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You’re probably familiar with the acronym TULIP. It’s just an easy way to remember some basic tenets of Calvinistic theology. There has been a lot of quibbling over the language of TULIP, so some people have suggested revised phrases. In case you need a review, here’s the acronym along with the updated language:

Total Depravity (Radical Depravity)

Unconditional Election

Limited Atonement (Particular Redemption)

Irresistible Grace (Efficacious Grace)

Perseverance of the Saints (Persevering Grace)

Even for people who use the new terminology, we still tend to talk about the acronym TULIP…because it sounds so much better than RUPEP.

But there’s a very serious problem with the language we use in this discussion. TULIP may not simply be a helpful mnemonic device; it may be a set of colored glasses that keeps us from seeing some very important aspects of the work of redemption.

You know those little decoder glasses you got as a kid? You would have a piece of paper that had a bunch of red dots on it. But when you put on the decoder glasses, the red disappeared, and you could finally read the hidden message, right? Without the glasses you could only see the red dots. But once you put the glasses on, you had a very different perspective.

When we use the language of TULIP we have on our special glasses, and we can only see parts of the picture. Perhaps we need to take off those linguistic filters and see a bigger picture.

Kenneth Burke, famous rhetorician, called this filtering aspect of language, “terministic screens.” In other words, we screen out certain aspects of ideas simply by the terms we use to talk about those ideas. I think we may unwittingly be screening out some very important aspects of the gospel because we fail to think of the gospel outside of the limits of the TULIP acronym.

I want to take a series of posts to accomplish several objectives:

• I want to demonstrate how each of the points of Calvinism are not only right and biblical, but also somewhat misleading.
• I want to show why a Christian who is committed to the doctrines of grace needs to take off the TULIP-colored glasses and look at the gospel from every angle.
• I want to show how we need to use different language when speaking of the gospel in order to accomplish that goal, and perhaps suggest some different language to use.
• And I want to point down some possible paths we may follow when we see that there are other paths of reality in the gospel message than simply TULIP.

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We humans are created to image God, to be his representatives and to be like him in the world. This quote from yesterday’s sermon is by Bruce Waltke:

We are never more like God than on our wedding day, when man and woman commit themselves unconditionally to one another.

By the way, the sermon yesterday was on divorce, and it was by far the best sermon I’ve ever heard on the topic. It should be available online here by the end of the week.

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Andy Crouch is Senior Editor at Christianity Today International. Last year he wrote a book called Culture Making: Recovering Our Creative Calling.

One of the big themes that we have been hearing for a while at our church now has been about the responsibility of the Church to be creators and cultivators of culture. We are to image God in his renewal of all things.

Crouch’s book is right down that alley. It is a call to the church to rediscover the bigness of the gospel. It is a call to not neglect the cultural mandate of God’s people. It is a call to be all that God has created us to be as humans.

There was an excellent interview this past spring with Andy about the book in byFaith Magazine. The interview itself is very powerful and profound. I’ve included some excerpts here to whet your appetite not just for the full interview, but also for the book itself.

When asked why he decided to write this book, Andy responded that one of the reasons was…

the sense that a lot of our cultural creativity was going into what people commonly call the “Christian subculture.” Actually, we were creating a lot of culture but it was only serving other Christians. And I think there was also a sense of embarrassment—that the music we created was not as innovative and compelling as the music that’s being created in the wider culture. The movies we were making were not as good as others; they weren’t as significant as the best movies that were being made in mainstream culture.

I sensed an opportunity to say, let’s think about a new way of framing what we’re up to in the world. It’s not about control or copying or consuming. It’s about what God has always intended for human beings; it’s the posture toward culture He wants His church to restore.

When asked what that posture is, Andy responded,

Well I’m thinking of Jesus as the second Adam, as the one who restored what Adam was supposed to be—a human being in full, faithful relationship to God. When we talk about being “in Christ” we’re talking about being a restored human being who does what Adam and Eve were called to do, but failed to do.

We don’t do it out of our own ability. We do it because Christ lives in us and restores to us that original human vocation which consists of two calls: cultivating and creating.

Cultivating is preserving what’s already good, and taking good care of it so that it remains good. Creating is actually bringing new things into the world—new cultural goods that extend and draw out the possibilities of the world. The church is the community of people who have the opportunity, by God’s grace, to be what human beings were meant to be: culture cultivators and culture creators.

The entire interview is very insightful, and well worth the read. Here’s a parting quote for you. Crouch discusses the way Christianity has interacted with politics and our failure to interact rightly. He says that we have become more influenced by the culture than we have influenced the culture:

So we were changed from people who were primarily about values to people who were primarily about power. And then we lost the struggle to turn that power into something valuable.

You can visit the Culture Making website here.

Read the full interview here.

Buy the book here.

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Desiring God has posted a series of videos from the Religious Newswriters Association meeting in Minneapolis. They discuss the “New Calvinism”–this Reformed resurgence within Evangelicalism. Most importantly (to me, anyway) is the discussion on how this new breed of Reformed thinkers view engagement with the world and culture. These are well worth watching, especially the Q&A.

Click here to view the videos.

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For those of you local to the Norfolk area, the Virginia Symphony will be performing the music of Led Zeppelin this Friday evening. Here are the details from the VSO website:

Ntelos Wireless Pavilion

Friday, September 25, 2009 at 8:00PM

Brent Havens, guest conductor
Randy Jackson, lead vocals

The Virginia Symphony performs Windborne’s Music of Led Zeppelin. A Benefit for the Virginia Symphony Musicians, Guest conductor Brent Havens Lead Vocalist Randy Jackson and a full rock band

Visit www.virginiasymphony.org or call (757) 892-6366 for more information.

Tickets: $30-$75 Children 12 and under free on the lawn

For more information, click here to visit the VSO website.

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Quote from today’s sermon:

Does God just enjoy being a moral nag? No. God wants us to live a certain way because the world is made a certain way. Sin is not meant to work well in God’s created order.

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[Read this article at the new site: www.anwoth.org.]

If you haven’t seen Seeds Family Worship yet, you need to visit their website.

Seeds Family Worship was planted when worship leader, Jason Houser, was asked to write some songs to help kids remember the verses from his church’s summer Bible school.

Jason began writing songs and singing them for the kids and families at church. The songs were well-crafted, catchy, and taken straight from scripture. Families liked them. . . a lot.

I know our family does. I lead children’s choir at our church, and we will be singing a couple of songs from Seeds albums this year.

On the Seeds website you can listen to all their songs, download Scripture memory cards for your kids, activities and ideas for family worship, chord charts for the songs, and even find out how to host a Seeds event at your church.

Check out their YouTube channel here. Here’s a video from their channel with the song our kids are singing today:

• Click here to become a fan of Seeds Family Worship on Facebook!
• Follow Seeds on Twitter for tips for family worship in 120 characters or less.
• Click here for short downloadable radio shows about family worship.

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Transformation 2009 is a conference designed to offer a team experience to pastors, ministry staff, and lay leaders in the realm of life-on-life missional discipleship.  Three specific tracks will be presented to allow you to explore how to bring spiritual [re]formation to your church.

• Spiritual Transformation – through leadership development
• Community Transformation – through strategic relationships
• Children Transformation – through engaging the imagination

To read more about the individual tracks, click here.

This conference is being held at Perimeter Church in Atlanta and promises to be a great opportunity for challenging our discipleship practices and helping us rethink how we do discipleship.

Early registration ends October 23, so click here to view registration information and pricing.

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Quote from this morning’s sermon:

Every time you eat and drink you declare that you are not God.

Our eating and our drinking define us as non-self-sufficient creatures. We rely on something outside of us to sustain us. That may be a good thing to remember when you pray before a meal. Let that be a prayer not only of thanksgiving, but of humble dependence.

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