ex libris

I've been posting a lot of quotes lately, and that's probably not bound to change anytime soon. So instead of having a different title for each "quoting-post" I'll just be using the title "ex libris" each time I share something I've been reading, re-reading, or just thinking about from an author.

Here's the latest.

Paul... considered the gospel to be a transcultural message of repentant faith in Christ designed neither to bind people to a form of culture alien to their own, nor to eradicate the distinctive features of their own culture.... Just as the gospel was to set free an infinite variety of individuals, developing their distinctive gifts and kinds of beauty rather than stamping them into a mold of conformity, so it was to come to whole cultures, with their dance patterns of folkways and institutions, and to lift these to the highest level of individual expression, erasing or cleansing only those with idolatrous implications. Thus the gospel is free to become encultured- to wear many forms of cultural expression, with perfect freedom to change these expressions like clothing when the need arises- only when it has been disencultured.

Paradoxically enough, it appears that when the church begins to draw up codes and taboos which separate it from the world, it is most worldly, most in conformity with the world's understanding of holiness and spirituality.

At its worst, [this] destroys the church's life. At best, it freezes the form of the church and produces a sanctified out-of-dateness which the world can easily learn to ignore.

- Taken from, Dynamics of Spiritual Renewal by Richard F. Lovelace, 188-89, 190, 197.