A few days ago I posted a column I wrote last year entitled The Irrelevance of God. The point of the column was that in our postmodern world, God has become largely segregated to the private sector. So that while God and spirituality may remain privately engaging, in a secularized society, they are publically irrelevant. Anyway, the point of this post is that I finished the article by saying this:
"The church, then, becomes the sphere of society where the relevance of God ought to reign supreme. The people of God are to be influencing the wider culture by expressing the centrality of God with both their lives and their lips. Jesus called on his disciples to be “the salt of the earth and the light of the world.” In other words, the people of God are to serve the world by acting as a preservative and a lighthouse. We do this by becoming God-saturated, God-intoxicated people, through whom God’s truth and love shine brightly. In order for God to once again become socially relevant, the church will have to exhibit a God-centeredness that shows our culture just how indispensable God is, not only for the individual, but for society as a whole."
I caught some flack for using the phrase "God-intoxicated." And given the association of the word today with drunkenness (although the word actually has a much broader meaning) I responded to the "flack" by admitting that it may not be the wisest phrase to employ. However, I'll have to re-think my recant based on what I read today. This is, word for word, J.I. Packer's endorsement of John Piper's book "Future Grace":
"John Piper's purpose in writing is to revitalize a decadent Western Christianity that knows only cheap grace and cheap faith. Bible-soaked, God-intoxicated, deeply evangelical, and passionately humane, Piper fills the forgotten dimensions of faith with a master hand. This is a rich and wise book, one to treasure and re-read."
It appears I'm in good company after all.