It’s an Oprah and Dr. Phil world, in which bad things happen to good people, good people have environmentally-generated self-image “issues,” and the right attitude (and possibly the right prescription) is the cure for everything. What world is that? The secular world? The world of those other religions? No, it’s the world of the average evangelical, in which very little requires forgiveness, where Jesus is not the great physician, healing our disease of sin, but the great therapist, helping us to overcome our psychological hang-ups and fulfill our potential. Albert Mohler writes:
Therapeutic modalities and answering questions with a therapeutic response have become the reflex of our society. If you doubt this, just go into your local Christian bookstore; what your are likely to find are rows upon rows of books that demonstrate this very therapeutic worldview, with just a few Bible verses added to make it Christian. We have to understand that for Americans this is normal. It is normal to be told that the self is the center of the meaning system, and that the self is a project that they undertake throughout the entirety of their lives. As a result, most Americans believe that their major problem is something that has happened to them, and that their solution is to be found within. In other words, they believe that they have an alien problem that is to be resolved with an inner solution. What the gospel says, however, is that we have an inner problem that demands an alien solution—a righteousness that is not our own. Once we begin to understand how that dichotomy comes together, we can see better how we can think we are talking about the gospel, yet people in this culture will hear it as merely a new form of therapy.
—Albert Mohler, Preaching the Cross (Crossway, 2007), 81.
Preaching the Cross is a collection of messages from the 2006 Together for the Gospel Conference. You can download the entire message from which today’s quote was taken here.
TrackBack URL: http://www.thirstytheologian.com/mt/mt-tb.cgi/1472
Share this post:
Posted in: Albert Mohler · Preaching the Cross · Soteriology & the Gospel
Link · 0 TrackBacks
← Previous · Home · Next →
Comments on this post are closed. If you have a question or comment concerning this post, feel free to email us.