A Couple of Notes

Just a couple of things. First I have been reading through a small book by Donald MacLeod called Shared Life. Subtitle is The Trinity & The Fellowship of God's People. This is a great book for the beginner Christian. I really appreciated a couple of paragraphs that answer the question of "why?" the Trinity is important to learn. With so much demand for "practical preaching, here is a portion of his response.

Even here, however, we need to be careful. What do we mean by practical? We think immediately of humanitarianism: of assisting our neighbors, of relieving famine in Africa, of ministering to drug addicts and alcoholics. Practical is seen almost exclusively in terms of this world. Such thinking looks harmless enough, but what it actually makes us say is this: loving our neighbor is practical, loving God is not. As Christians we obviously have no right to think like that. Practical Christianity will certainly involve concern for our fellow man and good will towards our neighbor wherever we meet him. But it begins with loving God, and with expressing that love in humility, gratitude and obedience.

The book is broken down into 3 section. First, an explanation of the biblical teaching of the Trinity and the major thinkers down through the centuries contribution to our ability to articulate the teaching. The second section deals with the Trinity in our religious life. The third is a defense of the doctrine in light to the major world religions and cults.

MacLeod is also the author of one of the best books on the Person of Christ that I have in my personal library. In this book you will receive a very thorough understanding of who Christ is from the Scriptures and also the historic debates concerning His dual nature.

Get it. Read it. Give it to a Christian friend.

I also managed to listen to a few programs of Issues Ect. with Todd Wilken. Shane Rosenthal was interviewed by Todd last week. After a few generations of bad preaching and worse youth group programs, Shane discusses a survey showing that American Christian youths are simply moralistic deists looking for a life coach in Jesus. Basically, we have become narcissistic gnostics looking for new ways to experience Jesus.