What I Have Learned in Recent Years that the Writers of HERE We STAND Don't Know

The average person in a CGGC congregation and his or her friends and neighbors don't read at a graduate school level.




As I work at a full time job that brings me into fairly intimate contact with my coworkers as well as important but less intimate contact with members of my community, I am frequently invited to participate in conversations having to do with the Word as well as with the very issues addressed in HERE WE STAND.


In fact, it seems to me that, as time passes, people seek me out to invite me to talk with them about biblical truth and compelling issues of the day. And, I give thanks for those opportunities to be salt and light in my world.


From my experience, however, no one who's invited me into these conversations would be impressed if I introduced my opinions by referring to the double helix, as the writers of HERE WE STAND have done.


As I read through the document, I'm seeing it doing precisely the opposite of what Jesus did. Jesus took even the most complicated philosophical issues and addressed them in a way that made it possible for an uneducated man or woman to understand how to live righteously.


Read a few pages of HERE WE STAND. This is highfalutin' stuff. It is erudite. It is pretentious. It is from and for the ivory tower. It is not something that will edify anyone I, personally, gather with or work with or chat with in my neighborhood. And, my guess is that if you are a CGGC person, your world resembles mine.


As I first began to read HWS, I thought it was written for an intellectual historian living a hundred years in the future. It might well be useful as a textbook at a seminary today.


But it will frustrate, not edify, the people I gather with. And, it will be useless in fueling conversation in the real world that I travel in. Ironically, the issues addressed in the book are what people today are talking about. Just not at this level.


Another irony. When people sympathetic to me criticize this blog they say that what I write is, itself, too lofty and theoretical. And, that criticism has value. However, I write this stuff for a very narrow audience, not for the broad audience that HWS puts in its sights.


In my opinion, HWS fails to achieve the goals it sets for itself.


I think it should be rejected for that reason, among several others.