God Wins (Part 1)

A lot of people are calling out Rob Bell for his new book Love Wins: Heaven, Hell and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived.  Many of them are calling him a universalist and a heretic.  Plenty of other people are calling out the people calling out Rob Bell, calling them pharisees and slanderers.  It's a calling out fest that has turned into a calling out calling out fest.  Let's hope it doesn't go any further.   It will be like when they came out with radar detector detector detectors (no joke).

Very few of them have read the new book.
I have.

 Now that I've read it and have an educated response, I'm in a difficult position.  The climate is hostile.  There are pre-concieved notions.

If I so much as compliment the cover art, there is a whole camp of theological snipers waiting to label me an emergent heretic.  "Ge the matches and the lighter fluid!"  On the other hand, if I so much as hint that I have concerns about Bell's theological method, there is another camp waiting to label me intolerant and narrow-minded fundamentalist.  "Bring your latest Brian McLaren book.  It's time for a Generous Beat Down!"

What has happened to the theological climate of the Church when we are known by out alignment or disagreement with a popular Christian author?  Half of us have created a climate that lashes out at the most insignificant theological miss-step.  The other half labels as unloving all legitimate attempts at biblical correction.

We have lost our way.  We have no more True North, no more standard.  We don't know Christ's palm Sunday transportation from a hole in the ground.

What if we approached this topic from a whole new (or very old) direction?

What if we actually formulated our opinion on a theological matter based on God's redemptive self-revelation in Scripture?  What if we actually started there?

I'm issuing a challenge on the comments board.
Answer this question: Will people suffer eternal punishment in Hell?

Here are the rules:

• You can't call a friend to ask their opinion.
• You can't reading a popular author on the topic. (no Rob Bell, no John MacArthur, no Ronald H. Nash--scholarly lexicons and translation tools are acceptable)
• No statement can be made without a reference to an contextually applicable biblical reference.  
• Make a genuine effort to put aside your pre-conceived notions about the topic. 

So, will people suffer eternal punishment in hell?  Tell us what the Word says.

Emergend?--Part2 "Apologetic Jiu Jitsu"

Reactive theology is a very dangerous thing. In a recent post, I dealt with the universal issue of self-oriented theology (our tendency to re-interpret the Bible to fit opinions and comfort). I used the emergent church as an example and a springboard to highlight this problem that we all have. Unfortunately the issue doesn’t end there. Let me tell you the rest of the story…

Jones ended his lecture with a Q and A (don’t know what I’m talking about? Click here). While I had hoped to see him speak in favor of Scriptural authority, Jones had brought a lot of clarity to our understanding of contemporary western thought and had not outright denied Scripture, Truth or any other core doctrine. This was a great opportunity to glean some wisdom about for ministering to postmodern youth. My hand went up; so did several others.

Several friendly and valuable questions were asked and answered. Some clearly disaggreed with Jones but were genuinely seeking clarity and understanding with Christian unity in mind. I was disapointed that I hadn’t been called on, but things were going well until a middle-aged “baptist curmudgeon” or “BC” (as I will call him) piped in.

Side note: Every Christian should learn Apologetic Jiu Jitsu. When you find you disaggree with someone, your first order of business should be to fiind common ground, some aggreed upon pre-supposition to work from. If both parties are operating from separate pre-suppositions, no one gets aywhere. It turns into a shouting match or a “look-cool-in-front-of-the-audience” match. Apologetic Jiu Jitsu channels the opinion of your “opponent” to convince him of yours. In most cases, this will allow you to either win your friend over or find that you already agree. If not, you can at least end the discussion on good terms with the possibility of ongoing discussion.

BC had apearantly never heard my advice on apologetic jiu jitsu. “Why do you heretics in the emergent church deny absolute truth?” he said. (Note: these were not his exact words. They were, however very cutting with the same implications).

My opportunity to gently and respectfully hear from Jones and bring us both closer to an orthodox view of scripture was sabotodged by a grumpy guy who wasn’t there to make friends. I aggree that Jones wasn’t taking a stand in the way I think he should, but a caustic frontal attack was not going to be effective.

Regardless of his intentions, BC’s tone made it seem like Christian unity and Christ-like love were the furthest thing from his mind. Unfortunately, Jone’s response was not particularly kind either. I can’t say that he was right, but I can’t say that I blame him. He was blindsided at his own lecture. In that situation, I would have either snapped back or use soft-spoken charm to make BC look like the bad guy. Jones managed to do both. The venom came out. Jones refered to a particular group of evangelicals as bordering on heresy. BC had already accused emergents of heresy. Both of these guys got pretty harsh. It was painful and unproductive.

Disclaimer: I believe false doctrine should be confronted (2 Timothy 3:16-17). I just believe it should be done with grace, love, tact and clarity (1 Cor. 13). Seek to understand and then say, “I just don’t think that lines up with what God says in [reference].” Any phrase that leads with, “Why don’t you…” or “you guys are…” doesn’t end well.

I remember sitting there with my hand in the air wishing for a chance to speak. My thesis dealt with the topic of epistemology as it relates to the revealed truth of God, I think I was qualified person to respond to the issue. However, my voice was never heard. In that room only the loudest, angriest (dare I say, least effective) voices were heard. It was very discouraging.

Lest you demonize Tony Jones, remember that he was interupted and accused of heresy in his own workshop. I would have been pretty upset as well. Given the circumstances, I think he kept it pretty civil. There was no yelling or name calling, just venom in the language and tone of both parties. It was clear that both had some hurt related to this topic.

Jones cut off the heated Q and A by saying that he had a plane to catch. He left abruptly. (Not his fault, by the way. He told us at the beginning his flight was early and that he couldn’t stay long after the lecture.)

I left the workshop with my heart on the floor. I had seen what reactive theology cause division. I was broken for the church. My heart was heavy and it was written all over my face. People who didn’t know me stopped to ask if I was ok. I spilled my heart out to a Youth for Christ guy I had met the day before. “The church keeps swinging like a pendulum,” I said. “One generation overcorrects to some extreme and then the next defines their theology in contrast. Someone reacts to that and we are back where we started.” We never seem to get it right. It feels like we are all just reacting to the last guy. Very few are looking at Scripture and genuinely seeking Truth.

Last week I made the statemetn that Emergents are “unwilling to surrender.” I wanted to clarify that this is not true of all of them. I think many are really seeking truth. However, I think in both camps of theology (maybe I should say “every camp”), there is a reactive faction, a group of people that identify their belief in contraversy. They react, distract and refuse to surrender to plain truth. We have these guys in the evangelical camp, and they have them in the emergent camp. We react and fight. All the while, we lose sight of the Great Commission.

So, I’ve listed a few guidelines for interacting with fellow believers who disagree:

Orient: Find a presupposition that you can both agree upon. Here are a few that may work:

o Scripture—inspired and innerrant

o Scripture—reliable historical document

o God—loving, all-powerful, just, etc.

Clarify: When someone disagrees with something you believe, ask them why. Find out if they have any Scripture to back it up. Take some time to read up and research before coming back.

Biblify: Find out what the Bible actually says about the issue.

Time: Don’t feel like you have to convince or be convinced in the moment. If you both care about truth, you should both be willing to allow one another time to look into it. If you really are right, your point can only be served with more research time.

Pray: Ask God to reveal the truth to you.

Relate: Preferably, build relationship before disagreeing. People tend to be more respectful when they know each other as people not as dissidents.

Return: Don’t flee the discussion . Keep coming back with questions and evidence. If you are clearly right, they eather conceid the point or hide from you (I’ve had this happen to me).

Tell us about a time when you changed a belief after a discussion about it?

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I

Emergend?--Part 1

As a young adult pastor I get a lot of questions about the Emergent/Emerging Village/Church/Conversation/. Given recent articles about its passing/death/transformation/emergence, I thought this was a good time to talk about it.

My first real experience with the Emerg_(insert ending of your choice here) was years ago at a Youth Specialties conference. I attended a Tony Jones workshop about ministering to postmodern youth. I didn’t know anything about Jones, but I knew that postmodernism was a big issue and that I wanted to know more about how to minister to our culture. So, I went.

The first part of the lecture was especially interesting to me. Jones gave a chronology of western philosophy that began with Immanuel Kant and led to Michel Faucault. I followed along as he traced through the centuries to contemporary thought. I noted that he conspicuously left out what I would call “objective thinkers” (philosophers who focused on objective truth as opposed to the knowing subject as the center of knowledge). Every thinker he cited seemed to focus on the knowing subject rather than on objective truth. Assuming his plan was to point out this underlying problem with modern and postmodern thought, I wasn’t concerned. Things didn’t go as I thought they would.

Background info: You might remember Rene Descartes’ famous quote, “I think, therefore I am.” The basic gist of his philosophy was that man’s source of truth is his own reason, not any outside authority. This ruled out general revelation and special revelation (The Bible and Jesus), among other things. His theory marked philosophy’s turn from objective to subjective truth, the beginning of the Enlightenment, and the elevation of human reason over divine revelation. Out of this came modern thought, out of which came postmodern thought. The ultimate root of both is man’s desire to trust himself rather than God’s revelation. It is the rejection of authority.

The modernist idea of reason was to impose human rationality on a universe of disorder. Truth was seen as amorphous and man’s role was to impose order upon it. Absolute truth was in the mind of the modernist. The post-modernists rightly pointed out a myriad of problems with modernist thought. However, rather than remove the root, the post-modernists hacked at the leaves by denying absolute truth in favor of skepticism. Both elevate self rather than God as the center of knowledge.

As Jones finished his overview, I noticed that he did not offer God and His self-revelation as a source for human knowledge. Instead, Jones finishes by saying that postmodern thought should be the basis of Christian thinking in the 21^st century. No critique, no appeal to Scriptural authority, just complete acceptance of the latest western philosophical mindset.

This was strange to me. He had just described the constant changing nature of western thought. How could a philosophy that rejects truth and authority be seen as an authority on truth? This is my issue with postmodernism and emergent thinking: they trust the opinions of man rather the revelation of God. They are unwilling to fully surrender.

Do you know what is disturbing? Lack of surrender isn’t isolated to the emergent church. It didn’t start with them, and it won’t end with them. I don’t know if this is the end of the emergent church (I doubt that it is). Regardless, it isn’t the end of self-oriented theology. Every time I open the Bible, I am tempted to re-interpret it according to my preference rather than what I know it says. God calls us to read His Word and surrender. Instead, we read it and rationalize.

Have you ever re-interpreted a passage of Scripture to fit your theology or your comfort?

Hitler, Hell and Atonement

I recently watched a movie about the Holocaust. Seeing families torn apart and children murdered made me feel an emotion I don’t often experience: anger. Most people will tell you that I’m a pretty easy going guy. I don’t get upset about most things. But when I see wickedness at its worse my sense of justice wells up. It infuriates me. Similarly, I’ve had people sit in my office and tell me they were abused as children. They still live with the scars today. My soul aches. Someone has to answer for this. We just can’t let this kind of evil go unaddressed. Worse than rape or murder would be to pretend they weren’t that bad. It would be like telling the victims that their pain doesn’t matter. To be brutally honest, in those moments when I hear about things like that it makes me glad there is a hell. Of course, in these moments I am forgetting how evil I am.

We don’t want God to wink at sin…unless it is ours.
Last night, I attended our Good Friday Service. It is a sobering affair. The pastor wears black. The band plays dark mournful songs about the suffering of Christ. Instead of a sermon Jim (our pastor) read a list of sins written on bricks. As he read the bricks, he tossed them into a rusty metal wheelbarrow. Each one makes a hollow, metallic noise. Some of the sins were murders and abuse. Others related to bitterness and deceit. All of them made the same heavy noise. In that place, hearing all those sins listed together, I didn’t want God to ignore any of them not even mine. They were all horrible. That same sense of justice that made me want punishment for Hitler, rapists and murderers made me call out for justice for my own sins. I am a wicked man. My sin weighed heavy on that cross. I deserve death.

At the end of the service, as everyone sat with the reality of their sin Jim pushed the wheelbarrow across the stage and dumped the bricks at the foot of the cross. The weight of my sins and the worlds were placed on Christ. Justice was served but at the expense of God’s Son. It was a powerful image.

Feeling the weight of my sin has helped me to see the greatness of God’s grace. The God of justice is also the God of grace, and my sin has made that grace very costly. Praise God for His justice and His grace. I am a bad man who has seen someone go to death for me. Grace is good and I want it for the worst offenders just as it was given to me.

Do you think that it is a good thing to wish for grace for rapists and mass murderers? How does it make you feel to think that Hitler could have gone to heaven if he had surrendered His life to Christ?