I have had NT Wright’s new book, The Challenge of Acts, on my shelf for awhile. I have some time to pull it out and begin to work through it. A small book, but NT Wright find’s his ways of making every word count. While I wish it to be a “quick read,” it will just be another pondering of each paragraph.

Case in point: He brings the reminder again about the fallacy of Western Christianity in the message of “salvation” we have been preaching for decades. He has really come down on this again and again, and for good reason. Western Christianity is stubborn if it is anything. Once we dig into a method or thought that seems to “work,” we will ride that thing into the ground.

The big fallacy of Western Christianity’s view of salvation summed up again:

“But — and this is always hard for some Christians today to take on board — this isn’t about explaining to people what they must do (or not do) in order to ensure that they will go to heaven when they die. You see, when we read the language of ‘salvation’, our minds easily flick back into the default mode of Western Christianity: we assume that the whole message is about ‘going to heaven’. That is never mentioned here. In fact, the New Testament isn’t about our going to be with God; it’s about God coming to be with us.” (p. 9)

Our truncated view of the gospel has falsely “upped our numbers” in Christianity. We see “salvations” at an “altar call” as the goal. We preach. People get saved. They get to go to heaven. Off we go to “preach” to another crowd. Wash. Rinse. Repeat.

This is not the message of Acts… or the New Testament.

I want to live in the broader gospel.