This New Year, Resolve Not to Forget God

Quick to Listen

Christianity Today

Religion, Christianity, Religion & Spirituality

4.3 • 622 Ratings

🗓️ 2 January 2020

⏱️ 42 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Transcribed highlights of the show can be found in our episode summaries. When did we forget God? It’s a provocative question. And it’s the name of outgoing Christianity Today editor in chief Mark Galli’s latest book. After years working in this world, Galli believes that evangelical Christians’ strong suit today is the love of neighbor be it prayer gathering to evangelism to social justice to acts of mercy. We talk about God a lot and worship him and pray to him regularly. But on the other hand, relatively few Christians take with equal seriousness the command to love God with all our heart, all our soul, all our mind, and all our strength. If we do talk about the love of God, it is said that we love God by loving our neighbor. True enough, but that is hardly a complete answer, nor one that would have satisfied Christians of other eras. So what would look like to love God with this sort of passionate and all encompassing fury today? Or, to put it in classical terms, what it looks like to strive to behold the beatific vision, that is, the vision of God himself, a striving driven by an unswerving desire to know God intimately, face to face, and thus to love him with earthly and heavenly intensity? For his last Quick to Listen episode Galli digital media producer Morgan Lee spoke with Hans Boersma, the author of Seeing God: The Beatific Vision in Christian Tradition, to discuss would look like to love God with passionate and all-encompassing fury today and what difference this move might make in our lives and in the world around us. What is Quick to Listen? Read more Subscribe to Quick to Listen on Apple Podcasts Follow the podcast on Twitter Follow our host on Twitter: Morgan Lee Subscribe to Mark’s newsletter: The Galli Report Visit Hans Boersma’s website Music by Sweeps Quick to Listen is produced by Morgan Lee and Matt Linder The transcript is edited by Bunmi Ishola Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	This episode is brought to you in part by The Apologetics Guy Show, the podcast that helps you find
0:07.5	clear answers to tough questions about Christianity. Learn to explain your faith with courage and
0:13.3	compassion. Join Moody Bible Institute professor Dr. Mikhail del Rosario at Apologeticsky.com.
0:23.2	American evangelicalism has had a unique beginning, one that energized it and carried it along for two centuries and more,
0:30.5	and it has been one of the most revolutionary movements in church history, changing the face not only of North American Christianity,
0:36.7	but with the 19th century
0:38.2	missionary movement, the entire globe. This history has many troubling elements, as many have noted.
0:43.9	This is not surprising, because it's a movement full of sinners. But God has been good and has
0:48.2	nonetheless used it to enable people from all walks of life and every corner of the world to know
0:52.8	the unsurpassable love and grace of Jesus Christ.
0:55.5	Still, contemporary evangelicalism is in serious trouble. Actually, its crisis is the same one
1:01.9	that afflicts all Christianity in America. At the risk of hubris and of merely adding one more
1:07.1	item to the seemingly endless list of crises, I suggest that one crisis lies at the
1:12.8	heart of what ails large swaths of the American Church. Alexander Soljanitsyn named it in a
1:18.4	1983 speech. He was talking about Western culture, but I apply it to the American Church. In some,
1:24.4	we have forgotten God. What I just read is from my forthcoming book, When Did We Forget God?
1:31.0	And what I mean by this is this.
1:33.8	Evangelical Christians strong suit today is the love of neighbor.
1:37.2	Just witnessed the plethora of good works we do today from prayer gatherings to evangelism to social justice, acts of mercy.
1:44.0	To be sure, we talk about God a lot and worship him and pray to him regularly.
1:48.3	But what I mean by we have forgotten God, and believe me, I include myself in that observation,
1:53.0	is this, relatively few Christians take with equal seriousness the command to love God with
	...

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