Pastorboy (John Chisham) went to Minneapolis at Solomons Porch to do an interview with Tony Jones. It was cut and pasted quite a bit (you can see the whole thing at www.apprising.org) In particular, Tony cut and paste around God being bound by law. He said that he was amazed that I said that God cannot lie
Hebrews 6:17
In the same way God, desiring even more to show to the heirs of the promise the unchangeableness of His purpose, interposed with an oath, 18 so that by two unchangeable things in which it is impossible for God to lie, we who have taken refuge would have strong encouragement to take hold of the hope set before us.
He cut out the portion about being born again. (or Not being born again) where he insults me and other ‘fundamentalists’ when he gives a story about camp and crying and etc…
John 3:3 Jesus answered and said to him, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.”
and then he elevates his daily agnostic doubt over faith, believing that somehow doubt is better to God than faith, again, an anti-biblical proposition:
Hebrews 11:6 And without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is and that He is a rewarder of those who seek Him.
He succeeded in making me look really bad, but that is okay. I am a fool for Christ! But my real concern is his apparent low view of scripture and high view of man, and man’s reasoning.
Pray for Tony Jones, and this movement. I think that they have found what they are looking for, a church that fits their needs, which fits their desires, and is very cool, hip, and modern. The worship is of man, and God takes a back corner to a god of their own creation. This is idolatry in the strictest sense.
Doug
pastorboy
Here’s some thoughts about that, or the earlier interview you had that was shown in its entirety.
1. Notice how Trucker Frank says that it’s about community, how it’s about giving people what they want. “We’re listening to what people want, and they want to have real relationships. That’s the most important thing that I’ve…(next few words I can’t understand)…that they want to have real relationships”
At least in that first exchange between Jones and Frank, I didn’t hear anything about the church being about Christ and taking the Gospel to the lost and discipling believers. It’s mostly about some nebulous “relationship” thing.
2. More baseless caricatures of non-emergents as being closed-mined. Yawn, yawn, yawn.
3. “Why must God punish people?” It would be just as well to ask “Why must God forgive people?”
4. The laws of physics are not the same as moral laws.
5. Many differences (not all, but many) in theology are more important then which football teams a couple of people root for.
6. I’ve heard about the controversy over whether women can be preachers or not for years. Sorry, but it’s not new to emergent. And when in the longer video Jones tries to make it into a human rights issue, that should have been a very scary statement from him, because that starts bringing in politics and law–if a woman has the human right to be a pastor, governments and law enforcement should have ther power to force a church to have a woman pastor in spite of their theological position.
If I may be bold enough to give a word of advise in case you should ever find yourself in such a position again, PastorBoy, it would be this–stop playing nice with these people. I’m not saying be nasty and rude, but you can’t “out nice” them. They already spun the PR to such a degree that “niceness” is simply what they do.