“The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.”

- Martin Luther King, Jr.

 

From the start, I’m terrible at reviewing books. So I’m not going to do that. I made notes all the way through Love Wins that led me to see some places where I believe we can interact. I’ll present those over the next few days. I also have made mental notes from a few things that keep coming up in discussions I’m having…I’ll actually lead with these because I’m finding a lot of knowledge opinion & discussion but few who have read the book.

So For Today: Talking Points, Admissions, Assumptions,
Exceptionalism & Curiosities
(thoughts that are  much more on the overall arc of this whole debate)

} I say talking points because I’ve heard the same statements multiple times this week. They must be circulating from somewhere or someone or some group. My basis for this assumption is that these statements are being said the same way every time. I am probably not reading the people that are giving them their information.

Which leads me to…

} An admission: a number of you have messaged me, mailed me, posted or tweeted links to reviews by people who are all part of a group that even before all of this I saw as mean spirited, arrogant and part of a way of reading the scriptures that breads elitism and division…I haven’t and won’t read them. I am going to assume bias (past performance as the best predictor of future actions). Most often when I come across the writings from these circles I want to go run read a Max Lucado book or curl up in my bed and reapeat, “My picture is on God’s refrigerator. My picture is on God’s refrigerator. My picture is on God’s refrigerator.”

Nate Dawson summed up my feelings about this group and their stance toward Rob & Love Wins which is so incredibly shallow and just down right down right mean. I can’t tell you how many times I thought this same thing as I’ve listened & as I read the book…

Love Wins because we are free to choose heaven and hell, for eternity. The questions left open in this book are not the ones the book is intending to answer. I’m sorry, if you don’t get that — then you don’t get the book. That’s just how it is my friends. This book answers YES to you and me, even when we think we’re not worth it. Even when the Calvinists have made us feel like themselves (that is, utterly depraved). God, in Christ, has already rewritten your story and mine, because Love Wins.

All we have to do is live into it!

The choosing never stops — we can choose hell or heaven — forever.

And I really think Eugene Peterson was right as well when he pointed out that this side will never really re-examine anything…I would add not another Christian leader or streams position or even what this book to could lead them to re-examine about themselves or their own positions. The pride is too strong; it will not happen.

} And I need to say this…I am not totally biased towards, against, or down on all Christians who see themselves as reformed. I greatly appreciate a number of these Christians. One example, Dr. Mouw. I tweeted out an article he wrote this week. The seminary where he is president, Fuller, has given me one degree and hopefully will hand me another one in 3 years and Fuller is historically a reformed seminary and the student body is surely mostly from reformed traditions.

} And look, if Rob came out & said he was a universalist – everyone is getting redeemed apart from a belief in Jesus, that there were multiple ways to enter into life eternal with God, I would be saddened…but not angry. I would be writing different things but I wouldn’t be belittling.

And here is as good a place as any to say…If you read the book, then you should walk away knowing that all of the above are not what he’s saying.

Yes, he talks about heaven on Earth.
Yes, he talks about hell on Earth.
But the point is we get life & maybe beyond to make choices that bring us into those realities.
But whichever we are experiencing now or we experience in eternity, we are experiencing because we have chosen it.
Some people have been choosing it all along.

People…these are not new ideas! Christianity has thought and debated this for centuries.
Maybe this is much harder because everyone has always just assumed Rob to be an evangelical. Has he ever claimed to be?

} This debate reminds me of the baggage we all bring to theology. To be honest I don’t understand why we wouldn’t all want to be universalist???? Shouldn’t we as a people defined by love want there to be a loophole where everyone get’s to experience eternal fellowship with God? Shouldn’t we want there to be a moment where we go…Oh, I never knew that. Thank you God…you made a way. Instead there seems to be a need to see some certain group/groups/people/others burn. What is that? And it’s not defending God. He never asked nor does he need me or you to do that. Our job is to love.

} Let me be clear again about my personal beliefs before I get accosted some more. I believe in a heaven; I believe in a hell; I believe that belief in Jesus is the way to eternal fellowship in the age to come with Yahweh but I am willing to make allowances that my view of the process of how this has to happen may be and probably is faulty. I willing to give space for other people’s views and the view of the majority of Christians on planet Earth that there is an opportunity for transformation post-mortem.*

}AND…A BIGGIE: I am committed to the belief that when you see Jesus, you see Yahweh; the life of Jesus is what Yahweh wants us to know about Him.

I and the father are one.

When you have seen me, you have seen the father.

Jesus is the visibile image of the invisible God.

In the beginning the Logos became flesh & dwelt among us.

There is no ambiguity about who God is and what he looks like. You do not have to wonder how God feels about a number of things in life because we see Jesus interact with them. Jesus is God & shows us what love is and what we are to be. So in the narrative arc of the story Jesus’ character is of supreme importance. This to means that my picture of him via the narrative (rooted in his context) is vastly more important to my character formation than is any system of belief.

If you know me or follow me, you probably know that one example of how this plays out in my life is in my belief in just peacemaking & non-violence (not pacifism). This based really on two things: the first 300 years of church history (pre-constantine & Roman incorporation of religion) and the big one for this discussion…the character of Jesus when confronted with violent or lethal force.

This also has been part of my angst in this discussion. I realize that in America, especially in the south, I hold the minority view on this strand of thought (I mean the vast minority . I would never when interacting with another person about this belief be as bold or arrogant as much of what I have seen written. The crowd who seem to be deeply effected by Love Wins are in the minority on this one but they are screaming like they are the majority and to be honest, I don’t get it.*

The  Talking Points…

1) “Martin Bashir showed Bell’s inconsistencies” – If you have read the book, you know that Bashir had to be working off of notes given to him or he proof texted the book. With exception given to the first question, Rob answered each of the other questions in the book – clearly. Granted in all of the exchanges/interviews that I have seen, this was the one that he had his worst time with.

I really am not sure why, on the question that shook him, …the “all-powerful but uncaring” vs. “powerless but caring” view of God, he didn’t call out these options as bad dichotomies. These are surely not the only options and are very poor ones at that. This is one of the rare moments where I’ve seen him let himself get cornered. I wonder if the first question…on the Tsunami was not part of the agreed to questions (as most of these types of interviews have) and that shook him. Bashir is as well an imposing interviewer. I think this was the worst of Rob’s showings but it’s not like he went into a fetal position & wept like many are portraying him.

2) Galatians 1v5-10: What is at stake here is the perversion of the gospel.
I’ll answer this one in my response to #3

3) Heard something like this story a few times…

“What if we were all packed in a burning building and I noticed that it was on fire. Would I be wrong to yell that it’s on fire so people could/would get out?”

This analogy absolutely misses Bell’s point and absolutely proves his point at the same time.

We know absolutely what fire is. We have experienced it in many forms; it is a tangible thing that we can interact with and we know, feel and see it’s effects.

When it comes to the “fire(s) of hell” we simply don’t know. We think; we discuss; we postulate; we predict but we simply don’t know and to say other wise is arrogant and prideful. Christians have for centuries debated this very thing and as far as I know we have no conclusive scientific data proving any one group to be correct.

And to be intellectually honest with the text you would have to acknowledge that when it comes to Gehenna we need to really give space to whether the hearers of Jesus are thinking “stinking burning trash dump outside the city” or are they thinking “place of eternal torment”? Our views of hell are much more shaped by Dante  or even American revivalism and Puritan thought than they are by Jesus’ words. We are such poor students of the scriptures many don’t even know where or what Gehenna was. They just assume that since it is translated in English into “Hell” that that is what Jesus is talking about.

I think Rob’s point is…let’s talk about it and I’m (William) not sure why this is so scary. Why is the challenging of what hell looks like really a scary thing to so many people? Don’t we want people to not be there? Do you really want someone to suffer eternally? I don’t understand why we don’t want a God who will do everything he can to keep people out of hell. The lust for some or most people to end up in hell that comes out of many Christians is just odd. Actually, That to me sounds a bit sick. What is this about us that wants to see others burn?

And this is what I mean by Maybe It Doesn’t -
If the minority of humanity goes to Heaven & the majority of humanity goes to burn forever,
love hasn’t won.
Evil has won and God has been proven either impotent or foolish in giving humanity the ability to choose.

I don’t think that we can confuse the the Accuser & his angels being thrown into the lake of fire for eternity a victory. How is it a victory if God is truly omnipotent? He can put them there whenever he likes. No, it is just a natural ordering in God’s timing of what must happen to set the created universe to rights.

But if God above can pull the majority towards him when they have every reason to choose not to, that my friend is a win. They could choose pride, arrogance, despair, bitterness, hopelessness, greed, idolatry, lust, etc. But I hope all whether in this life or beyond* will choose Jesus. That would be beautiful. When, during a game a player hits the shot to win the game matters little to me, I just want them to hit the shot to win. In the game or in over time or penalty kicks, it doesn’t matter to me. I just want him to hit it & I want everyone to get in.

Sidetracked….(sorry) But I guess really the point of the earlier analogy is that their is fire of heresy burning and I am/we are, right in sounding the alarm. So I guess my question to that is…who get’s to decide who is a heretic? If we are going to play by these rules, then every faith stream get’s to label the others as heretics.*

There is no doubt that Rob is heading down a different road but if you read the book you quickly see there isn’t really a new idea in it. Every thing there is something that
1) he has preached before over the past few years or
2) is something that has written before. Honestly this book drips C.S. Lewis, N.T. Wright and like much of the buzz from people who are familiar with it, Eastern Orthodox thought (see Scott McKnight’s Jesus Creed for a good discussion on this).

Exceptionalism: While many will say Bell being a perceived universalist will be the most important part of this debate, I will beg to differ. I believe our biggest lessons to learn so far are…

1) we gotta handle family discussions better than this and…
2) we need to own up to our American exceptionalism and deal with it.
It is really showing up in this debate. And yes, this is a family discussion.

Think question #2.

There is nothing new in the book.

Rob is leaning into older teachings. (I use Lewis & Wright again namely because Rob does.)

Both of these hugely respected thinkers held/hold different views of the afterlife…even from their owned faith traditions. Both come from the Anglican circle but are really hybrids of faith streams. Lewis & Wright both are lovers of the story; they are learners who pulled together strands from other tribes…chewed on them & came to a place where they believed that other beliefs were better than those of their on tribe. American tribes struggle with this; every little group (denomination) is protective of it’s way of doing things. Often in my experience denominational or conviction based (like SBC or reformed) seminaries don’t exist to teach people to think. They exist to produce a product: a person who will perpetuate why that group is right & others are wrong.

I think that Rob being a Fuller guy really shows up here. Fuller is not a denominational degree factory. You find out very quickly at Fuller that God has been at work in many ways and at many places in the world. Because of this he is seen in many different ways. Fuller breeds discussion and thought around our shared commonality and our shared diversity. We can all learn from and be stretched by faith stories from others.

This evidences itself in this debate. We seem to have one group protecting turf & we have Rob saying…let’s talk about it, there are a lot of views out there.

 

Finally…(We’ll end with the asterisks)

*There are 2.2 billion Christians on planet earth

1.1 billion are Catholic (50%)

300 million are Orthodox (14%)

—Roughly 64% of the world’s Christians (Catholic & Orthodox) believe in the ability for transformation post mortem. Less than 30% of Christendom is Protestant. Which we would then divide I guess into mainline and evangelical.

From there we can get to Evangelicals which make up about 11% (648 million) of Christianity.

Inside of that 11% let’s just say (and I think we’d be close) that 5.5% are Arminian and 5.5% are Calvinist (in tendencies). Inside that 5.5% of Calvinists is a neo-reformed group that, I don’t know…is maybe 1% of Christianity, maybe?

And that Group, the maybe 1% are speaking like they are the 64%; I really think that they believe that the other 94.5% are in danger of Hell’s fire. (I give them the other 4.5% back because these people just haven’t “gotten there yet, but there 5 minutes out”.

*Finally, this. Boys & girls 64% or so of the world’s Christians believe that soul transformation in some form can happen post-mortem. I know for many of us who have never stepped out of Evangelical circles this really flies in the face of “if you died tonight…” but just because we haven’t heard it or haven’t studied it or because Momma or uncle John didn’t believe it, doesn’t make it wrong.

I personally have to admit toward a level of skepticism with Catholicism. I think it’s history and what in Louisiana appeared to be a lack of sincerity when it came to putting on the character of Christ. Maybe it was well the idea that it was all about the ritual and that nothing else mattered.

But I am much more lenient with the Orthodox faith. There is simply something about the unchanged liturgies of 1700 + years and the depth of their writings. I love reading Orthodox authors because they don’t write like they have something to prove. Their books simply speak of what the church has discovered through prayer, study and experience how they have sought to live it out in an unbroken line that goes back to the early church. They are not perfect by any means. I have been to Eastern Europe & seen that. But I am willing to give them a listen and a time when I pray for God to show me as with any idea whether it is true, noble and from Him.

Sunday…Thoughts from the Book   Chapters 1-3

Peace ~

William