A week of atonement

This week is brought to you by A Better Atonement.

This post is inspired by three things:

• Listening to an episode (Hunger Games and A Better Atonement) of the Theology Nerd Throwdown podcast produced by the guys over at Homebrewed Christianity in which they interview Tony Jones about his book A Better Atonement.
• Thusly reading Tony Jones book A Better Atonement (e-book on Amazon for 2.99 or free for prime members). 
• Attending an event advertised as a worship service.

Within the podcast and in his book, Tony Jones offers wonderful, articulate, valid critiques of many traditional theories of atonement, especially Penal Substitution Atonement (PSA).  Basically, he challenges his readers to consider alternative ways of explaining just what meaning we make out of the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ.  I'll let you check him out to learn more.

Then, I attended an event advertised as a worship service.  It consisted of standing in a room with a band leading us in song for over an hour.  Two scripture passages were read that were seemingly unrelated to any of the songs we were singing, and no attempt to expound on said scripture was made.  Practically every song promoted PSA (you know, Jesus took the blame, God's wrath is satisfied, Jesus-you're awesome because you died for me), or talked about elevating God above everything else, or threw around holy, worthy, and glorious so much they lost all meaning.  To be fair, we did sing Be Thou My Vision, and My Hope is Built on Nothing Less.  The final hymn to go home on was How Deep the Father's Love For Us (find the lyrics here) in which we are reminded of our wretchedness, our blame for the crucifixion, and about the unspecified reward we have received because of the gruesome event of the cross.

I left feeling convicted that there is a great need to introduce people, through song, liturgy, and preaching to alternative views of the incarnational event and thus the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

I found myself wondering if God might actually be a bit embarrassed by some of the so-called praise songs that are sung in God's name.  Does God delight in "Our God is greater, our God is stronger
God You are higher than any other Our God is Healer, awesome and power Our God, Our God..."?  What happened to Christ being found in the least of these? Does God want us to sing about how wretched we are to God except for Jesus changing the channel with the cross?

To quote Tony Jones as he addresses those who claim the wrath of God: "So it seems odd to first have to convince people that God's wrath burns against them, then to convince them that Jesus lovingly took on that wrath."