Taking Back Christianese #1: “The Christian Life is All about Being Transparent and Vulnerable”
Over the last ten years, especially in Reformed circles, there has emerged a vision of the Christian life where one of the defining characteristics of a believer has now become transparency. A Christian is someone who is authentic, real, and open.
While prior generations might have suggested the essential mark of a Christian was obedience, those days seem long gone. In fact, for many (post)modern Christians the central issue is not whether someone obeys God’s law but whether they are honest about whether they have obeyed God’s law.
Authenticity has become (for some) the number one virtue.
Thus, we come to our very first instance of Christianese: “The … Continue reading...
Can the Ethiopian Change His Skin or a Leopard His Spots? How Postmodernity Has Led to a Culture of Hypocrisy
There has been a lot of chatter the last few weeks about Rachel Dolezal, civil rights activist and the former head of the NAACP in Spokane, WA. Although she presented herself as African American–a bit of a prerequisite for heading up a chapter of the NAACP–it turns out that she is not black after all. Indeed she was a blonde, freckle-faced white girl born to two white parents. She has merely changed her outward appearance.
Of course, objective facts regarding biology, genetics, and ethnicity have not proven to be a deterrent to Dolezal’s insistence that she is black. “I identify as black,” she told Matt Lauer. In other words, I … Continue reading...