love one another

Ray Ortlund posts:

“A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” John 13:34-35

Three things here. One, the command of Christ, that we love one another. Two, the example of Christ, that we are to love one another as he loved us. Three, the promise of Christ, that all kinds of people will see we are real disciples of Jesus, when we love one another his way.

Francis Schaeffer proposed two powerful things we can do, to display observable love for one another in response to these verses and also John 17:23:

One, “When I have failed to love my Christian brother, I go to him and say, ‘I’m sorry.’ That is first. It may seem a letdown — that the first thing we speak of should be so simple. But if you think it is easy, you have never tried to practice it. . . .”

Two, “There must also be open forgiveness. And though it’s hard to say ‘I’m sorry,’ it’s even harder to forgive. The Bible, however, makes plain that the world must observe a forgiving spirit in the midst of God’s people. . . .”

“[Does the world] observe that we say ‘I’m sorry,’ and do they observe a forgiving heart? Let me repeat: Our love will not be perfect, but it must be substantial enough for the world to be able to observe it, or it does not fit into the structure of John 13 and 17. And if the world does not observe this among true Christians, the world has a right to make the two awful judgments which these verses indicate: that we are not Christians, and that Christ was not sent by the Father.”

Francis Schaeffer, “The Mark of the Christian,” in The Church at the End of the Twentieth Century (Downers Grove, 1970), pages 143-146.

marriage

Ryan T. Anderson's Marriage: What It Is, Why It Matters, and the Consequences of Redefining It is a must read especially in light of the world system at work today. Here is the abstract:

Marriage is based on the truth that men and women are complementary, the biological fact that reproduction depends on a man and a woman, and the reality that children need a mother and a father. Redefining marriage does not simply expand the existing understanding of marriage; it rejects these truths. Marriage is society’s least restrictive means of ensuring the well-being of children. By encouraging the norms of marriage—monogamy, sexual exclusivity, and permanence—the state strengthens civil society and reduces its own role. The future of this country depends on the future of marriage. The future of marriage depends on citizens understanding what it is and why it matters and demanding that government policies support, not undermine, true marriage.

And the conclusion - the future of marriage:

Long before the debate about same-sex marriage, there was a debate about marriage. It launched a “marriage movement” to explain why marriage was good both for the men and women who were faithful to its responsibilities and for the children they reared. Over the past decade, a new question emerged: What does society have to lose by redefining marriage to exclude sexual complementarity? 

Many citizens are increasingly tempted to think that marriage is simply an intense emotional union, whatever sort of interpersonal relationship consenting adults, whether two or 10 in number, want it to be—sexual or platonic, sexually exclusive or open, temporary or permanent. This leaves marriage with no essential features, no fixed core as a social reality. It is simply whatever consenting adults want it to be. 

Yet if marriage has no form and serves no social purpose, how will society protect the needs of children—the prime victim of our non-marital sexual culture—without government growing more intrusive and more expensive? 

Marriage exists to bring a man and a woman together as husband and wife to be father and mother to any children their union produces. Marriage benefits everyone because separating the bearing and rearing of children from marriage burdens innocent bystanders: not just children, but the whole community. Without healthy marriages, the community often must step in to provide (more or less directly) for their well-being and upbringing. Thus, by encouraging the norms of marriage—monogamy, sexual exclusivity, and permanence—the state strengthens civil society and reduces its own role. 

Government recognizes traditional marriage because it benefits society in a way that no other relationship or institution does. Marriage is society’s least restrictive means of ensuring the well-being of children. State recognition of marriage protects children by encouraging men and women to commit to each other and take responsibility for their children. 

Promoting marriage does not ban any type of relationship: Adults are free to make choices about their relationships, and they do not need government sanction or license to do so. All Americans have the freedom to live as they choose, but no one has a right to redefine marriage for everyone else. 

The future of this country depends on the future of marriage, and the future of marriage depends on citizens understanding what it is and why it matters and demanding that government policies support, not undermine, true marriage. 

Some might appeal to historical inevitability as a reason to avoid answering the question of what marriage is—as if it were an already moot question. However, changes in public opinion are driven by human choice, not by blind historical forces. The question is not what will happen, but what we should do.

Read the entire article.

why follow jesus

Jonathan Dodson's post Why Follow Jesus?

In today’s culture, we are more pragmatic than reflective. Obsessed with knowing what works and how it works, we strive to repeat the formula. We are less concerned with why things work. Discipleship is no exception. Many have traded in the why for the how, motivation for the best practice. This is disconcerting. The reason for this is that practice can take us only so far. When hardship hits, practice needs motivation to continue.

What motivates you to follow Jesus? If this question isn’t one you continually ponder and answer, you will walk away from Jesus rather than after Him.

The Pragmatic Disciple

Given our culture’s pragmatic bent, the modern discipleship mantra is “make disciples who make disciples.” This mantra is pragmatic and reproductive. Is pragmatic reproduction Jesus’ chief concern? When He came proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom, did He give an inspiring message and then move to three action points on how to make disciples? Certainly, He did model, instruct, and send (Luke 9–10). The kingdom of God is embedded with reproductive DNA (reflected in some of Jesus’ agricultural parables). But the kingdom of God is also slow and deep. It stretches across arduous lifespans and into the depths of the human heart. The reign of Christ penetrates our DNA, continually motivating us.

Instead of focusing His training on the how, Jesus relentlessly got to the why. This is why so many of His sayings are unnerving. As a master teacher, He provoked reflection, not just action:

As they were going along the road, someone said to him, “I will follow you wherever you go.” And Jesus said to him, “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.” (Luke 9:57–58)

Yet another said, “I will follow you, Lord, but let me first say farewell to those at my home.” Jesus said to him, “No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.” (vv. 62–63)

Jesus forces us to reflect on our motives for following Him. If we live for comfort and ease, we won’t give up our beds, money, and entertainment to follow Him. If idyllic community is what motivates our decisions, we won’t give up close friends and family members. Jesus is clear. If we want to be His disciples, we must be motivated by something greater than comfort and community. His kingdom must motivate us, and the kingdom comes with a cost.

True disciples will consider and embrace the cost over and over again. They will endure because, in finding the kingdom, they have found a King worthy of their sacrifice. Searching for the why of their existence, they discover a pearl of great price. Disciples motivated by pragmatism alone may consider the cost and embrace the cause of making disciples who make disciples, but when push comes to shove, they will walk away from Jesus, not after Him. We need more than the hows of fulfilling the Great Commission to get us through the adversity of seeking first the kingdom of God.

The Jesus Disciple

When Jesus gave His mountaintop commission, He loaded it with kingdom motivation. The main directive to make disciples is preceded by the image of a risen, radiant king, rippling with power and authority, in heaven and on earth (Dan. 7:9–14; Matt. 28:17). He is strong enough to depose nations and glorious enough to summon their worship. We are sent under this aegis. We are not sent in the authority of our own experience but in the authority of His lordship. Our story isn’t sufficient to “make a disciple,” but His story is. Why do we go? To baptize into His name, not ours. Making disciples of all nations is no personal cause; it is the redemptive agenda of God Himself. Our motivation, then, arises from being submerged in the grace of God, not from having others align with our way of doing things.

How do we continue to make disciples when wading neck deep in sin? We have to remember that the success of our mission requires not only the authority of the King but also the mercy of the Messiah. He is the Disciple who succeeds where we fail, in perfect obedience to God. We extend mercy from His mercies that are new every day.

But what if the mission field is too hard? Behold, He is with us always, even to the end of the age. We depend not only on the past obedience of the Faithful Disciple, but also on the present presence of the risen Lord. We make disciples in the authority of Jesus, submerged in the grace of Jesus, enduring in the mercy of Jesus, with the forever promise of the presence of King Jesus. Disciples need to recover a singular motivation to endure all the cost—the infinite sufficiency and splendor of our Lord.

Why do we follow Jesus? Because of who He is. If we have Jesus, we have more than enough to make disciples.

the glory of god

John Piper in Seeing and Savoring Jesus Christ:

Jesus Christ is the Creator of the universe. Jesus Christ is the Alpha and Omega, the first and the last. Jesus Christ, the Person, never had a beginning. He is absolute Reality. He has the unparalleled honor and unique glory of being there first and always. He never came into being. He was eternally begotten. The Father has eternally enjoyed ‘the radiance of His glory and the exact representation of His nature’ (Hebrews 1:3) in the Person of his Son.

Seeing and savoring this glory is the goal of our salvation. ‘Father, I desire that they also, whom You have given Me, be with Me where I am, so that they may see My glory which You have given Me’ (John 17:24). To feast on this forever is the aim of our being created and our being redeemed.

(via)

discrimination

Rob Bowman provides some excellent thoughts regarding the argument of discrimination relative to so-called same-sex marriage.

I’m not a legal scholar or an expert on the issue of same-sex marriage, but I’d like to offer some thoughts I have had on the subject for some time. Specifically, I want to address the complaint that the traditional restriction of marriage to unions of a man and a woman are discriminatory against gay and lesbian persons.

I would suggest that laws prohibiting two men to marry one another, or two women to marry one another, are not discriminatory at all. They do not even discriminate based on sexual preference or orientation. If you’re homosexual, you can still get married, as long as it is to a person of the opposite gender. To understand why this is not discrimination, consider a far more common sexual orientation and its relevance to the issue of marriage.

A fairly typical male has natural inclinations or proclivities toward sexual relationships with multiple females. That is, he has biological urges that cause him to find women sexually attractive other than his wife. Moreover, this typical male doesn’t seem to be able to eliminate these feelings. They appear to be natural to him. For some reason, he has not yet been added to the alphabet soup of persecuted groups, LGBTQIA, but perhaps he should be. After all, there are a lot of guys in this category, and they get no respect. Admittedly some females have a similar desire to be united sexually with multiple males, and we don’t want to ignore them. Call these people, both males and females, the polyamorous, or the promiscuous, and add them to the mix. Now we have the LGBTQIAP.

At the present time the law allows Ps to pursue sexual relationships with any number of females that they might like as long as they are adults and consent. However, a P cannot be married to more than one woman. He can set up house with each one, if he can afford it, and procreate children by each one, but the fact is that he would not be allowed to marry any of them except one. The law does not allow him to marry anyone else as long as he is already married. Is this “discrimination”? No. The law is not discriminating against promiscuous men. The fact that he may feel that he sincerely “loves” more than one woman does not make the law discriminatory. The P is free to marry; but he is free to marry only one person. The male P is free to marry one person, and that person must be (a) female, (b) not a biological relative within certain parameters, (c) an adult, and (d) consenting to the marriage. So the law is not discriminating against him personally, nor is it discriminating against a class of people (the Ps).

A promiscuous man, then, may marry if he chooses. In doing so he is choosing to renounce his natural inclinations toward multiple sexual partners in the interests of a higher purpose. Billions of Ps have done just that throughout history; thousands of Ps are doing this every week. If a man simply finds refusing his promiscuous inclinations too painful, he is also free not to marry. But it would be ridiculous to claim that marriages with multiple partners needs to be made into a legally sanctioned and protected form of marriage on the grounds that not doing so “discriminates” against the P class of people. At least it seems ridiculous now to most of us. I suspect it already seems sensible to a few of us and that it may seem less ridiculous as our society abandons the traditional understanding of marriage. However sensible or ridiculous one may find such an idea, the fact remains that laws limiting marriages to unions of just two persons are not discriminatory.

Similarly, laws against incest discriminate against no one. Suppose a man and his sister feel that they are in love and want to live together, share property together, have each other in their wills, procreate or adopt children together, etc., etc. Is the law discriminating against them by refusing to recognize their relationship as a marriage? No. Refusing to sanction certain types of unions as marriages is not discrimination. Our law refuses to sanction as marriage sexual unions between an adult and a child, between two consenting adults who are siblings, and between any two individuals if one or both of them are already married to someone else.

Likewise, the lack of legal sanction for same-sex marriages does not constitute discrimination against any individual or class of individuals. No law currently requires anyone to identify his or her sexual orientation prior to getting married. Any consenting adult may marry any other consenting adult within certain limitations: the other adult must not be a close biological relative, must not already be married to someone else, and must be of the opposite gender. The law does not ask how you feel about sex with persons of the same gender or of different gender; it does not ask how many persons you find sexually attractive. It therefore does not discriminate against a class of persons based on their sexual orientation. It does, however, limit the government’s official sanction of marriage in specific ways. One may not like those limitations, or one may argue on some other grounds that they should be eliminated, but they are not discriminatory.

The main objection to the above line of reasoning is that it would mean that prohibiting people of different races to marry one another would not be discriminatory. After all, anti-miscegenation laws, so the objection goes, prohibited no one from getting married, but only prohibited certain kinds of unions, namely, interracial marriages. There are a lot of problems with this objection, not the least of which is that race is an amorphous construct that cannot be defined in a clear enough way to be coherently applicable to marriage laws.[1] It is really not even possible to find an arbitrary standard by which anti-miscegenation laws can be consistently enforced. Those laws, which were on the books in some states in America for two to three centuries, were unjust laws, but not because they “discriminated” against a particular class of people; they applied to ALL people and were nevertheless unjust. Anti-miscegenation laws were irrational on their face: supposedly a single drop of “Negro” blood made a person a Negro, but many drops of “White” blood did not make a person a White. We now know that far more Americans commonly classified as “White” have ancestors of African descent than one could guess by looking at them or even looking at a typical family tree going back a few generations.[2] There is simply no valid comparison between anti-miscegenation laws, which were themselves legal innovations, and the traditional view of marriage as a societally sanctioned union of a man and a woman.

Another problem with this objection is that miscegenationist marriages entail no differences in potential functionality than any other marriages. A black man and a white woman who are married can potentially perform any function normally associated with marriage in the very same way as a white man and a white woman. The claim here is not merely that each and every mixed couple can procreate; it is that a couple, by virtue of its being mixed, is in no way hindered from procreation. By contrast, each and every same-sex couple, simply by virtue of its consisting of two persons of the same gender, is by definition hindered decisively from procreating. Thus a normal function of the marital union is at least possible in most marriages regardless of race or ethnicity but is by definition impossible in any same-sex union.

Also, any heterosexual couple by definition will have one parent of the same gender as any child the couple might procreate or adopt, whereas approximately one-half of all children adopted by same-sex couples (assuming an approximately equal number of gay and lesbian adoptive couples) will necessarily have no parent of the same gender. About half of the adopted boys in such households will be raised with no father. The empirical evidence is overwhelming that the lack of a father will be disadvantageous for boys. This fact cannot be swept aside by citing exceptional circumstances; there are bad heterosexual parents and I would assume by contrast admirable homosexual parents, but overall children do better if they have parents of both genders, and particularly if the boys have fathers.[3] I have nothing but admiration for women who through no fault of their own are doing their best in raising their children without husbands, and I acknowledge that homosexual parents would all things being equal be better than no parents or abusive parents. But these qualifications do not change the fact that same-sex unions, by their very nature, cannot provide the normal dynamic of child-rearing produced in families that have a father and a mother. Obviously, this potential problem does not apply to racially or ethnically mixed marriages, so once again the analogy to anti-miscegenation laws is invalidated.

Having given some reasons why restricting marriages to heterosexual unions is not comparable to anti-miscegenation laws, the argument I presented above stands that shows that disallowing same-sex unions as marriages is not discriminatory. It is more like disallowing incestuous unions as marriages, or disallowing polyamorous associations as marriages. Any consenting adult may marry any other consenting adult, but “marry” here has a specific, recognized, historic meaning, namely, to enter into a publicly-sanctioned, exclusive, perpetual union with a person of the opposite sex. If the couple are siblings, or if their expressed intent is only to enter into a temporary living arrangement, or if the persons forming the union number three or more, or if the union includes two persons of the same sex, then by definition it is not a marriage. It is not arbitrary to define marriage in this way, nor is it discriminatory.

NOTES

[1] On the difficulties inherent in defining race, see, for example, C. Loring Brace and George W. Gill, “Does Race Exist?” Nova, 15 Feb. 2000 (presenting opposing viewpoints); Michael J. Bamshad and Steve E. Olson, “Does Race Exist?” Scientific American, 10 Nov. 2003.

[2] For an interesting article on this subject, see Steve Sailer, “Analysis: White prof finds he’s not,” UPI, 8 May 2002. The article reports that an estimated 30 per cent of “White” Americans have “Black” ancestors.

[3] See the National Fatherhood Initiative’s webpage on research data on the consequences of father absence, which includes helpful citations. Only some of the data can be explained as the result of only one adult in the household.

hauerwas

Branson Parlor quotes Stanley Hauerwas - simply brilliant.

Hauerwas in the Duke Magazine, Jan-Feb. 2002 issue:

The problem with debates about homosexuality is they have been devoid of any linguistic discipline that might give you some indication what is at stake. [The denomination of] Methodism, for example, is more concerned with being inclusive than being the church. We do not have the slightest idea what we mean by being inclusive other than some vague idea that inclusivity has something to do with being accepting and loving. Inclusivity is, of course, a necessary strategy for survival in what is religiously a buyers’ market. Even worse, the inclusive church is captured by romantic notions of marriage. Combine inclusivity and romanticism and you have no reason to deny marriage between gay people. 

When couples come to ministers to talk about their marriage ceremonies, ministers think it’s interesting to ask if they love one another. What a stupid question! How would they know? A Christian marriage isn’t about whether you’re in love. Christian marriage is giving you the practice of fidelity over a lifetime in which you can look back upon the marriage and call it love. It is a hard discipline over many years.

The difficulty, therefore, is that Christians, when they approach this issue, no longer know what marriage is. For centuries, Christians married people who didn’t know one another until the marriage ceremony, and we knew they were going to have sex that night. They didn’t know one another. Where does all this love stuff come from? They could have sex because they were married.

Now, when marriage becomes a mutually enhancing arrangement until something goes wrong, then it makes no sense at all to oppose homosexual marriages. If marriage is a calling that makes promises of lifelong monogamous fidelity in which children are welcomed, then we’ve got a problem. But we can’t even get to a discussion there, because Christians no longer practice Christian marriage.

What has made it particularly hard is that the divorce culture has made it impossible for us to talk about these matters–and many of you know, I’m divorced and remarried. It has made it impossible for us to talk about these matters with an honesty and candor that is required if you are not to indulge in self-deceptive, sentimental lies.

For gay Christians who I know and love, I wish we as Christians could come up with some way to help them, like we need to help one another, to avoid the sexual wilderness in which we live. That’s a worthy task. I probably sound like a conservative on these matters, not because I’ve got some deep animosity toward gay people, but because I don’t know how to go forward given the current marriage practices of our culture.

Hauerwas from his essay, "Why Gays (as a Group) are Morally Superior to Christians (as a Group)":

As a society we have no general agreement about what constitutes marriage and/or what goods marriage ought to serve. We allegedly live in a monogamous culture, but we are at best in fact serially polygamous. We are confused about sex, why and with whom we have it, and about our reasons for having children. This moral confusion leads to a need for the illusion of certainty. If nothing is wrong with homosexuality then it seems everything is up for grabs. Of course, everything is already up for grabs, but the condemnation of gays hides that fact from our lives. So the moral ‘no’ to gays becomes the necessary symbolic commitment to show that we really do believe in something.

church through the ages

So you wanna go back to the way it was?

arguments for gay marriage

Kevin DeYoung posts arguments for gay marriage and how we might respond.

With two landmark gay marriage cases before the Supreme Court we are already seeing a flurry of articles, posts, tweets, and status updates about the triumph it will be when America finally embraces equality for all and allows homosexuals to love each other. These tweets and posts and articles perfectly capture the reason why the arguments for gay marriage have become so persuasive so fast. Given the assumptions and patterns of thinking our culture has embraced in the last fifty years, the case for gay marriage is relatively easy to make and the case against it makes increasingly little sense.

I don’t think the arguments or gay marriage are biblically faithfully, logically persuasive, or good for human flourishing in the long run, but they are almost impossible to overcome with most Americans, especially in younger generations. By and large, people don’t support gay marriage because they’ve done a lot of reading and soul searching, just like people didn’t oppose it on high flying intellectual grounds either. For a long time, homosexuality seemed weird or gross. Now it seems normal. More than that, it fits in perfectly with the dominant themes and narratives shared in our culture. Gay marriage is the logical conclusion to a long argument, which means convincing people it’s a bad idea requires overturning some of our most cherished values and most powerful ideologies.

Think of all the ways gay marriage fits in with our cultural mood and assumptions.

1. It’s about progress. Linking the pro-gay agenda with civil rights and women’s rights was very intentional, and it was a masterstroke. To be against gay marriage, therefore, is to be against enlightenment and progress. It puts you on the “wrong side of history.” Of course, most people forget that lots of discarded ideas were once hailed as the inevitable march of progress. Just look at Communism or eugenics or phrenology or the Volt. But people aren’t interested in the complexities of history. We only know we don’t want to be like the nincompoops who thought the sun revolved around the earth and that slavery was okay.

2. It’s about love. When gay marriage is presented as nothing but the open embrace of human love, it’s hard to mount a defense. Who could possibly be against love? But hidden in this simple reasoning is the cultural assumption that sexual intercourse is necessarily the highest, and perhaps the only truly fulfilling, expression of love. It’s assumed that love is always self-affirming and never self-denying. It’s assumed that our loves never require redirection. Most damagingly, our culture (largely because of heterosexual sins) has come to understand marriage as nothing but the state sanctioning of romantic love. The propagation and rearing of children do not come into play. The role in incentivizing socially beneficial behavior is not in the public eye. People think of marriage as nothing more than the commitment (of whatever duration) which romantic couples make to each other. 

3. It’s about rights. It’s not by accident the movement is called the gay rights movement. And I don’t deny that many gays and lesbians feel their fundamental human rights are at stake in the controversy over marriage. But the lofty talk of rights blurs an important distinction. Do consenting adults have the right to enter a contract of their choosing? It depends. Businesses don’t have a right to contract for collusion. Adults don’t have a right to enter into a contract that harms the public good. And even if you think these examples are beside the point, the fact remains that no law prohibits homosexuals (or any two adults) from making promises to each other, from holding a ceremony, from entering into a covenant with each other. The question is whether the government should bestow upon that contract the name of marriage with all the rights and privileges thereto. 

4. It’s about equality. Recently, I saw a prominent Christian blogger tweet that she was for gay marriage because part of loving our neighbor is desiring they get equal justice under the law. Few words in the American lexicon elicit such broad support as “equality.” No one wants to be for unequal treatment under the law. But the issue before the Supreme Court is not equality, but whether two laws–one voted in by the people of California and the other approved by our democratically elected officials–should be struck down. Equal treatment under the law means the law is applied the same to everyone. Gay marriage proponents desire to change the law so that marriage becomes something entirely different. Surveys often pose the question “Should it be legal or illegal for gay and lesbian couples to marry?” That makes it sound like we are criminalizing people for commitments they make. The real issue, however, is whether the state has a vested interest in sanctioning, promoting, and privileging certain relational arrangements. Is it unjust for the state not to recognize as marriage your group of four friends, close cousins, or an office suite just because they want their commitments to be called marriage? 

5. It’s about tolerance. Increasingly, those who oppose gay marriage are not just considered wrong or mistaken or even benighted. They are anti-gay haters. As one minister put it, gay marriage will eventually triumph because love is stronger than hate. Another headline rang out that “discrimination is on trial” as the Supreme Court hears arguments on Proposition 8 and DOMA. The stark contrast is clear: either you support gay marriage or you are a bigot and a hater. It’s not wonder young people are tacking hard to left on this issue. They don’t want to be insensitive, close-minded, or intolerant. The notion that thoughtful, sincere, well-meaning, compassionate people might oppose gay marriage is a fleeting thought.

So what can be done? The momentum, the media, the slogans, the meta-stories all seem to be on the other side. Now what?

For starters, churches and pastors and Christian parents can prepare their families both intellectually and psychologically for the opposition that is sure to come. Conservative Christians have more kids; make sure they know what the Bible says and know how to think.

We should also remember that the church’s mission in life is not to defeat gay marriage. While too many Christians have already retreated, there may be others who reckon that everything hangs in the balance on this one issue. Let’s keep preaching, persevering, pursuing joy, and praying for conversions. Christians should care about the issue, and then carry on.

And if we are interested in being persuasive outside of our own churches, we’ll have to do several things better.

1) We need to go back several steps in each argument. We’ll never get a hearing on this issue, or a dozen others issues, unless we trace out the assumptions behind the assumptions behind the arguments behind the conclusions.

2) We need more courage. The days of social acceptability for evangelicals, let alone privilege, are fading fast in many parts of the country. If we aren’t prepared to be counter-cultural we aren’t ready to be Christians. And we need courage not to just say what the Bible says, but to dare say what almost no one will say–that gay sex is unnatural and harmful to the body, that abandoning gender distinctions will be catastrophic for our society and for children, and that monogamy and exclusivity is often understood differently in the gay community.

3) We need more creativity. Statements and petitions and manifestos have their place, but what we really need is more than words and documents. We need artists and journalists and movie makers and story tellers and spoken word artists and comedians and actors and rappers and musicians who are galvanized by the truth to sing and speak and share in such a way that makes sin look strange and righteousness look normal.

4) We need a both-and approach. In the months ahead I imagine we’ll see Christians wrestle with whether the best way forward is to form new arguments that appeal to people where they’re at, or whether we simply need to keep preaching the truth and trust God to give some people the ears to hear. I’m convinced we need to do both. Let’s keep preaching, teaching, and laboring for faithful churches. Let’s be fruitful and multiply. Let’s train our kids in the way they should go. Let’s keep sharing the good news and praying for revival. And let’s also find ways to make the truth plausible in a lost world. Not only the truth about marriage, but the truth about life and sex and creation and beauty and family and freedom and a hundred other things humans tend to forget on this side of Adam. The cultural assumptions in our day are not on our side, but if the last 50 years has shown us anything, it’s that those assumptions can change more quickly than we think.

shellfish

I had a very nice inquiry from a Facebook friend. Buried within the question that was being asked were some thoughts regarding inconsistencies relative our handling of the Old Testament law. My assumption is that this was triggered by my recent repost of Michael Patton's thoughts on worshipping the Bible. So, in a effort to address the perceived inconsistencies, here a repost of Tim Keller addressing the point.

Tim Keller adresses the Old Testament Law inconsistency charge clearly and concisely.

I find it frustrating when I read or hear columnists, pundits, or journalists dismiss Christians as inconsistent because “they pick and choose which of the rules in the Bible to obey.” What I hear most often is “Christians ignore lots of Old Testament texts—about not eating raw meat or pork or shellfish, not executing people for breaking the Sabbath, not wearing garments woven with two kinds of material and so on. Then they condemn homosexuality. Aren’t you just picking and choosing what they want to believe from the Bible?”

It is not that I expect everyone to have the capability of understanding that the whole Bible is about Jesus and God’s plan to redeem his people, but I vainly hope that one day someone will access their common sense (or at least talk to an informed theological advisor) before leveling the charge of inconsistency.

First of all, let’s be clear that it’s not only the Old Testament that has proscriptions about homosexuality. The New Testament has plenty to say about it, as well. Even Jesus says, in his discussion of divorce in Matthew 19:3-12 that the original design of God was for one man and one woman to be united as one flesh, and failing that, (v. 12) persons should abstain from marriage and from sex.

However, let’s get back to considering the larger issue of inconsistency regarding things mentioned in the OT that are no longer practiced by the New Testament people of God. Most Christians don’t know what to say when confronted about this. Here’s a short course on the relationship of the Old Testament to the New Testament:

The Old Testament devotes a good amount of space to describing the various sacrifices that were to be offered in the tabernacle (and later temple) to atone for sin so that worshippers could approach a holy God. As part of that sacrificial system there was also a complex set of rules for ceremonial purity and cleanness. You could only approach God in worship if you ate certain foods and not others, wore certain forms of dress, refrained from touching a variety of objects, and so on. This vividly conveyed, over and over, that human beings are spiritually unclean and can’t go into God’s presence without purification.

But even in the Old Testament, many writers hinted that the sacrifices and the temple worship regulations pointed forward to something beyond them. (cf. 1 Samuel 15:21-22; Psalm 50:12-15; 51:17; Hosea 6:6). When Christ appeared he declared all foods ‘clean’ (Mark 7:19) and he ignored the Old Testament clean laws in other ways, touching lepers and dead bodies.

But the reason is made clear. When he died on the cross the veil in the temple was ripped through, showing that the need for the entire sacrificial system with all its clean laws had been done away with. Jesus is the ultimate sacrifice for sin, and now Jesus makes us “clean.”

The entire book of Hebrews explains that the Old Testament ceremonial laws were not so much abolished as fulfilled by Christ. Whenever we pray ‘in Jesus name’, we ‘have confidence to enter the Most Holy Place by the blood of Jesus’ (Hebrews 10:19). It would, therefore, be deeply inconsistent with the teaching of the Bible as a whole if we were to continue to follow the ceremonial laws.

The New Testament gives us further guidance about how to read the Old Testament. Paul makes it clear in places like Romans 13:8ff that the apostles understood the Old Testament moral law to still be binding on us. In short, the coming of Christ changed how we worship but not how we live. The moral law is an outline of God’s own character—his integrity, love, and faithfulness. And so all the Old Testament says about loving our neighbor, caring for the poor, generosity with our possessions, social relationships, and commitment to our family is still in force. The New Testament continues to forbid killing or committing adultery, and all the sex ethic of the Old Testament is re-stated throughout the New Testament (Matthew 5:27-30; 1 Corinthians 6:9-20; 1 Timothy 1:8-11.) If the New Testament has reaffirmed a commandment, then it is still in force for us today.

Further, the New Testament explains another change between the Testaments. Sins continue to be sins—but the penalties change. In the Old Testament things like adultery or incest were punishable with civil sanctions like execution. This is because at that time God’s people existed in the form of a nation-state and so all sins had civil penalties.

But in the New Testament the people of God are an assembly of churches all over the world, living under many different governments. The church is not a civil government, and so sins are dealt with by exhortation and, at worst, exclusion from membership. This is how a case of incest in the Corinthian church is dealt with by Paul (1 Corinthians 5:1ff. and 2 Corinthians 2:7-11.) Why this change? Under Christ, the gospel is not confined to a single nation—it has been released to go into all cultures and peoples.

Once you grant the main premise of the Bible—about the surpassing significance of Christ and his salvation—then all the various parts of the Bible make sense. Because of Christ, the ceremonial law is repealed. Because of Christ the church is no longer a nation-state imposing civil penalties. It all falls into place. However, if you reject the idea of Christ as Son of God and Savior, then, of course, the Bible is at best a mish-mash containing some inspiration and wisdom, but most of it would have to be rejected as foolish or erroneous.

So where does this leave us? There are only two possibilities. If Christ is God, then this way of reading the Bible makes sense and is perfectly consistent with its premise. The other possibility is that you reject Christianity’s basic thesis—you don’t believe Jesus was the resurrected Son of God—and then the Bible is no sure guide for you about much of anything. But the one thing you can’t really say in fairness is that Christians are being inconsistent with their beliefs to accept the moral statements in the Old Testament while not practicing other ones.

One way to respond to the charge of inconsistency may be to ask a counter-question—“Are you asking me to deny the very heart of my Christian beliefs?” If you are asked, “Why do you say that?” you could respond, “If I believe Jesus is the the resurrected Son of God, I can’t follow all the ‘clean laws’ of diet and practice, and I can’t offer animal sacrifices. All that would be to deny the power of Christ’s death on the cross. And so those who really believe in Christ must follow some Old Testament texts and not others.”

welcome bell

Matt Dabbs writes a fair minded review of Rob Bell's new book What We Talk About When We Talk About God by Rob Bell. His view contrasts with my earlier re-post of a review by Timothy Tennent. I haven't fully digested Dabbs' post but I like the following section a lot.

I am afraid that preconceived ideas and the new media of Bell saying he is for gay marriage is muddying the waters on how good this book really is if you just picked it up and read it, not knowing who Rob Bell is…just for what it actually says about us and about God and about how we talk about God.

Great point! We need to be wary when reading someone with a bad track record. At the same time, we know that past performance does not necessarily predict the future. It's too easy to allow our opinion of an author to taint our reading and judge what he's trying to say about point A in light of what we think of his views on point B & C.

Thanks Mr. Dabbs for the healthy reminder. And while I may or may not agree with your take on Bell, I certainly appreciate your integrity, honesty, and spirit.

Read Dabbs' full post here.

the holy bible

Super great post by Michael Patton on the Holy Bible.

The problem with many Evangelicals is that we can come dangerously close to worshiping the Bible. As Evangelical theologian James Sawyer once said in jest, we worship the Trinity: the Father, Son, and Holy Bible.

Now, by this I do not mean we actually set the Bible up in a shrine in our house, throw it away if it ever touches the floor, or put our hand on it when swearing an oath. Of course we are above that, right? What I think people like James Sawyer are talking about is that we put our Bibliology (study of the Bible) ahead of Christology (study of Christ), Pneumentology (study of the Holy Spirit), and Paterology (study of the Father). We hold the Bible in such high esteem, a firm adherence to an Evangelical Bibliology (verbal plenary inspiration, inerrancy, and authorial intent hermeneutics) becomes the unashamed anchor to the Gospel. But, eventually, it can (and often does) become the Gospel itself. One may be perfectly orthodox in every area about which the Bible speaks (deeply believing in the deity and Lordship of Christ, the sinfulness of man, and Christ’s the death, burial, and resurrection), but if they are not perfectly orthodox about the Bible, to many of us evangelicals, they are not orthodox at all.

Now, let me cease with the self-deprecation for a moment. When straw-men are not being built against us (and when we are acting our age!), a high view of Scripture is easy to justify. For example, for many years the Evangelical Theological Society (ETS) had only one point in their doctrinal statement that members had to sign every year—inerrancy. And, in my estimation, this was not a bad thing. After all, where do we get our high Christology? The Bible. Where do we get our high view of God? The Bible. Where do we get the Gospel? The Bible. So, in our best moments, we will condemn anything that smells of idolatry concerning the Scriptures. We know that the Bible is not the fourth member of the Trinity. The Bible is not actually alive, but it does accurately reflect the movements of a living God.

How does this translate into our witness? When we are sharing Christ with someone, I have never heard anyone require that they invite the Bible into their heart (although, to be fair, asking Jesus into your heart might cause some problems too!). At baptismal confessions in the early church, there was a renouncing of Satan, but no renouncing of those who deny inerrancy. There was a confession of Christ as Lord, but no confession of Paul as the author of the Pastorals. There was a symbolic burial of our old life but no burial of old books you used to read besides the Bible. Don’t get me wrong. I am not saying that the early church had a low view of Scripture. Far from it. I even believe that they held to a seed form of inerrancy. What I am saying is that one’s bibliology was not an essential component of the Gospel.

I am really saying nothing new or extraordinary here. I am trying to get people to present the message of the Bible (Jesus Christ and him crucified for our sins and raised from the dead) not the message about the Bible (inspiration, inerrancy, etc). The Gospel message does not require anyone to believe in either inspiration or inerrancy before it can become effective in their lives. When those we are sharing Christ with object to the Scriptures based on supposed inconsistencies, we are to show them that these inconsistencies, even if true, do not change the message of the Bible. The historic message of the Bible needs to take precedence over the theological nature of the Bible. And here is where I feel we Evangelicals, in our zeal and love for the Bible, taint the Gospel with unnecessary additives. These additives, more often than not, create red herrings where we can end up leaving Jesus out altogether as we defend against thousands of claims of Bible contradictions. Further, I believe that this defense needs to be exclusively concerned with the historicity of the resurrection of Christ (“Resurrection Apologetics”). If Christ is risen from the grave, Christianity is true, no matter how many contradictions one thinks they have found. And if Christ did not rise from the grave, Christianity is false, no matter how harmonious the Bible shows to be. In short, I don’t have to convince anyone of the inspiration and inerrancy of Scripture in order to introduce them to my Savior. I just have to make a case that the historicity of the story of Christ contained in the Bible is reliable enough to warrant their belief.

Deep breath . . . And here is where I am really trying to go with my argument.

Understandably, some people object to this line of reasoning, believing that I am shooting myself in the foot. Many would argue that the only way we can know about the person and work of Christ with certainty is through an inspired and inerrant Bible. Otherwise, according to these, we have no real assurance that what we believe is true. If there can be an error in the primary source for the Gospel, the Gospel itself loses its authority and power to convert. In short, as the objection goes, inspiration and inerrancy must be present or there is no Gospel.

My response is that it is the person and work of Christ that is the ultimate authority, not really the Scriptures. Christ did what he did not because Scripture was written and made it so, but because historically Christ did what he did. The Scriptures have no causal authority when it comes to the Gospel.

But if we don’t assume an inspired inerrant text of Scripture how can we be certain that the Gospel in the Scriptures is correct? If you are willing to grant a historical error here and there in the Gospel accounts, then this is a slippery slope. Where do you draw the line? How can we be sure that the historical account of the resurrection is not in error?

These are great questions. In fact, being an inerrantist myself, in a different context I would say that they are valid questions that need answers. However, I don’t think the possibility of an error needs to issue forth into the probability of an error. In other words, just because we may grant, for the sake of argument, that their might be errors of history in the Bible, this does not mean that everything is in error. After all, we don’t treat other works of history this way do we? Just think if we discounted all histories that did not pass the infallibility test. What would we know about history? That’s right. . . Nothing. We understand that even the best histories are only basically reliable, not perfectly reliable. When it comes to the Bible, just because one Gospel writer says that there were two angels at the tomb and another records only one angel, this does not mean that the tomb was not really empty. Remember, concerning the main events, all the writers agree. They all have Jesus living a perfect life, teaching about God, dying on a cross and raising from the dead. What exactly where his last words from the cross? Was Matthew right or Luke? Who cares (at least right now)? I just want to talk about the things about which they agree.

Yes, but you are presenting an uncertain Gospel. One can never really be completely sure that they have the right story.

Yes, uncertainty may be a fact of life. But this is true even if you make inerrancy a prerequisite to the Gospel. Think about it. Here are five things concerning Bibliology that are not make or break issues for the Gospel and about which we are not completely certain:

1. The canon of Scripture: If you are a Protestant, you may believe that the very words of the Bible are inspired and inerrant, but here is the problem: you don’t have an inspired and inerrant Bible. In other words, whatever the Bible is, you believe the text is inspired and inerrant. But you don’t know with infallible assurance what the Bible is. How so? Because we have a fallible cannon. There is no inspired and inerrant table of contents in the Bible. Therefore, you have to live without the luxury of inerrancy when it comes to the canon. And last time I checked, the canon of the Bible is somewhat foundational to what the Bible is! But I don’t think this is a make or break issue for the Gospel, do you? I hope not. If you do, you will have to become Roman Catholic to get the certainty that you think is necessary.

However, like with the inerrancy of the text, I don’t think we have to go there. I trust that a study of the history of the canon can give us not only assurance, but warranted obligation to believe that we have the right books in our Bible.

2. The text of Scripture: Again, we don’t have any infallible manuscripts of the Bible. Of the six thousand plus manuscripts and fragments of manuscripts that we have catalogued of the New Testament, not one of them is without error. There is no place that you can go to in order to have absolute certainty about the text of the Scripture, Old or New Testament. But this need not cause us despair as we can look into this issue, study it deeply, and come away with a firm conviction that we have the essential message, even if there are going to be some passages that may be forever lost in obscurity.

3. The translation of Scripture: Unless you are a King James Only advocate, you do not have a perfect, infallible, inerrant, or inspired translation of the Scriptures. Neither the NAS, NIV, ESV, KJV, or NKJV are perfect. They all have mistakes. We don’t know where they are or we would fix them, but all messages have something lost in translation. Does this mean we are left only to uncertain despair? Well, only if indubitability (the belief that knowledge is only justified when we have absolute certainty) is your goal. Only if you cannot live with a bit of uncertainty. But all one has to do to regain confidence is to get involved in the translation process yourself. Once you do, you will see that it is not doom and gloom. We have every reason to believe that even the worst translations out there get across the general message of the Gospel.

4. Interpretation of Scripture: No one that I know is an infallible interpreter of Scripture. Even the advocate of King James Onlyism has to admit uncertainty here. We have to live with the fact that we might have and teach wrong interpretations of the Scripture. But this does not mean that we cannot have a good degree of relative certainty about our interpretation. For the most part the Scriptures are not that difficult to understand. We often call this the perspicuity of Scripture. This does not mean that all of Scripture is easy to understand, only that the main teaching are clear enough that even a child can understand them.

In all four of these, we have to live with uncertainty. We need to get used to it. Even with an inerrant text of the Scripture we still have to live with our limits. If you cling to a modernistic cartesian ideal of absolute certainty, you are in trouble. But we can have sufficient warrant for our beliefs even when we are not mathematically certain that we are correct.

Why all of this? Am I trying to slowly phase inerrancy out? Absolutely not. I am an inerrantist by theological deduction. I believe that the Scriptures are from God. I believe that God is perfect. Therefore, I believe the Scriptures, if we are going to have any meaning to inspiration, are inerrant. But I am not an inerrantist because I believe the Gospel is lost without it. In a world where just about every evangelistic atheist has on their job description “Can bring to light 1001 Bible contradictions,” I want you to be able to get past this issue. It only ties the Gospel up in endless legislation.

As well, I want to reorient your perspective, if need be. The Bible is not the Gospel. We often accuse Roman Catholics of worshiping Mary and Eastern Orthodox of worshiping the Saints. Unfortunately, against their higher ideals, many times the accusation fits the bill. But while our highest ideas abhor the notion of worshiping the Bible, unfortunately, this charge sometimes fits the bill as well. We don’t worship the Bible. We can hold to a high view of Scripture (and we should) without having to deify it. God has revealed himself to us in Scripture, but he is not Scripture. We worship the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, not the Father, Son, and Holy Bible. Stick to the resurrection of Christ and you should be fine. But this assumes you are a student of the resurrection. Are you?

les miserables

Sadly, this honest trailer explains my take on the Les Misérables musical movie. I much preferred seeing the version with Liam Neeson or the musical in the theater ... but not in the movies ...

reproducing cultures

Ron Edmondson offers 10 Ways to Have a Reproducing Culture ...

Catch the vision of multiplication – It’s hard to convince people to buy into something you don’t believe in personally. As a leader, you must believe reproducing leaders is a valuable enough process to make it a priority.

Be intentional – Every leader in the organization must be willing to consciously replace themselves. Multiplication must be a part of the overall strategy. There must be a system of leadership recruitment.

Start early – Reproducing cultures replace leaders before they actually need them.

Invest in personal growth – You can’t take new leaders where the current haven’t been or aren’t going.

Humble leaders – Leaders must not be afraid that new leaders could lead better than them. When leaders allow people to shine under their leadership it advances their ability to lead. The good news is today’s generation likes honesty. They will follow a leader more if they trust their integrity.

Share responsibilities early - The easiest way to learn something is to do it and the more ownership given to people the more they will be motivated to participate.

Identify potential – This was in my previous post. It’s important in a recruitment culture to always be looking for people who may someday be leadership superstars. Look for the good in people. What do they have that attracts people to them?

Create an environment conducive to leaders – Leaders don’t develop well under a dictatorship. If people are afraid to have an answer under the current leadership for fear of being wrong, they are less likely to try to have an answer. The real leaders will disappear quickly in a controlling environment.

Recruit – The “sign up” method seldom works well. The best quality people are personally recruited. Jesus found people with a personal ask. The best recruitment in most organizations will be likewise.

Lead for life change – Some people will experience their greatest life change only when they are leading others or have some sort of responsibility for leadership. Nurture potential leaders knowing that part of their spiritual maturity will be that step of leadership.

which parent

Sometimes our world's complex issues are only made that way by us ... here is some common sense our government chooses to ignore ...

the snail

Slow down ...

"Sometimes we allow our lives to move too quickly to notice the beauty in the small things around us. This short time-lapse of a snail might inspire you to take a closer look at creation, and the beauty it holds." ~ Geoff Hill

2 trees

"Just as Adam lost his bride through his disobedience at a tree . . . so the last Adam won His bride through His obedience at a tree" (For a Glory and a Covering, p. 60).

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the central problem

Ray Ortlund posts:

As the latest volume in the new Crossway series, Theologians on The Christian Life, William Edgar’s Schaeffer on The Christian Life compels my respectful attention. The subtitle, in particular, “Countercultural Spirituality,” combines two things attractive to me, true to Francis Schaeffer and prophetic in our time.

Countercultural. Counter, especially, to a compromised church culture. Biblical Christianity is a radical adjustment. We would gain immeasurably from being confronted, even opposed, by the biblical witness. Our gracious Justifier, who is for us (Romans 8:31), also says to us, “But I have a few things against you” (Revelation 2:14). Are we willing to face that honestly and find out what he means and receive his correction?

Spirituality. Personal reality with the living God, according to Scripture. The Bible is not there for us to polish our theories. It is not there to reinforce any status quo. It is there to bring us to God and move us to deeper change and empower us for bold witness in our generation. This is the rugged, costly spirituality nothing on earth, nothing within the church, can withstand, because God is in it.

Schaeffer: “The central problem of our age is not liberalism or modernism [or postmodernism] . . . . The real problem is this: the church of the Lord Jesus Christ, individually or corporately, tending to do the Lord’s work in the power of the flesh rather than of the Spirit. The central problem is always in the midst of the people of God, not in the circumstances surrounding them” (page 148, italics original).

Such a stance lifts this book above merely speculative interest, thought-provoking though it is. The entire outlook of Francis Schaeffer, well summarized on pages 189-192, demands personal and corporate reassessment at a basic level.

I needed to read this book. Maybe you do too.

a hidden god

David F. Wells in The Courage to be Protestant:

The point I am making is quite offensive to us today. It is that God hides himself from us, that he cannot be had on our terms, and that he cannot be accessed from “below” through natural revelation. In the malls, and in much of life, we encounter nothing like this. We expect access. We expect to be able to get what we want, when we want it, and on our terms.

Here this is not the case. Here we have to be admitted to God’s presence, on his terms, in his way … or not at all. We cannot simply walk into his presence. Here nature does not itself yield grace. God’s grace comes from the outside, not the inside, from above and not from within. It is not natural to fallen human life. We enter the presence of God as those who have been estranged, not as those who have been in continuity with the sacred simply because we are human. We are brought into a saving relationship through Christ; we do not put this together from within ourselves.

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farewell bell

Rob Bell ... sigh ... here's Timothy Tennent's helpful review of Bell's continued missteps ...

Rob Bell, author of Love Wins, has recently published a new book entitled, What We Talk about When We Talk about God. Those who are regular readers of my blog will recall that when Bell published Love Wins I wrote a four part blog series exploring what I liked about Bell’s book and, mostly, where I felt the book contained serious errors. In his earlier book, for example, Bell misunderstands the Biblical teaching regarding God’s love. Bell exchanged the biblical teaching of God’s covenant love with a highly sentimentalized view which played heavily to popular cultural views regarding love which are then imposed on God. Further, Bell has an inadequate view of sin and has, it seemed, abandoned in both books any vestige of the doctrine of the Sin nature. Several other key doctrines are ignored to the peril of his argument. Finally, Bell misunderstands the biblical teaching regarding the kingdom of God, rejecting a kingdom which has been inaugurated but still awaits final consummation. I rehearse his earlier difficulties only because several of those difficulties still seem to plague Bell. I don’t want to be uncharitable to Rob Bell, but since he is a best selling author and has been hailed by the New York Times as “one of the most influential pastors in America” he deserves both our prayers and our rigorous scrutiny. Nevertheless, I devoted several blogs which also commended Bell for much of his analysis. In the end, I wished he had the courage and theological depth to write a book entitled, Holy-Love Wins – that might have gotten us all closer to the mark. Bell seems to offer little to no resistance to the worst errors of tired old Protestant liberalism. Indeed, the adage by Richard Neibuhr about liberal Christianity is certainly true of Rob Bell’s writings: “A God without wrath brought men without sin into a kingdom without judgment through the ministrations of a Christ without a cross.”[1] But that was then and this is now, so let’s move on to Bell’s latest work which will likely also become another best seller.

I am just one reader and therefore I hope this is just one of many thoughtful responses from across the church. I’m sure that many will laud his book as providing the very direction we need to go. To his credit, Bell has his pulse on the modern consciousness as much as anyone. He understands that many people, including Christians, are experiencing a faith crisis and he, in good faith, is seeking to provide a new way of approaching God which he hopes will bring hope and the rebirth of faith to many. Nevertheless, this book continues the errors of his previous book and, in fact, extends them in new ways. It is not as easy to respond to What We Think about when We Think about God because it is not as carefully reasoned or argued as Love Wins. Instead, Bell shares a steady stream of personal experiences and stories which are used to frame the general argument of the book. Bell uses these stories to demonstrate that quite a few people have the perception that the Christian faith is outdated and that God, in particular, appears malevolent, primitive, and stuck somewhere in the past. Bell argues that God is like a four door Delta 88 Oldsmobile. It may have been an awesome, cutting edge car in the day, but now seems hopelessly stuck in the past (p. 5, 6).

Bell honestly shares how this realization precipitated his own faith crisis. He was preparing to preach on Easter Sunday knowing full well that his congregation expected him to proclaim with confidence that Jesus Christ is Risen. But, instead, he found himself plagued with doubts. He doesn’t tell us what he actually preached that Easter, but Bell does tell us what he wanted to say. Bell says he felt like standing up and saying, “Well, I’ve been thinking about this for a while, and I got to be honest with you. I think we’re kind of screwed” (p. 12). Bell entered a period where he says he was “full of really, really serious doubts about the entire ball of God wax (p. 12). Through counseling and reflection Bell has emerged from his struggles with a sort of reconstructed faith which he is now sharing with us in What we Talk about when we Talk about God. This newly constructed religious structure of Bell no longer resembles New Testament Christianity, but it does generously borrow the language of Christianity to give this re-presentation the ballast it needs to get off the ground.

One must commend Bell for his personal honesty and having the integrity to allow himself to struggle. Furthermore, one cannot help but applaud Bell’s genuine desire to help thousands who must be feeling much like he felt. My difficulty with Bell is not with his description, but with his prescription. What is his “answer” to this dilemma? Bell’s solution is to reflect on all the religions of the world, all the popular spiritualities which have arisen, and the general consciousness about the transcendent to see if he can discover some deeper unifying common denominator. He is, of course, not the first to attempt this, but he is certainly one of the more prominent contemporary advocates of this approach. Bell is particularly struck by a phrase he heard from Jane Fonda who described her spiritual path as “feeling reverence humming in me” (p. 10). Bell uses this phrase at key points in the book. He longs for a new kind of spirituality which is more affirming, more inclusive, and more progressive. However, there are several areas in which Bell’s book, in my view, fails to provide a satisfactory solution.

First, Bell fails to clearly embrace the singularity of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ.

The Resurrection of Jesus Christ is, of course, the central proclamation of the Christian faith. Without the Resurrection, St. Paul declares, we are still in our sins, and our faith is useless and futile (I Cor. 15:12-21). As noted earlier, Bell tells the story of his own growing doubts about the credibility of the Resurrection (p. 12), and only brings it up again late in the book when he says, “In Jesus we see the God who bears the full brunt of our freedom, entering into the human story, carrying our pain and sorrow and sin and despair and denials of God and then, as the story goes, being resurrected three days later” (p. 145). Using the phrase, “as the story goes” leaves the reader with the impression that this is what Christians teach, rather than an historical event upon which the whole faith rises or falls. Either Bell no longer affirms the Resurrection or he has failed to understand its true significance. Either way, it is very troubling. Throughout the book, Bell consistently gives us a pre-resurrected Jesus, carefully choosing texts which connect Jesus to the deeper spiritual consciousness which keeps our “reverence humming within” (p. 15), but carefully avoiding the radical exclusivity of Jesus’ teaching as well as the post-resurrection confidence in the cosmic supremacy of Jesus Christ. Bell is surely right when he says that doubt can sometimes be a sign that our faith has a pulse (p. 92), but it is important to remember that faith and doubt really are different – not just two equal “dance partners” (p. 92). Christians can, of course, be plagued with doubts as much as anyone. But, when it comes to the Resurrection, there is a time when we must “stop doubting and believe” (John 20:27).

Second, Bell has a distorted understanding of “progress.”

A major portion of the book (pp. 21-73) surveys the breathtaking advances in science, particularly in the area of quantum physics. Bell uses these amazing advances in our understanding of the universe as the backdrop to his real thesis which is that we are all advancing and moving forward and the church is being left behind. Bell explores the idea of progressive revelation and points out how certain texts in the Old Testament reveal that people are at “F and God calls them to G” and now that we are at “L” we look back and God may seem primitive and barbaric. Meanwhile God is calling us to “M” (p. 165). However, it is crucial to Bell’s deeper thesis to make the assumption that just as science is progressing and moving forward in undeniable ways, so culture and family systems and philosophy and every other arena of thought must, likewise, be progressing forward. So, the church with all of its “dead theological systems” must play catch up. One of Bell’s crucial themes is the idea that God is always moving ahead of us and bringing us forward. OK. But Bell never seems to even consider the tension that might be felt in a culture when a step backwards occurs. He never seems to entertain the idea that sometimes societies do not progress, but regress. This inevitably increases the tension between biblical revelation and popular conceptions about God. Where is the prophetic role of the church which resists sinking lower and lower to find a common denominator of spirituality which will be affirmed by most everyone as opposed to calling men and women to the deeper realities of biblical revelation which is never outdated or outmoded, but always fresh with power and relevance? The gospel does not need our help in being made “relevant.” The gospel is always relevant for every time and culture. Bell has given us a reshaped and highly domesticated gospel which tries to make the gospel relevant to contemporary sensibilities.

Third, Bell does not call us to carefully study and submit to God’s revelation in Scripture.

Bell gives many examples of Christians who have only a superficial understanding of the actual teaching of Scripture so they can be caught saying foolish things like “all gay people are going to hell” (p. 6). But these superficial caricatures are not used to call us to a deeper study of God’s Word. Rather, they are used to call us to listen better to ourselves. Bell tells the story of a time when he purchased some snorkeling gear and in his haste to get it out of its packaging a little tube fell out unnoticed. It wasn’t until later that he realized that this tube was essential for keeping your goggles unfogged in the water and, because he had lost the little tube, his underwater vision was blurred and fuzzy. Bell goes on to apply this saying that for twenty years as a pastor he had been trying to get people to see clearly and to help them find that “little tube” (p. 99, 100). But, what, symbolically speaking, is this “little tube”? This was an opportunity for Bell to tell us clearly that the “little tube” (without which all of life is fuzzy and blurred) is the Word of God. Instead, Bells tells us that the “little tube” is to listen within to a “certain stillness” in our hearts (p. 103). He says that it might come to us while we are eating a meal or having a conversation (p. 102, 103). He never suggests that it might come through the Word of God. Bell seems to equate the “ruach (spirit or breath) of God” and “cosmic electricity” (p. 106). But, there is a very important Christian difference between God’s self-disclosure and our self-discovery.

Bell’s book left me with the impression that the musings of an unbelieving man talking about God while he stands in his backyard barbecuing is just as valid as the utterances of the Hebrew prophets or the Apostle Paul. Bell’s ability to listen to the stories of people and discern their spiritual journey is exemplary – and I commend him for it. But, I also long to hear his confidence in the objective revelation of the Bible as God’s Word which just might tell the man barbecuing his chicken that his ideas about God are just plain wrong. For Bell, all such musings must be validated because, in the end, why should we validate a biblical prophet over the man barbecuing? The answer is that, for Bell, theology (our words about God) is a subset of anthropology. This is because, for Bell, any words – even if found in the Bible – cannot ever describe with confidence the ultimate reality that is “fundamentally beyond words and phrases and forms” (p. 87). That is an innocent looking phrase in Bell, but, read in context, it manages to put the Bible, the church and all theological propositions in the tentative and provisional category. Of course, to say that God is beyond words and phrases is an axiomatic truth, but that should not be used as leverage against the proclamation of God’s revelation about himself in words, phrases and forms.

Fourth, Bell offers us a less nuanced, more simplistic, more pluralistic expression of Christianity.

Bell tells the readers he wants to avoid “long and scholarly and technical and complicated words” (p. 15). Instead he wants to use the words “open” “both” “with” “for” and “ahead” (which is used as the structure of the entire book). However, in the end we are left with something short, naiive, populistic and way too simplistic. We are left with a “light weight” tentative world view which makes Christianity just one of many possible ways of “doing” your spirituality. Bell finally answers the question which his book title raises when he says, “so when we talk about God, we’re talking about our brushes with the spirit, our awareness of the reverence humming within us…” (p. 91). This could just as easily be said by a Hindu, a Buddhist or a Sufi Muslim. What makes Bell’s answer a distinctively Christian statement? Is Christianity just one of many options on a global religious smorgasbord, or has something uniquely occurred in Jesus Christ? For the Christian, truth doesn’t just rise up within us, it is revealed to us by God in his Word and, supremely, in the Person of Jesus Christ, the Resurrected One who suffered on the cross for us and is now the living, ascended Lord. Bell seems to be willing to trade the priceless pearl of the gospel for a mess of pluralist porridge. He is clearly uncomfortable with the exclusivity of the Christian claims. Bell has chosen to find his spirituality in a Jesus of his own imagination. Indeed, Bell would not insist on any particular outward forms or divine conceptions as long as one gets in touch with their own “humming spirituality.”

Conclusion

As we face a culture increasingly abandoning the Christian faith we have much to learn from Bell’s missional heart and his willingness to listen deeply to the angst of popular culture. But, the solution is not to further domesticate the gospel. Rather, the church must rediscover a more robust gospel; the good news proclaimed in the New Testament. We must, in fresh and compelling ways, “contend for the faith once and for all delivered to the saints” (Jude 1:3). Time magazine has hailed Bell for being “at the forefront of a rethinking of Christianity in America.” But have any of us really been given the authority to “re-think” Christianity? My prayer is that Christians all across the world will realize that the “new and improved” Christianity which Bell offers us is not an improvement of the faith and proclamation of the Apostles who were the eye and ear witnesses of the good news of Jesus Christ. In the end, what Rob Bell seems to be saying is that we don’t really talk about God when we talk about God. Instead, we are talking about ourselves. For Bell, this is a progressive development. For me, it is an irreverent humming of deception. More importantly, for the church throughout the ages, this is just another of a myriad of failed attempts to use Christian language, but deny the power of the gospel.