Review: Foolishness to the Greeks: The Gospel and Western Culture
Foolishness to the Greeks: The Gospel and Western Culture by Lesslie Newbigin
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Newbigin’s premise is to look at western culture from the cross-cultural perspective typically used by those evangelizing a foreign culture. There was a time when westerners would think this approach unnecessary and maybe even ridiculous. How about now? In just the last 15 years, western culture has quickly become opposed and hostile to biblical Christianity. We have codified and institutionalized discrimination against Christians to set the stage for more aggressive persecution.
Bible-believing Christians are now so out of step with the culture that we are no longer speaking the same thing. We cannot count on common currency in thought and language that we once took for granted. We are now babblers and setting forth strange gods to this culture (Acts 17:18). Newbigin’s book does give us some help in this regard. It was written in the mid-eighties, so it’s a little dated. Nevertheless it can still help to give us a change in perspective.