Radical Discipleship: Nonconformity
June 2, 2010
John Stott impresses me greatly in his last book ever: Radical Discipleship.
Stott claims that the church has challenges to overcome to regain its influence back. He names four: Pluralism, and materialism, ethical relativism, and the challenge of narcissism.
3. Ethical relativism, Stott labels an insidious spirit… seeping into the church. He picks mostly on sexual ethics. The incidence of cohabitation is alarming in Western Culture in and outside the church. Conforming to the standards of Jesus in sexual ethics (sexuality must always be within marriage between husband and wife) is the high calling of all Christians, relativism notwithstanding. In Christianity we are not to live by an “it all depends”, but by the words already spoken by God.
4. The last challenge to authentic Christian living is narcissism, an inordinate love of oneself, and the sufficiency of oneself. Got a problem? Look within for the solution. Narcissism neglects the love of God, and others for the love of self.
Pluralism, materialism, ethical relativism, and narcissism, these four but the greatest of these is the unwillingness to seek conformity to Christ at all cost. Stott doesn’t blame the world for being the way it is. He simply points out, having been a pastor and a Christian statesman for a couple of generations that our easy willingness to follow the ways of the world are killing us.
What problems in the church can be attributed to these challenges? Do yo agree that these are the biggest challenges the church is facing today?
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