A Radical Review: What was Missing: The Final Post

I had two other posts I wanted to include, but I realized that they were really just rants against a particular theological point of view. I figured my time was better spent doing something constructive. So this is the final post in my review of David Platt’s Radical. I hope you have enjoyed the series. You can read them all right here (though you should note they are in reverse order). 

 

What Was Missing

A more robust Trinitarian theology would’ve helped strengthen every single point David Platt made and would’ve kept him from a number of the errors into which he ventures.

Why do Evangelical pastors and theologians assume the Trinity has nothing to contribute to the conversations the church is having about politics, justice, evangelism, and social ethics?

I know this may seem like an abstract question about an abstract doctrine that is better left to the dusty bookshelves of Moltmann, Barth, and Augustine. We figure it’s something those old timers in church history argued about, but who cares about it now? We moderns have more important things to talk about like God’s hatred for sinners and His love for his own self-glorification

 

But the Trinity? We assume, to our own detrmiment, that it’s a doctrine merely for scholastic reflection, but doesn’t really touch down in everyday life.

I want to propose, instead that the Trinity is a necessary prerequisite to understanding what Christians are to do in the contemporary culture and Platt has missed a great opportunity to make his argument much stronger. I want to suggest that the Trinity matters to what we have to say about caring for the poor. I want to argue that we have shot ourselves in the foot in the Abortion debate because we’ve missed the power of the doctrine of God’s Tri-unity to help shape, engage, and live out our beliefs.

And more specifically, I want to argue that the persons of the Trinity provide an Evangelical model for social interaction, and David Platt has walked right past his best theological weapon, not even giving a second thought to it.

The basic rundown is this:The three persons of the Trinity, though distinct from one another, are united in a loving union. This union of perfect love created the world out of an overflow of love – perfect love desires nothing more than to give itself away. When creation fell into sin under the guidance of Adam and Eve, God took His perfect love a step further. Though they did not need to, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit gave themselves up for their enemies. The Son, the most physical example of this, gave up His glory to become a human. He humbled himself even to the point of death, even death on a cross – the most humiliating death in world history. He later, by the power of the Spirit, resurrected from the dead in defeat of death and the forces of evil and chaos in the world. This, in short, is called the gospel and it is from first to last about the Trinity.  It was planned by the Father before the creation of the world, enacted by the Son, and is continued in the church by the indwelling power of the Holy Spirit.

Now, this is a quick rundown of a complex doctrine. But here’s what we have:

• God’s central character attribute is love. This love was core to his character prior to the creation of the world. Indeed, it was the reason for creation.

• That love was self-less (not self-centered). Each member of the Trinity loved the other members with self-giving love. That self-giving love extended to the creation – and then later to fallen creation. David Platt could argue that in God’s unity the persons loving each other mean that God loves himself. Okay, that’s fine. But the Trinitarian description of such a love moves it into the self-less category, not the selfish category.

• The Triune God’s self-giving love is most clearly exhibited in Jesus. He didn’t just stand aloof to our brokenness and say, “Don’t worry, I love you.” No – he entered into our history, our brokenness and died under it’s weight! The incarnation of Jesus is  the ultimate manifestation of Triune, self-giving love. And that is why it is at the core of our “good news.”

Therefore: If we are to be called the people of the Triune God…

1) We are to be people known for our self-giving love. Our political involvement is not about power and preservation of our comfortable way of life. Our political involvement must be self-giving, humble, and willing to die for those we are in disagreement with. Disagreement is inevitable. But the way we disagree is an indication of whether we are emulating the Triune God or the ways of the world. This is a radical idea. 

2) We are to be people who are willing to love our enemies and others considered ‘unlovable.’ Jesus told us to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us. Much of our contemporary rhetoric in the political world (I’m thinking here of “Obamanation”) is filled with hatred and vitriol and has no redeemable quality to it. We may need to criticize certain political stances, but demonizing people is not the way of the God who exhibits love to the entire world by being crucified by the world! This is a radical idea. 

3) The love of the Triune God is not abstract. It is concrete in its expression – we must enter into someone’s life in order to let them know that they are loved. Indeed, we must be willing to die for them and their brokenness. Paul tells us, in his poetic description of love in I Cor. 13, that it does not matter if we have all knowledge (read: truth) if we do not have love! And that love gets it’s hands dirty. That love doesn’t just stand back and proclaim truth – it necessarily embodies the truth! Like Jesus, that kind of love is truth “in the flesh.” This is a radical idea. 

The Trinity matters to truly radical living. It is only in modeling our ministries after Triune, self-giving love that we can ever truly live radical lives. 

This doctrine isn’t for dusty books and obscure academic journals. It’s for the everyday life of people struggling to bring God’s kingdom to earth. It’s for people who are looking for serious alternatives to American Dream living, for people trying to navigate the moral morass that is the the suburbs. The Trinity provides an alternative model for those of us looking to engage this world with the gospel, not just make it endurable until we can get to heaven.

Platt wanted to call us to mission. The Father sent the Son to die and rise and the Spirit to empower and indwell; is there a better understanding of mission than that?

Platt wanted to call us to social justice. Is there a better example of seeking justice on a systemic level than Jesus, who was sent from the just and good Father to challenge (political and religious) systems of oppression and injustice that marginalized and dehumanized the first century poor?

Platt wanted us to preach the gospel. Is there a better place to begin sharing the gospel than with the Father who loved the Son so much that their love poured out onto a broken creation when Jesus took on human flesh? The incarnation wasn’t just something the Father and Jesus decided to do one day. It is the natural overflow of their mutual love for one another! The gospel begins there and only there.

All of this was missing from Platt’s book. And all of his good points (and some of his not-good points) could’ve been made stronger by building on this beautiful, mysterious, and, yes, accessible doctrine.

Review complete. Mischief managed.

 

 

A Radical Review: The Really Bad, Pt. 1

This is part 10 in my review of David Platt’s Radical. Previously, I have looked at the really good aspects of his book, the good aspects of his book, the bad aspects of his book, and now I’m discussing some things I thought were really bad…bad enough for me to not recommend this book to anyone in my church. (Please see the prior sections of my review to get a balanced understanding of the book. If you only read this section, you’ll come away with a much more negative view than I intend). 

God hates people: I knew I was going to have some problems with this book when on page 29 Platt makes this statement, “And in some sense, God also hates sinners. You might ask, ‘What happened to ‘God hates the sin and loves the sinner’? Well, the Bible happened to it. One psalmist said to God, ‘The arrogant cannot stand in your presence; you hate all who do wrong.’ Fourteen times in the first fifty psalms we see similar descriptions of God’s hatred toward sinners, his wrath toward liars, and so on.” 

I know Platt and others (Piper, Driscoll, Washer) think they’re profound when they say this stuff. But it’s terrible biblical interpretation to pull a couple Bible verses out of their context in order to prove your point and add some shock value to what you’re saying. A point, in my opinion, which is shocking precisely because it goes against the grain of the thrust of scripture.

You can’t just say God hates people and then when people ask about it say, “Well, the Bible happened to it….the Bible says God hates us.” That’d be like me saying, “What happened to Unconditional Election? Well, the Bible happened to it.” In other words, such an approach does nothing to actually prove the point. It merely assumes it.

No. Sorry. That won’t do. Preachers, theologians, and Bible teachers need to be better handlers of Scripture than that.

This approach to these texts is a cheap version of biblical interpretation that charades as deep spiritual truth, but is actually deadly.

How Would I Interpret the “God Hates You” Passages?

The first rule you learn in Biblical Interpretation 101 is that genre is the first thing you need to determine when reading a Bible passage. The psalms are part of the literary genre called “poetry.” A unique part of poetry’s very DNA is that it is filled with symbols, emotion, and exaggeration. As Platt acknowledges, most of his citations of scripture come from the Psalms, which means that knowing/acknowledging the psalms are poetry is an essential part of understanding what the psalms mean: By their very nature they’re not to be taken literally. To miss this point leads to all kinds of grave interpretation errors…like the one represented by Platt when he says God hates people.

Furthermore, we must also recognize that words like ‘love’ and ‘hate’ don’t translate 1 to 1 into our culture. God’s love and hate are covenantal words in the OT, not strictly emotional words (like in our culture). The point being that the exaggerated language of ‘hate’ combined with the cultural context and genre give us a good indication of the psalmists point: Those who are wicked fall outside of God’s covenant (which is Paul’s point [and Malachi's] when he writes of the same thing concerning Jacob and Esau in Romans 9…he’s building on a covenant theme he’s been talking about the entire book.).

And on one more note, our individualism goes awry in our interpretations of these passages because we read these words like they’re for ‘me’ or ‘you’ individually. But if these words are covenantal words, then they’re necessarily about a community of people, not individuals. Even in Malachi and Romans 9, Jacob and Esau represent nations not individuals (and an interpretive case could be made for the same thing in Genesis, “There are two nations in your womb.”).

If we miss the genre of the passage we’re reading, if we miss the cultural context of the passage, and if we read our Western individualism on to them, then we miss the interpretation. To say that God hates all individual sinners not only goes against the main thrust of Scripture (For God so loved the world!), but is to cherry-pick verses out of their context to prove our pet-points. This is really bad interpretation. This is really bad theology. This is really bad pastoring.

A Radical Review: The Bad, Pt. 4 (False Dichotomy 5 – God’s Love for Us vs. God’s Love for His Glory)

God’s Love for Us vs. God’s Love for His Glory: 

Platt really shows his Reformed cards throughout the book when he discusses his understanding of God’s motivations for saving the world. After citing Ezekiel 36, Platt goes on to say, “What a statement! God goes so far as to say that when he acts among his people, he doesn’t show his grace, mercy, and justice for their sake but for the sake of his holy name among the nations.” (68). 

There is much to be said about this, but one of the conclusions one must come to when Platt’s words are traced throughout his book is that the God he worships is a God who is self-centered and self-serving – He’s a God who seeks his own glory above everything else and is self-referenced in all of His actions. Indeed, Platt even says this, “God centers on himself.” (71) 

The problem is, when I look at Jesus on the cross, I see there a God who took on shame, not glory. I see a God who acted in love for sinners. I see a God who gave up his own glory for death.

Platt would criticize my understanding of Jesus’ death, to be sure. Beginning on page 70, pay attention here(!), Platt argues that, “‘God loves me’ is not the essence of biblical Christianity. Because if ‘God loves me’ is the message of Christianity, then who is the object of Christianity?….me.” 

Now, here’s the thing: First of all, I understand that we have a very self-referenced understanding of Christianity. And this self-referenced understanding needs to be criticized and we need to repent of our “me” focused religion. But this is much different than what Platt is arguing. 

For when I say, “God loves me,” who cares if I’m the object? Because God is the subject! It doesn’t take glory away from God for him to love me. It doesn’t take away his centrality to the gospel story for him to love me! Rather, it magnifies it! I didn’t love him first, he loved me first! I didn’t make the move toward knowing him, he made the move toward saving me! Yes, I am the object of God’s affection! But God is the subject of the sentence and the subject of creation and redemption! Let’s stop laying this either/or game. God is both glorious and great. And God loves me enough to give up that glory for me and you and all of creation. That’s what love means – it is self-giving and finds glory in the ‘other’!  

In the end, Platt wants to argue that God is the object of God’s affection and love, not me. 

This is a really complicated discussion that I will take up in the final section of my review. But in the end, it’s just another one of his false dichotomies. God loving me and God seeking to make his name great among the nations are not antithetical. In fact, quite the opposite, it is through his great love for me/us that he makes his name great among the nations…so that he might love them too, and they might love him! His love for us does not put the focus on us. His love for us puts the focus on his self-giving (not self-serving!) nature! There’s no theological reason for Platt to separate God’s love and His glory. Neither his love nor his glory end with us; they are always to be offered to the world for the sake of His great name and love being given to all people. (Please see my final section, “What was missing” for further reflections on this subject. 

A Radical Review: The Bad, Pt. 4 (False Dichotomy 3 and 4)

Here is post 8 of my review of David Platt’s Radical. Please see the previous posts in this series if you wish to get a more full understanding of my thoughts on the book…good and bad. 

Listening to the Holy Spirit vs. Plotting and Strategies: Platt argues that when he reads the pages of the New Testament, he doesn’t see a group of people who are plotting and strategizing for the Kingdom of God. Rather, he sees a group of people radically dependent upon the Holy Spirit for guidance and discernment. “They are not plotting strategies. They are ‘joined together constantly in prayer.’ They are not busy putting their faith in themselves or relying on themselves. They are pleading for the power of God, and they are confident that they are not going to accomplish anything without his provision. (51)” 

I appreciate Platt’s desire to be dependent upon the Spirit. Indeed, I desire the same thing! And so does everyone else who works in the kingdom of God. Just because people strategize, research, and make plans doesn’t mean they’re not relying on the Spirit. Why can’t the Spirit be involved in strategizing? Why can’t the Spirit be active in our demographic research? Why can’t the Spirit be leading us as we make plans? Why can’t we rely on the Spirit to change even our good plans if God wants something else (See Paul going to Greece instead of Asia in Acts)?

This dichotomy between planning and being led by the Spirit sounds really spiritual the way he says it. But in the end, it’s a false dichotomy. These two things are not antithetical. It reminds me of the preachers who don’t prepare their sermons and just trust that God will guide them when they step into the pulpit. They think they’re super spiritual because they’re relying on God and they look down on people who study, prepare, and practice. But all the while they miss the fact that the Spirit can and is active not only in the ends, but in the means of sermon preparation, not only in the ends, but in the means of all kingdom work. 

Talents, Resources, Leadership vs. The Leading of the Holy Spirit: This false dichotomy is closely related to the previous one. Whereas previously Platt created an unnecessary division between church strategizing and following the Spirit, on pg. 54 he unnecessarily separates talents, resources, and leadership from the Holy Spirit.

Again, at the root of what he’s saying, I’m in agreement. “It doesn’t matter how many resources the church has. The church I lead could have all the man-made resources that one could imagine, but apart from the power of the Holy Spirit, such a church will do nothing of significance for the glory of God.” 

Yes. He’s right. And he’s right that God can use the least of the least for his kingdom. 

But there’s also a sense in which God has gifted us and graced us with talents and abilities unique to us. These gifts give us unique perspectives, abilities, and clout that we wouldn’t otherwise have. To disregard these things as outside the realm of being lead by the Spirit is stupid. I’m not saying Platt is doing this, but he needs to know that his audience will hear it that way, especially in the context of the aforementioned false-dichotomy. 

Talents, resources, and leadership are not the enemy of listening to the Holy Spirit. Arrogance, pride, and fear are. Let’s keep these things straight. 

A Radical Review: The Bad, Pt. 3 (False Dichotomy 1 and 2)

Gospel Preaching vs. Entertainment: On page 49 Platt rightly criticizes that most people are just looking for a good show that won’t put them to sleep when they go to church. Obviously this should be criticized. But Platt goes so far as to create a false dichotomy between true gospel preaching and entertainment. I’m sorry, but since when did entertainment become the enemy of the gospel? Since when did holistic experiences become the enemy of the God who created us with 5 senses? And if well written sermons, dramas, and music are so terrible, why in the world is the Bible one of the most well articulated, well crafted, symbol-laden, entertaining books in the history of the world? 

Let me be clear: There are churches that let entertainment rule the day and be an end in itself. This is sin. But that doesn’t mean that we must resign ourselves to passionless preaching and terrible music. Growing, dynamic churches are churches that appeal to people at all kinds of levels (because God created us with so many different levels). The Gospel preaching vs. entertainment dichotomy is one we must carefully consider, but the two are not, in my opinion, ultimately antithetical…unless of course you believe truth should be dull, irrelevant, and eye-gougingly boring. 

God has a plan for your life vs. You’re a sinner who can’t save yourself: One of Platt’s primary points of pontification is when he sets up this false dichotomy. He wants people to believe that the way the gospel is often presented (God has a plan for your life) is a false gospel that should be replaced by You’re a sinner who cannot save yourself. 

The problem I have is that I don’t see these two things as necessarily contrasting. Again, I think we can take the former too far – American individualism has hijacked this idea and suggested that God’s plan for people’s life is prosperity and comfort. But we need not overreact to that misunderstanding of the gospel. After all, is “You’re a sinner who can’t save yourself” equal to, “God doesn’t have a plan for you life”? 

No.

The fact is, God does have a plan for you: his plan is that you be conformed to the image of Christ, that you participate in his renewal of all creation which is happening in the present. But in order to do so, we need to understand that this is his work, and we are only participants because he invited us. We do not save ourselves. We cannot save ourselves. But, yes, God has a plan for us: to save us, so that we might work with him to save all of creation! 

In other words, Platt needlessly separates these two ideas. 

 

A Radical Review: The Bad, Pt. 2

Here is the 6th post in my review of David Platt’s Radical. 

Derivative of John Piper: 

David Platt should be sued by John Piper for plagiarism. Seriously. There were places in this book where he downright quoted word-for-word things I’ve heard John Piper say or read in one of Piper’s books. I could care less that he didn’t footnote Piper. My main concern here, actually, is that David Platt like so many of the young, restless, and reformed are just copying the ministry and sayings of John Piper and others.

I’m not a fan of the idea that pastors and theologians need to always be coming up with new and fresh things to say. In fact, I hope I never have anything new or fresh to say. But David Platt’s book is simply a repackaging of Piper’s Let the Nations Be Glad and other various works. Sometimes it’s a shameless repackaging. 

No, Platt doesn’t need to say anything new. But he can at least say it in his own way. 

Straw-Men: 

One of the sayings I’ve become very fond of over the last several years is, “Before we say, ‘I disagree,’ we should be able to say, ‘I truly understand.’” Because this is something I feel so strongly about, I feel a lot of frustration when someone misrepresents the position of another person – and, yes, I feel this frustration whether or not I agree with the person being criticized. I want all persons and positions to be fairly represented.

Platt fails to do this on a number of occasions.

The instance that bothered me the most occurred on page 148 in his discussion of Inclusivism (though, he does not use the term). He writes, “Many professing Christians have come to the conclusion that if certain people around the world don’t have the opportunity to hear about Jesus, then this automatically excuses them from God’s condemnation. Such people will go to heaven because, after all, they never had the opportunity to hear about Jesus…but think with me about the logic of this conclusion. It asserts that people will be with God in heaven for all eternity precisely because they never heard of Christ. Their not hearing gives them a pass into heaven.”

The problem with this statement is that no one actually believes this kind of thing. He cites no one. He gives no illustrations. He mentions no names. He made up a straw-man doctrine and then beat the tar out of it. 

But what he’s really trying to do is argue against Inclusivism. The problem is, Platt’s description is a terrible misrepresentation of what Inclusivists actually believe. No Inclusivist believes someone will go to heaven (notice, again, the limitation of the gospel to ‘going to heaven’!!!) simply because they never heard of Jesus. Again, no one believes this.  

The Inclusivist position, rather, is that some (not all!) people who never heard the name of Jesus will go to heaven based on their positive response to the Holy Spirit, Prevenient Grace, and the revelation of God in creation and conscience. Those who do not respond positively to those things will not be saved. 

Platt not only fails to fairly represent what Inclusivists actually believe, but in that failing, he also fails to offer a legitimate, biblical rebuttal. 

Unfortunately for most of Platt’s readers, his high powered rhetoric mixed with his appeal to ‘logic’ will be enough to turn them away from any representation of the gospel that differs from Platt’s. This is not to say that Inclusivism is the way to go. But it is to say that Platt’s representation of the gospel is truncated and limited and his rhetoric only serves to seal his readership in that limited understanding instead of offering them an opportunity to consider something outside his little box. 

A Radical Review: The Bad, Part 1

After 5 posts examining The Really Good and The Good aspects of David Platt’s Radical, we are moving on to some of the less positive aspects o my review. This, too, will take 4 or 5 posts as we examine The Bad and The Really Bad.

The Bad….

 

A Limited Gospel: 

One of my frustrations with much of the evangelistic efforts of modern Evangelicalism is the ingrained assumption that the gospel is primarily about getting people into heaven. All other things serve that purpose. The Southern Baptists are largely the spearheads of this understanding of the gospel, and David Platt, in general, fails to break free from the mold. While I am excited about Platt’s push for justice for the poor and marginal (something rarely discussed in Southern Baptist churches), Platt still falls into the assumption that the gospel is primarily about preparing people for the next life instead of teaching them that heaven is being brought to earth in this life when the church lives out the ethics of Jesus.

Platt spends the entire 7th chapter of his book discussing what ‘the gospel’ is. His outline is as follows (The parenthetical statements are my brief summaries of the sections):

1) All People Have a Knowledge of God (God has revealed Himself to everyone…even people who’ve never heard his name)

2) All People Reject God (All persons have rejected God because of their sinful hearts)

3) All People are Guilty Before God (No one is innocent)

4) All People are Condemned for Rejecting God (The law cannot save anyone, it only condemns)

5) God has made a way of Salvation for the Lost (Jesus is the only way, not other religions)

6) People cannot come to God Apart from Faith in Christ 

7) Christ Commands the Church to Make the Gospel Known to All Peoples

Now, if you’re paying attention to the outline, you’ll notice that Platt is following the typical Evangelical formula for “getting someone saved” by leading them through Paul’s epistle to the Romans. But my biggest beef with this approach is that it fails to take into account Paul’s intentions in the book of Romans, itself, and substitutes, instead, the Evangelical agenda for the book of Romans. Such an approach reduces Paul’s greatest letter to a series of proverbial proof-texts designed to “lead someone to the Lord.” 

But Paul’s intention was quite different. After all, he wasn’t writing to unbelievers, but to believers.  

In Romans, Paul’s primary concern is not establishing a bunch of proverbs intended to lead unbelievers to faith in Christ. Paul’s intention is to write to Christians about how God has put them in right standing with His covenant purposes and how God has shown himself to be faithful to His covenant promises in sending Jesus as both the representative of humanity (Israel) and God. Jesus fulfills both sides of the covenant obligations in his death and resurrection. And through faith in Jesus (and the faithfulness of Jesus!), all people can be put in a right relationship with God, no matter if they are Jew or Gentile. 

But none of this is mentioned in Platt’s recounting. Platt’s primary concern in citing Romans lies far from Paul’s primary concern. In pursuit of his own agenda for Romans, Platt consistently cites scriptures outside of their context to reinforce this pre-established agenda. Paul’s point about all people having a knowledge of God, all people rejecting God, and all people being guilty before God are not primarily about teaching unbelievers they’re sinners. Rather, Paul’s primary point is to teach Jewish and Gentile Christians that neither party is morally or spiritually superior to the other. Paul’s not writing a handbook of soul-winning, Paul’s writing a handbook on ethnic diversity in the early church – especially ethnic diversity that dealt with the status of the Jewish people in relation to the Gentiles who are newly grafted into the story of Israel. 

In short, Platt uses Romans to “get people saved,” but Paul was writing Romans  in order to tell “saved people” how they are to understand their new-found relationship to each other and God. Platt is concerned for the billion people in our world today “who will not go to heaven because they have never heard of Christ” and are “dying and going to hell without ever knowing there is a gospel.” But Paul mentions neither heaven nor hell in the book of Romans! Because his point is elsewhere. 

Add to this the fact that for all Platt’s talk of the gospel being “God-centered,” I’m a bit disappointed that he spends most of his time in this chapter discussing humanity and our falleness (which Platt, by the way, attributes to the sovereign determination of God, which acted prior to human free will!). Even under point 5 where he talks about what God has done to make a way for us, he gives all of two or three lines discussing the death and resurrection of Jesus, and the rest of the time he spends pounding the gavel of exclusivism in a pluralistic world. Another subject Paul doesn’t discuss in Romans, though he has a ton to say about the death and resurrection of Jesus. Platt’s discussion is lopsided because his theology is lopsided. And his exegesis is lopsided because he fails to do the hard work of biblical interpretation in Romans. Rather, he just assumes he knows what the book is about. 

In the end, when we reduce the gospel to nothing more than “getting people saved” by taking them through Platt’s 7 points, we are left with no conception of the recreation of all things beginning in the present age, no conception of how the gospel brings heaven to earth in the present age (in fact, quite the opposite, on page 179, Platt contends this world is not our home, which is the opposite of what the NT writers claimed!), no conception of how resurrection life begins in the present age. Instead, what we get is a lot of guilt, a brief mention of a God who died and rose for us, and then a commission to go out to the world in order to make them feel guilty with our proof-texts and then mention at the end that they, too, can be saved because Jesus died and rose again….that is, they can be saved if God doesn’t hate them (but we’ll get to that in a bit).  

For all our arguments over the bodily resurrection of Jesus, if we do not offer a salvation to the world that actually means something to their physical, this-worldly existence (not denying, of course, that there’s a next wordly aspect to our salvation…but even it is physical!), then our cognitive assent to the bodily resurrection of Jesus is meaningless act of the intellect. 

While there is truth to Platt’s understanding of the gospel (we are all, indeed, sinners who cannot save ourselves!), I merely contend that it is not a robust enough understanding of the gospel. If Evangelicalism is to have a powerful voice in our culture, then we need a deeper, more biblical understanding of the gospel and how the scriptures speak of the gospel. 

Platt is writing for the church in this book. He’s not writing for non-Christians. Thus, I contend that he missed an opportunity to do exactly  what Paul did in Romans – preach the gospel to the church and show her how it matters to how she lives her everyday life. Platt had an opportunity to spell out, for the church, what words like ‘gospel,’ ‘justification,’ ‘atonement,’ etc. mean in the context of Romans. But Platt  assumes (a faulty assumption, in my opinion) that the readers of his book already understand these terms and goes on to reinforce the old Evangelism-technique approach to Romans. Such an approach, unfortunately, leaves Paul’s intentions in Romans behind and leaves the modern reader lacking a fuller understanding of Scripture. As a pastor who happens to believe these words matter to our everyday lives, Platt’s approach genuinely saddens me. I wish he had used his platform better. 

This is not a matter of me complaining Platt is not scholarly enough. And, really, this is not a matter of me singling out Platt for his reduced gospel. This is a frustration I have with the larger Evangelical community in general. Our gospel is reduced to “getting sinners into heaven” instead of making disciples of Jesus who bring heaven to earth. We all, not just David Platt, need to repent of this.

A Radical Review: The Good, Pt. 2

Criticizes a Cheap Understanding of God’s Will:

I’m pretty sure David Platt and I would have significant disagreement regarding the nature of God’s will. Nevertheless, in whatever overlap there is between our understandings, I think he nailed it with his comments on page 164,

“We say things such as, “The safest place to be is in the center of God’s will. We think, If it’s dangerous, God must not be in it. If it’s risky, if it’s unsafe, if it’s costly, it must not be God’s will. But what if these factors are really the criteria by which we determine something is God’s will? What if we began to look at the design of God as the most dangerous option before us? What if the center of God’s will is in reality the most unsafe place for us to be?” 

I certainly think there’s a sense in which Platt’s overstating his point for rhetorical purposes. After all, I don’t see him trying to cross the Iranian boarder with a bag full of Bibles and no identification. Nevertheless, his questions need to be heard by American Christians. I’ve heard people voice the cliché’s he’s criticizing here. And I’m grateful for his voice on the matter.

As I’ve said elsewhere, safety is never promised to us in Scripture. You never once heard Jesus saying to the disciples, “Hey guys, don’t worry about the Romans. They don’t like me much, but you guys shouldn’t have a problem with them. Once I’m gone, I’m pretty sure they’ll leave you alone.” No, quite to the contrary, Jesus tells them that before they follow him they are to be fully aware that this can only end in a cross. Death is where this Christianity thing is headed – therefore count the cost!

God’s will wasn’t for us to have a safe, sentimental religion. Jesus came to call us to a *radical* revolution – to a life that is not afraid of death or those who can bring death because we believe that Christ has defeated death and our ultimate end is resurrection. Safe, sentimental religion is not Christianity. Christianity is a religion of self-sacrifice not safety, death not sentimentality.

It seems, then, that the most dangerous place to be in this life might very well be within the will of God. .

 

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.