Friday, August 19, 2011

Corporate Temptations/Tests

In my new book on Paul's Spirituality (published by IVP, coming out soon), I was struck by Paul's application of his theology of the cross, especially when it came to the things Paul sacrificed as a demonstration of his faith. For example, Paul sacrificed his ethnicity/nationality for the sake of following Christ. Now, at this point I don't want to get into why Paul felt it necessary to do so (I cover that in the book--it can be a rather lengthy topic to banter about). Rather, for the purposes of this blog, I'd like to ask us the simple question: have we sacrificed our ethnicity/nationality for the sake of knowing Christ, especially as it relates to being "crucified with Christ"? What American privileges have you given up in order to share in the "sufferings of Christ."

Or, to turn the question the other way around, to what extent have we given into American obsessions (what I would call a corporate temptation/test) rather than discover the loss that comes by Jesus' cross?

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