This is the title of an article written by an expert on Jonathan Edwards, posted on Christianity Today website July 2007. Josh Moody is a PhD, the senior pastor at Trinity Baptist Church in Newhaven, CT, is associate fellow of Jonathan Edwards College of Yale University, and author of The God-Centered Life: Insights from Jonathan Edwards for Today. Wow! He must be right.
Wrong.
Josh thinks that Edwards would read all of the Harry Potter books, find cultural enlightenment in them and use the light to further the gospel. Because Edwards knew about the Enlightenment and its errors, then he must have read all the stuff on the secular shelves and used the good he found in them to make cool sermons. "No doubt Edwards would have mined the Harry Potter series for insights into the predominant spiritual atmosphere in which we live," says Josh the Expert.
After saying something about "intellectual bridges to cultural attitudes" he speaks of "Trojan horses full of gospel truths." He is pretty much saying that Edwards used contemporary material to sneak the gospel into the minds of the otherwise uninterested hoardes of his time. Is Josh the Senior Pastor hinting that we should do the same? Oh yes, that is the way of modern preaching.
He ends his article with, "I believe Edwards would also look from Potter to us and say, "Who's going to tell a more compelling story that sheds true gospel light on the transcendent?"
Now, I ask the reader to read "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God," Jonathan Edwards' most popular sermon, a famous piece of American literature, a catalyst of the Great Awakening going against the culture of the time, and ask himself, "Is Josh Moody telling the truth?"
Chris Simonson
Author