Fear and Loathing in the West
Notes
Transcript
First Sentence
First Sentence
It’s been said “It’s hard to dream when you are being chased by a grizzly bear.”
What does it risk if they fail to hear from me?
What does it risk if they fail to hear from me?
We are living in the midst of unprecedented change. It’s fast and it’s frightening. I wonder if this is the time to dream big.
Fear tempts us toward apathy or cynicism on the one hand. Or we could be tempted to bury our heads in the sand and wish everything went back to normal. But what if God really had given us a message that would truly resonate with people. A message that people wished were true.
Change
More than at any other time in history, North America, along with much of the world is exploding with change - fast, frightening, change. Some have referred to it as mega-change.
Hear Peter Drucker sum it up
Every few hundred years throughout Western history, a sharp transformation has occurred. In a matter of decades, society altogether rearranges itself its world views, its basic values, its social and political structures, its arts, its key institutions. Fifty years later a new world exists. And the people born into that world cannot imagine the world in which grandparents lived and into which their own parents were born.
Post-Christian
Not pre-Christianity. Though Biblical illiteracy is on the rise, it’s not as though we are returning to a world identical to the one where Christianity didn’t exist. Post-Christianity attempts to move beyond Christianity while simultaneously feasting upon its fruit.
Ethics of a post Christian world
Mark Sayers
The highest good is individual freedom, happiness, self-definition, and self-expressionTraditions, religions, received wisdom, regulations and social ties that restrict individual freedom, happiness, self-definition must be re-shaped deconstructed or destroyed. The world will improve as human freedom grows. Technology- in particular the internet will motor us toward utopia. The primary social ethic is tolerance of everyone’s self-defined quest for individual freedom and self-expression. Any deviation from this ethic of tolerance is dangerous and must not be tolerated. Therefore social justice is less about economic or class inequality, and more about issues of equality relating to individual identity, self-expression, and personal autonomy. Humans are inherently good. Large-scale structures and institutions are suspicious at best and evil at worst. Forms of external authority are rejected and personal authenticity is lauded.
These beliefs are not so much preached as they are assumed. That’s why as Sayers points out you can have very disparate groups with these same beliefs: Free market economists, leftist anarchists, porn producers, tech entrepreneurs, and small government conservatives.
Ex. Sunday assembly church was not alienating but contemporary culture was. A mantra of the late 20 century was people like Jesus but they hate the church. Now it may be people don’t like Jesus but they like the church.
And Yahweh said to Abram, “Go out from your land and from your relatives, and from the house of your father, to the land that I will show you. And I will make you a great nation, and I will bless you, and I will make your name great. And you will be a blessing. And I will bless those who bless you, and those who curse you I will curse. And all families of the earth will be blessed in you.”
And Abram went out as Yahweh had told him, and Lot went with him. Now Abram was seventy-five years old when he went out from Haran. And Abram took Sarai his wife, and Lot his nephew, and all their possessions that they had gathered, and all the persons that they had acquired in Haran, and they went out to go to the land of Canaan. And they went to the land of Canaan.
What am I asking them to do?
What am I asking them to do?
1. Bring our fears to Jesus
a. Fears will one day surface
And there was a famine in the land. And Abram went down to Egypt to dwell as an alien there, for the famine was severe in the land.
Now Sarai, the wife of Abram, had borne him no children. And she had an Egyptian female slave, and her name was Hagar.
b. Learn to surface them approriately.
What does Scripture say? “Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness.”
Now to the one who works, wages are not credited as a gift but as an obligation. However, to the one who does not work but trusts God who justifies the ungodly, their faith is credited as righteousness.
2. Get help discerning his perspective on our fears
“Trauma is when severe emotional pain cannot find a relational home in which to be held.”
Robert Stolorow
For whatever was written beforehand was written for our instruction, in order that through patient endurance and through the encouragement of the scriptures we may have hope.
Start Dreaming
a. Go on prayer walks
Have people prayed here before?
b. What meaningful experiences have you had at Compass? How might we invite others into those experiences?
c. What values have formed Christ in you?
d. What dreams do you have about the kind of people we would be in Christ?
Next steps- What would it look like if we believed this?
Next steps- What would it look like if we believed this?
town hall November 12 6:30
Dead Dog Story- Vision Spring
Dead Dog Story- Vision Spring
Last sentence- It is a scary world. There are things that go bump in the night. But he is with us and his grace will carry us through together.
Last sentence- It is a scary world. There are things that go bump in the night. But he is with us and his grace will carry us through together.