Tim Melton wrote @ June 25, 2008 at 9:38 am

This is Tim Melton from over at Sacrosanct Gospel. I appreciated your comment and I have looked read several posts from your blog and highly commend your work. Good job. Keep plugging. I will check in from time to time if you don’t mind.

In regard to your comment on “The Idol of Christian Impact”, please understand that I mean no disrespect to Piper. As I said, I love the guy – even though he has no TV, watches no movies, does not drink beer, and disdains American sports. Even still, I love him. I plan to write a series on my favorite quotes by Piper in the near future. Right now, I’m working on CS Lewis.

Furthermore, in the sermon I have posted, I get that Piper is prioritizing. He is saying that Jesus should be our utmost concern, our utter joy. I get that. I agree. But I feel that he is, unintentionally, creating a false dichotomy. He’s feeding our the evangelical tendency toward ‘impact’ idolatry. It’s subtle…that’s why it’s dangerous. All I’m saying in this post is that Piper needs develop another side of his Theology. His 19th century mentor, Johnathan Edwards, seemed to have the same kind of imbalance…much too serious for his own good. This certainly was a factor in the mess Edwards made out of his first pastorate.

With so much ‘Piper’ idolatry in Evangelicalism, I feel that it is necessary to point out some areas where his theology to be weak and where we might go to ‘balance out’ this emphasis. That’s all. Again, I love Piper…I just don’t worship him. He’s not the be all end all.