Gospelbound

It’s the tale of two crowns: the so-called coronavirus that looks like a crown under the microscope and Jesus Christ as King of Kings and Lord of Lords. Can God be good when thousands around the world get sick and die from something they cannot even see? Where is he, and what is he doing?John Lennox poses these and other good questions in a new book, Where Is God in a Coronavirus World?, published by The Good Book Company. John Lennox is professor of mathematics at Oxford University (emeritus), and an internationally renowned speaker on the interface of science, philosophy, and religion. He is senior fellow with the Trinity Forum and has written a series of books exploring the relationship between science and Christianity. You may also know him from his debates with noted atheists Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, and Peter Singer.In this book he points out how the coronavirus exposes our vulnerability, when we expend so much energy pretending that we are immortal. And yet the relationship between creator and creation is disordered. All is not well. Perhaps this epidemic will make it impossible to avoid the fact that we will all die.What, then, can Christians say to an anxious world? Can we solve this problem? Lennox doesn’t go that far. He writes that “a Christian is not so much a person who has solved the problem of pain, suffering and the coronavirus, but one who has come to love and trust a God who has himself suffered.”Lennox joins me on Gospelbound to discuss the God who wears the crown and why we can love and trust him. This episode of Gospelbound is brought to you by Southeastern Seminary. In a disenchanted world looking to themselves for answers, Southeastern’s three-year Doctor of Ministry in Faith and Culture plants graduates at the intersection of theology, culture, and church to bring the world a better story—the gospel. Learn more at sebts.edu. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The church will always face external threats. The gospel will always incite opposition. What if our biggest problem, then, isn’t hostility from the world but instead compromise inside the church?Gerald Sittser marshals that argument in his new book, Resilient Faith: How the Early Christian ‘Third Way’ Changed the World, published by Brazos. Sittser is professor of theology at Whitworth University in Spokane, Washington.He writes: “The problem we currently face is not primarily political or ideological. The problem is the compromised identity of the church itself and the compromised message of the gospel.”Sittser joins me on Gospelbound to explain how this “Third Way” in the early church attracted attention not for being loud and obnoxious, but by being different. We’ll also discuss why millennials drift away from the church, how to change a church culture of entertainment, the high price of fighting for power and privilege, and more. This episode of Gospelbound is brought to you by Southeastern Seminary. In a disenchanted world looking to themselves for answers, Southeastern’s three-year Doctor of Ministry in Faith and Culture plants graduates at the intersection of theology, culture, and church to bring the world a better story—the gospel. Learn more at sebts.edu. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

If Erik Larson writes the book, I read the book. It's one of my simple rules of life. All the more so when he writes about one of the most dramatic periods of history, the so called London blitz of 1940 and 1941 when Great Britain withstood aerial bombardment by Nazi Germany. Larson's latest book is The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz, published by Crown. Larson is also the number one New York Times bestselling author of two of my most memorable reads The Devil in the White City and also Dead Wake among other titles. If you're looking for an engrossing read during the coronavirus quarantine, I recommend this book.You'll be engrossed in the life and death struggle of a nation and its dynamic leader in their confrontation with Nazi tyranny. I read the book before the world stopped spinning, but recent events gave me a new perspective on the timeliness of this work and it even made me wonder about the role of religion or lack thereof in this and in that previous crisis. So that’s why we've invited Erik Larson to speak on Gospelbound. This episode of Gospelbound is brought to you by Southeastern Seminary. In a disenchanted world looking to themselves for answers, Southeastern’s three-year Doctor of Ministry in Faith and Culture plants graduates at the intersection of theology, culture, and church to bring the world a better story—the gospel. Learn more at sebts.edu. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

It turns out that rock bottom isn’t the worst place to be. When you have nowhere else to turn, you realize we need renewal.Mark Sayers has not written another book on the challenges that face the church in the West, though few would be better suited to do so. He’s written instead a handbook for not only surviving but even thriving in our secular age. Sayers is the author of Reappearing Church: The Hope for Renewal in the Rise of Our Post-Christian Culture, published by Moody. Sayers has written previous books, including Disappearing Church. And he is the senior leader of Red Church in Melbourne, Australia. Many listeners of Gospelbound may know Mark as the cohost with John Mark Comer of the podcast This Cultural Moment.I appreciate Sayer’s view that we’re just not going to be smart or savvy or rich enough to meet the challenges of our post-Christian culture. So much is working against us in this world.He writes:The whole of contemporary Western culture—from the structure of our malls and cities, to the very fabric of the internet and social media platforms—are ideologies that shape us toward a vision not rooted in the eternal, but in the unlimited freedom and pleasure of the individual. But Sayers doesn’t just see challenges. He also sees opportunities. We talk about both in this episode of Gospelbound. This episode of Gospelbound is brought to you by Southeastern Seminary. In a disenchanted world looking to themselves for answers, Southeastern’s three-year Doctor of Ministry in Faith and Culture plants graduates at the intersection of theology, culture, and church to bring the world a better story—the gospel. Learn more at sebts.edu. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Now here’s a good question: “How was it that a cult inspired by the execution of an obscure criminal in a long-vanished empire came to exercise such a transformative and enduring influence on the world?”That we take for granted this enduring influence is the main point of Tom Holland’s new book, Dominion: How the Christian Revolution Remade the World, published by Basic Books.Holland is an award-winning historian of the ancient world and regular contributor to the Times of London, The Wall Street Journal, and The New York Times. He observes that Romans saw worship of the crucified Jesus as scandalous, obscene, and grotesque. And yet this same Roman Empire would eventually come to worship Jesus as God. Holland writes:The relationship of Christianity to the world that gave birth to it is, then, paradoxical. The faith is at once the most enduring legacy of classical antiquity, and the index of its utter transformation.In our own day Holland finds pervasive Christian influence everywhere he looks in the West. The self-evident truths of the American Declaration of Independence—that all men are created equal and endowed with the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness—are not remotely self-evident to a student of antiquity or other world religions. But that’s the genius of this Christian revolution, Holland argues. He writes, “The surest way to promote Christian teachings as universal was to portray them as deriving from anything other than Christianity."Holland joins me on Gospelbound to discuss why Christianity is the most difficult legacy of the ancient world to write about, and why this Christian revolution is the greatest story ever told. This episode of Gospelbound is brought to you by Southeastern Seminary. In a disenchanted world looking to themselves for answers, Southeastern’s three-year Doctor of Ministry in Faith and Culture plants graduates at the intersection of theology, culture, and church to bring the world a better story—the gospel. Learn more at sebts.edu. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

I don’t know what vision the term “decadence” conjures up for you. Some advertising campaign years ago implanted an association for me with chocolate cake. But Ross Douthat sees a rich and powerful society no longer going anywhere in particular. We’re stuck with economic stagnation, political stalemates, cultural exhaustion, and demographic decline.He writes: “For the first time since 1491, we have found the distances too vast and the technology too limited to take us to somewhere genuinely undiscovered, somewhere truly new.”That line comes from his new book, The Decadent Society: How We Became Victims of Our Own Success, published by Avid Reader Press. Douthat is a columnist for The New York Times and author of the book Bad Religion, for which I previously interviewed him. The last time we talked was spring of 2016. A few things have changed since then. But not Douthat’s abilities as a must-read writer. I could do an entire podcast just reading my favorite lines from this book. As a former Methodist, I especially liked how he described “thin cosmopolitanism that’s really just the extremely Western ideology of liberal Protestantism plus ethnic food.”This is a serious book, though, and it deserves serious attention. What’s next when there are no more unexplored frontiers or fresh discoveries? What’s the point of life if there are no more worlds to conquer? Douthat says we see a world in turmoil, but it’s more like we’ve lulled ourselves to sleep.Douthat writes:If you want to feel like Western society is convulsing, there’s an app for that, a convincing simulation waiting. But in the real world, it’s possible that Western society is really learning back in an easy chair, hooked up to a drip of something soothing, playing and replaying an ideological greatest-hits tape from its wild and crazy youth, all riled up in its own imagination and yet, in reality, comfortably numb.Yet Douthat does envision a possible renaissance for the West, an escape from our cultural malaise. That’s part of what we discuss in this episode of Gospelbound. This episode of Gospelbound is brought to you by Southeastern Seminary. In a disenchanted world looking to themselves for answers, Southeastern’s three-year Doctor of Ministry in Faith and Culture plants graduates at the intersection of theology, culture, and church to bring the world a better story—the gospel. Learn more at sebts.edu. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Gospelbound, hosted by Collin Hansen for The Gospel Coalition, is a podcast for those searching for firm faith in an anxious age. Each week, Collin talks with insightful guests about books, ideas, and how to navigate life by the gospel of Jesus Christ in a post-Christian culture. Coming Tuesday, March 3. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.