A Radical Review: The Good, Pt. 1

Herein lies post 4 of my review of David Platt’s Radical.

For the Introduction to my review see here,

For The Really Good Pt. 1 see here.  

And for The Really Good Pt. 2 see here. 

 

Having examined what I considered to be the exceptional parts of Platt’s book, this next section of the review will consist of reflections on some of the other positive aspects of Radical. 

Passion for Missions:

When reading Radical you come away with the truth that, for Christians, missions is not optional. In the words of John Piper, we can either “go passionately, send passionately, or be disobedient.” The Christian church does not exist for herself. She does not exist for our comfort. She exists to make God’s name great among the nations. And we make his name great by being his hands and feet in the world. For Platt, as a good Southern Baptist, missions is a must. Methodists could learn something from our Southern Baptist friends about this. In fact, if we became as passionate as they are about it, we could probably teach them some things, too (I’ll get to that below under my discussion of Platt’s understanding of the gospel).

In relation to this, Platt rightly recognizes and points out the unnecessary false-dichotomy that many Christians work with: that we must do local missions OR foreign missions, but we can’t do both. In the end, the church that is active at home is a church that is going to want to be active abroad. And the church that’s sitting on her hands at home is a church that’s going to say, “Why should I give my money overseas when there are starving people right here I’m not feeding?” The subject of mission is not an either/or. It’s a both/and. The church is called both to the local community in which God has situated her and she is called to take the name of God throughout the nations. We must do both. When we don’t, we may as well not call ourselves “church.”

Disciple Making cannot be done with a Canned Formula:

One of the things I appreciate about Platt’s book is that he doesn’t lay out a formula or a plan for making disciples. He has no curriculum. He merely calls the church to be obedient where she is. And Platt acknowledges that in many instances this obedience and disciple-making process is filled with ambiguities, messiness, and mistakes. When we try to clean up discipleship and make it shinning and professional (or more often, make it merely educational), we end up with a shallow understanding of what it means to be a disciple of Jesus.

Indeed, in my experience, it is often those who define holiness by what we don’t do that are the ones who like to make discipleship into a simple, easy formula. After all, the assumption goes, if we can correct behavior, then we’ve created a Christian. Unfortunately for that model, the Jesus model of disciple making had no formula except for living life with people in all their brokenness and seeking to bring about new creation in the midst of chaos. Platt rightly acknowledges the ambiguities of the Jesus model.

A Radical Review: The Really Good, Pt. 2

Takes the Hard Words of Jesus Seriously:

On a number of occasions, Platt points out that too frequently we take the hard words of Jesus and explain them away, rub off their sharp edges, and make them palatable to modern ears (i.e. the story of Jesus telling the Rich Young Ruler to give away all his possessions). Platt does a good job of criticizing such interpretive moves that make it easier, rather than harder, to be a disciple of Jesus. I find that Calvinsits, often more than Arminians, are willing to embrace these hard words. I can’t really explain why. But in this matter, I wish we were more like the Calvinists.

 

Holiness is Defined by What We Do, Not By What We Avoid Doing:

Typical of most young pastors and Christians, Platt is fed up with the Christian life being primarily defined in terms of legalistic rules about what we shouldn’t do. When we define the Christian life this way, we reduce holiness and Christian living to avoidance of sin (or what looks like sin) instead of the active pursuit of God. Contrary to this legalistic view of spiritual growth and holiness, Platt rightly maintains that genuine discipleship involves propelling Christians into the world, not the avoidance of the world (105). A Christianity which tries to keep itself pure by avoiding the world or pretending bad things don’t exist is a Christianity that will quickly find itself irrelevant, isolated, and obsolete. Holiness should be defined by what we do in the world and for the world, not by how good a job we do avoiding the world.

 

Platt Spoke Favorably of John Wesley:

This may not seem like that big of a deal to most people, but Platt is overtly (if you know what you’re looking for) a 5-Point Calvinist. Calvinists are not always fond of speaking well of Arminians, and John Wesley is very much Prince Arminian. Platt says nothing about Wesley’s theology, but on page 128 he tells a wonderful and challenging story of Wesley’s deep and profound passion for making sure that everyone had their basic needs met. Wesley was making, in today’s terms, about $120,000 a year, but he was living as if he was only making about $20,000 so that he could give the rest away to the poor. This was actually a consistent theme through Wesley’s life. He died with mere pocket change in his possession because he had given it all away.  I’m deeply appreciative of Platt bringing that information to the fore in his book. It made me proud of my Methodist heritage!

 

A Radical Review: The Really Good Part 1.

Criticizing the American Dream: 

Throughout this book there were a number of places I wanted to pump my fist in the air in appreciation for Platt’s observations and thoughts. As the subtitle of the book suggests, Platt spends much of his time criticizing American Evangelicalism’s infatuation with the American Dream. For being a people who are supposedly about bringing the “good news” (Evangel) to the world, we seem to spend an awful lot of time, energy, and money pampering ourselves and living the life America has called us to instead of the one Jesus has called us to. And Platt make no bones about it – the two callings are completely antithetical to each other. The longer we refuse to see this, the longer we try to worship both God and Mammon. Platt is not the first to say these things. And I hope he is not the last. But, nonetheless, these are words we need to hear and I am grateful for his boldness. I especially liked this line,

“The lesson I learned is that the war against materialism in our hearts is exactly that: a war. It is a constant battle to resist the temptations to have more luxuries, to acquire more stuff, and to live more comfortably. It requires strong and steady resolve to live out the gospel in the middle of an American dream that identifies success as moving up the ladder, getting the bigger house, purchasing the nice car, buying the better clothes, eating finer food, and acquiring more things.”  (136)

A Call to Care for the Poor:

As part of his rejection of the American Dream, Platt calls the church to care for the poor, provide a voice for the voiceless, bring the marginalized into genuine community, and and be present for the neglected persons of our society. He calls churches to stop turning a blind eye to problems related to poverty, not only in this country, but also in other nations. And he recounts numerous stories of people he knows who’ve made radical life changes in order to be the hands and feet of Jesus to the forgotten people of the world.

In a Christian world where helping the poor is often characterized as a a “leftist agenda,” I’m grateful for Platt’s voice here. Especially because I bet he’s probably a pretty politically conservative person (Aren’t all Southern Baptists?).

With that said, my main concern is that while I appreciate Platt’s focus on social justice, I don’t think he quite goes far enough in describing what that actually looks like long-term. That is, it is not enough just to feed homeless people and “get them saved;” we need to actually challenge the systems that create homelessness to begin with. And this is both an individual and a societal problem.

My speculation at this point is that Platt doesn’t venture into these details because to do so would mean that he would have to take certain political stances. I appreciate his not wanting to get distracted by political arguments, but in the end, the problem is not that some people care about the poor and others don’t (though, that’s the case sometimes); the problem is that we simply don’t agree on what’s the best way to care for the poor and help them.

For Platt’s thoughts to have any lasting impact, I think, he needed to go into more depth about what a uniquely Christian vision for caring for the poor looks like on a systemic level – even to the point of challenging all existing paradigms. That would, indeed, be Radical. Without such a proposal, Platt’s call for social justice has no serious bite. I’m glad he’s bringing these things to our intention; it’s a good start for us. But it looks like someone else is going to have to do the radical work of figuring out what it looks like to deal with the systemic political problems.

A Radical Review: Introduction

After months of people asking me after I preach a sermon, “Have you read Radical by David Platt? Because you sound just like him,” I was finally able to get my hands on a copy. Knowing this book is a New York Times Bestseller, and knowing that so many people have  been challenged to greater faithfulness by it, I had pretty high expectations. Then when I saw the subtitle was, “Taking Back Your Faith from the American Dream,” I got even more excited. 

So in the course of about two days I set out to read the entire book. When I read books anymore I read them not only as an academic, but also as a pastor. I’m definitely looking for things that will challenge my mind and my spirit, but I’m also searching for things that are potentially helpful or hurtful to the people in my congregation. In this book, I found a mixed bag of all of these things. Yes, there were absolutely challenging and convicting words in this book, hard words of truth I needed to hear. But there were other places where I cringed, felt very anxious about how God was being represented, and even got downright angry. 

So, due to the book’s popularity, and because of the good and bad in it, I decided to do something I rarely do: write a review. I’ve outlined my review as follows: 1) The Really Good, 2) The Good, 3) The Bad, 4) The Really Bad, 5) What Was Missing

Over the next few weeks I will post pieces of the review in that order. Though, some of the sections will, themselves, take multiple posts. 

The Incarnation is Why I’m a Christian

Someone* asked tonight why I’m a Christian. Here was my response….

The incarnation. It’s amazing and beautiful and tragic and joyful and the ultimate expression of love. It is the whole of human history summed up in a person. It is the ideal humanity lived by one of us. It is the lover seeking out his bride. It is the full manifestation of Triune self-giving love. It is what it means to be fully alive…fully human…fully real. It is death and resurrection, humility and exaltation, shame and glory. 

Without it, Christianity doesn’t make sense. My draw to it is NOT just that I see it because of the (historical) evidence. Rather, it is through the lens of the incarnation that all other things make sense…especially love.

The person who asked this is a Christian, so I wasn’t afraid to use Christianeese in my answer. They know the conceptual language of Christianity. That always makes it easier

Bieber and Bonhoeffer…

I saw this pairing of books at the Christian bookstore last night. I not only almost threw up in my own mouth, but I realized how very misguided we are about what real Christianity is – So misguided we will celebrate a 12 year old sex-symbol for little girls everywhere right next to a man who gave his life to training pastors to love Christ, suffering, and justice in the midst of Nazi Germany. I’m speechless.

QoD: Is His Word Enough?

‎”This is the question that often haunts me when I stand before a crowd of thousands of people in the church I pastor. What if we take away the cool music and the cushioned chairs? What if the screens are gone and the stage is no longer decorated? What if the air conditioning is off and the comforts are removed? Would His word still be enough for His people to come together?” David Platt, Radical. 27.