“Just Do Something”

Most of the amorphous blob that makes up evangelical Christianity seeks God’s will in a mystical manner. The essence of the advice is to pray and then sit in stillness while waiting for God to speak to you. Rarely does the Bible enter into this equation. Today, Tim Challies posted a book review of “Just Do Something” by Kevin DeYoung (one of the authors of “Why We’re Not Emergent (Even Though We Should Be)”. It looks to be a great response to the sit-and-wait method of knowing God’s will in that it tells you what we do know about God’s will (be saved, be sanctified), and then says we’re probably not supposed to know the secret things about God, and a direct will for our lives is one of those things (being unrevealed).

In thinking of this, though, it seems that the real problem at work (besides a low view of Scripture) is that people have no real idea of a theology of God. They know he’s loving and kind; omniscient, omnipresent, and omnipotent, but that’s pretty much it. The more orthodox will have a concept of God’s wrath and justice, but the ever increasingly vocal liberals will deny those attributes. What’s missing is an understanding of the fact that the finite can’t grasp the infinite, that we can’t ever know God as he is, and a resulting concept of mystery.

But these are the same people who tell you that they don’t want to know about God; they just want to know God. I like Dr. Horton’s response to that in Christian Mind last term — go and try telling that to whom you’ve married or are dating, and see how far that sort of sentiment gets you.

Radical Womanhood: Feminine Faith in a Feminist World

Carolyn McCulley’s book is now available; the above is the intro movie that was made to promote it.

I’ve been looking forward to reading it for a good while now, ever since reading one of the historical excerpts she posted on her blog. I have shied away from women’s history because it almost always is taught by a feminist with a skewed picture of Christianity and its teachings (as well as a failure to realise that good teachings may be badly implemented by sinful people), so I’m glad to be able to read a history of feminism from a solid Christian perspective.

Interestingly, one of the commenters on Justin Taylor’s blog (whose post gets a hat tip for prompting this post), said she thinks that McCulley draws the wrong conclusions on Christian feminism. She didn’t make clear if she got that from the movie or the book, but it would make far more sense for it to be the latter, as I really don’t think you can say that from the movie — mostly because nothing is said about Christian feminism in the film. (And I should note that as the book was actually relased on 1 October — a fact that I’d missed — it’s entirely possible for the book to have inspired the comment.) Obviously, not having read the book, I can’t comment on the comment that much more, but it will be interesting to see if she’s right or not…