CHURCH TAKES PURPOSE DRIVEN THEOLOGY TOO FAR.

As I was driving the last couple of miles to my home last night I drove by Mount of Olives Assembly of God church. They have a sign that they use to advertise events coming up. Last night their sign read: "A Purpose Driven Christmas Carol". My first thought was "Why?" Why must Christian churches continue to promote Rick Warren's pop theology to this extreme?

But then I am reminded of a production I attended back in the 1980s produced by the Jesus People and titled "The Gospel According to Scrooge." With all due respect we have in many ways perverted Dicken's classic when we do this, but yet if one really looks at what Dickens was saying it is still bad theology. A man who has given up on such frivolity as Christmas is told by the ghost of his dead partner that he will be visited that night by three spirits that will show him the error of his ways.

Scrooge is first visited by the Ghost of Christmas Past. He visits his boyhood and sees his sister, whom has long passed on to the next world. He visits the first place he ever worked and we see the woman he almost married were it not for his greed. The next Ghost is the Ghost of Christmas Present. The Ghost now takes him to his nephew's home and then to the home of his clerk Bob Cratchit. He sees Tiny Tim and is made aware of the boys ailment. He is also forced to see the conditions in which Bob and his family live.

Finally Scrooge is visited by the Ghost of Christmas yet to come and is taken again to see the Cratchits mourning over Tiny Tim's death. He also gets to witness people preparing for his own funeral and finally taken to the cemetary where the Ghost points him to his gravesite. At this point Scrooge is awakened by what seems to have been a dream, but he is now feeling a change in himself and when he realizes that he has not missed Christmas goes off to make right some of the wrongs he has committed including that of his clerk Bob and his family and that of his nephew.

If one were to look at this story from a theological perspective one would see first of all that no where is Christ really mentioned other than that the name of the holiday. Scrooge is given a glimpse inside himself instead of showing him objective signs of the salvation Christ won for him on the cross. Though I don't think that Charles Dickens had in mind to create a story of the Christ it seems interesting to me that Christian's want to do it for him. I wouldn't mind that they do it but at least get the theology correct.

I suppose the next thing we will see is "Purpose Driven Easter Bunny"

Let this purpose driven fad go and get back to Christ and him Crucified.