Tony Jones has made my day. In a sermon last Sunday, which you can hear here, he not only responded to the Yoga bit on CNN I posted a while ago but called MacArthur out as a modern day Gnostic. I have thought this since May when I went to a luncheon with him here in Winston, but never posted something about it. I will think of how to tell the story while you listen to Tony. Emerge on Tony.
UPDATE: Tony has a sweet new blog post that pertains which i enjoyed.
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3 comments:
Oh the irony.
Weren't you just posting about how Driscoll was calling out Pagitt, Mclaren, et al?
This just kinda sounds like the same thing to me.
MacArthur isn't part of emergent in any form. I even think he is bothered by Driscoll, but anyway if you listen to Tony's sermon I think you find a good discussion of Gnosticism, a video of John getting ruff on CNN, and then you are left to draw a conclusion. The point of the sermon was actually not another minister but a clip of him on CNN facilitated a discussion of how Christianity is an embodied religion.
Tony Jones is so way out in left field on so many levels in this short clip. First, John MacArthur counsels regularly, it is an understanding that he and his elders agreed to. A pastor needs to be engaged in one-on-one counseling on a weekly basis so that he stays in touch, so his preaching doesn't become clinical but where the rubber meets the road.
And John MacArthur is a very good counselor, for exactly the reason Tony Jones mocked him. Because he counsels from Scripture. Exactly what people need is to know how their problem is a direct result of their failure to practice Scriptural principles. That Tony would mock this, only shows how ignorant he is of, the richness of the Scriptures when it comes to meeting people's REAL needs. (I don't entirely blame Tony because the Church has almost entirely failed in this regard with their plethora of self-help psycho-babble that fills the "christian" book stores).
Second, John MacArthur did NOT say, that there is no connection between body and spirit. Tony made that up. John MacArthur is quite aware of the body/spirit connection. John MacArthur's point was that using a Hindu religious practice (yoga) was entirely the wrong way to meet the physical/spiritual problem.
Third, because of Tony Jones' ignorance of TRUE Biblical counsel he has no framework from which to understand John MacArthur's remarks. John MacArthur, if he had, had the time and Pagitt would have been anything short of scornful. John MacArthur would have been able to share with him an incredibley wise and thoroughly Biblical prescription for dealing with stress. To which yoga in comparison is a cheap immitation, as it never really solves the problem of stress it merely masks it.
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