https://notthebee.com/article/trans-activists-are-calling-for-more-blood-after-the-nashville-shooting-heres-how-christians-should-respond
What a week! Not only the Jesus Revolution in the theater, but then a music concert by a Nashville artist with hundreds of cheering fans!
4 stars out of 5.
As far as I understand, the movie is historically accurate
to the times. The “Jesus people”
movement of the 70s was not just a copy-cat of the hippie movement, but was a
real spiritual awakening. The movie
contrasts Timothy O’Leary’s message of “turn on, tune in, drop out,” with the
Gospel message of forgiveness in Jesus Christ for your sins. Both messages are clearly shown, and the fruit
of them shown, too. Drugs lead to car
crashes and near- or actual-death. The
Gospel leads to new birth.
The doubts of all sides are shown well. Greg Laurie wondered if this religion was
just another new high that will pass.
Chuck Smith wondered if he would lose control in his church if he let
the hippies in. Lonnie thought God had
abandoned him when everything didn’t go how he wanted.
The message is very relevant today, as drugs continue to be
an escape for many – yet this path remains a dead end. When the stoner comes to the end of his rope,
the Gospel is still there for him. The
movie conveys the second chance everyone gets to receive grace, though they
have made a wreck of their lives.
Jesus Revolution shows the polarity between the younger,
immature, but vibrant, Spirit-filled faith, and the older, mature, but
calcified faith that needs shaking up. This
is a real thing. But as Hollywood will
do, it leans heavily in the direction that the former is absolutely better and
life-giving. This is not entirely wrong,
but the young need the old to mature as well.
The movie doesn’t portray that at all.
So no 5 stars. The megachurch has
been stuck ever since in immature mode.
The church needs to welcome in the immature, but insist that they grow
in the faith, and not stay the spiritual infants they often are.
I’d recommend Jesus Revolution for a few reasons:
1. A history lesson of the church in the last 50 years.
2. Evaluating how churches should present the Gospel to
various generations and ages.
3. Understanding the faults that all sides are prone to:
traditionalists, new believers, and unbelievers pursuing the truth in bad ways.
1. Kevin DeYoung has a good critique of reparations here.
2. Peter Lillback, president of Westminster Seminary in Philadelphia, has an excellent piece on the importance of public theology here. The seminary is seeing the need to train future pastors to have a developed theology of politics, and to tackle the rise (and I'd say current triumph) of cultural Marxism as the threat to Christianity that it is.
3. Just read this clear article defending the American Revolution. The four take-aways at the end are very good.
But I still have questions.
1. If colonial charters with the king were revoked in 1689, as the article says, how can the whole argument here hinge on those very charters establishing the colonies' relationship with the king, and not with parliament?
2. Didn't the king have the right to use parliament to administer his relationship with the colonies? Seems reasonable to me.
Where the rubber hits the road for me is this:
- Was there a principled problem that we were not being represented in Parliament, or that the king wouldn't hear us reasonably, while our rights were trampled upon? Did George violate Magna Carta-like common law in his treatment of the American colonies?
- Or was it that the colonists had to pay their fair share for the benefits of the empire, and just didn't like it - e.g., taxes to fund a war (French-Indian) that had benefitted them?
I lean toward the first.
Yet I'm suspicious of the strength of the argument that the colonies didn't have to listen to Parliament, only the king.
The better argument seems to be:
- taxation without representation
- rights trampled (harboring troops in homes, etc.)
- Magna Carta obligations the king has to his subjects' rights
https://crosspolitic.com/rebellion-to-tyrants-the-principles-behind-the-just-war-for-independence/
