Marketplace Bible Study

Summer Break

Marketplace Bible Study is on its summer break until September.  See you then!

American Spirituality - Part 2

In the final session of Pastor Jamie Rasmussen's series on Spirituality in the 21st Century comes his final thesis:

"God has revealed Himself, and so there is such a thing as transcendent truth."

"Do you not know? Do you not hear? Has it not been told you from the beginning? Have you not understood from the foundations of the earth?

Have you not known? Have you not heard? The LORD is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth." (Isaiah 40:21,28 ESV)

To contrast this transcendent statement, consider Englightenment Next founder Andrew Cohen's statement:

"Enlightenment is simple. It is the mind-shattering revelation that all is One and One is all. That everything is ultimately none other than that mystical and mysterious ground of Being—that Nothingness that is Everything."

These two statements are profoundly different and are in significant opposition to one another.

Christianity claims that God exists and that there is transcendent truth outside of ourselves, where American Spirituality would claim that self determines what is true and that nothing exists transcendentally outside of our understanding and/or feelings, and furthermore, it is possible to have many differing "truths".

Listen as Jamie explains:

Editorial Note:  please forgive the extreme tardiness of the final post of this series.  I (David Porter) was out of the country for two weeks with extremely limited Internet access.

 

American Spirituality - Part 1

In the final two sessions of Pastor Jamie Rasmussen's series on Spirituality in the 21st Century, he brings our attention to American spirituality.

Pastor Jamie shared that American culture is currently enamored with spirituality, and that 25% of books sold to Americans feature a "spiritual" message of some sort.

This is in stark contrast to the 1940s and 1950s were scientific discovery and evolution theory seemed to be the vouge thought of the day.

In an effort to understand what American spirituality might be, Pastor Rasmussen shared a quote from Sarah Michelle Gellar that appeared in Christianity Today back in July 2002:

"Like her television show, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, actress Sarah Michelle Gellar's personal spirituality borrows from a hodgepodge of religions. "I consider myself a spiritual person," she told Scotland's Daily Record. "I believe in an idea of God, although it's my own personal ideal. I find most religions interesting, and I've been to every kind of denomination: Catholic, Christian, Jewish, Buddhist. I've taken bits from everything and customized it."

Listen as Pastor Jamie Rasmussen shares five words that describe what American spirituality is increasingly being built upon: