Reckoning Time! Part 2

Thomas said to Him, "Lord, we do not know where You are going, how do we know the way?" Jesus saind to him, "I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me. John 14:5-6

Sure, Rob Bell can hope for the salvation of all things, but does he have a Biblical leg to stand on? Is he undermining God's justice by confining Him to Bell's finite understanding of love? And what of wrath? And zealous jealousy? Does not God also hold these attributes to His bosom as eternal attributes?

Bell's most specific dealings with Biblical confrontation in this light comes out on pages 154-155 of Love Wins.

Dealing with the very passage quoted above, Bell responds:

This is s wide and expansive a claim as a person can make. What [Jesus] doesn't say is how, or when, or in what manner the mechanism functions that gets people to God through him. He doesn't even state that those coming to the Father through him will even know that they are coming exclusively through him. He simply claims that whatever God is doing in the world to know and redeem and love and restore the world is happening through him...

...And then there is an exclusivity on the other side of inclusivity. This kind insists that Jesus is the way, but holds tightly to the assumption that the all-embracing, saving love of this particular Jesus the Christ will of course include all sorts of unexpected people from across the cultural spectrum...

What Jesus does is declare that he, and he alone, is saving everybody. And then he leaves the door way, way open. Creating all sorts of possibilities. He is as narrow as himself and as wide as the universe. 

It's a happy thought, no? -- that Jesus is saving everyone despite themselves, despite whatever the individual thinks. 

But is Bell's generous orthodoxy warranted? This is not the only Biblical passage that deals with the way to salvation.  

After attempting to sum up Bell's thoughts to a friend, this dear friend swiftly responded that Bell is only seeing what he wants to see. Her point was to say that Bell is only taking from scripture what he wants to see. He is turning a blind eye to the myriad other references that do indeed show, and make explicit the idea that salvation is a game of exclusivity. You are in, or you are out. Her claim is that although it sounds nice and is easier to think of a world that will be saved through-and-through, the reality is that some are bound towards hell. To destruction they will go. Her argument is that Bell is perverting the reality of hell because it makes him uneasy.

We can't ignore Scripture just because it is uncomfortable. 

And so Romans 9 comes rolling in:

8That is, it is not the children of the flesh who are the children of God, but the children of the promise are regarded as descendants. 

9For this is the word of promise: "At this time I will come, and Sarah shall have a son." 

10And noth only this, but there was Rebekah also, when she had conceived twins by one man, our father Isaac:

11for though the twins were not yet born and had not done anything good or bad, so that God's purpose according to His choice would stand, not because of works but because of Him who calls,

12it wad said to her, "The older will serve the younger."

13Just as it is written, "Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated."

14What shall we say then? There is no injustice with God, is there? May it never be! 

15For He says to Moses, "I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion."

16So then it does not depend on the man who wills or the man who runs, but on God who has mercy.

17For the Scripture says to Pharaoh, "For this very purpose I raised you up, to demonstrate My power in you; and that My name might be proclaimed throughout the whole earth."

18So then He has mercy on whom He desires, and He hardens whom He desires. 

And before I can get a clear thought through my head, 

 Paul responds to my inner groaning:

19You will say to me then, "Why does He still find fault? For who resists His will?

20On the contrary, who are you, O man, who answers back to God? The thing molded will not say to the molder, "Why did you make me like this," will it?

21Or does not the potter have a right over the clay, to make from the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for common use?

22What if God, although willing to demonstrate His wrath and to make His power known, endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction?

23And He did so to make known the riches of His glory upon vessels of mercy, which He prepared beforehand for glory...

This is, and has remained for many years, the most difficult passage of Scripture for me to hear. Although Paul rebukes my very thoughts, I want only to say, "But Paul, if the clay maker tortures the lump, would it not have been better for the lump to have remained merely a lump? Why create to destroy?" I am left then unanswered and ashamed that I can barely handle what appears to me a dark truth. How can it be? How is there love? 

And on this, Bell is silent. 

So is the conversation over? 

Despite the difficulty that this passage may cause us, is it addressing the means by which we, as individuals, may be granted access into God's Kingdom? 

Well, yes.

And no.

What Paul makes explicit is that God alone is the means by which man is judged. 

We 21st century western Christians tend to see salvation as Campus Crusade for Christ has led us: as a series of 4 Spiritual Laws. They are (according to campuscrusade.com)   >>>

1. God loves you and offers a wonderful plan for your life.
2. Man is sinful and separated from God.
   Therefore, he cannot know and experience
   God's love and plan for his life.
3. Jesus Christ is God's only provision for man's sin.
   Through Him you can know and experience
   God's love and plan for your life.
4. We must individually receive Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord;
   then we can know and experience God's love and plan for our lives.   

I am not going to besmirch this list, as in general I think it is a helpful road-map, and surely has facilitated prayer for thousand upon thousands who have yearned to know Jesus. 

A few months back I wrote concerning the true story of Genie. Genie was locked in a dark room until adolescence when she was discovered by authorities. She is the most widely studied and researched 'feral child' of modern history. It would appear that Genie was born completely normal, but due to her environment of oblivion, her brain did not develop during the instrumental growing years. It would prove to be impossible to acclimate her into normal society. She simply could not learn certain things. Language was a forever struggle. Her developmental experience took away her God-given ability to think abstractly. 

For a girl like Genie, the 4 spiritual laws would be far too abstract. 

So what happens?

If acceptance of Jesus Christ as atoning Savior is the necessary action that grace requires, then what is to become of the mentally disabled among us? Surely the Lord will not damn them, right? Right? 

Are you prepared to answer? 

If your answer is that surely God has mercy for them, then is that not showing that grace is extended to individuals who did not for themselves accept Christ into their hearts? 

And if your answer is that these poor souls are to suffer hell as consequence, I ask again, how is that love? And God loved and chose Jacob before he was born -- so does that not set precedence for acceptance unto Christ prior to an action taken on the part of the individual? 

And to get another cheap (but valid!) shot, 
what of the aborted souls, the children? 

What is to become of them? 

Does love not win? Will God not show compassion? 

Surely your instinct is to say, yea, scream, "YES!", is it not? 

Nevertheless, I am getting into sticky territory. And stickier yet we must go. 

For me, the pages of Rob Bell's book that made me the most uncomfortable was the section that dealt with our perception of Christ's death on the cross. I no longer have the book at my service, so I cannot quote, but I recall Bell stating that the analogy of an atonal blood sacrifice does not mean the same thing to us as it would first century Jews and Gents. Our culture is not accustomed to sacrificing rams and goats for sins, so Christ's work on the cross doesn't quite have the internal resonance with us as it would the old-timers, so the argument goes. 

Now, to be clear, I do believe Jesus' death and resurrection were not merely an analogy -- I believe those actions are the root and spring from which we may be cleansed of our sins. I believe Christ died specifically for my sins against God, and then conquered death on the third day and has ascended to sit on the right hand side of God the Father. But... remember Isaiah's vision. Chapter 6:4-7

And the foundations of the thresholds trembled at the voice of him who called out, while the temple was filling with smoke. Then I said, "Woe is me, for I am ruined! Because I am a man of unclean lips; For my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts." Then one of the seraphim flew to me with a burning coal in his hand, which he had taken from the altar with tongs. He touched my mouth with it and said, "Behold, this has touched your lips; and your iniquity is taken away and your sin is forgiven."

What are we to do with this story? Is this burning coal another means of salvation? If not, why not? Is it another instrument by which salvation is created? 

I have not the answer. 

All I know is that God is not tame.

Remember Paul's cloak? How is it that it had the power to heal? Is not healing a spiritual gift? Shouldn't it have to come through the means of the Holy Spirit working through a believer? Or perhaps a demon through a possessed soul? 

Acts 19:11-12, God was performing extraordinary miracles by the hands of Paul, so that handkerchiefs or aprons were even carried from his body to the sick, and the diseases left them and the evil spirits went out.

Hmmm...

And let us also recall Jesus when He healed the woman with the hemorrhage. Jumping in mid-story:

Mark 5:28-31, For she thought, "If I just touch His garments, I will get well." Immediately the flow of her blood was dried up; and she felt in her body that she was healed of her affliction. Immediately Jesus, perceiving in Himself that the power proceeding from Him had gone forth, turned around in the crowd and said, "Who touched My garments?"

My little mind looks at that passage and is caused to quirk the head. Some power left Jesus? I tend to think that Jesus Himself is the power, or at least that it is God's presence through Him, not some power that can exit the body. Perhaps it is just a matter of semantics, but it sounds like there is a third-party 'power' in play that physically leaves Jesus and enters into the woman. A power. Could we even call it an energy? 

And how did those Egyptian charlatans echo God's miracles through Moses? By demons? Perhaps so, but the Scripture makes no mention that this was by a direct dark-sided power that it was done. The action is simply written, without noting the origin. Were the Egyptians tapping into the same 'power' that left Jesus? 

One more! 

Elisha. 

The dude that came after Elijah.

Check that. 

Not-Elisha.

Just his bones. 

Post-Elisha.

2 Kings 13:20-21: Elisha died, and they buried him. Now the bands of the Moabites would invade the land in the spring of the year. As they were burying a man, behold, they saw a marauding band; and they cast the man into the grave of Elisha. And when the man touched the bones of Elisha he revived and stood up on his feet.

Bam! 

How exactly does that work? -- power infused bones? And what of Samson's hair? What was going on with that? Why was the hair so special? Did God and him make an arrangement that the power was to be in his long locks? Was that power the same third-party power that seeped through Christ into the bloody woman? 

I reference these strange Biblical incidences to make a simple point: God is a quirky fella. He's the Dude that made the duckbilled platypus after all. Those suckers are all types of crazy. 


God is big. God is not tame. He will save whom He desires to save. And I, like the good monk being led to martyrdom by angry Islamicists, can pray with a clear conscious that I, and everyone I know, may be found as happy thieves in Paradise, made perfect by God's wonderful love and grace. 

The greatest story ever fashioned is that of Christ Jesus, the God-Servant-King, who came into flesh to die and overcome death for a desperately lost sinner such as I. May I never forget this, nor you, as long as we live and work on this good earth. 

 And oh, how big our God is, 

and how expansive His creative genius!

Amen.

Reckoning Time!

And so we come to it.

Therefore many of His disciples, when they heard this said, 

"This is a difficult statement; who can listen to it?" John 6:60

I have read Rob Bell's controversial book, Love Wins, and I can delay response no longer.

Many have harshly critiqued Bell's perspective, determining his views to have dipped into full distortion of the Biblical message. The heretical idea in question is that of universalism. Has Rob Bell, with one book, tip-toed into the heresy that all ways, all paths, all people, all worldviews, all in all leads to eternal communion with Christ Almighty?

I grew up and grew old in a small church. The congregation never ballooned to much more than 40 souls. We were, from inception, a small clan. Because our numbers were small, any personal departure from the community was a big deal. It made ripples. Departure equaled schism for our weak body, and schism we got. One member of the church was a former archeologist/anthropologist. I recall he had done work searching for Sodom and Gomorrah... fun stuff like that. It appeared to us that those past days sweating in the hot desert sand had hardened this man's convictions. What he held dear, he held firmly without flexibility.

The particular incident that caused the ruckus for this gentleman, and led to him divorcing himself and his family of five from our congregation, involved the usage of a single word. Jehovah. Jehovah, an early translation of the Hebrew letters YHWH, was, for some reason unbeknownst to my high school brain, an utterly unacceptable term for the name of God, according to the shrewd worldview of this gentleman. Sure, we, as a congregation, could acknowledge that the name Yahweh appears to be closer approximation of the Hebrew name, nevertheless, Jehovah came up in song lyrics from time to time, and we did not shun it.

For this man, utilizing the word Jehovah as a place holder for God's name was tantamount to spitting on the Holy of Holies. It was simply not to be done. The good sir, an elder in our congregation, made his views known, and upon hearing the word again sung during worship one day, found himself unable to remain a member of our sinful-tongued community. So he schismed. He and his family together. I never saw them again.

One more anecdotally connected incident...

Last week I watched the French (yet set in Algeria) film Of Gods and Men with my visiting parents in Salzburg, Austria.

It is a beautiful film.

It spins the tale of a group of monks caught between a failing government, and a roving band of Islamic militants.

The final monologue, spoken as a voice-over by the lead protagonist, is translated as such:

And I know how Islam is distorted by a certain Islamism. 

This country, and Islam, for me are something different. They're a body and a soul. 

My death, of course, will quickly vindicate those who call me naïve or idealistic, 

but they must know that I will be freed of a burning curiosity and, God willing, 

will immerse my gaze in the Father's and contemplate with him his children of Islam as he sees them. This thank you which encompasses my entire life includes you, of course, 

friends of yesterday and today, and you too, friend of last minute, 

who knew not what you were doing. 

Yes, to you as well I address this thank you and this farewell which you envisaged. 

May we meet again, 

happy thieves in Paradise, 

if it pleases God the Father of us both. 

Amen. Insha'Allah. 

My mother, upon hearing this film-ending speech, was distraught over the good monk's theology. 'How could he say such things about Islam, an obvious distortion of the Gospel message? He should know better!'

Such emotional responses are valid to a degree, and if we were to put this man's words under theological scrutiny, I reckon it wouldn't hold up... but I don't think that that's the point here. The good monk is not writing a theological dissertation on salvation, by no means! He is writing a love letter. A love letter to God. To His creation.

The monk is assured of his own salvation, but he admits his own 'burning curiosity'. Do we not all have such thoughts? These monks were brought into a foreign land. They fell in love with the community around them. They fell in love with God's creation. For man, does that love turn to wrath? Should it? Certainly not. Justice and vengeance are the Lord's, not ours. We have no reason to judge the Muslim. We can share the Gospel with him, tell him about the grace Jesus brings. We can tell him how he doesn't have to work to get into heaven -- that in fact his works will not save him, but we are not the ones that need pass judgment.

So the monk will ask God about Islam when they meet face to face. This seems good and right to me. Furthermore, the monk does indeed wish that he and his killer will find each other both under God's luminous grace in Heaven. How is that not a beautiful prayer?

The only way to make many of Bell's statements work is to view them with the same lens --- the lens that looks to the heart rather than the mind. Perhaps that message alone sounds anathema, but I propose, or rather, I insist on believing, that Bell's message is centered on dealing with what certain polemical theological systems do to our innermost thoughts -- our innermost interactive thoughts with the God of this universe.

Yes, it's true, Bell leaves the door open for Buddhists and Muslims and Hindus to have access into the Kingdom of Heaven. That sounds super scary. Jesus states plainly that he is the only way to God. He is the way to salvation. He is the door. So how on earth can these religions that do not acknowledge Jesus as Savior and Lord lead people to Heaven's gate? Bell doesn't explain how. If he was writing a theological entreaty, he would have to do so... but he wasn't.

The most accurate critique of Bell's book is that it won't bring non-believers to the foot of the cross of Jesus Christ. Perhaps that is a fair litmus test; in many ways I agree that any work regarding God and salvation should do exactly that. I should read the last words of Love Wins, close the book, and immediately be driven to open up one of the Gospels. Indeed. 

However, if I personalize the book, if I focus on bringing my understanding of the Gospel, of salvation, to the book's emotional core, than my response is much different. At the end of the day, that's all I can rightfully bring to the table, correct -- my own experience? Do I have a right to condemn the book for its evangelical lackings towards the un-Christian nations? I'm not sure...

Another film that recently ventured past my eyelids was Paul Schrader's 1979 George C. Scott vehicle, Hardcore. Now, Schrader is always a bit of a wild card when it comes to spiritual exploration, and Hardcore is no exception to the role. Schrader plops us not only into the seamy underbelly of the porn industry, but also the moralistic statutes of a hardlined dutch-reformer. At one point, our center-stage reformer dishes out the entire Calvinistic TULIP acronym to a helpful prostitute. Schrader takes the time to label each letter with its appropriate doctrine. To remind:

• T - Total Depravity. We are all horrifically corrupted and in complete submission to the service of sin.
• U - Unconditional Election. From eternity past, God has chosen those with which He has chosen to bestow mercy upon. Likewise, those not chosen are determined to face the consequential wrath for their sins.
• L - Limited Atonement. Jesus died only for the sins of the unconditionally elected.
• I - Irresistible Grace. The Holy Spirit cannot be resisted. If God chooses to save you, you cannot resist His call. 
• P - Perseverance of the Saints. God's will cannot be undone, therefore, all who are elected will never fall away. Those who appear to fall away from the faith never really were elected, or they are not really falling away. 

 When I hear this list of doctrinal certainties regarding salvation, I want to gag. To dry heave. My response is so not because I find these measures inexplicably disconnected from scripture (indeed, there appears to be a fair amount of Biblical evidence for each of the postulates), but because it is a very hard thing to equate these principles with my conception of an all-loving God. If feels like saying, God is love, but...

When hearing this, I become just like my brothers, the disciples... who can listen to it?

How can a predetermined eternal damnation be compatible with a God of love?

Often, it seems, these two ideas are kept in tension. I reckon most Christians just let that tension sit there. Rob Bell doesn't. I'm not sure I can either.

Despite the fact that I cannot biblically deny the tenants of Calvinism, I haven't yet been able to succumb to its systematizing of Scripture because it undercuts my very understanding of the word love.

I think Bell looks at the position from a similar angle, feeling the awful weight of the Church's history upon him. If you take these past two thousand years of time in which the 'era of Church' has been instated, you will find much hate. The Church has hated. It has judged. It has done so with extreme prejudice and ugliness. And it is still shaping how we appropriate our worldview. Our tendency, particularly the Christian Church in America, is to create concepts of exclusivity. There is us, and there is them. There is the elect and the particularly unelected. We must save the heathens. We must bring them into our fold. The dark side of such attestations comes out in full force with the vitriol signs of "God hates fags" and the like.

Here's a controversial statement: maybe He does. Maybe God does hate fags. Maybe He would agree with such a statement. Maybe.*

(*To be clear: I am certainly of the disposition that God loves those people who identify themselves as homosexuals -- my point is simply to say it is God's place to make such claims, not ours)

But has He called us to make such claims? Are we called to judge?

What if we judge wrongly?

You have heard that it was said, 'You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you... Matthew 5:43-44

I love the Sermon on the Mount; so scandalous. To love those who hate you, to turn the check, to give extra to him who stole from you -- these ideals are so counter what the world feeds us.

Lewis certainly nailed pitch-perfectly a right understanding of God when Aslan the lion is described as safe, but not tame. God is a knuckle-ball pitcher; we can't ever quite predict what he'll do next.

An expansive view of God leads us to try and keep our conception of our Lord as vast as Scripture allows (I'll examine this idea further in my follow up post), so it seems good to leave that which is up to God, exactly that, up to God. Why burden ourselves with that which the King tells us to let him carry?

While still on that mount, Jesus said, Do not judge so that you will not be judged. For in the way you judge, you will be judged; and by your standard of measure, it will be measured to you. Matthew 7:1-2

Love your neighbor. Love your enemy. Believe that God is love. And however much you can love these people you meet, you see, how much greater is God's love for them!

Perhaps I am giving Bell too much slack, but I stand to reckon that his intention in Love Wins, and ultimately what I choose to take from it, is that our predominant character as followers of a loving God, is to love everyone, and to believe that no matter what, God is love, and that love will not be diminished, undercut, or undermined, in this life or the next.

In part 2 I'll take some time to examine the 'tough to hear' passages of scripture (I'm looking at you Romans 9!), as well as try to seek Biblical support for the idea of an inclusive & expansive view of an untame God.

Matthew 11:28-30, the words of Jesus: Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.