This Good Word With Steve Wiens
Religion & Spirituality:Spirituality
Nearly three hundred years ago, a young preacher by the name of Jonathan Edwards gave a sermon called "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God," which has aruably become the most influential sermon in the history of the Evangelical church. In it, he says “The bow of God's wrath is bent, and the arrow made ready on the string, and justice bends the arrow at your heart, and strains the bow, and it is nothing but the mere pleasure of God, and that of an angry God, without any promise or obligation at all, that keeps the arrow one moment from being made drunk with your blood.”
Lovely image.
Brian Zahnd is the founding pastor of Word of Life Church in St. Joseph, Missouri. When he was in his twenties, he was greatly affected by Edwards' vision of God as angry, violent and retributive. "What I did know was that I liked Jesus," Zahnd says, "But I was really scared of his Dad, the faceless white giant with obvious anger issues."
In his brand new book, Sinners in the Hands of a Loving God: The Scandalous Truth of the Very Good News, Zahnd paints a very different, very biblical portrait of God: one that looks like Jesus. In it, he asks questions like: Is seeing God primarily as wrathful toward sinners true or biblical? Is fearing God a normal expected behavior? And where might the natural implications of this theological framework lead us?
I loved this book, and I loved my conversation with Brian.
Enjoy!
Oh, and Here is the hilarious and poignant youtube video of "Fyodor Dostoyevsky" reviewing Brian's book.
Music on today's episode is by Masss (Silver Collar)
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Episode 174 | Getting Back At It
Episode 173 | Advent with Ruth Haley Barton
Episode 172 | Piles
Episode 171 | What are you supposed to do with those lemons?
Episode 170 | An Alternative to Pushing Through
Episode 169 | Finding Holy in the Suburbs with Ashley Hales
Episode 168 | Reflections on Oscar Romero on the Eve of his Sainthood
Episode 167 | Angsty Book Proposals with Erin Lane
Episode 166 | A Flexible Faith with Bonnie Kristian
Episode 165 | Raise Your Voice with Kathy Khang
Episode 164: Live at Art House North with Tov Music and Shawn Smucker
Episode 163 | Learning to Speak God from Scratch with Jonathan Merritt
Episode 162 | The Unlikely Seminarian with Dan Cook
Episode 161 | Now
Episode 160 | The Eternal Current with Aaron Niequist
Episode 159 | Experiments in Honesty with Steve Daugherty
Episode 158 | The Spiritual Legacy of Madeleine L'Engle with Sarah Arthur
Episode 157 | Rethinking Incarceration with Dominique Gilliard
Episode 156 | I'm Still Here with Austin Channing Brown
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