yamia

I have been reading a lot lately about the way things are going in the church in America. There are many ideas out there about what will happen the the western church and the ideals it is built on. From what I understand, some like Phyllis Tickle are thinking it will be a convergence of ideas from many backgrounds that learn to play together. Others like Alan Hirsch seem to think a more radical shift is in order away from the model of Christendom into what the early church looked like. I don’t pretend to have any prophetic gift, but I do see a problem that I am not sure either of those ideas discusses.

The problem I’m thinking of is one that I don’t think either the early church nor Christendom has faced yet. That is a people inoculated to the gospel.

By my understanding, inoculation is a small taste of something that keeps you from getting it full blown. Flu inoculations give you just enough of the flu so that you build up antibodies against it and therefore are prepared to fight it off should you encounter it in the wild. I think that is what has happened to the church. There are many different ways this plays out, but essentially by reducing the gospel to what happens to us when we die, by making Christianity into a decision to “ask Jesus into your heart” that is a one time assent, Christianity has been inoculated from receiving a good news for them where they are know and in the afterlife.

More later.