Thursday, November 01, 2007
What Are You Building?
Russ over at Eagle and Child looks at Kuyper and Calvin and wonders what we are building.
Just think about it. Building in blogging would requires being widely read, and maybe even doing research. Criticism, as it is most often practiced, simply means someone else's statements and more or less intellectually sticking your tongue out at them. The most widely read blogs, with a few notable exceptions, are that way for a reason - they are constructive.
Think about what passes for growth in churches today - it is most often poaching from other churches. Is that building or destroying?
Even when criticism is right and appropriate such can be done in a constructive or a destructive fashion. Isn't doing so constructively the very essence of grace? Let's think about this for a minute.
What is the purpose of criticism, or correcting error? Is it not ultimately to help those holding the error towards the correct view? Yet if we criticize destructively, rather than invite them into the fold, we drive them away.
Russ has struck on something very deep here. Building lies at the very heart of what it means to be a disciple. It may be building a relationship, or building a correction, but we are always building. Even when "pruning" it is for the sake of construction.
We would do well to remember tha.
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Thus, Calvinism, taught rightly, ought to produce the best most engaged citizens out there. People who are involved in the community, working in the schools, investing in the public institutions. Simply put, we as Christians ought to be builders. (Yes, I'm well aware that there are diseased and unhealthy institutions and organizations in society that are beyond repair -- a part of healthy building is selective pruning out of what isn't working).I am struck by how often we has Christians engage in destruction rather than building, and it is destruction for destruction sake. It is especially true in blogging where criticism seems to be the "call" of all. After all, it is so easy.
Contrast that with the ethos of destruction. This is the ethos of "I'm going to have mine, and the rest of you can play with a rusty chainsaw, for all I care." This is the ethos that spawns the latest crop of "torture chic" films (like Saw, Hostel, The Hills Have Eyes, etc). This is the ethos that turns a diverting video game like Second Life into a den of depravity, exploitation, and selfishness.
Just think about it. Building in blogging would requires being widely read, and maybe even doing research. Criticism, as it is most often practiced, simply means someone else's statements and more or less intellectually sticking your tongue out at them. The most widely read blogs, with a few notable exceptions, are that way for a reason - they are constructive.
Think about what passes for growth in churches today - it is most often poaching from other churches. Is that building or destroying?
Even when criticism is right and appropriate such can be done in a constructive or a destructive fashion. Isn't doing so constructively the very essence of grace? Let's think about this for a minute.
What is the purpose of criticism, or correcting error? Is it not ultimately to help those holding the error towards the correct view? Yet if we criticize destructively, rather than invite them into the fold, we drive them away.
Russ has struck on something very deep here. Building lies at the very heart of what it means to be a disciple. It may be building a relationship, or building a correction, but we are always building. Even when "pruning" it is for the sake of construction.
We would do well to remember tha.
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