Jesus Cropped from the Picture

Jesus Cropped from the Picture

in information primarily for their individual consumption can become distracted by learning facts, growing stagnant in their capacity to represent Christ.

Children’s programs emphasizing rote Scripture memory, without any connection to the biblical Story, exemplify particularism. A better approach is to help children not only memorize verses, but also learn their connection to the Bible’s over-arching Story. Moralism emphasizes ethics, factualism prizes knowledge, and particularism miniaturizes a believer’s outlook on life. When these are combined, they produce the SLIMming Effect, a life that is too predictable and lacking adventure, where the desire to take risks for Christ diminishes over time. The SLIMming Effect results in arrested development. However, some Christians are comfortable with a safe, predictable, and easy routine. They do not find the SLIM life constraining, and actually prefer “this provincial life.” Curtis and Eldredge said it this way: Part of us would rather return to Scripture memorization, or Bible Study, or service—anything that would save us from the unknowns of walking with God.... The choice before us now is to journey or to homestead, to live like Abraham the friend of God, or like Robinson Crusoe, the lost soul cobbling together some sort of existence with whatever he can salvage from the wreckage of the world. Crusoe was no pilgrim; he was a survivor, hunkered down for the duration. He lived in a

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