Kalled,
Just wanted to add some thoughts, not necessarily to contradict you, but perhaps to highlight Webb's gross error on this one.
It's a risk to go into a bar and share the gospel with someone...
That's one thing, but when you yourself start drinking along with everybody else, that's what the Bible calls "sin."
it's a risk to go into the inner city and share the gospel...it's a risk to go where the lost people are and share truth with them in a loving way and a way they will understand. It's a big risk to go where the people are who need the gospel.
Yet when we begin to act like those we are ostensibly ministering to, we are becoming enemies of the gospel.
It's not only a risk of our life, but a risk of our reputation. It's a risk of the self-righteous people in the church who have added rules to being a Christian beyond what Scripture commands looking down on us.
Yet this wasn't what Webb was saying at all. He was talking about people who were "risking their reputation" by living lives a lot
lower then the standards the Bible supplies. We are not called to be prudish, but we are called to be pure. We can be in the world, but when we become of it, the world has won.
Yes, we need to live holy lives and lives that glorify God. But what glorifies God more...sitting on our butts on a comfortable pew Sunday after Sunday and praying for lost people or going out to where they are and sharing truth with them that we are praying for? I choose the latter because it is what God has commanded. God never commanded us to stay inside the four walls of our comfortable church buildings and pretend they will come to us. We can have the best theology and the greatest scholars and be the most biblically accurate people on the face of the earth intellectually speaking, but if we're not putting those doctrines into practice than we are no better than the ones running around spreading lies and stealing money on TV.
Right, but again, you seem to be missing Webb's point. Bono is not sharing "truth," in the Biblical sense of the word, with anybody. Social causes may be noble, and may be a secondary responsiblility of the church, but they are not "truth," and Bono's life and doctrine (or lack thereof) make him anything but a christian hero. Johnny Cash giving the finger in Rolling Stone magazine is not putting his faith into practice- it's rebelling against it. It's not advancing the cause of Christ- it is doing injury to it.
Again, we'd probably agree on most of this, but I just wanted to point out that perhaps the thing you have in mind and the thing that Derek Webb has in mind are not the same.
