May 30, 2006
The Gospel According to Electronic Culture: What if the medium really is the message?
Before entering ministry, Shane Hipps had a career in advertising developing multimillion dollar communication plans for brands like Porsche. It was during his time in advertising that Hipps gained expertise in understanding the power of media, technology, and culture. He left his lucrative career abruptly when he saw it as promoting a counterfeit gospel. Today, Shane Hipps serves as the Lead Pastor of Trinity Mennonite Church in Phoenix, Arizona. His new book, The Hidden Power of Electronic Culture: How Media Shapes Faith, The Gospel, And Church (Zondervan, 2006) is the confluence of his two professions.
Whenever we in the church debate new methods of communicating the gospel, or alternative ways of doing church it ends in a predictable turn. There is a point in these conversations when a person, hoping to end the debate once and for all, says “The methods must change as long as the message stays the same.” So it would seem as long as we preserve the unchanging message, any method is fair game. This serves as a kind of evangelical rally cry for methodological innovation.
If they are feeling particularly sophisticated, they may go on to explain that, “Our methods, in and of themselves, are neither good nor evil, it is how we use them that determines their value.”
Meaning, if we pipe pornography through the Internet it’s bad, but if we post the Four Spiritual Laws there the Internet is good. We assume that any medium is simply a neutral conduit for information, like the plumbing in our house. The tubes are of little consequence unless they spring a leak. So as long as we are communicating the unchanging message of the gospel, every technology or method can be good. This tends to be our most nuanced conclusion.
Unfortunately, it fails to account for what our media and methods truly have the capacity to do and undo. And so we encounter them with the proverbial slip on the banana peel. We remain quite oblivious to the ways our message and our minds are being shaped by our methods and media.
The reality is, our methods are in no way “neutral,” they have a staggering, yet hidden power to shape us regardless of their content. This is what Marshall McLuhan meant when he observed “The medium is the message.” And it stands in direct contradiction to our evangelical rally cry. In other words, our media and methods have an inherent bias and a message of their own that has little or nothing to do with their content.
Consider the medium of the printed word. It is not coincidental that modernity and the “Age of Reason,” (i.e. A celebration of linear thinking and rational argument) came about just after the printing revolution. The relentlessly linear, sequential, uniform medium of print inevitably gave rise to the same patterns in our thinking-- we become what we behold. Thus modernity celebrated syllogism, systematization, and reason above all else. And the modern church followed suit by unconsciously offering an “unchanging” gospel pressed into a linear, sequential, and reasonable formula:
Apologies for your sins + Believe in Jesus = Go to heaven.
As the print era wanes and electronic culture reigns, we are witnessing a morphing of modernity’s “unchanging” gospel. Something as simple as communicating with images and icons has changed the way we conceive of the gospel. Images, regardless of their content, erode our capacity for abstract thought and linear reasoning; while at the same time reviving our preference for narrative, concrete experience, and mystery.
The result is a gospel according to electronic culture, which is often carried by the emerging church. This budding approach to faith embodies the bias of images (just as Eastern Orthodoxy has for centuries). It is a gospel encountered through iconic story, mystery, and experiential ritual, rather than linear proposition and reasoned argument. It is a gospel bathed in the mystery of God’s Kingdom. It is elusive, deliberately defying categorization.
The most disconcerting part of it all is not that changes are happening—that is inevitable. It is that we stand oblivious to the magician’s sleight-of-hand as a trick is played on our mind. And so we repeatedly seek to use our new methods only to be used by them.
This is not simply another call for a Luddite resistance to technology or new methods. Such a strategy is like trying to resist the wind and the tides; never mind that the Bible itself is a technology—a printed book. This is a call to take the red pill and see how deep the rabbit hole goes.
Posted by UrL at May 30, 2006 | Comments (16) | TrackBack
May 25, 2006
Is Emergent the New Christian Left 2: Tony Jones takes on Chuck Colson and "true truth"
In part 2 of his post, Tony Jones addresses emerging church critic extraordinaire Chuck Colson. Colson sees the Emergent conversation as a threat to traditional Christian understandings of the “truth.” Jones responds by discussing the interdependence of truth and community—the essence of the Emergent Village conversation.
I thank the many commenters for thoughtful and, generally, gracious comments, and I want to respond in a bit of a roundabout manner. If you can bear with me, I think I can speak to the concerns of many.
Yesterday I received my latest copy of Christianity Today. I look forward with some ambivalence to the even-numbered months' editions because they contain both the columns of my friend, Andy Crouch, and of despiser-of-all-things-emergent, Chuck Colson (and his amaneuensis and, it seems, proxy church observer, Anne Morse). Colson has had a burr under his saddle about the emerging church for some time—for instance, in his last column he equated the emerging church with namby-pamby praise music (as he was bemoaning how many Christian radio stations are dropping his daily commentaries).
What Colson's writing has in fact betrayed over the last couple of years is that he knows very little about the emerging church. In this month's column ("Emerging Confusion: Jesus is the Truth Whether We Experience Him or Not"), he recounts a recent conversation with a "young theologian" named "Jim" (whose name has been changed to protect the innocent). "Jim" asked Chuck to take it easy on the emergents; they're just trying to translate the gospel for postmodern folks, "Jim" pleaded. That's a noble motive, Chuck replied, but if they undermine truth, then all is lost.
In his penultimate paragraph, Colson refers to D.A. Carson, fellow critic of Emergent, who argues that objective truth precedes relational truth. Colson then weighs in with this philosophical doozy: "Truth is truth.” (Why don't you read that again.)
You see, by saying that "truth is truth," Colson is essentially saying...well, nothing. That's called a "self-referential argument," or a "circular reference" and it's non-sensical; it doesn't say anything, and it doesn't mean anything. I can't tell you how many times I've been speaking and heard similar statements. I'll spend a couple hours doing my best to lay out a rather intricate understanding of truth and interpretation, only to be told by an audience member that some things are "really, really true," "true with a capital 'T'" or my personal favorite, "true truth."
But if I can try to surmise Colson's meaning from the subtitle of the essay, he means to indicate that we in the emerging church have placed too much weight on "relational" or "experiential" theories of truth. The gospel is true, Colson seems to be saying, regardless of your human experience of that truth.
But philosophically, the obvious follow-up question is, Why? What makes the gospel true, especially if those of us in the world have no experience of its truthfulness? Is it true because Chuck Colson says so? Because Augustine said so? Because Paul said so? Is it true because, as Karl Barth might say, God's revelatory action that breaks into our space-time continuum? But isn't even that subject to our interpretation of the event?
In the essay, Colson also warns us in the emerging church about being in league with Stanley Fish, postmodernist extraordinaire and, to Colson's thinking, the epitome of yucky liberalism. Colson quotes Fish as saying that there are no "independent standards of objectivity.” Truth cannot be proven to another human being, and thus, Colson concludes, Fish is arguing that truth cannot be known.
But, in fact, Fish says nothing of the kind. What Fish says is that objectivity is unattainable. In his excellent book, Is There a Text in this Class?, Fish argues that truth comes to be known in and among and on the basis of "the authority of interpretive communities." We are subjective human beings, trapped in our own skins and inevitably influenced by the communities in which we find ourselves. And isn't this what the church is, or at least should be: an authoritative community of interpretation? Indeed, isn't this just what Colson did when he converted to Christianity in prison many years ago: placed himself under the authority of the church of Jesus Christ?
What I was trying to get at in my blog post earlier this week is that Emergent Village endeavors to be a catalyst of conversation, community, and, ultimately, interpretation. We want the church to reclaim its place as the authoritative community of interpretation of scripture, culture, and human existence. We want Christians to be engaged politically and culturally, and we want to provoke robust and respectful dialogue around issues that matter. Many of us think that the polemical nature of the church today precludes just this kind of necessary conversation. So, we're going ahead and doing it, with or without the imprimatur of evangelical elites like Colson and Carson.
If that's a compelling vision for you, then jump on board, we're glad to have you. If, however, you'd like to first see our doctrinal statement on penal substitution or read a position paper on homosexuality, then Emergent Village isn't for you.
Posted by UrL at May 25, 2006 | Comments (81) | TrackBack
May 23, 2006
Is Emergent the New Christian Left? Tony Jones responds to the critics
In December, Brian McLaren was arrested along with 115 other activists while peacefully protesting the federal budget that he believes unfairly treats the poor. As one of the most visible participants in Emergent Village, McLaren’s increasingly outspoken political views has some wondering—is Emergent a new camp for Christian liberalism? In this post Tony Jones, the national coordinator for Emergent, responds to critics by championing Emergent’s conversational purpose and celebrating the group’s diversity.
I read a lot of blogs, my wife and friends say too many. And some of those blogs are deeply critical of Emergent Village, a decade-old friendship that has, after my family, become home to my most important relationships. My Emergent friends, old and new, love Jesus and are robustly grappling their way into God's future. It seems to me that the two most important commitments that we in Emergent share are 1) we are ultimately hopeful about God's future, and 2) we are committed to moving forward together, as friends.
What continues to surprise me is how dangerous some people consider this friendship I'm in to be. If you take some of these blogs (and books) seriously, those of us who make up the Emergent Village are a great threat to the Christian church—we have undermined doctrine, truth, and church life. The fact that we're discussing theological items that have been previously deemed "undiscussable" is considered grounds for labels like "heretic" and "apostate."
Honestly, I care little about these critiques. They come from those who either have no idea what Emergent is all about and/or could not possibly be persuaded from their position anyway.
On the other hand, I'm currently hearing and reading that Emergent is part of the "New Christian Left." Mark Driscoll, for instance, has recently drawn a line in the sand between "emerging evangelicals" and "emergent liberals." He places himself in the former camp, and I assume he'd assign me to the latter. Others, like Ed Stetzer, have similarly attempted to divvy up the emerging church. Stetzer gives three labels: relevants, reconstructionists, and revisionists. Again, I can assume that I'm among the lattermost, whose "prescriptions fail to take into account the full teaching of the Word of God," according to Stetzer. Yet another Christian leader has recently accused us of becoming one with Jim Wallis, Sojourners, and the Christian Left.
The problem with all of these critiques is that they fundamentally misunderstand the nature of Emergent Village. We are a group of friends—about 20 in 1997, and now in the thousands—who are committed to doing God's Kingdom work together, regardless of our theological, ideological, and political differences. Are we friends with Jim Wallis? Yes! And are there Bush-loving neocons among us? Yes! Emergent is a loose collection of folks who feel that true, robust conversation about issues that matter has been chilled out of modern Christian institutions (seminaries, mega-churches, denominations, and para-church groups, to name a few). We're trying to make a place to bring conversation back.
Thus, we have friends among us who think that small government, free market economies are the solution to poverty, and others who favor federal programs and higher taxes—honestly, this is an ongoing conversation within the Emergent friendship. But we all agree that something must be done about extreme poverty, especially in Africa.
Within Emergent are Texas Baptists who don't allow women to preach and New England lesbian Episcopal priests. We have Southern California YWAMers and Midwest Lutherans. We have those who hold to biblical inerrancy, and others trying to demythologize the scripture. We have environmental, peacenik lefties, "crunchy cons," and right wing hawks.
I suppose it's easy for those who stand outside of Emergent Village looking in to credit the politics or theology of a few to the whole group, but that's inaccurate. And I can understand the frustration of those who want to criticize us and box us in when we say that we don't play by the old rules, that we can't be categorized as "left" or "right," "evangelical" or "mainline."
But, I think those same critics will only be more frustrated as the tide of those rebelling against a commodified and domesticated Jesus gain momentum. If the mainstream media is a harbinger, then I'd say that recent columns by Gary Wills and Andrew Sullivan show that a tipping point is just around the corner. Jesus really wasn't a Democrat or a Republican, and he won't be domesticated by political agendas. I do, however, believe that he will inhabit the robust and respectful dialogue about ideas that matter.
Posted by UrL at May 23, 2006 | Comments (63) | TrackBack
May 18, 2006
Liking Da Vinci, Loving Jesus: confessions from a Christian fan of "The Code"
Unless you've living in a cave in Tora Bora you know that The Da Vinci Code movie opens this week. Early reviews have not been kind, but that hasn't deflated Leadership editorial coordinator Elizabeth Diffin's excitement. Elizabeth believes enjoying Dan Brown's novel is not contrary to her faith, and asserts that The Code has actually strengthened it.
I have a confession to make: I am a Christian and I liked The Da Vinci Code. At the risk of being called a heretic, I’ll admit I’m a fan of the novel.
I read The Da Vinci Code last fall, and although it was recommended to me by a strong Christian friend, I can’t claim any holy motivations for reading it. I was looking for an entertaining and quick read; Da Vinci fulfilled those needs. No, The Da Vinci Code is not a great work of literature. It obviously doesn’t measure up to Shakespeare or Dostoyevsky. It’s pop-fiction, an amusing book for when you’re at the beach or working a slow bank window (as I was).
The thing is, The Da Vinci Code is fiction. Dan Brown’s cryptic statements at the beginning of the book notwithstanding. It’s right there on the cover in all caps: A NOVEL.
No one is trying to trick us into thinking it is true, any more than E.B. White tried to convince us that pigs can talk. That’s the nature of fiction: you suspend reality for a couple of hours and experience another world. And I found Brown’s world to be a great ride.
Personally, I give kudos to Brown. Not only did he write a hefty volume (a feat in-and-of itself), he wrote a book that millions of people bought, and it has been discussed in workplaces and gyms and coffee shops across the country. Now it’s even being debated on CNN and at Christianity Today, of all places.
It’s not that Brown came up with these ideas on his own. The Gnostic Gospels have been around since shortly after Matthew and Luke wrote theirs. Other books have already dealt with this controversial subject matter (such as The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail, the 1982 book whose authors recently had Dan Brown in a British court). Brown, I would argue, committed the very great sin of writing a book that a lot of people read. He didn’t invent new ideas, or even a radical new take on an old idea. But since a lot of people read his book and discussed it, it became “dangerous.”
The Da Vinci Code didn’t rock my world much, to be quite honest. It had some interesting ideas – Brown claims that Jesus and Mary Magdalene were married, in case you missed that – and it taught me some things I didn’t know. I had never heard of Opus Dei or the Cult of the Feminine in my pre-Da Vinci days. And even if Brown sensationalized them, which I’m sure he did for the sake of the plot, I was interested and able to do research and became more aware of the world. In the process, I reaffirmed my belief on certain topics, such as Christ’s divinity. It took some thought and prayer, and yes, it took some questioning. But eventually I arrived at sound and better informed conclusions.
I guess that is the basis of most of the complaints about The Da Vinci Code. It causes people to doubt their faith, to reconsider what orthodox Christianity teaches. Ultimately, I think that’s the great thing about Da Vinci. I recently interviewed a self-described atheist for an upcoming issue of Leadership. His final exhortation to me was to never be afraid to ask the questions. His exact words: “Keep having questions and don’t rest until you get answers. If you get a good answer, that makes you stronger in your faith. But if you don’t get a good answer, you have no reason to believe in that stuff.”
If Christianity can’t stand up to questioning, it’s not worth believing. I want to have a faith that is worth believing. If Jesus Christ is truly “the Way, the Truth, and the Life,” then Christianity will be able to withstand the questions and the doubt and the outright blasphemy. In the past 2000 years, Christianity has faced bigger obstacles than a fanciful novel. The Da Vinci Code might have been a New York Times bestseller, but The Holy Bible is the bestseller of the ages.
So, when The Da Vinci Code hits theaters this week, look out for me. Despite poor initial reviews, I’m excited to see how Tom Hanks and Ron Howard were able to adapt the book to the big screen. The debate over The Da Vinci Code may be huge, but as a Christian, it’s my prerogative to like Da Vinci and still love Jesus Christ.
Posted by UrL at May 18, 2006 | Comments (45) | TrackBack
May 17, 2006
Is Ministry Leadership Different 2: a response to Andy Stanley
Andy Stanley, pastor of North Point Community Church, is interviewed in the current issue of Leadership on his leadership style. Highlights from the interview were posted on Out of Ur in March. Stanley defends the incorporation of secular business practices in the church—a philosophy of ministry that has fueled evangelicalism for the last 25 years and pollinated megachurches across the fruited plains. But church-as-corporation and the pastor-as-CEO have come under increasing criticism, and Stanley has felt this heat.
In the interview Stanley says:
One of the criticisms I get is “Your church is so corporate…” And I say, “OK, you’re right. Now why is that a bad model?” A principle is a principle, and God created all the principles.
Honestly, are we really to believe that the mere existence of a principle is the same as God advocating our employment of it? The flawed logic here reminds me of Greg Fokker’s assertion that “you can milk just about anything with nipples,” and Robert De Niro’s rebuttal, “I have nipples, Greg, could you milk me?”
Jesus said, “The rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them.” That is a principle of leadership, and a very popular one. But Jesus then emphatically declares, “Not so with you!” Simply because a model exists or is popular does not make it accessible to the church. Jesus calls us to lead his church in a manner that reflects his own servant method and the counter-culture reality of his kingdom. In other words, Jesus believes that truly Christian leadership is revealed in both its function and its form. The two cannot be divorced.
This is the primary flaw I see among those promoting church-as-corporation—they wish to disassociate business structures from the fruit they produce. Sure, market-driven business models can create large and efficient ministry organizations, but what is the impact on the lives, spirits, and characters of those immersed in them? After all, the church isn’t commissioned to sell a product. We are commissioned to change lives that bear spiritual fruit.
Marshall Shelley, editor of Leadership, tells about Jerry, a pastor who finally told his business-minded elders to stop imposing their corporate models upon the church. With pastoral firmness Jerry said to his elders:
The next time a sentence begins, “In the business world, we…” please know that I’m not interested in the rest of that sentence. The church is not the business world. As I’ve observed the effects of the business world on people’s lives, it doesn’t produce the traits that the church is about: joy, contentment, grace, and love. I don’t see the business world as a model for encouraging the kinds of lives we’re called to live.
Bravo, Jerry!
This pastor’s insights are validated by research done both in Europe and the US. In 2000 a UK study found British professionals to be the most depressed and unhealthy group of managers in Europe. They also have the highest divorce rates. The study, commissioned by a healthcare company, said that a major reason for the poor condition of British corporate workers is that “the UK has Americanized faster than any other country during the 80s and 90s.”
On this side of the pond, author Jill Andresky Fraser chronicles the decline of corporate culture in America and the negative impact the business environment has on people and families in her book, White-Collar Sweatshop. Fraser cites a Lexus commercial as indicative of modern corporate culture, “Sure, we take vacations—they’re called lunch breaks.”
Even if we dismiss this work by sociologists and healthcare researchers, anecdotal evidence suggests that few Americans find corporate environments, or their leaders, admirable. A recent survey showed that only 25% of people trust corporate executives—slightly higher than the 23% that trust used-car dealers.
I don’t believe those in favor of liberally applying business models to the church, like Andy Stanley, are advocating cultures of corruption, backbiting, or greed. But one must ask, if the structures that have produced these ungodly qualities in America’s most “successful” corporations are worthy of emulation among God’s people?
The second reason I believe the corporate model is bad for the church is more straight forward—it hasn’t worked. As corporate models have flourished in ministry the church in North America has lost ground both quantitatively and qualitatively. While business models are not solely to blame for this decline they certainly haven’t helped. Research done by George Barna and Gallup, disturbingly summarized in Ronald Sider’s book The Scandal of the Evangelical Conscience, shows “Evangelical Christians are as likely to embrace lifestyles every bit as hedonistic, materialistic, self-centered, and sexually immoral as the world in general.”
Similarly, many church leaders are lured by corporate structures that promise to generate large ministries with more evangelistic impact. But Outreach Magazine recently published a special report that finds church attendance has been steadily declining for decades despite the increase in megachurches. Just as corporate giants Wal-Mart and Home Depot have thrived at the expense of smaller outlets, megachurches have succeeded primarily by absorbing their smaller predecessors. Dave Olson says:
"Some of the people in those mid-sized churches are the ones leaving and going to the larger churches. There are multiple expectations on mid-sized churches that they can't meet—programs, dynamic music, quality youth ministries. We've created a church consumer culture."
The evidence reveals that the American church is consolidating but not growing. In fact, less than 18% of the population regularly attends church, and if something radical is not done, this number will drop to 11% by 2050. Thom Rainer says, “The failure of churches to keep up with the population growth is one of the Church's greatest issues heading into the future.” And the solution isn’t a more efficient corporate model, but rather a grassroots movement comprising thousands of church plants.
Unlike the explosive church growth being experienced in Asia, Africa, and South America in recent years, the U.S. church seems to display little spiritual vigor or power. Has our reliance on the wisdom of marketers and business principles displaced dependence upon God’s Spirit? The fact that less than 1 in 25 churches ranks prayer as a priority may reveal the answer. Perhaps many pastors can relate to Stanley when he confesses, “There is nothing distinctly spiritual” about his leadership.
Posted by Skye Jethani at May 17, 2006 | Comments (36) | TrackBack
May 15, 2006
Donald Miller Isn’t Hip: a gospel for people tired of trying to be cool
In recent posts we have debated the importance of “image” in advancing the ministry of the Gospel. Donald Miller, author of Blue Like Jazz and other books seeking to build a bridge between Christianity and those raised in a post-Christian context, was interviewed by Leadership last year. Miller is unimpressed by attempts to spin the faith as “cool” and how our culture has turned love into a commodity.
How do you react to ministries that try to present Christianity as being cool and hip?
Miller: There are many problems with trying to market the gospel of Jesus, not the least of which is that, in itself, it is not a cool or fashionable idea. It isn't supposed to be. It is supposed to be revolutionary. It's for people who are tired of trying to be cool, tired of trying to get the world to redeem them.
I attended the Dove Awards and was brokenhearted. I saw all these beautiful Christians, wonderful people, with this wonderful, revolutionary message of Jesus, who, instead of saying, "Look, fashion doesn't matter, hip doesn't matter," were saying "World, please accept us, we can be just as hip as you, just as fashionable, only in a religious way."
I would say we need to choose our God, choose our redeemer.
You've said that the church "uses love as a commodity." What do you mean?
Miller: We sometimes take a Darwinian approach with love—if we are against somebody's ideas, we starve them out. If we disagree with somebody's political ideas, or sexual identity, we just don't "pay" them. We refuse to "condone the behavior" by offering any love.
This approach has created a Christian culture that is completely unaware what the greater culture thinks of us. We don't interact with people who don't validate our ideas. There is nothing revolutionary here. This mindset is hardly a breath of fresh air to a world that uses the exact same kinds of techniques.
What's the alternative?
Miller: The opposite is biblical love, which loves even enemies, loves unconditionally, and loves liberally. Loving selectively is worldly; giving it freely is miraculous.
If love isn't a commodity, what is it?
Miller: I think of love like a magnet. When people see it given in the name of God, they're drawn to it. If I withhold love, then people believe I have met a God that makes me a hateful and vicious person. And they're repelled.
I have two responsibilities to this world, the first is to love; the second is to speak the truth. I can tell somebody such and such a behavior is sin, and still love them. Why not? Why not bring them food, why not hug them, why not have them over to the house? Won't this only help them understand the truth?
Tell us about your church, Imago Dei, and how love is expressed there.
Miller: Imago has saved me in so many ways. Rick, my pastor, is a perfect example of somebody who speaks the truth in love. He is a genius at saying such and such an idea is true, and it is hard, and sometimes I don't like it, but we must trust that God is good, we must help each other, and we must obey. People feel loved at Imago, but they also feel instructed, guided, and that God is not just a Diety who is there to give them whatever they want.
Imago makes me feel parented and not alone. I spoke at Imago right after the election, and a woman, a homosexual, was sitting on the front row with a giant sign that said, among other things, that she hopes our children die, that the legacy of hate will end.
At the end of the service, her sign was laid down in front of the communion table, and she was being held by me, and many others, sobbing as she had never heard truth being presented in love. She had not known the difference between a parental communication of truth and a judgmental, hate-filled communication of truth.
It is a very beautiful community, and I am honored they would accept me and love me.
Posted by UrL at May 15, 2006 | Comments (27) | TrackBack
May 11, 2006
Brian McLaren’s Inferno 3: five proposals for reexamining our doctrine of hell
In this final installment of his interview on hell, Brian McLaren provides more insight into how he understands the teachings of Jesus, and offers five suggestions for rethinking our traditional understanding of hell.
Let me offer five suggestions on how we could re-approach this subject by looking at the Scriptures in a fresh light. After all, my opinions aren’t worth two cents compared to what the Scriptures actually say. First, I’d suspend the common assumption that every time the word judgment occurs in the Bible, it means “going to hell after you die,” or every time the word save occurs, it means “going to heaven after you die.”
Second, I’d encourage people who say, “Well, what about Matthew 25:41?” or some other specific passage to also pay attention to the reasons those passages give for people experiencing those negative consequences. Jesus never says, “If you don’t believe in a particular theory of atonement . . .” or “If you don’t accept me as your personal Savior by saying the sinner’s prayer . . .” then you’ll experience the lake of fire. That’s not what he says. I put a table in the book that tries to help people attend to what the texts actually say, and in case after case, they simply don’t say what many Christians commonly say they do.
Third, we need to re-sensitize ourselves to Jesus’ use of figurative language. We act as if “metaphorical” were a small thing, and concrete/literal were a big thing, but that’s the reverse of what I see in Jesus’ teaching. I think about John 6, for example, where Jesus talks about people eating his flesh and drinking his blood, and then says his flesh and blood are real food and drink. They take his statements non-metaphorically and concretely, and they miss the point.
Or there’s Nicodemus not getting Jesus’ language about being born again. Or when he’s talking about the leaven of the Pharisees and the disciples assume he’s talking about physical bread. There’s so much going on metaphorically in Jesus’ teaching about hell and judgment, and I think we often misinterpret it by reducing it to the concrete just as the disciples did.
I’m an old English major, so I’m sensitive to genre, and the highly metaphorical genre of Jewish apocalyptic literature was pervasive in Jesus’ day. We need to let him use language in the richly metaphorical way his contemporaries did. N. T. Wright, Walter Brueggemann, and many others are writing very helpfully on this subject.
Fourth, we should consider the possibility that many, and perhaps even all of Jesus’ hell-fire or end-of-the-universe statements refer not to postmortem judgment but to the very historic consequences of rejecting his kingdom message of reconciliation and peacemaking. The destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 67-70 seems to many people to fulfill much of what we have traditionally understood as hell.
Jesus, along with the other apostles too, seems to be much less focused on the post-mortem destiny of individual souls and more focused on the end and rebirth of the Jerusalem/Temple/sacrifice-centered world as they knew it, and on the constitution of a new people of God that includes Gentiles with Jews. People should re-read the texts with this possibility in mind. After all, when the Old Testament prophets used apocalyptic language, we know they were referring to historic events—like the attack by Assyria, or the exile in Babylon for example.
Finally, I think we can leave some theoretical questions unanswered because what we need to know is very clear: God is love. God is gracious. God is just. God is holy. And these things are never in tension, but are always perfectly integrated. God’s love and mercy are always just and holy. God’s justice and holiness are always loving and merciful. God shows his perfect integration of love and justice through sending his Son to live and die as one of us. We see God’s love and justice perfectly expressed as the Word-made-flesh spreads out his arms on the cross to offer himself as the perfect sacrifice for all sin, once and for all, saying, not “Father, repay them for their evil deed,” but “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”
Our proper response to that view of God is not to speculate on who will, or will not, be forgiven. Instead, Jesus makes our proper response very clear: if God treats those who hate him with such love, then we should love our enemies, not repay evil for evil, turn the left cheek after being struck on the right, walk the second mile, stand naked by giving away our undergarment if someone takes our outer garment, and so on. I trust God’s goodness and wisdom in judging others, just as I trust myself into God’s care; I don’t feel he needs my help.
This is where my reflections on this have been taking me in recent years. Some people thinking I’m going astray, but I know that I’m seeking the truth. And I know I still have a long, long way to go in my search. I hope people can understand that some of us show our love for God by seeking better answers when our current answers seem unworthy of God. Maybe we’ll be proven wrong in the end, but I can’t see what faithful alternative we have other than to ask, seek, and knock ... trusting God will respond and doors will be opened.
Posted by UrL at May 11, 2006 | Comments (34) | TrackBack
May 8, 2006
Brian McLaren’s Inferno 2: are we asking the wrong questions about hell?
In part one of this post, Brian McLaren and Tony Campolo tried to deconstruct the traditional evangelical view of hell. Here, McLaren continues to outline his view as neither universalism nor an exclusivist understanding of hell. And he pushes us to reconsider the questions we pose versus what Jesus really says.
McLaren: Tony [Campolo] and I might disagree on the details, but I think we are both trying to find an alternative to both traditional Universalism and the narrow, exclusivist understanding of hell [that unless you explicitly accept and follow Jesus, you are excluded from eternal life with God and destined for hell].
Tony is presenting the inclusivist alternative. The fact is, many people who claim to be exclusivists are actually inclusivists and they don’t know it. For example, if you ask them if they believe all babies who die before or shortly after birth go to hell, they’ll say no, that children who die before the age of accountability are included in Christ’s saving work. They’ll say the same for people who are mentally incompetent, and so on. So really, strict exclusivists are rather rare.
My approach is a little different. Although in many ways I find myself closer to the view of God held by some universalists than I do the view held by some exclusivists, in the end I’d rather turn our attention from the questions WE think are important to the question JESUS thinks is most important.
We obsess on “who’s in” and “who’s out.” Jesus, however, seems to be asking the question, “How can
the kingdom of God more fully come on earth as it is in heaven, and how should disciples of the kingdom live to enter and welcome the kingdom?”
Universalism can unintentionally dis-empower the church, because it says everything’s going to be okay in the end, regardless of our responses. That can be a very pacifying answer, and lead to attitudes that are not faithful to Scripture and to Jesus. As I see it, all of Scripture affirms that yes, you can really waste your life . . . you can play on the wrong side and live very destructively.
On the other side, exclusivism can spin off all kinds of terrible problems, too. It can create a view of God as vengeful torturer, and that has played a role, I believe, in horrible behavior on the part of Western Christians—from anti-Semitism to slavery and racism and holy-war mentality. In other words, if we can identify some people as God’s enemies, hated by God for all eternity, we can find ourselves directly disobeying Jesus’ clear teachings about loving our neighbors and our enemies.
Most people aren’t willing to reopen these issues with an open mind, and those who do find the process painful and socially dangerous in many of our churches. In the end, I suppose I am truly an evangelical Protestant in the sense that I believe we must go back and search the Scriptures and look at them afresh and see if there isn’t something better than what we have been taught. Ironically, we could stand before God and have to answer for our judgmentalism and heartless attitudes that were, to a significant degree, consequences of a popular and longstanding misreading of the Scriptures on this subject of hell.
For example, I think God will be far more displeased by our carelessness toward the poor, or by our lack of peacemaking, or by our unrecognized racism and nationalism than he will be about whether you’re an exclusivist or not. I think many of us should tremble in light of what God says about caring for the poor, the fatherless, the vulnerable.
So you are saying that we’ve spent too much energy analyzing the aesthetics and environment of hell, and we’ve lost the clear scriptural call to proclaim and teach about Judgment?
McLaren: Absolutely. But even there, we don’t preach judgment to create fear, so that people see God as enemy. Actually, in the Bible, especially in the Psalms, people are often praying eagerly that judgment will come. That’s because they weren’t thinking in the binary terms of heaven and hell after this life. Instead, they were looking for God to intervene in history so that the oppressors, the warmongers, the greedy, the abusers, the violent, the careless toward the widow and orphan and poor would be stopped, exposed, and frustrated, so that justice and peace and joy could flourish.
I don’t think it’s insignificant that Revelation ends, not with us going up to heaven (or down to hell) with the earth being “left behind.” Instead, John has a vision of the New Jerusalem coming down to earth. The new heavens and new earth mean, I believe, not the replacement of this world, but its redemption and liberation from injustice and sin.
Some people think you’re simply being evasive and not answering plain questions clearly. But you would say that you’re not satisfied with the questions we’re asking because you don’t think we’re asking the questions the Bible is trying to answer. It also sounds like you feel we need to pay more attention to the ethical dimensions of Jesus’ teaching, and that some of our theological discussions distract us from what Jesus focused on.
McLaren: Yes, that’s it exactly! I keep coming back to Jesus and his teaching. In the Sermon on the Mount, he says that God is good to the righteous and the unrighteous, and for that reason, we should love everyone, including our enemies. He says we shouldn’t judge or we’ll be judged. That’s a very different attitude than I see so often in our Christian circles, where there’s always this in-group/out-group mentality. And those in the out-group we treat with distance, disdain, or disrespect. How would we like it if God decided to treat us as we’ve treated others?
Posted by UrL at May 8, 2006 | Comments (38) | TrackBack
May 5, 2006
Brian McLaren’s Inferno: the provocative church leader explains his view of hell
No contributor to Out of Ur has elicited more responses than Brian McLaren. Part of McLaren’s appeal is his courage to rethink long-held evangelical assumptions and call the church to shed the baggage of modernity. Brian’s critics, however, accuse him of throwing the orthodox baby out with the modernist bath water. In this interview McLaren discusses his view of hell and judgment, and explains why some have mislabeled him a universalist. Part one of this post also features fellow prophet Tony Compolo.
Brian, in your book, The Last Word and the Word After That, you focus heavily on “deconstructing” the evangelical view of hell. Some critics think your deconstruction has moved to the point of your embracing a “universalist” position. Are you a Universalist?
McLaren: No, I am not embracing a traditional universalist position, but I am trying to raise the question, When God created the universe, did he have two purposes in mind—one being to create some people who would forever enjoy blessing and mercy, and another to create a group who would forever suffer torment, torture, and punishment? What is our view of God? A God who plans torture? A God who has an essential, eternal quality of hatred? Is God love, or is God love and hate?
It might sound surprising to state it that way, but you’d be surprised at some of the emails I’ve received. For example, someone quoted Scriptures like Psalm 5:5 or Psalm 11:5 and said, “If you don’t believe in a God of hate, you don’t believe in the God of the Bible.” Here’s my concern: if you believe in a god of hate, violence, revenge, and torture, it makes you very susceptible to becoming a person made in that god’s image.
Even though this subject is so controversial and I don’t like controversy, we have to address it because we’re dealing with our view of God, and the consequences of our essential view of God are staggering. The only thing that’s more important, I guess, is God’s view of us!
Anyway, Western Christianity has been overly preoccupied with the question of who’s going to heaven or hell after death, and not focused enough on the question of what kind of life is truly pleasing to God here in the land of the living. We’ve got to look at that. In The Last Word and the Word After That, I wanted to raise the issue of “Judgment,” that all will be judged rightly and fairly by God alone, who weighs the scales rightly, and does this for everyone. Again, when we put ourselves in the position of judge – making pronouncements on the eternal destiny of others – I think it’s pretty dangerous, especially in light of Jesus’ words in the Sermon on the Mount.
Campolo: I come out of a tradition that pays attention to George MacDonald and C.S. Lewis, and I’m contending that we need to deal with this question: Is God less just than I am, or is his sense of justice different than mine? It’s very simple, MacDonald and Lewis would say, “There is a hell, there has to be, because if there is no hell, there is no freedom.” In Lewis’s book, The Great Divorce, he says, “The bus leaves heaven every half hour, and anybody who doesn’t want to stay in heaven goes to hell . . . by his own choice!”
What I think we can say is, and this is where I get into trouble, I’m not so sure that when this life is over that all possibilities for salvation are over. I read in Ephesians 4:9-10 a passage that can be interpreted to describe a Jesus who descends into “the depths below the earth” to bring captives up to God. I read in 1 Peter 3:19 about a Jesus who goes to preach to those in the prison house of death, and I believe these Scriptures show Jesus doing something for people after they are dead, as we understand death. This reveals Jesus to be the “hound of heaven.”
Yes, I believe there will be people in hell eternally, but somehow, I believe from Scripture—note I said from Scripture—that in the end everybody gets a chance to choose.
As Paul says, “We prophesy in part and we know in part, and we wait for that which is perfect which is to come.” I’m willing to be corrected. I’m willing to be shown I’m wrong, but as I read Scripture, this is how I see things: You will never be condemned to hell because you didn’t have a chance, you will condemn yourself to hell because you reject Jesus.
There’s no sense of justice found in universalism. If everybody ends up in the same place no matter what they choose, there is no justice. On the other hand, grace says we don’t get justice in the end. So we’ve got both of those truths in tension.
Continue reading part two of Brian McLaren's interview on hell.
Posted by UrL at May 5, 2006 | Comments (27) | TrackBack
May 3, 2006
Spencer Burke on the Church that Consumerism Built--and Why I Fled
The upcoming issue of Leadership deals with “Consumerism and the Church It Creates.” We asked Spencer Burke to write about his journey from being a megachurch pastor to spiritual guide of an online community (TheOOZE.com). Below is a brief excerpt. The full article will appear in Leadership’s July issue, along with some of the best of your comments about how we live out the nature of the church today.
When I gave up being a teaching pastor at a Southern California megachurch eight years ago, people around me were perplexed. After all, as jobs in professional ministry go, working at Mariners was a dream--big building, big budget, big salary. What wasn’t to like?
Maybe I was burned out, they reasoned, but I’d be back. I was bound to get over my ministry midlife crisis eventually, right? But when months turned into years and I still hadn’t been added to anyone’s payroll, more than a few eyebrows went up. I kept talking about this online community, TheOoze.com. Sure, it was an interesting idea, but hardly a career move.
When I was leaving Mariners, the buzzword was relevant. It’s what every church was striving to be, by changing their music, their marketing, even their ministry philosophy. Today, church leaders are still pursuing relevancy in order to reach more people. When those efforts don’t pan out as expected, church leaders are quick to blame “consumerism.” The problem? People. They want too much, and they’re never satisfied.
But is that really it?
Is the problem that people in the pews keep upping the ante on their demands, or is it that church leaders don’t comprehend the real source of their discontent? Is it that people want too much, or that they just don’t want what the church is currently selling?
Right now churches are focusing on one product to the exclusion of others. Most often, it’s teaching, a 60- to 90-minute event held at a particular time, at a particular physical address. It’s basically the same product we’ve been selling since the Renaissance. People sit in a room and listen to someone talk.
But here’s the thing: back then, it made sense for people to travel miles to hear someone talk about God. After all, people were mostly illiterate, Bibles were expensive, and Sunday morning was often the only time people could expand their horizons. Teaching was a rare commodity.
That’s no longer true today. Teaching is available everywhere—on television, radio, online. The local church no longer has the corner on the market.
The situation reminds of the banking industry. At one time, if you wanted to deposit or withdraw money, you had to go to the bank and stand in line. You had to fill out a slip and wait for someone to serve you. Today, there are independent ATMs capable of instantly dispensing cash everywhere—from grocery stores and restaurants, to sports stadiums and bars. I can’t remember the last time I actually “went to the bank.” It’s not that I’ve stopped needing money; it’s just that I choose to get it in other ways.
But the church seems largely oblivious to this trend toward flexible, on-demand service in our culture. We still expect people to come to us, at our buildings, to do transactions with God or make deposits in their spiritual account. When congregants complain about pastors and churches not fitting their lifestyle, the church cries foul in the form of “consumer!” But does anyone ask whether the church is delivering what the market needs?
Imagine if people were encouraged to do their spiritual banking in ways that fit their lifestyle. They could watch some of the world’s best speakers on TiVo, DVDs or download resources for their iPod, then gather in smaller groups to discuss and apply what they’ve heard. A church wouldn’t necessarily need its own teaching pastor on the payroll anymore, and people wouldn’t need to leave their community in search of better teaching.
We need to see teaching not as our core product, but as one part of a line of products that also includes community, service, and worship.
Let’s move beyond the blame game and look at the church with a fresh perspective. Let’s start our conversation with the mission of the church, not about any particular tools or methods. Let’s let function drive form, and be willing to follow Jesus even if it means re-tooling everything we do.
Posted by Marshall Shelley at May 3, 2006 | Comments (32) | TrackBack
