Posted on June 17, 2008 - by Stephen Murray
Healthy Critique
Some of the heat that has been directed my way due to my post about Hillsong Cape Town has disturbed me somewhat at the ability (or lack thereof) of Christians to critique and ask hard questions of themselves. I understand that when one is part of something that you believe in you’ll defend it tooth and nail – but shouldn’t Christians be slightly different? After all we should be fighting tooth and nail for one central issue and that is the Gospel of Jesus Christ and its centrality to life and practice. For everything else shouldn’t we be prepared to critique and be open to critique?
In the last two years of blogging I’ve followed a lot of different types of Christian blogs and if truth be told I’ve learned an absolute ton from Christian traditions other than my own. I’ve learned things from (wait for it…) Roman Catholicism, the Emerging Church, Eastern Orthodoxy, Neo-Monasticism, Pentecostalism and even stuck in the mud Reformed folks. By reading widely and interacting with the different expressions of faith I’ve been able to critique my own expression and refine it in order to be more faithful in following Christ. Going back and forth between the scriptures and these various traditions has been a thoroughly fruitful exercise. And so I think that when we become unable to critique we lose much and are worse off for it. We also might be (and I say this tentatively) exposing the idols in our life and practice when we discover areas that we are unable to critique (i.e. what do I value above the gospel?).
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Stephen Murray
Christian, husband to my beautiful Robin, missional dreamer, pastor, church planter, Arsenal, Sharks and Springbok supporter, surfer (in the real sea), patriotic South African, Capetonian. Find out more about the church planting work I'm involved in at my support blog.
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June 18, 2008
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Jonathan said:
is this not in some ways ‘the scandal of the evangelical mind’ (to borrow from noll, in that as soon as hard questions are asked, many peopel are afriad of actually thnking. thus, it seems that it is farv easier to hide behind the “this is God’s will*, so it will be blessed, and dont you oppose it” view than actually realising that there is often a struggle to find God’s will. reading some of the comments, i was intrested to see that most who supported the hillsong jsut said that is was God’s will. as soon as someone immediatly claims to beGod’s spokeperson, i do belive that danger is around the corner.
Thats why I really respect your blog and thoughts Stephen,and pelase keep it up, as we need to continually examine our lives and see if we are actually near God’s will or not.
*Also, there are so many vierws to what God’s will is, and how it is found, things like thas cannot be rashly dismissed, but need to be deeply engaged.