Commentary on 5 Distortions of the Gospel

This is a commentary on 5 Distortions of the Gospel in Our Day.

I would like him to explain some of the points a little more so I can understand his perspective, but here are my thoughts.

What does MacDonald mean by "Gospel", is he talking about the narrative of Jesus or God's redemptive plan? Those 2 are pretty different. I'll assume he's talking about the latter when addressing his points. I'll also assume that his goal is to reach the lost for the kingdom.

Cake Mix Gospel

If we leave out key ingredients our souls will never “rise” to God. We don’t need the message reduced to some irreducible elements, we need the whole gospel.

It's hard to know what parts MacDonald thinks is being left out of the Gospel or what components go into making the Gospel. Maybe because I've already broken it up into its essential parts. But the reality is, different people need God in different ways. If the Word is truly living, then different aspects will touch different people depending on their particular social game or set of experiences.

If our goal and God's goal is to bring people to saving knowledge of Him, we're going to use the parts of the Word that speak to the particular people.

This is not to say that we should just write off parts of the Gospel. But it doesn't mean that we necessarily need to present the entire thing at once. Faith is a long journey. There's so much information that needs to be conveyed that there's no way to effectively convey it all at once. Even if you could, it would take a lot to be able to process it all.

Just as the Jesus' 12 disciples spent time learning from our great teacher, they also spent time afterwards figuring out what it all meant. Paul wrote a bunch of letters to correct the Church and bring it back on track.

Winning souls isn't about praying a prayer, it's a journey of faith to become what Christ modeled for us.

The Cultural Gospel

Understanding the ‘culture’ is much less important than knowing what the Bible says about every human heart separated from God. We don’t need slick sales people giving out the gospel. We need bold, Spirit-filled messengers with a deep heart of compassion for lost people.

I agree with his first statement, that "Understanding the ‘culture’ is much less important than knowing what the Bible says about every human heart separated from God" only to an extent. I think they're equally important. The people we're trying to reach for the Kingdom exist in the culture. Language is a part of culture. I would be hard pressed to bring the Gospel to a country in Africa without first learning the language. But even language is only a part of the culture.

Having a "deep heart of compassion for lost people" will want us to want to learn about their culture. How they think, work, play. The things they need or care about. We see the example of God himself. Having been disconnected from His people for so long, He sent his son, Jesus, to become one of us (John 1).

Understanding culture is more than just ethnography or anthropology, those are the first steps. We then take that knowledge so that we too can incarnate God into their midsts. Just as Jesus lived with us, we live with them. Just as Paul said, "I have become all things to all people, that by all means I might save some. I do it all for the sake of the gospel, that I may share with them in its blessings." (1 Corinthians 9:22-23)

The Cool Gospel

We don’t need to ’spin’ the message, we need to say it. We need to stop shaping Jesus in some misguided effort to make Him appealing.

Agreed, we have to say "the message". But how do we say it? I'm not necessarily advocating that Jesus be "cool", whatever that means. But the Gospel needs to be appealing. It's our job to figure out how it will appeal to the lost and let the Holy Spirit do His work and finish the job.

Part of making the message appealing is by making it relevant. Another part is presenting it in a way that people haven't heard before so that they notice the message.

Advertisers have been having this problem for ages. Eventually, the message wears off and people start tuning it out. If advertisers continue to just broadcast and broadcast, they wouldn't be getting anywhere.

I'm not saying that we change the message, just how the message is presented. If it turns out that the way we present it is "cool", what's wrong with that as long as the Gospel is being preached? The message is still there. The Holy Spirit is still there. We're just doing the human part.

Carnal Gospel

The selfish gospel that promises things Jesus doesn’t promise is a lie and is sentencing the lost who listen to a shocking surprise in eternity.

Jesus does promise "health, wealth, always happy, never hurting". And I think there's nothing wrong with embracing those promises as long as we're authentic about how God provides. The Gospel has real power to heal and to bring hope, not just in the after life, but in this life. We need to start embracing the truth and reality of that power.

Additionally, we need to stop over promising. We have to be able to answer the hard questions that people ask of us because these hard questions are real. The biggest is the issue of suffering. God has a plan is little comfort to those who experience it. We really need to seek the Spirit and come up with a theology of suffering. I wish I had a better answer, but don't yet.

The Carefree Gospel

The gospel of “get them to church, and in time everything will come together as long as we don’t offend them” is a dangerous gospel.

I know I rather have people in church, where they will hear God's word and be surrounded by a cloud of witnesses than not.

There are definitely times where truth can be offensive, but doesn't mean we need to speak it in an offensive way. I'm not keen on the whole politically correct business, and I don't think we should shy away from correcting people when they need it. But we need the right to speak those things into their lives. And not from a position of power or authority. But from love and relationship.

This idea of being afraid to offend someone comes from people being strangers to us. If we have that relationship, we know what will and won't offend them. There's going to be times when we do, whether knowingly or not, that we may have to apologize for afterwards. But if the relationships isn't there, then none of that is possible.