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Building Intellectual Towers While Living In Crappy Little Huts

July 27, 2007
Posted by Pastor Matt Johnson

Alan Hirsch, the Co-author of The Shaping of Things to Come, has a good blog that I read from time to time. His most recent, Existence Communication, contains a few thoughts via our brother, and father of existentialism, Soren Kierkeggard.

Neatnik theologians have been getting their knickers in a knot over SK since the 1800s (and at times rightfully so) but the dude still has an apt challenge for the church today.  Here’s a snippet of Hirsch’s comments re: Kierkegaards Existence Communication:

“There can be no way around the fact that our actions, as manifestations of our total being, do actually speak much louder than our words. There is a clear non-verbal message being emitted by our lives all the time. We are faced with the sobering fact that we actually are our messages”.  

 Could it be that for all of our talk of incarnational living, contextualizing the gospel and being mission minded-cool that we get stuck in our own cultural ghetto and fail to live the content of our message? I know I do…

Dont’ get me wrong. Proclamation of a robust orthodoxy is absolutely essential. But ideas have consequences. As in, our theology cannot be disembodied from our living. It’s a both-and thing, not an either or. Anyway, read the post and let me know what you think.