Rethink Your Cultural Assumptions!
by John J. Parsons

Rethinking our cultural assumptions -- particularly how they are expressed in the institutional churches of our time -- is a hard but necessary work. An excellent way to begin, however, is by "retooling" our theological lexicon so that we are better able to contextualize and understand the message of Yeshua and his disciples. 

I think we ought to read only books that bite and sting us. If the book we are reading doesn't shake us awake like a blow on the skull, why bother reading it in the first place? A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us. - Franz Kafka

Experience supplies painful proof that traditions once called into being are first called useful, then they become necessary. At last they are too often made idols, and all must bow down to them or be punished. - J. C. Ryle

If Christianity is to receive a rejuvenation it must be by other means than any now being used. If the church...is to recover from the injuries she suffered, there must appear a new type of preacher. The proper, ruler-of-the-synagogue type will never do. Neither will the priestly type of man who carries out his duties, takes his pay and asks no questions, nor the smooth-talking pastoral type who knows how to make the Christian religion acceptable to everyone. All these have been tried and found wanting. Another kind of religious leader must arise among us. He must be of the old prophet type, a man who has seen visions of God and has heard a voice from the Throne. When he comes (and I pray God there will not be one but many) he will stand in flat contradiction to everything our smirking, smooth civilization holds dear. He will contradict, denounce and protest in the name of God and will earn the hatred and opposition of a large segment of Christendom. - A.W. Tozer

@ about the author:
John J. Parsons studied philosophy in college and graduate school and also attended seminary, various theological schools, and Talmud Torah. He is the author of Zola's Introduction to Hebrew and is Director of Hebrew4Christians, a non-denominational outreach intended to promote Jewish literacy among those of the Christian faith. John and his family live in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

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