We Don't Understand "Wonderful"

When a popular praise-song writer introduced a re-make of the old hymn, When I Survey the Wondrous Cross a few years ago, I was struck by how badly the writer seemed to misunderstand the term 'wondrous'.  It seemed, from the context of the song, that he was viewing the cross as a really cool thing (the contemporary view of 'wonderful', confused with the real meaning of 'wondrous').  The real meaning of the word has to do with the idea of the inability to understand God's condescending grace toward us as fallen sinners, not the idea that Jesus is our homeboy who bails us out in a pinch.  It's a good song if you mentally twist the words to mean what they meant in a classical sense.  Maybe that's the meaning the author intended, but if you ask anyone under about 50 after the worship service what it means, they'll give you the homeboy definition.

Pete Scribner posted this blog article yesterday, and it has a bit of artwork that I absolutely love.  I don't love it for the content it expresses, but the irony.  It smacks around one of the popular views of the Christian life these days; a view that needs to be smacked around.

Pete does a good job describing the irony.  Go give it a read here.

To all those who are suffering, I would send you to First Peter.  It is the best place I know in the Bible to get an understanding of what the real Christian life (not the Americanized-Finneyist/Osteen version) looks like.