Living Journey

Roger Oakland recently sent me an email about a new book he has written… Here is the blurb:

FAITH UNDONE
The emerging church - a new reformation or an end- time deception
by Roger Oakland

Published by Lighthouse Trails

Note from Author:

In the not-too-distant future, most evangelical pastors will have to decide whether to support or reject the spirituality behind the emerging church. If this movement continues unfolding at the present pace, mainstream Christianity will be completely restructured, and the biblical gospel of Jesus Christ will be considered obsolete. If I believed for one minute that this movement was just another passing whim or the discontent rumblings that so often occur with young people as they search for answers to life, I would never have written this book.

But sad to say, the emerging church is far more than a fleeting fad and much more than the complaints of a group of young leaders. It is indeed a new way of being Christian and its objective is to usher in a new reformation throughout the world.

Those who refuse to embrace this direction will be considered spiritual oddballs that are hindering a unified one-world spirituality that is promoted as the answer for peace and that is prophesied about in the Bible. I know these sound like preposterous concerns. How could a movement that seems so unorganized and mismanaged do so much damage? The answer to that is the reason I wrote this book. For behind this new kind of worship, this new kind of church is a strategic apostasy and maneuver by the prince of this world, the enemy of our souls, to literally take apart the faith of millions-it will be nothing less than faith undone.

Chapter by Chapter Overview can be found here at Roger Oakland’s website.

This would be a great book, and one well worth the read.

This also brought to my mind what it means to have a ‘Faith Undone’.

Interestingly, a ‘Faith Undone’ is classic deconstructionism at work (or is it deconstructionalism, is that even a word?).

Deconstruction was a word that made it into high-popular culture, a word that Jacques Derrida gave birth to. John D. Caputo has taken that philosophy and is the one person that has blended that philosophy with theology within the post-modern emerging church.

In a post called ‘A weak theology — A weak God‘ I wrote the following:

I have found some interesting quotes from people who have analysed Caputo’s work, and from my understanding, the outcome of ‘Deconstructionism’ and its theological and doctrinal implication is something that we as Christians may have to deal with in the not so distant future.

What does Derrida and others who now favour deconstructionism and Post-stinkin-modernism as the way forward for our world offer at the end of it all? What precisely is it that Christians may have to deal with in the not so distant future?

What is the desired outcome?

According to Caputo after total deconstruction, you are only left with the undeconstructible!

And what may that be?

The undeconstructible is the subject matter of pure and unconditional affirmation –”viens, oui, oui” (come, yes, yes) — something unimaginable and inconceivable by the current standards of imagining and conceiving. (Pdf file - Jacques Derrida by John D. Caputo Syracuse University)

Where does this lead?

It is of no surprise, that according to Caputo, Derrida would start talking about religion, a religion that is without religion. He even spoke of the Messiah! Caputo understands it this way:

Deconstruction, it turns out, is not nihilism; it is just high standards! Deconstruction is satisfied with nothing because it is waiting for the Messiah, which Derrida translated into the philosophical figure of the “to come…, the very figure of the future, of hope and expectation.

For we pray and weep for something that is coming, something I know not what, something nameless that in always slipping away also draws us in its train. (Pdf file - Jacques Derrida by John D. Caputo Syracuse University)

Yes that’s right, Caputo is one individual that is giving insightful theology to the emerging church. A theology in a new form that post-modernists love. Caputo is just one of many who will tear down the church to build a ‘Faith Undone’. This will ultimately leave the church wanting and expecting a new kind of Messiah and the old Weak God outside of His own House knocking to come in.

Rev 3:20 Behold, I stand at the door and knock: If anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will enter to him, and I will dine with him, and he with Me.

Do you hear Him?