I thought I'd share this sermon that I heard, it starts about 27 minutes in.
It is an extremely good one.
My problem with most of Christianity is that it's a mess. Nobody can seem to agree on any dogma, and while everyone is pridefully confident that they've worked everything out - it's all castles in the sky, devoid of anything tangible. Ecumenism, the chance that you might have incorrectly worked things out and could learn something from someone else professing much the same beliefs, is the boogieman.
Unless your Christianity makes a difference on the ground, in your life, and in the lives of others, it might as well be discarded.
Atheists have taken that step.
I chose not to.
This sermon is good. Very good. And this Pastor is young, extremely young. But Christianity needs to find itself, needs to go back to the basics, needs to go back to the wonder of the Incarnation and the fact the God became man so that men could finally become like God. Not the imaginings of what God might be like, full of fury and destruction, but of humility, meek and mild, that he would come to earth as a human (Philippians 2:6-8).
Maybe it's the young that will make that happen.
My problem with Adventism is their adherence to the investigative judgment, and their reliance upon penal substitution as the primary work of Christ on the Cross.
As this pastor states, the local church may be healthy. But my concern is that the denominational insistence upon upholding certain distinctives is problematic, and must be acknowledged as such, and must eventually be re-imagined, reinterpreted, or discarded before a deeper understanding can be recovered.
My study of Orthodox Christianity, and my desire for practical application, has made me resistant to lofty philosophy, and intangible "investigative judgments" for which we have no evidence.
Christianity must involve transformation of the human person, here, now.
Or it is of no value at all.
Lord, Jesus Christ, Son of God, Have mercy upon me, A sinner.
