more tension

I like blogging due to the dialogue it creates. Comment sections rarely allow for decent on-going exchange. My last post, The Tension of the Cross, has generated some good conversation that includes two guys that have really helped me think, Jonathan Brink and Matt Adair. So to do justice to the exchange, I bring it to a separate post.

Brink challenges with "man doesn't need any help realizing his own brokenness." Adair's response matched my thinking which is that "the Scriptures and life help us see that the cross is necessary to understand why everything is broken and why Jesus is our only hope." He then noted that the weight of the messages he has heard from Bell seem skewed toward the love of God as opposed to our desperate need for the redemption found in that love.

Brink sees that we have historically focused on the criticism and left the love in absence. He senses that we have little faith in the love of God to transform?

I disagree. A number of years ago a friend of mine noted that historically we have leaned toward the wrath of God and the sinfulness of man but that recently the Church has leaned in the opposite direction, i.e., toward the love of God and the wonderful life He provides in His Kingdom. So if Brink means historically as in 2000 years, yes. But experience from my lifetime is the opposite.

Both are sides are true and this conversation is about "leanings" and in these days, I see us not centered but leaning more on God's love rather than our need.

Now back to Rob Bell. I liked Jonothan Buzzard's ending to his original post. Too many of us take snapshots of someone else and then focus on what is missing from that. We evaluate far a person far too quickly and a snapshot rarely represents all of what a person is saying or thinks.
Here are Buzzard's words:

I wish I'd had an opportunity to speak with Rob after the message. Like I said above, I think I'd really enjoy hanging out with the guy. If I had gotten a chance to talk with Rob I would've asked him three questions/said three things to him:

1. Rob, I felt that your message mostly ignored what the Bible has to say about the reality and extent and depth of sin. Could you share with me what you believe the Bible teaches about sin?

2. Rob, what you had to say about Jesus and the cross seemed to suggest that you don't hold to the traditional, penal substitutionary understanding of Christ's death on the cross. Could you share with me what exactly you believe about the atonement, about why Christ died on the cross and what he accomplished there?

3. Rob, I felt like your message, especially for the non-Christians in the audience, left a wide open door to universalism. I would imagine with was unintentional. Could you tell me what you believe about salvation, heaven, and hell?

This seems quite fair.

If Brink is warning that we can err by focusing on man's sin, I agree. But to say "man doesn't need any help realizing his own brokenness." is the opposite error.

The Law was so that we could realize our brokenness. God took time to ensure we knew of our need for Him as much as His provision for us.

Ro 3.21-27 - But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it— the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction: for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God's righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.

Then what becomes of our boasting? ...

I love this phrase from the Theological Dictionary of the New Testament.

Only he who knows the greatness of wrath will be mastered by the greatness of mercy. The converse is also true: Only he who has experienced the greatness of mercy can measure how great wrath must be.

That is not to say our focus is on our fallenness but to exclude it robs us from understanding God's mercy.

1 Pet 1.7 - Since you call on a Father who judges each man's work impartially, live your lives....in reverent fear.

In addition to teaching God's love, the Bible reveals a living God who hates evil, is disgusted and angered by it, and refuses ever to come to terms with it. Understanding this and our inability is the only way to ensure we do not confuse God's love and true salvation with a false (and futile) attempt earn His favor.

Emil Brunner wrote:

Where the idea of the wrath of God is ignored, there will also be no understanding of the central conception of the Gospel: the uniqueness of the revelation of the Mediator.

John Stott wrote:

If we bring God down to our level and raise ourselves to His, then of course we see no need for a radical salvation, let alone for a radical atonement to secure it. When, on the other hand, we have glimpsed the blinding glory of the holiness of God, and have been so convicted of our sin by the Holy Spirit that we tremble before God and acknowledge what we are, namely 'hell-deserving sinners', then and only then does the necessity of the cross appear so obvious that we are astonished we never saw it before."

Conclusion - I meant no confrontation with Bell. I do not know the whole of his teaching. There seems to be a leaning toward one side of the Gospel message and a leaning in either direction takes away from the whole of the glory of the Gospel.