Making Sense of the Cross: The MOOC
I’m excited.
I’ve just worked my way through ChurchNext’s MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) of my Making Sense of the Cross and, well, I’m excited. The folks at ChurchNext have done a wonderful job in taking some of the essential elements of the course and turning it into an accessible – and free! – online learning opportunity that is ideal for individuals or congregations as we approach Lent.
The class starts a week from today, and you can find out more about the course here. Again, it’s free. While you don’t need to purchase the book to participate in the class, if you’re interested you can find copies of Making Sense of the Cross either at Amazon
Okay, enough commercials. 🙂 For now, I’m just excited to see how this goes. I hope you’ll register today and, if you do, please let me know how it goes.
Can we do the course after Lent?
It was set up for last year, Jane. You’d have to check with the folks at ChurchNext.tv.
Finished reading your book. Awesome. Finished it at the same time I was in a conversation with an evangelical friend of mine who’s convinced evangelism means “show them they’re sinful i.e. the law then reveal to them Jesus”. Anyway, the long short of it is as I tried to talk about the cross faithful, I got stuck and I was wondering if you had a thought to address this.
How does the cross address the Adam & Eve problem? I mean, not the fact that they sinned. The fact that they refused to repent, to come to the light, to admit the truth about themselves and trust God to love them anyway. In your last chapter you talk about forgiveness as similar to the presidential pardon – it both makes us tell the truth about ourselves and encounter the truth about God. The way my pastor when I was in undergrad stated the ultimate result is heaven AND hell will both be full of grace-filled sinners. The ones in heaven welcomed the pardon. The ones in hell either don’t believe they have a problem and won’t take the pardon because they ain’t guilty or they won’t take the pardon because they can’t believe God actually forgives them.
But that’s the problem for me. What I love about the cross is that the grace is universal. God is offering full pardon, universal salvation, to everyone. Where I get hung up is the through faith. Not because I’m not adamantly Lutheran, but because I feel it fails to address the fundamental problem in the garden. The problem isn’t that they sin; it’s that they won’t repent. That’s when judgment comes.
So we have this experience of the cross that continues to call and move us toward daily death and resurrection, but what about all those moments I don’t want to admit are sin? All those moments I’m not willing to die for? All those moments I won’t quit punishing myself for?