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Gospel Hope
Like all great stories, though, the most important part of this one is that it can serve as a picture of gospel hope in miniature. The Cubs’ saga, because the drought was so much longer and more desperate than any other North American professional sports franchise, actually illustrates that hope uniquely. Think of it: more than a century of constant struggle, doubt, and disappointment. Hopes for a glorious and cathartic future of which we'll all be an emotionally and spiritually invested part, despite not being the main actors.
We hope for we do not yet see, and our great God kindly gives us earthly windows into the glory that will come if we faint not (Gal. 6:9).
No one can trivialize holy things quite like an Evanjellicle. Here one of America’s small-market talking heads chatters briefly about earthly windows into glory.
Try not to laugh.
5 comments
“I don’t want to go overboard and speak of ending the 108-year championship drought with exaggerated significance.”
Too late.
Evangelicals are so predictable. There is no fad or fanboyism into which they will not shoehorn the Gospel.
Also: what does it take to become an exemplary Christ-follower these days? Notoriety and Sabbath-breaking?
I think it is fair to say that Evanjellicles have lost all sense of proportion; they have no concept of true judgment.
I wonder how in the world this could have happened!
Oh, wait…
What utter twaddle.
Ever notice how the 24 news channels have to fill in the scheduling gaps with stories of waterskiing dogs and such like? This is the evangelical equivalent. TGC needs a 3:1 editor-to-writer ratio.
Well, I do take your point, but I don’t think The Gospel Concoction (or Christianity Today or the Hendricks Center’s thetablepodcast for that matter) can be fixed with more austere oversight. Keller, Bock, Galli, Carson, inter alios are above critique. Their institutions are above evaluation. I think it is eminently fair to say that the Evangelicalism we have is the Evangelicalism they want.
(It is absolutely true—and patently obvious—that this is just filler, but most of what The Gospel Concoction does is filler; and what isn’t filler is the dust the filler kicks up, like its absolutely brilliant work on racial reconciliation.)
Rishmawy on commitment, Mellinger on sports, Wax on cultural engagement, Mohler on holy hip hop and Downton Abbey, anyone at all on Frozen….
At the very moment they seek an audience for cultural engagement they demonstrate their total incompetence.
The Cubs win the World Series and we get a secular homily on Gospel hope.
And we get those ice cream stories.
I fear you are right. Adding more gatekeepers won’t help if they can’t tell friend from foe…
It’s interesting; I heard a lecture by DA Carson in which he decried what he calls ‘parallel-o-mania’ - finding types and shadows of the gospel in every OT story no matter how tenuous the connection. Where is this sensibility at the weekly meetings when the team green-lights baseball-as-picture-of-redemption musings?
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