Just in case you haven’t been following what’s going on, Derek Webb is on the cusp of releasing a new album named Stockholm Syndrome.  However, apparently some of the content is a bit edgy (imagine that) and he’s offended his record company.  Not to be stopped however, Webb and company have started an online and nationwide scavenger hunt of sorts to somehow release the material and work around copyright issues.  Details are still emerging, and theories abound, but this is really cool stuff! Relevant magazine is calling it a publicity stunt, but I think knowning Webb’s music, that that controversy is real. There’s a lot ot explain about all the websites that you need to know about, so I’m not going to go into it all, but check out these links:

derekwebb.com – kickdrum

paradiseisaparkinglot.com

black-eye.me – youneverknow

derekwebb.net

shemustandshallnolongerexist.com

twitter.com/ssyndrome

twitter.com/derekwebb

I’ve figured out a lot of the current story using derekwebb.net and shemustandshallnolongerexist.com.  However, there’s a lot to take in.  If you don’t research this stuff, what I have listed above will be confusing, but Twitter me @biggzipp and I’ll explain anything I’ve figured out.

I guess you could say that I’m mostly a hobbiest graphic designer.  I make a little money here and there and I do a bunch of stuff for my church, but mostly I just want to learn and have fun.  These are 4 graphic designers / companies  that I find inspiring.

Action Hero Design

Invisible Creature

Pixel Peach Studio

Media Kamp

Click on the logos to check out the websites, and let me know what designers inspire you.

My brother Andy recently read this book and wrote a review.  I’m posting it here.  The implications of this book are huge: I can’t wait to read it for myself.

Summary
In Total Truth Nancy Pearcey argues that western (American) Christians have been indoctrinated by secular culture, and by poor theological frameworks within the church, that have caused them to acquiesce into a bifurcated system of living and seeing the world, one in which there is a secular/sacred divide that keeps faith locked into the private sphere of life and out of the public sector (17).  Pearcey states, “Many believers have absorbed the fact/value, public/private dichotomy, restricting their faith to the religious sphere while adopting whatever views are current in their professional or social circles” (33).

The problem with this is that it is a breakdown in theology and it highlights the insufficiency of many western Christians’ worldview.  A right understanding of Christianity is, “that there is a biblical perspective on everything – not just on spiritual matters” (44).  Thus, it is every Christian’s duty to think through and live out all of life from a Christian perspective.  “Being a Christian means embarking on a lifelong process of growth in grace, both in our personal lives (sanctification) and in our vocation (cultural renewal)” (49).  Christians cannot afford to accept the terms as they stand – leaving faith at home or in church on Sundays.  Rather, the Christian’s entire life should be driven by a biblical worldview.  This is the only real way to break free from the dichotomies that pervade our thinking and living.  As Pearcey states, “The best way to drive out a bad worldview is by offering a good one (58); one that unifies both secular and sacred, public and private, within a single framework (65-66).

And it is the church’s duty to work to this end.  The church is a training ground for cultivating people equipped to speak the gospel to the world (67).  And by “gospel” Pearcey does not simply mean to share that all have sinned, that Christ died for sins, and that the proper response is repentance and faith.  While it is inferred that she does believe this to be true and that it is the central message of the gospel, Pearcey argues that evangelism encompasses more than disseminating these basic truths.  She states, “The task of evangelism starts with helping the nonbeliever face squarely the inconsistencies between his professed beliefs and his actual experience” (314).  She goes on a few pages later, “In evangelism, our goal is to highlight the cognitive dissonance – to identify the points at which the nonbeliever’s worldview is contradicted by reality. Then we can show that only Christianity if fully consistent with the things we all know by experience” (319).

Moving on in her book Pearcey traces trajectories that led America into its dichotomized way of thinking.  By looking from within the church and from the outside, she exposes several contributing factors to the secular/sacred split.  First from within, Pearcey explains an overarching three-part theme that should guide the Christian worldview: Creation, Fall and Redemption.  She summarizes, “All of creation was originally good; it cannot be divided into a good part (spiritual) and a bad part (material).  Likewise, all of creation was affected by the Fall, and when time ends, all creation will be redeemed. Evil does not reside in some part of God’s good creation, but in our abuse of creation for sinful purposes” (86).  This system is, “cosmic in scope, describing the great events that shape the nature of all created reality.  We don’t need to accept an inner fragmentation between our faith and the rest of life.  Instead we can be integrally related to God on all levels of our being” (95). Using this three-part grid as a tool of analysis, Pearcey then argues, “Throughout the history of the church, various groups have tended to seize upon one of these three elements, overemphasizing it to the detriment of the other two – producing a lopsided, unbalanced theology” (87).

One such failure was Aquinas’s overemphasis of Creation, leading him to a theology of “nature/grace dualism” (92).  The outworking of this error was that the gospel was restricted to the “upper-story realm,” isolated from science, philosophy, law and politics (93).  This gave leverage for the argument that later came to fruition during the Enlightenment; namely, that science and reason are religiously neutral.  From this developed the notion that secularism and naturalism are objective, rational systems, binding on everyone, all the while biblical views are dismissed as biased, private opinions (94).

Once there was an accepted dichotomy between “nature” and “grace,” it was not hard to convince anyone that “science constitutes facts while morality is about values” (107).  And with Darwins’s theory of natural selection came the ability to have a complete naturalistic worldview (106).  The effect of Darwin’s theory has been pervasive.  Pearcey states, “Virtually every part of society has been affected by the Darwinian worldview” (155).

What is insightful by Pearcey, though, is that the overwhelming acceptance of this dichotomy and of naturalism as the “lower-level” neutral sphere of truth is all based upon a philosophical foundation.  The under girding of naturalism is the belief that matter is eternal and that the “system” is closed – neither of which can be proven on naturalist, scientific terms.  Nonetheless, “once people have made that philosophical commitment, they can be persuaded by relatively minor evidence” (168).  Furthermore, at this point, the “game” is biased, because once the two-tiered view of reality is accepted, the naturalists define the rules for access into the “lower realm.”  Science (empiricism) is put forward as the only viable means for validating truth claims.  Or conversely, we must now accept naturalism as a “central tenet” of science (169).

Moving on, Pearcey progresses to show how the dichotomy made its way into the development of our country’s politics and religion.  Originally, in the colonial period, the dominant political philosophy was classical Christian republicanism.  But with the development of thought – that cannot be divorced from the Enlightenment and Darwinism – came the new liberalism, which replaced the sentiment of self-sacrifice and the social structures of family and church with individualism.  The focus was now on self-assertion and self-interest (280).  Even evangelicalism1 with all of its positive affects in many ways worked to further the gap.  The focus on individual conversion led to a doctrine of one-time emotional decisionalism, which ultimately contributed to the belief that Christianity is a “noncognitive, upper-story phenomenon” (272).  Pearcey concludes, “Evangelicalism has largely given in to the two-story division that renders religion a matter of individual experience, with little or no cognitive content” (293).

Pearcey eventually reveals that the bifurcation of public/private has made it into the culture in which we are currently living.  And therefore Christians have a great responsibility to fight against this way of thinking because it opposes truth.  “What Christianity offers is a unified, integrated truth that stands in complete contrast to the two-level concept of truth in the secular world” (119).   So what we must do is “evangelize”2 culture by exposing the flaws of other worldviews and then reveal that the Christian worldview offers a better alternative.  And the alternative we offer is not simply for the private sector; we must, “find ways to make it clear that we are making claims about reality, not merely our subjective experience” (119).

Critical Evaluation
The premise set forth in this book has exposed an entire schema of thinking that I have used to interpret reality.  While I have thought for some time that what Christians need is an entire worldview from which to operate, I have failed to see the pervasive nature of the public/private dichotomy in the western world and my acceptance of it many times.  As a result, there are some questions I now have in relation to this new enlightenment.  For one, how am I to understand the concept of “separation of church and state?”  Originally, this clause was set forth to guard from the establishment of a church-state and to protect the right of individuals from forced religion.  But as it is used now, it seems to “guard” the government from any religious influence (except naturalism), and this seems to be an extension of the public/private dichotomy.  It would be fitting to trace how it is that we should specifically think through this concept of “separation.”

Another trajectory worth tracing is what the implications are for the education of Christian children.  If evangelism is as broad as Pearcey defines it3, and if,  “every subject area should be taught from a solidly biblical perspective so that students grasp the interconnections among the disciplines, discovering for themselves that all truth is God’s truth (129), then is public school even an option for Christian parents?  And furthermore, where do we start as Christian parents in building a biblical worldview with our children?

Lastly, Pearcey calls for us to engage culture by exposing to individuals the inconsistencies in their worldview.  But at what point do we share what Paul calls of first importance: that Christ died, that he was buried and that he rose again?4  And what’s the order in our attempt to put forward both the central gospel message, and an entire worldview that comes with it?

Review by Andy Adkison

I began reading The Kingdom of Christ (TKoC) about two years ago, and was throughly enjoying the book at the time, but for some reason (that I can no longer remember), I failed to finish it in its entirety.  Currently however, I am in one of those modes where I’m enthralled by reading, learning, and synthesizing, so I just finished rereading the entire book.

The Kingdom of Christ is a deeply theological book that is not an easy read, but is well worth the endeavor.  One of the reasons that this is a hard read is the length of the chapters.  The entire book is only five chapters long, actually four chapters, because the fifth chapter is only a brief conclusion.  The four main chapters are lengthy and technical, which makes reading individual chapters a little-at-a-time a bad idea, because it’s hard to reenter the author’s flow of thought if your reading has paused for a significant amount of time.  The book also assumes that its readers have a basic understanding of things like covenant theology, dispensational theology, the Kingdom of God, the social gospel, and the evangelical movement.  These issues: the length of chapters, technicality of the language, and assumed pre-knowledge of the reader are the only real negatives of the book.  And honestly these aren’t negatives as much as they are just factors that narrow the book’s audience.  And let’s be honest, not every book is for every person.

In TKoC Moore does an unparalleled job of tracing the theological concept of the “Kingdom of God” as it has evolved in both the dispensational and covenant theological camps.  In each chapter, Moore unpacks how “Kingdom of God” theological construct has had profound implications on:  eschatology, soteriology, and ecclesiology. In all of these theological areas, covenantal and dispensational theologians have developed wider agreement due to a deeper understanding of Bible’s teaching about the Kingdom of God.  Moore’s intent is to question the social and political ramifications of evangelical action within the public sphere based on this wider theological agreement.  The book asserts that modern evangelicalism’s discussion of social and political action began with the publication of Carl F. Henry’s, The Uneasy Conscience of Modern Fundamentalism. In chapter one, Moore delves into Henry’s writings, and then traces the theological history of the Kingdom of God to the current time.  According to Moore’s conclusion, though larger evangelicalism now agrees more wholeheartedly on “Kingdom of God” theology, it now faces larger theological disagreements on perhaps even more primary issues such as epistemology, inerrancy, and the sovereignty of God.  This is evidenced by the increasing influence of movements such as evangelical feminism and open theism.

I walked away from TKoC with a much deeper understanding of covenantal theology, dispensational theology, the writings of Carl F. Henry, the Bible’s teaching about the Kingdom of God, and the mission of the church in society.  This book is profoundly relevant to the questions now being addressed by the modern church.  In many ways, the emerging church movement is repeating the mistakes of the social gospel liberation theology of the 1960’s.  And most likely, this is in part a reaction to the unhealthy politicization of Christianity by the Religious Right.  Church leaders need to continually assess how to be the “city on the hill” that Jesus talked about in the Sermon on the Mount.  TKoC is an important read in that assessment.  Having read TKoC, I yearn for a practical book dealing with how churches can be salt and light in the public sphere, that takes into account Moore’s research, but is geared to a larger audience.  I would love to hear any suggestions about books of this nature.

I’m honestly not even sure how to review this book. How do you a review a book this great? I have no complaints or disagreements; I have only praise. This is an amazingly good book. It’s entertaining to read because Driscoll is adept at mixing pop culture references throughout the text so that the words come alive with relevance. It’s deep because the theology presented in the book is thoroughly Biblical, beyond surface-level Christianity, and presented in a lively, understandable manner. And…the book will strengthen your faith and conviction in Jesus and His glorious salvation. Even elderly saints will benefit from the depth of solid theology that this book offers. This is one of the most encouraging and inspiring books I’ve read in a while. Everyone should read it.

I just saw this advertised on DesiringGod.org.  I’m a big fan of the Reach Records guys and Desiring God, so I thought I’d promote the tour.  LeCrae, Trip Lee, Tedashii, Sho Baraka, and Flame are headed to urban centers all across America this Summer to promote the message “Don’t Waste Your Life.”

Check it out at http://www.reachrecords.com/dwyl/.

Also check out LeCrae’s video for Don’t Waste Your Life, produced by Desiring God.

Are you following Aaron Ivey on Twitter?  You should be if you’re a Spur58 fan.  Spur58 doesn’t technically exist anymore, but Bush (bass), Jimmy (guitars), and Aaron (lead vocals and keys) are still making music under Ivey’s name.  Why the change?  Well in part, because Spur officially ended when Ivey took a job at Austin Stone Community Church leading worship.  None the less, the music making continues, and that’s good news if you like good music.  Spur58 made some amazing music, wrote some of the most moving worship songs I’ve ever heard, and they rock hard!  Check out studio updates on:

AaronIvey.com

on Twitter at @aaronivey

promotional poster

Like No Other Logo

Tee Shirt Design #1 (I did a version of this in dark grey that looked really good as well)

Tee Shirt Design #2

This is some design work I did for some a camp that some of my buddies are putting on.  The job included the creation of a logo, t-shirt, and promotional poster.  I was given a fair amount of freedom in the direction of the design and I decided to incorporate a Lion because of it’s messianic symbolism.  Jesus is the Lion of the Tribe of Judah, our Savior, and He is like no other.