Scripture Engagement

Jayson Georges, in his book '3D Gospel' suggests there are three sets of dynamics in Scripture and also in worldviews that people use as a framework when interpreting Scripture, and especially when understanding the gospel: Innocence-guilt. This the one any Westerner will have grown up with. The big question is, 'How can sins be paid for?' I'll let John Piper explain the rest:  What is the Gospel?   Honour-shame. This is much less individualistic than the one above. The big question is, 'How can honour in the family be restored?' The family, in terms of Scripture, is the descendants of Jacob, and, by extension, the whole of humanity. All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God (Rom 3.23). Gentiles were excluded from the covenant (Eph 2) but have now been included. The barrier between Jew and Gentile has been broken down. We are fellow citizens, with them. Jesus, as our older brother, has regained the honour he always deserved, and shares it with us,...

We are used to talking about Bible translation in terms of communication. Missiologists talk often talk about 'bridges' used for sharing the good news, which is also a communication metaphor - we have something we want to communicate, but we need a bridge, a way of expressing it, some kind of packaging for it, so that it communicates correctly (or hides whats inside the package, if we interpret the metaphor literally). This is a misunderstanding for two reasons: It is a false assumption that we have 'correctly' understood the good news. Unfortunately we have only understood a representation of the good news for our own culture . It doesn't matter how we package it, this will be misunderstood or irrelevant to the receptor culture (the primary audience in question). For instance, those in the minority world often explain the good news in terms of our guilt before a just God who has to punish sin, and that He, in Christ, took that punishment on our behalf to make us...

So there's a lot of discussion at the moment about why postmillenials are leaving the church. I'd like to suggest one possible reason, and that's an inappropriate explanation of the gospel. Evangelicals tend towards using a substitutionary atonement theology in their explanations: we're sinners, we deserve God's wrath, Christ took the punishment we deserved, and so on. The trouble with this is that it really doesn't resonate with a postmillenial view of the world.  Firstly people don't think of themselves as sinners. To believe we are sinners means accepting a world where God is judge, there are clear rules, we have broken them, and that puts us in the dock, as it were. We're like criminals. But millenials don't feel that way. Another option, according to Jayson Georges' book 3D Gospel , is that people see themselves as shaming their family or peer group or 'clan' (again, a kind of peer group), and that this causes a break in ...