborne’s redefinition of conversion is perhaps the most dangerous and disturbing of his errors.  The section entitled Schools For Conversion is so critical I will cite it all by paragraphs with comments interspersed.

 

SCHOOLS FOR CONVERSION

It’s a shame that a few conservative evangelicals have had a monopoly on the word conversion.  Some of us shiver at the word.  But conversion means to change, to alter, after which something looks different than it did before—like conversion vans or converted currency.  We need converts in the best sense of the word, people who are marked by the renewing of their minds and imaginations, who no longer conform to the pattern that is destroying our world. Otherwise we have only believers, and believers are a dime-a-dozen nowadays.  What the world needs is people who believe so much in another world that they cannot help but begin enacting it now. (TIR 149)

 

Conversion in the biblical sense of the word is speaking of a person who has repented and believed the gospel and has passed from death unto life.  (I contend that this is a convert in the best sense of the word.)  To reduce this word simply to mean a noticeable difference and distinguish it from a believer seriously distorts the gospel. We cross from grace back to legalism.

 

Then we will start to see some true conversion vans—vehicles that run on veggie oil instead of diesel.  Then we will see some converted homes—fueled by renewable energy—and laundry machines power by stationary bicycles and toilets flushed with dirty sink water.  Then we will see tears converted to laughter as people beat their swords into plowshares and weld their machine guns into saxophones, and as police officers use their billy clubs to play baseball. (TIR 149-150)

 

This takes the reduction of Christianity to a new level.  In the introduction we saw where young people were looking for something more in Christianity.  Here we see how much less we can offer when we abandon sound doctrine. 

 

There is a kind of conversion that happens to people not because of how we talk but because of how we live.  And our little experiments in truth become the schools for conversion, where folks can learn what it means for the old life to be gone and the new life to be upon us, no longer taking the broad path that leads to destruction.  Conversion is not an event but a process, a process of slowly tearing ourselves from the clutches of the culture. (TIR 150)

 

There are all kinds of conversions.  Jennie Craig and Weight Watchers produce a lot of them.   The danger comes in when we start speaking of lifestyle conversions in biblical terms.  Biblical conversion is not a process; it is a miracle.  It is a sovereign act of Almighty God giving life to the dead.  The dead cannot learn themselves to life nor tear themselves away from death.

 

^ESV Colossians 2:13 And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses,

 

It saddens me to say that at this point we’ve come to the place where D.A. Carson’s evaluation of McLaren and Chalke (in the introduction) rings true in our ears for Claiborne as well:

 

I have to say, as kindly but as forcefully as I can, that to my mind, if words mean anything, both McLaren and Chalke have largely abandoned the gospel.32

 

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