January 7, 2009

What does "boldy proclaim" mean?

Keith, my Rector, is reading Rob Bell's latest book, Jesus Wants to Save Christians, and I think it is safe to say is having his mind blown and his spirit refreshed.  I ordered it yesterday based on the strong impact it seems to be having on him spiritually.  Here's what the About the Book section of the website says:

Jesus wants to save us from making the good news about another world and not this one. Jesus wants to save us from preaching a Gospel that is only about individuals and not about the systems that enslave them. Jesus wants to save us from shrinking the Gospel down to a transaction about the removal of sin and not about every single particle of creation being reconciled to its maker. Jesus wants to save us from religiously sanctioned despair, the kind that doesn't believe the world can be made better, the kind that either blatantly or subtly teaches people to just be quiet and behave and wait for something big to happen 'someday.'

I cut my spiritual teeth in the world this describes; one focuses on heaven vs. hell, personal salvation, and washing oneself clean in the blood of the lamb.  In seminary I began to see that perhaps that was a very narrow understanding of God's dream.  Now I am often lumped in with the "crazy liberals" who want to argue that Jesus was much more concered with restoring all things to God than he was with making sure I personally go to heaven when I die.

So as we pray on Sunday that God might "grant that all who are baptized into his Name may keep the covenent they have made, and boldly confess him as Lord and Savior<>

No answers today, just more and more questions.  What does "boldly proclaim" mean?

No comments: