The 3D Gospel: Ministry in guilt, shame, and fear cultures,
Jayson Georges, Timē Press, 2017, 80 pages, £5.73 (amazon), ISBN: 978-0692338018
This short introductory book is well worth the small price
tag. Whether planning on sharing the
gospel with people from different cultures (at home or abroad) or simply
wanting to see more of the glory of the work of Christ this book is a must
read. Simple, to the point, and easy to
read it is the kind of book which can be read in a single session or slowly and
pondered upon at length—in this latter regard I felt it could have perhaps
benefitted from some discussion group questions being added at the end of each
chapter.
The book begins by outlining the three different kinds of
culture which anthropologists have broadly identified, namely guilt-innocence,
shame-honour, and fear-power. Whilst the
book takes care to point out that these often overlap and no culture is wholly
one or the other it does break things down sufficiently to be able to see how
these apply across the world in a general sense. In the first chapter we also come across a
biblical passage in which the 3D gospel—the gospel which addresses the concerns
and needs of all these three cultures—is drawn out. Throughout the book Georges grounds what he
is teaching in Scripture and helps us to see the connections to these different
cultures within the text. The “key
verses” sections for each of the three cultures is a goldmine for the
evangelist. There are also personal anecdotes and stories scattered across the
chapters which help to personalise the theology and break up the pacing in a
helpful and engaging way. Perhaps one of
the most challenging sections comes on pages 59-59 where the words used to
describe the gospel in each culture are listed. The book encourages the reader
to try and tell the bible story of salvation in each of the three cultural languages
using only the word listed for them. I
personally found an equally useful and more impacting exercise to be trying to
write my own testimony using only the language of other cultures—seeing afresh
just how vast and great and deep the salvation Christ won for me was and the myriad
of changes it made in my life.
If there were any criticism of the book it would be three-fold. Firstly the book feels like it majors on the
guilt-innocence and shame-honour cultures.
The fear-power sections are at times noticeably shorter and feel less
fleshed out. Secondly, the section
dealing with historical theories of atonement, whilst helpful, is perhaps too
simplistic. It leaves many questions
such as why was the Ransom Theory (labelled as fear-power) so dominant in the
shame-honour based early church and still today in Eastern Europe? Georges lists Anselm’s Satisfaction Theory
under shame-honour but this theory was and is strongly repudiated by the
Eastern Orthodox who culturally come from much more shame-honour based
societies. Likewise implying that Penal
Substitutionary Atonement only emerged from “reformed legal scholars in the mid
1600’s” is well off the mark historically.
These faults do not detract though from a superb book which
every pastor should read—and to be honest which every Christian would benefit
from reading. The only thing which could
have made it better is my final issue with the book: It is called the “3D Gospel” but “guilt,
shame, and fear” do not begin with the letter D. Surely the 3D Gospel is one which deals with
“damnation, dishonour, and dread!”
