On those “Blue Bibles, pink Bibles, rainbow hued Bibles, Bibles for banana lovers, Bibles for cat lovers and mouse haters and Bibles printed on recycled paper for those who value the environment more than high quality print”:
…But in the meantime as we seek to serve more and more niche markets with niche products, millions of people remain without the Bible in their own language, and if but a fraction of the investment made by publishers such as HarperCollins in these fancy dress accessory styled Bibles were to be made in Wycliffe’s Bible translation projects then, perhaps, some real light would begin to shine in humanity’s darkness…
In what way have we as evangelical Christians failed to grasp or live out the fullness of God’s missional intent? How (if at all) has our theology of evangelism been weak?
Read Christopher Wright’s response in a 2-part series here (1) and here (2).
A snippet:
We have tended to separate believing from living the gospel, and to prioritize the first. That is, we seem to think that there can be a belief of faith separate from the life of faith, that people can be saved by something that goes on in their heads, without worrying too much about what happens in their lives. So long as they have prayed the right prayer and believed the right doctrine, nothing else ultimately matters, or at least, whatever happens next is secondary and distinct.
…The bad result of this dichotomy is that we have people called believers and evangelicals, whose actual lives are indistinguishable from the culture around them – whether in terms of moral standards, or social and political attitudes and actual behaviour (as various surveys have shown, including the recent Pew survey that showed evangelicals were the largest religious group in the USA who approved of the use of torture).
But even now, the King of Pop must bow his knee to the King of kings. And we pray, that you remind us Lord that our lives are but dust. We are here for a moment, and then we are gone...
