Hot Issues: Jesus Confronts Today's Controversies

By Mark Ashton

The Reality Check series makes just one assumption: that you’re serious enough about your spiritual journey to investigate Christianity with an open mind. This isn’t about joining anyone’s religious club—it’s about being real with yourself and with the others in your group. Since no one has all the answers, there’s plenty of room for discussion. After all, if there is any truth to the Bible’s stories about Jesus, then one thing he’d welcome are questions and opinions that come from honest, earnest hearts.Have you stopped to consider just how broken this planet really is? Look around you. Poverty, racism, intolerance, materialism, oppression of women . . . it doesn’t take long to see plenty that needs fixing. Hot Issues explores six current social evils that affect us all one way or another. They’ll come as no surprise—until you explore Jesus’ radical responses to the same issues in his time. Hot Issues includes these sessions: The Poverty Line Crossing the Racial Divide Handling Hypocrisy The Treatment of Women Materialism and the Moral Yuppie Religious Intolerance For the Group LeaderReality Check is for spiritual seekers of every persuasion. Uncompromisingly Christian in its perspective, it steers wide of pat answers and aims at honesty. This innovative and thought-provoking series will challenge you and those in your group to connect heart to heart as together you explore the interface between Jesus, the Bible, and the realities of this world in which we live.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Zondervan
• Release date: Feb 23, 2010
• ISBN: 9780310867807

Mark Ashton

Mark Ashton is the director of seeker small groups at Willow Creek Community Church. In addition, he supervises the staff for more than 40 new believer groups, 80 seeker groups, and Willow's Internationals ministry. He is also the director of TruthQuest - Willow's ministry that answers tough questions about Jesus and Christianity. Mark is a frequent speaker at conferences and is the author of Absolute Truth?

Book preview

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Reality Check Series

Clear Evidence: Eyewitness Reports of Jesus

Future Shock: Jesus and the End of the World

Hot Issues: Jesus Confronts Today’s Controversies

Jesus’ Greatest Moments: The Week That Changed Everything

Leadership Jesus Style: The Master and His Mission

Sudden Impact: Powerful Encounters with the Real Jesus

When Tragedy Strikes: Jesus’ Response to a World Gone Wrong

Winning at Life: Jesus’ Secrets Revealed

ZONDERVAN

Hot Issues

Copyright © 2002 by Willow Creek Association

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of Zondervan.

ePub Edition September 2009 ISBN: 978-0-310-86780-7

Requests for information should be addressed to:

Zondervan, Grand Rapids, Michigan 49530

ISBN: 978-0-310-31134-8

Photo of Hitler is © www.arttoday.com 2002.

Photo of Mother Teresa is © www.arttoday.com 2002.

All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the Holy Bible: New International Version®. NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked NLT are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Illinois 60189. All rights reserved.

All rights reserved. The original purchaser of this product shall have the right to make unlimited print-form copies here of, provided such copies are not resold or distributed to the general public.

Interior design by Sherri L. Hoffman

To the leaders

who have served to make

the life and teaching of Jesus clear

to those who are seeking

CONTENTS

Title Page

Copyright Page

If I Could Change the World …

Discussion 1    The Poverty Line

Discussion 2    Crossing the Racial Divide

Discussion 3    Handling Hypocrisy

Discussion 4    The Treatment of Women

Discussion 5    Materialism and the Moral Yuppie

Discussion 6    Religious Intolerance

The Right Center

Leader’s Guide

Introduction

How to Lead a Great Discussion

Notes for Each Discussion

Acknowledgments

About the Publisher

Share Your Thoughts

INTRODUCTION

IF I COULD CHANGE THE WORLD …

If you could change just one thing about the world, what would it be?

Chances are, each of us would respond differently because as individuals, we are passionate about varying issues. However, none of us would deny that we live in a world that desperately needs social reform. Every minute, while restaurants and wealthy families throw away garbage bags full of food, 360 people die of hunger and hunger-related causes. Racial tension erupts into violence in the inner city. Families with nowhere to go must live on the streets. Wars claim the lives of millions every year, destroying families, cities, and cultures. Corporate promotions are given based on race or gender rather than merit. Disease is rampant. Women experience abuse, powerlessness, and lack of opportunity in nearly every culture.

These issues—so poignant today—are the same ones that have bothered people for centuries. Over all those years thousands of governments have tried to implement programs and systems that create equity and justice … and have failed. Some have thought education is the answer. But statistics and personal experience show that people who are highly educated normally use their education to increase their own power and comfort level. Celebrities have espoused random acts of kindness, which have done a scattered amount of good. But they haven’t done much to transform the institutions and systems that keep people in a cycle of oppression.

So is there any teaching, system, or model that has been able to transform lives and give hope to the most marginalized people in society? Where governments, education, and Hollywood have failed, is there any hope for lasting social impact? The best answer the world has ever known is one life, one vision, one word—Jesus.

When trying to resolve these crucial controversies, why should we look to Jesus—especially when some Christians have perpetrated great evils in his name? What does a wandering, homeless preacher from two thousand years ago have to say about hot issues that face people in the fast-paced, high-tech, cosmopolitan world of the third millennium?

The answer is simple. In the scope of human history it’s clear that it takes a lot to achieve real, lasting change in individual lives and nations. And nobody has spoken to the issues of poverty, racism, hypocrisy, the oppression of women, materialism, and religious intolerance like Jesus has. Nobody knows the heart of humans like Jesus. Nobody understands people’s needs like Jesus. Nobody has ever lived his convictions to the fullest like Jesus. Nobody has placed himself elbow-deep in the pain and turmoil of others’ lives, yet maintained perfect compassion and purity like Jesus. That’s why we should listen to him, watch him, and learn from him.

As you and your group use his life as the basis for discussion, you’ll find that Jesus was a healer of the maladies of humanity. He was seen at parties where respected Jewish rabbis dared not visit. He hung out on the streets with diseased, broken, and hurting humans. He traveled to places where he was the ethnic minority. He treated women with more love and respect than any of his contemporaries. He got in the face of those in power, denouncing their hypocrisy and shocking them to act on behalf of the powerless. He called the wealthy to give up their luxury and care for the poor. He had a vision for a world that transcended the woes of interpersonal brokenness and brought people together in the spirit of community.

But through all his life on earth,