Book Comment: If the Church Were Christian, Chapter 2, Part 2

If you are joining this book review series mid-stream , you can read the comment from the beginning by going to the LABELS section following the last post on this page and clicking on PHILIP GULLEY.

Gulley, Philip, If the Church were Christian.  Rediscovering the Values of Jesus (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2010)

CHAPTER 2: Affirming Our Potential Would be More Important Than Condemning Our Brokenness

Pastor Gulley denies the doctrine of Original Sin.    He says that a God who would condemn billions of people to Hell because the first couple tasted a fruit is despotic.  A very strong charge.  To respond fully would take weeks.

Every question can be followed by one hundred new questions and this is no different.  Talking about Original Sin opens up a door to numerous doctrinal questions; original sin, the age of accountability, adult versus infant baptism, what baptism actually means, where the soul comes from and when and how it is connected to the body.  I will discuss each of these in separate posts later.

Pastor Philip Gulley says that the churches he is criticizing see humans as sinful, flawed, and broken.  Look at your history books, check the court dockets, watch Judge Judy.  The world is sinful, flawed, and broken.

In this second chapter of his book, Gulley is responding to a real attitude in some churches, a strict rules based understanding of the Christian life.  This is especially prevalent in Fundamentalist churches.  I think it misses a vital point (who we are) and robs many sincere committed Christians of the true fullness of their Christian life.  We really are different from those outside the Church

In his book, After You Believe, Anglican Bishop N, T. Wright points out that, in the Kingdom, believers are to be Kings and Priests (Isaiah 61:6, Revelation 1:6, 5:10, Exodus 19:6, 1 Peter 2:5) and that Jesus clearly said that the Kingdom is here now (Luke 17:20-21) as well as in the future.

Our purpose is to learn to live now as Kings and Priests, members of the royal household (Ephesians 2:19, 1 Peter 2:9).   That means becoming like Jesus and assuming the Mind of Christ (1 Corinthians 2:14-16, http://www.pbc.org/files/messages/4807/3577.html ), instead of living by a bunch of rules and trying to be perfect. 

This is part of a continuing chapter-by- chapter response to this book.  More to come.