http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2011/april/5bookspoverty.html
My Top 5 Books On Poverty

Picks from Brian Fikkert, co-author of 'When Helping Hurts.'
http://www.christianbook.com/Christian/Books/product?item_no=WW457051&p=1006327
posted 4/12/2011 12:00AM

Let Justice Roll Down

John Perkins (Regal)

http://www.christianbook.com/Christian/Books/product?item_no=WW743073&p=1006327

This classic documents the riveting story and enduring principles of one of the greatest heroes of the civil rights era. Despite little formal education, Perkins combines practical theology, a deep understanding of grace, and keen insights on the essential elements of community development.

Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger: Moving from Affluence to Generosity

Ronald J. Sider (Thomas Nelson)
http://www.christianbook.com/Christian/Books/product?item_no=WW945305&p=1006327

Sider's 1977 book was a prophetic call for evangelical Christians to make a radical commitment to end global poverty. His appeal to Scripture moved a generation of Christians to believe loving poor people is inherent to following Jesus Christ.

 

 

The White Man's Burden: Why the West's Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good

William Easterly (Penguin)
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0143038826/christianitytoda

Easterly, a secular economist, demonstrates that good intentions are not enough. Improper incentives and inadequate information plague most attempts at poverty alleviation, with profound implications for Christian efforts.

To Live in Peace: Biblical Faith and the Changing Inner City

Mark R. Gornik (Eerdmans)
http://www.christianbook.com/Christian/Books/product?item_no=WW46850&p=1006327

Combining theology, social science research, and grassroots experience, Gornik narrates how the New Song Church in Baltimore created one of the premier examples of Christian community development in the U.S.

Walking with the Poor: Principles and Practices of Transformational Development

Bryant L. Myers (Orbis Books)
http://www.christianbook.com/Christian/Books/product?item_no=WW752753&p=1006327

Arguing that poverty is fundamentally relational rather than material, Myers critiques the standard Western approaches and provides an essential handbook for pursuing transformational development for both the rich and the poor.

Previous Christianity Today articles on poverty include:

An Obligation to Remember Eternally?

Resentment, even in the name of justice, is not for those who expect God's final reconciliation. (May 18, 2007) - http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2007/mayweb-only/120-52.0.html

Centering on Poverty

A coalition of the Right and Left launches a new project to reduce poverty. (February 17, 2009) - http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2009/februaryweb-only/107-21.0.html

How We Fight Poverty

U.N. Millennium Development Goals are good—as far as they go. (December 5, 2007) - http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2007/december/17.20.html

Can We Defeat Poverty?

Unless Africa tames corruption, new aid efforts will fail. (September 26, 2005) - http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2001/septemberweb-only/9-17-53.0.html

Which is Stronger: Grace or Law?
http://peterrollins.net/?p=2664

by Peter Rollins
posted 2/4/11

Aesop was such a powerful and insightful storteller. I was recently reminded of this fable he wrote that beautifully sums up the nature of grace and its transformative effect.

********

A dispute once arose between the Wind and the Sun, which was the stronger of the two, and they agreed to settle the point upon the issue – that whichever of the two soonest made a traveler take off his cloak, should be accounted the more powerful.

The Wind began, and blew with all his might and main a blast, cold and fierce as a Thracian storm; but the stronger he blew, the closer the traveler wrapped his cloak around him, and the tighter he grasped it with his hands.

Then broke out the Sun. With his welcome beams he dispersed the vapor and the cold; the traveler felt the genial warmth, and as the Sun shone brighter and brighter, he sat down, quite overcome with the heat, and taking off his cloak, cast it on the ground.

Thus the Sun was declared the conqueror; and it has ever been deemed the persuasion is better than force; and that the sunshine of a kind and gentle manner will sooner lay open a poor man’s heart than all the threatenings and force of blustering authority.

What is Love

Love does not exist – A valentines post
http://peterrollins.net/?p=2127

by Peter Rollins

posted 2/14/11

"Love does not belong to the beholder of love, but to the subject to which it loves. True love cannot help but overflow, to give, to reveal itself to the object of its desire." - Soren Kierkegaard

Love is so humble that it seems impossible to ever really catch anything but the briefest glimpse of her. She is like a tiny field mouse dwelling in the dark. Should we hear her scratching in the corner and shine a light she will, quick as a flash, scurry away so that we catch sight of only the tip of her tail. Indeed love is so bashful that we often forget about her entirely. For love, to change analogies, is like light. When we are sitting with friends we do not think about the light that surrounds us but only of the friends that the light enables us to see. Likewise love illuminates others and so our attention is focused on what she illuminates rather than with the illumination itself.

Love, in a very precise way, enables us to see. For in daily life we perceive others in much the same way as a cow gazes at cars. We walk past thousands of people without really seeing anyone. I was reminded of this recently when a friend of mine told me of something that happened when she took a train from Connecticut to New York. As the conductor, a large and imposing man, approached she realised that she had left her purse at the house. When he got to her seat and asked for her ticket she, with much embarrassment, explained the situation and braced herself for the worst. But the conductor just sat down in the seat opposite and said, “Don’t worry about it”. Then, for the remainder of the journey they talked. They shared photos of their family, they exchanged jokes and they spoke of the ones who meant most to them. When the conductor finally got up to continue his rounds my friend began to apologise again, but the conductor stopped her mid sentence and smiled, “please don’t pay it any thought, you know its just really nice to be seen by someone.”

This might initially seem like a strange thing to say as the conductor was being seen by thousands of people every day. But only in instrumental terms, only as the extension of a function he performed. In this brief conversation with my friend he felt that he had actually been seen as a unique individual and that was a gift to him.

This is what love does. It does not make itself visible but rather makes others visible to us. In a very precise sense then love does not exist but calls others into existence: for to exist means to stand forth from the background, to be brought into the foreground. Love does not stand forth but brings others forth. When we love our beloved is brought out of the vast, undulating sea of others. Just as the Torah speaks of God calling forth beings from the formless ferment of being so love calls our beloved from the endless ocean of undifferentiated objects.

In this way love is not proud and arrogant. It does not say, “I am sublime, I am beautiful, I am glorious”. Love humbly points to another and whispers, “they are sublime, they are beautiful, they are glorious.” It does not tell us that they are perfect despite their weakness and frailty, but that they are perfect in the very midst of their weakness and frailty.

Love does not want our hymns of praise or prayers of adoration. She does not want our sacrifices or seek our time. One cannot and should not even try to love love. For love always points away from herself. To honour love is to be in love, to swim in the world illuminated by her.

That which love illuminates means everything to us: a reality that can be exquisitely pleasurable or devastatingly painful. As such we will always experience the one we love as the most sublime existence in the universe. This experience however hides within itself a deep truth, a truth that we would do well to forget as soon as we learn of it (for it works best in darkness). Namely, that the most sublime presence in the universe is not our beloved but the love that exposes them as our beloved. The love that does not itself exist, but which raises our beloved to the level of existence.

Feeling Mostly Like Winnie-the-Pooh

Great Theologians: Winnie-the-Pooh
http://peterrollins.net/?p=2600

by Peter Rollins
posted 24/3/11

“Here is Edward Bear, coming downstairs now, bump, bump, bump, on the back of his head, behind Christopher Robin. It is, as far as he knows, the only way of coming downstairs, but sometimes he feels that there really is another way, if only he could stop bumping for a moment and think of it”

**********

We all experience life like Winnie-the-Pooh at times. We all have been touched by the feeling that we are upside down and traveling this path of ours all wrong. When this feeling creeps up on us it is deeply disconcerting. And so we try to avoid it. We fill our lives with distractions… we gather people around us who tell us everything is fine… we affirm our view of the world all the more vigorously (reading books, watching programs, reading papers etc. that solidify our view of the world and thus help to inoculate us from the experience of Winnie-the-Pooh).

Most of us flee from the idea that perhaps it is not the rest of the world who are wrong… but us.

However there are a few who allow this feeling to speak to them, a few who are brave enough to let this experience interrogate them, to break them, rather than attempting to domesticate it, tame it or repress it. These few open themselves up to a deeply disconcerting experience of feeling forsaken by all that has grounded them, all that has sustained them, all that has nurtured them.

This crucifixion experience is deeply painful, but just perhaps it can help to humanize us and open us up a whole new type of community. A community where we acknowledge our weakness, brokenness and frailty, a community in which we gather, not around the idea that we are right, strong, pure and good. But rather around our wounded flesh. Finding purity, beauty and truth, not in the renunciation of our weakness, but in the very midst of it.

A Letter of Welcome (April 2011)

by skinhead

April 16, 2011

revised March 26, 2012

Relevancy22 is an Emergent Christian blog and webjournal that is now ready for exploration and review. It is hoped that it can continue to develop as an Emergent Christian resource that may help in re-framing the many newer, theological trends that are being uncovered in post-modernday 21st Century Christianity. A journey that I started while being presently occupied with writing poetry and verse describing mine own personal narrative of apprehending the mysteries of God through story and insight.

But here, I must stop what I am doing and take the time to open up my heart and mind to a younger generation of Christians seeking direction, knowledge, inspiration and reconciliation to the many confusing voices presently being found in Christianity. For mine own Christian pilgrimage has been one that has been hard fought and hard won... and, it seems, much too often, and at too many significant times of my life. It has cost me time and money. It has created loss in my life. It has been inconvenient. It has been demanding. But it is something that I must now share of mine own experiences and journey - as both a mentor and fellow disciple of Christ.

For we are together found in this veil of life too often become a vast wilderness fraught with sin and dissension. Deceits and lies. False teachings and wasteful endeavors. A wilderness that at all times needs the guidance of God to lead us beyond its fastness to the highlands of God's own heart and mind that can show us the mis-directions and confusions of man-made arguments, futile religious endeavors, and misleading sincerity. I have been led by God to many good teachers of the Word and I have sat under some preachers that were undergoing the same significant change and growth that I was going through. Theirs was public. Mine, thankfully, was private. So that I understand, I think, what drove them to speak out expediently and prematurely. With a lack of clarity but from a heart filled with conviction.

Similarly, my Christian journey has been a pilgrimage where both practice and theology has been an exciting adventure - but not a place to settle in or defend, per se. My mind ever changes - if not easily nor with every cultural wind that blows - as a result of personal reflections and enlightened discoveries as I seek to become unbounded by my past and uncluttered from my past cultural entrenchment. And with these journeys have come some years of frustrations and personal quandaries. While at other times deep satisfaction and growth. Lately I have found myself in the mesmerizing and perplexing world of Emergent Christianity which for years has left me unable to explain until lately with the publication of Love Wins and the severe backlash of public opinion that I witness from Evangelical Christianity.

As a result, my  most recent theological explorations and considerations are giving rise to newer, more significant revelations to this present day's cultural movements and events. For it is at this time that I am come to a significant road that is both broad and narrow. One that must be explored carefully, diligently, prayerfully, with discernment, in fellowship and in hope. It is my wish to explore a type of Christianity that is less limiting and more free to discover God at work in this ever evolving world of ours. To remove the limitations of systematic theology and to go back to the roots of biblical theology. To remove the church's bounded philosophical mindsets and to propose a more unbounded way of thinking. To show the uselessness of debates when centered in hearts of fear and uncertainty, and not in trust and faith upon the Living God of Creation. To learn to re-learn. To reject ourselves as the only basis of truth. To become comfortable with not knowing. And overall, to live in the sublime wonder, thanksgiving and humility of the Christian faith as it was meant to be. Not as a carefully constructed series of formulaic creeds and religious statements devoid of life and blood, breath and soul. In all these areas Emergent Christianity promises the hope and freedom rightly expressed in the Christian faith.

So then, let us join this conversation together for it is my wish that this blog may serve as both resource and guide. And it is my desire to keep it updated enough to stimulate fresh thoughts and ideas that are provocative as well as inspirational. It is an emergent blog, but one of mine own flavor as it must be, as one who is in the process of leaving a conservative evangelical Christianity heritage. A heritage I deeply respect and am thankful for, but one that must be decisively move away from towards a more postmodernistic expression of Christianity known as Emergent Christianity.

May God's Peace be yours...

The Objectives of Relevancy22

- Relevancy22 is a neo-conservative (but non-liberal) Emergent Christian website

- Written to give insight into the general state of affairs of Christianity today

- Written to encourage reflection upon God's reality in the world today

- Written to encourage fellowship, devotion, missional witness, and community participation

- Is less sympathetic to systematic (or creedal) theology, esp. Calvinism (Arminianism has

   been used to counter its arguments)

- Is more focused on biblical theology (from which systematic and creedal theology derive)

- Is very focused on contemporary theology that takes both biblical and systematic theology

   and integrates it into modern day discussions for Christians and non-Christians alike

- Actively investigates cultural, philosophical and scientific trends

- Utilizes a variety of Emergent Christian voices to create a kind of Christian news journal

- Actively supports historical Christianity (unlike some Emergent sites) that finds value

   with remembering the past and appreciating the journey of traditional orthodoxy starting

   from the first century unto the present; while wishing to avoid repeating past sectarian, 

   Gnostic, and cultic errors

- Differs in culture and orientation from Evangelicalism. Though voicing the same concerns,

   Emergent Christianity approaches those areas from a different perspective that is less

   limiting and more open to cultural opinion

- Is actively engaged in showing the relevancy of God, and the centrality of Jesus, to the

   world's endeavors

- Is actively engaged in determining what Emergent Christianity is, and isn't

- Is actively engaged in voicing Emergent concerns, issues, topics and news

- Was written to journal my experience and current understanding of Emergent Christianity

- Was written to clear up the confusion that was found in Emergent Christianity's earlier

   versions of itself (late 1990s to 2011)

- Was developed to help this blogger write a deeper style of poetry sometimes called

   theo-poetry

- Is to be used more as an Emergent Christian reference site than as a personal journal

   or "blog"

- Should be read topically (however, a sequential reading will show this blogger's own

   personal development in each area listed on this blog)

- And generally, can be viewed as a personal commentary, written in prose, on various

   Christian subjects and topics

What is a PostConservative Evangelical?

Addendum

Let's call Emergent Christianity what it is and enough of the word games and positional theological hedging. Postmodernistic Christianity is emergent Christianity, not neo-evangelicalism, not postconservative, not progressive evangelicalsim. Be bold and be boldly willing to allow theology to breathe again! Let God be God who speaks to us without more labels, more "careful creedal statements", more anything! We are on a pilgrimmage. We can never stop exploring and trying to interpret this tremendous revelation that God gave to us of himself through his Son, his Spirit and his Word. It is never static but ever fluid and dynamic because God is and because we bear his image! Let us then journey together and be willing to change when we must, speak out when we should, and be ever humble in our walk, our knowledge, and our relation with the Godhead Three! Get involved with the conversation and stop sitting on the sidelines. We are in this together! Speak out!

- skinhead

(ps. Well done Roger. It'll be a privilege to walk with you on our pilgrimmage)

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Posted on April 13, 2011 by Roger Olson
http://rogereolson.com/2011/04/13/a-good-description-of-postconservative-evangelical/

I’ve begun reading a relatively new book (2010) by one Steven B. Sherman entitled Revitalizing Theological Epistemology: Holistic Approaches to the Knowledge of God (Cambridge, UK: James Clarke & Co.).

The author begins with my category “postconservative evangelical” and defines it thus (pgs 9-10):

“Basically, they [postconservative evangelicals] compose a loose coalition of thinkers who are seeking to facilitate a number of ‘beyond’ moves, theologically:

1. beyond the agenda of the modernist/fundamentalist dichotomy toward what they see as a more holistic theology;
2. beyond classical foundationalist epistemology toward alternative concepts of knowledge;
3. beyond concentration on rationalism toward incorporating additional ways of knowing; 
4. beyond inerrancy debates and concerns toward an instrumental use of scripture; 
5. beyond academy-centered theologizing toward ecclesial and community-oriented thinking; 
6. beyond gatekeeping on boundary-setting doctrinalism toward a generous orthodoxy with pietistic emphasis; and finally, 
7. beyond what they view as a fixation on the concerns of modernity often motivated by a fear of liberalism, toward a more positive view and selective appropriation of postmodern insights.”

I couldn’t have said it better myself!

The only addition I would make is that:

     8. “postconservative” does NOT mean “anti-conservative.”

“Post” added to a word does not indicate rejection but sublation. (Please don’t ask me to define sublation; look it up!)

Do Christians Exist?

How do we think of ourselves when we think of our Christianity and of ourselves as Christians? What does this thought or label imply to us? Does it fill us with humilty and brokenness? With contradiction and the understanding that it is only in Christ that we find our new identification? That without his filling, his presence, his being we are but unredeemed, sinful, empty vessels of the old humanity we had no desire to leave behind until we met Jesus. That Jesus has become our new humanity, who fills us with his divine essence, his love, mercy, grace, hope and peace. Who would destroy all of our sinful humanity, our hate and jealousies, wickedness and lies, selfishness and lusts. Even death itself. For the divine is now near through the person of the Christ and it is his resurrected life that fills us with newness and hope and re-definition.

skinhead

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.emergentvillage.com/weblog/do-christians-exist

By George Elerick
April 12, 2011

Watch - "Why Christians Don’t Exist" – George Elerick from Bubble Up TV on Vimeo - http://vimeo.com/22002741

cogito, ergo sum’ ubi cogito, ibi non sum – Lacan

once you label me, you negate me – Kierkegaard

There is no such thing as Christian.

Let me explain. Philosopher Rene Descartes once posited the renowned phrase, “I think therefore I am”, and more recently Psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan reformed this philosophy by adding that "Where I think 'I think, therefore I am', that is where I am not." Whatever is the representation of something else is negation of that very reality. Theology tends to be the fantasy behind our representations of God, so the fantasy claims to be true, all the while is still itself, nothing more than a fantasmagorical spectre of reality.

Essentially what we think isn’t who we are, rather what we think is itself an element of fantasy and our beliefs are framed by this fantasy rather than our beliefs framing the fantasy itself. Some Christians define themselves by certain criteria of belief or doctrinal adherence, but this itself is not a Christian. Lacan takes this notion a step further and proclaims that our alliance to what is represented by our thoughts & definitions are not true about ourselves.

The very claim that we are any type of Christian is the negation of that very claim.

The reality is that the only way to discover Christianity is to dismantle the perverse historical narrative we have adopted as the very framework for our identity. The very idea of ‘Christian’ must itself come to a place ideological atheism to re-discover itself in light of its inherent negation.

Christianity isn’t meant to fulfill us, it’s meant to remind us of our lack, [that] the thing we desire isn’t fullness. There is tendency to define fullness in some sort of heavenly end or utopian socialist ideal where everyone will get along and we will forget the sins behind us.

Christianity is meant to scandalize our very existence. It’s meant to destroy the very presumptious foundations of our identities. This is the very place of discovery we see Jacob come to when he wrestles with the Angel.

The Angel represents God, the transcendental signifier, and it is only when Jacob chooses to wrestle with a representation of the divine that he begins to find who he himself is meant to be. Christianity isn't meant to be a faith of acceptance, but a religion of ideological denial and self-nihilism. When I use the word ‘I’ I am aligning a part of myself with the concept I choose to follow such a claim. For example, when I claim ‘I believe that the sky is blue’ – I am making an objective statement about something I believe in.

‘I’ then am in two places, ‘I’ as a subjective (experiential) person am making a objective truth claim. These are the very things we must wrestle with when encountering a representation of God. We must not merely wrestle with the theology of God, but with the very representations that these theologies claim, and even at times, we must be willing to come to a point of nihilistic optimism, which I claim is the hope that something much more positive will eventually take the place of the theological idea we gave up. Jacob discovers this, when he in a moment of full de-constitution, encounters another reality where Israel is his new identity and Jacob is no more. Being a Christian is this very encounter suspended in infinite animation. The core of Christianity and the representations within must die so resurrection can embody itself with those kernels and allow for new transformation.

It is not we who embody Christ but rather Christ who embodies up.

It is not that we embody truth but rather truth that embodies. It is not that the we exist in the saviour but rather the saviour exists in all. Exampel: Paul and the new humanity: Jacob is attempting to embody something he is not; he is claiming something not true about himself and the divine injunction is to wrestle with this. It is in the grappling that we began to discover the inherent emergence of our identity already present in us. To be a Christian is to allow the Christ element to emerge from a place of nowhere.

Paul expands this dichotomy of embodiment by explaining that the second Adam is Christ (Romans 5:12-6:5). The name Adam is of Hebrew origin which is fundamentally defined as the plural of mankind, or modernised humanity. Paul is doing something revolutionary and inclusive here, he is making the assertion that Christ is embodied in humanity. That the whole of humanity already is embodied with the attributes of Christ. Jesus claims the similar idea when he utters the words, ‘The Kingdom of God is near’, the Hebrew word for near means within or inside. Jesus doesn’t presume that people have to earn this or even attempt to label themselves something else, he simply assumes that the Christ element is already within them. This is why the Christ element is so revolutionary because it is something already true of humanity: past, present and future.

George Elerick is an author and speaker. Find more about him at theloverevolution.org.uk

Justice or Mercy? What if You Had to Pick One?

http://lovinggodcenter.blogspot.com/2011/01/justice-or-mercy-what-if-you-had-to.html

Posted by Julie Ackerman Link on Saturday, January 08, 2011

Last night Jay and I watched a Dateline program about Brooks Douglass, the son of a Baptist preacher, and his long road to forgiveness. Douglass has produced a movie about the journey that started with the murder of his parents and near-fatal injuries inflicted on him and his sister.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_fUVQv-z4Is&feature=player_embedded#at=51

The title of the movie, "Heaven's Rain," is taken from one of my favorite passages of Shakespeare, a section from "Merchant of Venice," a play that is seldom studied or performed because some consider it anti-Semitic.

The quality of mercy is not strain'd,

It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven

Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest:

It blesseth him that gives and him that takes.

'T is mightiest in the mightiest: it becomes

The throned monarch better than his crown;

His sceptre shows the force of temporal power,

The attribute to awe and majesty,

Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings;

But mercy is above this sceptred sway,

It is enthroned in the hearts of kings,

It is an attribute to God himself;

And earthly power doth then show likest God's,

When mercy seasons justice. Therefore, Jew,

Though justice be thy plea, consider this,

That in the course of justice none of us

Should see salvation: we do pray for mercy;

And that same prayer doth teach us all to render

The deeds of mercy.

When I was searching for the Shakespeare quotation on my computer, I came across an article written shortly after 9/11. I am using the quote without attribution because some consider the author to be anti-Islamic.* In it he says,

Judaism integrates the qualities of strict justice and mercy,
in harmony and in proper measure.
Christianity took only the quality of mercy
while Islam took the quality of strict justice.

I am a Christian, yet I do not consider the comment anti-Christian. I don't take offense at it because it's a position worth considering. Is it true? Is he correct? Is this what Christians have done? Is this what Christians should do?

He's right in claiming that Judaism requires both justice and mercy:

Execute true justice, Show mercy and compassion. (Zechariah 7:9)

But is he right in claiming that Christians practice only mercy?

I have trouble finding evidence to support that.

But how about the question, Should Christians always choose mercy?

This question leads to one of my favorite Bible verses. In the words of the half-brother of Jesus,

Judgment without mercy will be shown to anyone who has not been merciful.
Mercy triumphs over judgment! (James 2:13)

According to this, mercy does have a superior position in the Christian faith. But the Christian Bible does not negate the importance of justice. Jesus said,

Woe to you,
teachers of the law and Pharisees,
you hypocrites!

You give a tenth of your spices —
mint, dill and cummin.

But you have neglected
the more important matters of the law —

justice, mercy and faithfulness.

You should have practiced the latter,

without neglecting the former.

(Matthew 23:23)

The truth is, none of us can practice our faith perfectly, but I can't imagine anyone surviving in a "pick-one" society. To separate justice from mercy is like using the sword on the baby brought to Solomon's court. Death is the only possible outcome.

Justice or mercy? Perhaps the problem is not that we practice one and not the other but that we have a warped concept of both and thus practice neither one well.

To figure out the proper balance, we can't rely on either emotion or intelligence. Only as we increase in love for God (with heart, soul, mind, and strength) and for one another will we gain the wisdom to balance mercy and justice.

---------------------------------------------

*Those who want to know the author's identity should be able to find it easily enough. I just don't want certain other things he has said to detract from this statement, which I think raises a question worth considering.



My Emergent Letters to Friends: Learning to Trust God

My Emergent Letters to Friends: Learning to Trust God

“can anything be less plain than the intent of our speech

as versus the composition of the correctness of our speech?”

– skinhead

Hey skinhead,

I have to disagree with what you’re saying about Rob's views on heaven, hell, love, etc. after watching his livestream from NYC. I think he would even say that he doesn't agree on the traditional views of these things. And not even going off what Kevin Deyoung said but in just reading quotes from the book itself, mocking a God who would send someone to literal, eternal hell if they got hit by a car w/o believing in Jesus.

And so, though I appreciate your response to my emails I have to disagree & point out that Rob neglects major chunks of scripture in order to try and make points in the book. It's grievous to me to read and hear the things he's saying and I lovingly want to caution you to see that what he's saying in many places in the book are unbiblical and even mock the God of the Scriptures:

"Millions have been taught that if they don’t believe, if they don’t accept in the right way according to the person telling them the gospel, and they were hit by a car and died later that same day, God would have no choice but to punish them forever in conscious torment in hell. God would, in essence, become a fundamentally different being to them in that moment of death, a different being to them forever. A loving heavenly father who will go to extraordinary lengths to have a relationship with them would, in the blink of an eye, become a cruel, mean, vicious tormentor who would insure that they would have no escape from an endless future of agony." – from Love Wins by Rob Bell

Thanks again for your emails.

- your brother in Christ

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Dear brother, Hi! -

I have yet to read Rob's book but am very familiar with his convictions having been engaged with his ministry the past dozen or so years. After a third reading of the Rob quote above I would give him a pass by saying the following: he’s not questioning the eternal torments of hell and its reality as it would seem on the surface. But that he’s saying that when that time of finality comes in a person’s life it will be finally and solemnly at that free-willed being’s rejection of all things Christ. Here’s my summary of “Love Wins” for which I’ll give to Rob partial inspiration and to the Lord the greater portion of inspiration:

“We are to over-expound and over-preach the hope and the grace that is in God as we preach the solemnity of the horrors of hell found in this life as it is in the next without Christ.

Furthermore, this message isn’t simply for others, but it is for us to know too - of the hope and grace that is in God and is ours both now, as heaven touches earth through Jesus, even as it will be ours later, in heaven.

That we as Christians do not live with a gospel that has become an evangelical-evacuation policy from earth, but with a gospel that is every-much as good news to us, as to those around us, in this present day of the here-and-now because of the presence of the Kingdom of God enacted at the Cross and through the Holy Spirit in response to Christ's atonement on the Cross.

As is the solemn reality and responsibility of the hell we deliver to people around us by living unChrist-like; or the hell that non-Christians live in each day in their brokenness apart from Christ; or the hell that humanity is experiencing at its own hands, when the love of God through Jesus is not being lived, shared, breathed and experienced.

Ultimately, the last book of the bible, Revelation, shows us in exquisite grief the finality of mankind rejecting the love of God when love doesn’t win; as well as the finality of God’s resurrection (and resurrected kingdom) because love did win.”

- skinhead

But asked another way, I think the broader reading of Rob is more to the point that my fellow classmate Scot McKnight has earlier observed these past several weeks in the links that I have sent to you:

Link 1 - My horror, then, was three-fold [to the evangelical response to Rob Bell's book, LOVE WINS]: first, the image of God that is depicted when hell becomes the final, or emphatic word to the world [as evangelicals missionize the Gospel]; second, the absence of any context for how to talk about judgment in the Bible [in the evangelical kit of 'Becoming Saved']; and, third, the kinds of emotion [we are seeing] expressed [to Rob's book, which isn't pretty]. We saw too much gloating, pride and triumphalism on both sides of the LOVE WINS issue. I felt like those watching the sinking of the Titanic but who didn’t cringe at the thought of thousands sinking into the Atlantic to a suffocating death. We were instead singing and dancing to a jig that we were right or had been predicting the sinking all along.

Link 2 - To talk about wrath apart from this depiction of the grace-consuming God is to put forward a view of God that is not only unbiblical but potentially monstrous. And, to put forward a view of God that is absent of final judgment, yes of wrath, yes of eternal judgment, is to offer a caricature of the Bible’s God.

No one should begin to talk about hell without spending fifteen minutes in pausing prayer to consider the horror of it all.

Further, I find some people can get intoxicated on wrath and it can lead them in a triumphalist dance of anger. And I find some who get intoxicated with a flabby sense of grace. Isn’t it better to get lost in the dance of God’s good and triumphant grace and of making things right? If we are to be intoxicated, let it be from imbibing the hope and grace of God’s love which will both win and be right in the End.

- Scot McKnight

By way of summary, and as I’ve repeatedly have said in the past, the enigma that is Rob Bell can be a slippery-sloop to those who chose to listen selectively (and this is truth of both sides - both of his detractors and well as of his supporters). He too easily can mean whatever we wish him to mean. And maybe I think of Jesus when I write this too. For his listeners also had all types of responses to his messages as well.

And so I think I get Rob more than I had in the past, in his cynicisms, his irreverent apologies and statements, in his quirkiness that comes with an impassioned heart and soul, and a mind overwhelmed with speaking God better to the misunderstanding lost masses. He's willing to bend on exact statements to allow his congregants and audience to become further engaged with the ministries and the minitrations of Jesus and Jesus' flesh-and-blood fellowship on this side of heaven. He's willing to entertain extra-biblical suppositions and questions to raise the awareness of both personal and corporate introspection, trusting in the Spirit's overall leading to teach and to guide in questions of mis-understanding and mis-statement.

But it is still my and your responsibility to cut through his words to get to the sense of the argument (as versus just dumping on him as a brother in Christ). The quote you gave is hard to defend in-and-of itself but then again, I don’t wish to. Nor do I wish to defend Rob. I stand with him, I pray for him, and I treat him in love as my brother in Christ as we and many other emergent Christians re-learn God’s heart for the lost and for our fellowship of brothers and sisters.

Too, when I get a chance to read LOVE WINS I’m sure I’ll see a lot of similar statements just like there were in his past books. Still, I know that Rob believes in the evangelical doctrines of Hell, Heaven, Sin, Judgment, Jesus. So the fight isn’t there. The fight is over evangelicalism's words and formulaic statements of correctness that have lost the heart of God in their zeal for the truth of God, and for which postmodernistic books and writings wish not to similarly evidence. You have an austere evangelical readership wanting correct, specific statements as versus a "mellow" emergent body of believers wishing to lovingly retell the gospel to a non-Christian world through relational and service ministries about Jesus; a world that is totally unfamiliar with the centuries-old church dogmas and doctrines that have overtaken the evangelical church, and have removed the life and heart of God in the process.

Doctrines? Yes, if they are biblically received. But no, if they are more important than the people that those doctrines minister to. I'm all for correct doctrines but I'm also for allowing people to express their fears and misunderstandings and to allow for further personal expressions of God. We can correct their (and ours) misunderstandings later through biblical study, but it is more important first to find the heartbeat of God and to resurrect it into the pulse of dying mankind. Let us do the hard work of ER first and then later get the whole man healthier over a process of time and involvement, benevolent engagement and practice, faithful living and endeavor, merciful love and living.

So then, in order for us as evangelicals to be able to read postmodern/emergent writings it will require that we put away our theological formulas, our compendiums of exact scientific speech, and re-double our encryption efforts to hear and read Rob’s (and others) words for the intent that is being conveyed. It’s not easy to do and after 12 years of listening, investigating, questioning I think have adapted enough now to do it. And by “adaptation” I don’t mean that I’ve left my doctrinal heritage or legacies but that I’m re-learning how to better speak my heritage in more relevant forms and fashions using postmodernistic methods that are highly creative and deeply personal and loving to the non-Christian, non-churched audience.

Peace,

skinhead

My Emergent Letters to Friends: Learning to Discern

My Emergent Letters to Friends: Discernment

by skinhead
March 15, 2011

Dear Ed.  I found Kevin DeYoung’s and Justin Taylor’s statements last week inflammatory about Rob Bell’s position on hell, sin, atonement, justice, and etc. Kevin and Justin made up stuff about Rob that is not true and the response has been typical of what you’re getting on Facebook (from friends and colleagues alike). I really don’t wish to respond to each of their statements publically other than to say what I already have said. Rob fully believes in the evangelical hell, heaven, Jesus, etc. and made it clear again Sunday night at a Q&A held at church when he was questioned.

But Rob uses imprecise language (as I also have stated) which leaves him open to being accused of things that aren’t there. These accusations then amount to false judgments about him in the name of Christ by Christians feeling threatened by his missing imprecisions. Personally, I don’t really wish to defend Rob so much as to point out to my fellow Christians that they are making the very point Rob is making in his book… that we judge each other really fast and aren’t comprehending how deeply grievous spiritual truths like hell, heaven, love, Jesus, really are beyond making our safe creedal statements about them.

With Rob I’ve learned a long time ago to listen to the intent of his speech rather than to the precision of his statements. Too, he loves to talk about theological paradoxes within biblical narratives which cannot be resolved and must be left open-ended. For traditional Christians who are use to hearing “definitive” summary statements within carefully crafted theological formulae, the emergent method can be found to be irritating, frustrating, inspecific, unnerving and angering. Personally, I believe Christians have been spoon-fed for so long that their minds have turned to mush and water and that they don’t know how to think for themselves anymore. How to study, how to investigate, and most importantly, how to listen and think other than to spout off their feelings and emotions as "gospel" to those enablers willing to listen around them.

When I try to parse what Rob is saying against my traditional Christianity upbringing it leaves me blinded from hearing God’s word that is shouting in my ears while I debate God and refuse him his grip on my heart. Said differently, I’ve been too fast to judge Rob on what he should be saying in my mind (wishing to feel safe and content) than to listen to him on what he is really saying. Once I re-orient myself away from those traditional arguments in my head I then can hear him better as to what he is saying…. And, when I do, its spiritually overwhelming - like scales coming off my eyes that I may fearfully come and tread into the holy-of-holies before the presence of our Almighty God.

For you see, Rob still is claiming traditional evangelical doctrinal tenets no less than what DeYoung or Taylor ascribe to, but he is re-framing or re-defining these tenets into a postmodernistic framework of emerging Christianity as he uses the emergent language to help us better hear God's Word. And if anything, emergent language is all about ambiguity and mystery, the high holiness of God and the complete gulf that we have put up to God's eternal redemptive purposes. It is this latter part of postmodernism - its emergent language and mindset - that so engage traditional Christians towards anger for the "truth". They don’t get postmodernism and it unnerves them. Rob will say it more simply -

“If we think we know God, than that "God" we think we know isn’t God. For God is infinitely above what we know and think, and the God we have is the one we’ve put in our religious faith-box, whom we’ve idolized and have told what he should and shouldn’t be doing.”

At least that ‘s my current understanding of all this after 12 years of struggling to listen more completely while trying to figure this postmodern emergent stuff out as an older-generation adult 3 generations removed from generations X,Y and Z. Historically, evangelicalism itself is a new movement birthed from the fundamentalist movements back in the 1880’s-1940’s (the Industrial Age) and has, itself, become the “new fundamentalism” of modernity. Thus, today’s evangelicals control the presses and the schools, the media and the pulpits and are crying foul to its newest challenger and usurper, emergent Christianity. But emergent postmodernism has arisen as an updated version of evangelicalism these past 10-20 years (c. 1990-2010, the "Social Networking" Age) and intends to displace, disrupt, destroy, burn everything that we as evangelical Christians espouse that we think know about God and doctrine and faith and Jesus... or more correctly, impiously think we know. And I don't think for a minute that emergent Christians will be re-writing the bible with false doctrines and lies. More correctly, I do think that emergent Christians will be authenticating their historic faith and as they do we'll discover how close it will be to past creedal statements written in blood, sweat and tears of our past forefathers in the faith.

Emergent Christianity isn’t clearly defined b/c it is so new and no one really knows what it is and where it’s going. The conservative form of "emergent-ism" is an “emerging Christianity” that holds to its orthodox-evangelical roots while trying to not to be too quick to jump into the “emergent ship”. Thus, Mark Driscoll, John Piper, Matt Chandler are kinda caught out as “tweeners” between wanna-be neo-evangelicals and emergent Christians while DeYoung and Taylor are still in the evangelical camp of strict Calvinistic reformed doctrine (at least that's how I understand it). But for the emergent, the argument isn’t to abandon evangelic doctrine but to better speak it to a postmodern era (or rather, let evangelicalism go as irrelevant and unnecessary parts of the continuing conversation of authentic Christianity in its haughtiness and judgmentalisms). And so, it is the emergent's newer-language which “feels” like a "must-hear" better re-interpretation of church dogma as it thrashes around trying to “speak God better”.

Now I have my differences with Rob but its more along the lines of the various emergent strains of Christianity as each emergent position works to define their foundations of where they should be vs. what they are teaching. The spectrum goes from conservative to neo-evangelic to a more liberal abandonment of everything that is church doctrine over the past 2000 years (called “pyro-theology” or “deconstructionism”). And to some degree this latter endeavor may have to be done b/c we have simply “boxed” in God with too much argument and thesis and have missed his heart and soul and consequently, the heart and soul of our faith.

I think of Jesus in the gospels who so greatly upset the Sadducee's and Pharisees as he re-aligned and re-established the OT Abrahamic faith that had gotten lost in the religious rhetoric of his day. Jesus kept to the past, but he re-explained it through himself, and then continued to re-define it in the lives of each soul he met, individualizing it and expanding it, just like the paradigm he was so fond of using, that of "new wine skins for new wine". Without new wine skins the new wine would burst the old wine skins as it fermented. Jesus words were doing the same to the religious institutes of his day. He was re-adjusting and re-framing God, faith, sin, life, living, love, justice, etc. to the faithful (and unfaithful) traditionalists of his day. And so I think that this is what emergent Christians are doing today... searching to speak God better to a sinful, needy, lost world.

And at this point I believe Rob to be an emerging Christian like myself who is making adjustments as he goes along – trying on new suits of clothes for size and fit, freewheeling off of new wake boards as he tests new equipment and theories, in an attempts to determine the necessary fundamental emergent directions he thinks postmodern Christianity should be taking.

And unlike me, he is more committed to destroying the past more completely (which takes a lot of courage b/c of all of the vilification that he gets). But I think he’s more gifted to do this like the old-time preachers of the past - the Billy Sundays and George Whitefields, the Jonathan Edwards and Charles Spurgeons, the John Wesleys and D.L. Moodys, and the David Otis Fullers of their day. They didn’t take any crap and they loved dishing it out in extremely convicting hellfire-and-brimstone sermons. They wielded the pulpit like a bully club and they struck down anything and anyone that didn’t worship Jesus first and foremost. Rob is not very different from these old-timey preachers but I think that he is hated even more. And so, we would do well to shut our mouths and listen first, before hastening to judgment and vaunting ourselves and our bruised egos up in inflammatory rhetorical displays. God is not pleased by our harsh judgments, words and labels. We are to speak truth in love, and in love speak truth, and use God's wisdom in both directions. Amen! and Amen!

Consequently only time can tell what will be, and it’ll be at least another 10-20 years before everyone really knows what emergent Christianity will was about. But outlandish statements made by both sides as they create point-and-counterpoint arguments against each other can be as much constructive as they are destructive to the fellowship of God's church over time. Bell, like myself, will continue to modify his position in light of newer developments and spiritual insights based upon Inauguration Eschatology (cf. my writings and NT Wright's among others). It must be done and is being done by Mars Hill Church and others.

Thus, emergent Christianity is in its own “discovery-and-analysis” phase of what postmodernal Christianity may look like. But we don’t know. It’s too soon to tell. And when we get there our traditional brethren can thank us then for plowing the hard ground that is ahead and has been behind. Because they have not helped with their harsh judgements and inciteful words, working against any form of plowing being done by humble, faith-driven, obedient servants of God. But I would that my brethren team with their newest cousins and work with us together towards figuring-out this thing we call the Christian missional message of Jesus.

- skinhead

My Emergent Letters to Friends: What is Emergent Christianity?

My Emergent Letters to Friends

by skinhead
March 14, 2011

Hi. Attached is a Christianity Today review of Rob Bell’s book. My comments are in green to help elucidate the mis-statements I’ve been noticing in popular discussion websites. I think that if we wish to critique emergent Christianity that we should look past Rob to the thing itself. To do that I’m reading through “Church in the Present Tense” by Kevin Corcoran (a Calvin prof) and Scot McKnight (formerly of Cornerstone). The first chapter made all the difference for me in discussion of philosophical realism versus antirealism and its social apophaticisms. Too, McKnight’s candid comments on emergent Christianity should be helpful like his blog, “The Jesus Creed”.

http://www.amazon.com/Church-Present-Tense-resources-communities/dp/1587432994

http://www.patheos.com/community/members/scotmcknight/

Overall I believe Rob's critics to continue to mistake him as a non-evangelical rather than as a neo-evangelical or more popularly knoewn as an emergent Christian. In fact, Rob’s portrayal of Christ makes the relevance of Christianity even more awesome, hopeful, useful as people have become redeemed, reconciled, Spirit-filled, disciples of the Gospel.

Fearing postmodernism, orthodox/evangelical/modernistic congregations have responded by fleeing backwards into time-bound, traditional church institutions and contemporary evangelical mega-churches that seem to become less and less relevant for this new age of the 21st Century, as they seek to update their liturgies without updating their foundations and the introspections to their faith. You can't dress up something that is already dead or dying. It needs to be buried and left in the ground. Evangelicalism is dead. Let's give it a proper, thankful burial and move on.

Emerging Christianity is doing just that in the continuum of 2000 years of church history as it rescinds from the industrial/scientific age of language specificity to a postmodernistic form of communication known for its looser language rules (thus, the squawk re Rob’s imprecise language).

Lastly, it’s not so simple to say that Love Wins or that Jesus Wins or that Justice Wins through our competing Christian labels and syllogisms. Rather, we had better find out what Jesus wants of us and to do it better, together and not separately apart... for that is where our real strength lies as well as the devil's divisions and inner man's pride.

- skinhead

------------------------------------------------------------------

syl•lo•gism [ síllə jìzzəm ] (plural syl•lo•gisms)

noun

Definition

1. a logical argument involving three propositions: a formal deductive argument made up of a major premise, a minor premise, and a conclusion. An example is, "All birds have feathers, penguins are birds, therefore penguins have feathers."

2. deductive reasoning: reasoning from the general to the specific

3. example of deduction: an example of deductive reasoning

4. specious argument: a subtle piece of reasoning, or one that seems true but is actually false or deceptive

McKnight - A Critique of Love Wins 7

http://www.patheos.com/community/jesuscreed/2011/04/15/exploring-love-wins-7/

Exploring Love Wins 7

by Scot McKnight
April 15, 2011
Filed under: Atonement

The 5th chp in Rob Bell’s book, Love Wins: A Book About Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived, is called “Dying to Live.” I am asking that you pause quietly and slow down enough to pray this prayer as the way to approach this entire series:

O Lord, you have taught us that without love whatever we do is worth nothing:

Send your Holy Spirit and pour into my heart your greatest gift,

which is love, the true bond of peace and of all virtue,

without which whoever lives is accounted dead before you.

Grant this for the sake of your only Son Jesus Christ,

who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God,

now and for ever. Amen.†

In this chp Rob seeks to communicate into today’s idiom the significance of the cross and resurrection. Which means he’s touching on atonement theory, surely one of the most discussed topics of our day, but he shifts the conversation from atonement theory to another topic. More of that below.

How would you explain what Rob says about cross and resurrection in this chapter? Do you think it is adequate? Do you see a shift in topic — from salvation and atonement theory to moral theory?

The big theme of this chapter is that the Bible speaks of the significance of Jesus’ death and resurrection through a variety of images, each designed in different ways to speak to humans/Israel/church. In other words, this chp enters into atonement theory. Bell then proposes looking at the cross through the lens of elemental features of the universe.

Here are the atonement images in the Bible: Sacrifice, reconciliation, justification, victory, redemption.

Which is the correct one? His answer, “Yes.” Which is to say, each is true. Rob Bell then tries to get to the bottom of atonement theory. Here are his words: “The point then, as it is now, is Jesus. The divine in flesh and blood. He’s where the life is” (129).

First cross, and then resurrection, and in this he works out what I’m going to call an “elemental theory of the cross.”

It is clear that his “elemental theory” is neither the Christus Victor theme made so clear in Tom Wright nor the solidarity theory seen in the writings of Moltmann. Here’s where he goes:

1. Death gives way to life in all of nature, and in relationships. “It’s how the world works” (131). The cross is a “symbol of an elemental reality.”

2. The resurrection is cosmic — “The tomb is empty, a new day is here, a new creation is here, everything has changed, death has been conquered, the old has gone, the new has come” (133-134).

3. The resurrection is personal: “When we say yes to God, when we open ourselves to Jesus’s living, giving act on the cross, we enter in to a [new] way of life. He is the source, the strength, the example, and the assurance that this pattern of death and rebirth is the way into the only kind of life that actually sustains and inspires” (136).

And: “Lose your life and find it, he says. That’s how the world works. That [sic] how the soul works. That’s how life works when you’re dying to live” (136).

A few points:

First, I summarized where all those atonement theories were headed in Rob’s view just before the jump, and I think he’s shortchanged and simplified them. Again, he says the point is Jesus. He is where life is. No one wants to disagree with that, but even if I agree, that’s not how to get to the “point” of all those atonement words. The point of each one of them is this: humans are sinners and enslaved and entombed, God has done something mighty to rid them of their sin problem, and what God has done can be expressed as sacrifice, reconciliation, justification, victory and redemption. Yes, the point is Jesus and Yes the point is life, but the Jesus of these images is the Savior — the one who steps in and gives himself in our place (vicarious) and who removes our sins at the cost of his own life — and who by his death and resurrection brings us into new life. Inherent to each of these is the removal of sin as precondition with the forgiving, etc, benefits that follow.

As I read this chp, Rob shifts the topic from sin removal to cross as paradigm of elemental factors.

Second, Jesus, too, says there’s something elemental about death and life. John 12:24. But I can’t quite comprehend how the atonement-sacrifice work of Christ can be so elemental and at the same time a “scandal” and a “rock of stumbling.” There’s not enough here about sin removal and not enough here about something God does, and more an elemental principle that death leads to life — but why death? How does death work? These are the elemental things atonement theories work out, and his “elemental theory” doesn’t explore that.

Third, I agree with Rob in that the cross and resurrection have to be tied together — one without the other is no gospel. Too many today have a Good Friday only gospel. Rob wants it to be cross and resurrection.

Fourth, I’m all for seeing atonement language as various metaphors (see A Community Called Atonement: Living Theology - http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0687645549/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=jescre-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0687645549).

And I’m all for finding a way to bringing them into our modern world. And how we do that matters. But however we do the transfer, it needs to be comprehensive. And, perhaps most importantly, it’s got to retain and sustain the various dimensions of those biblical metaphors.

Here’s how I see what I see as a shift in this chp: the “elemental theory” seems to drop the sin and drop the Savior and instead explores perhaps the most significant moral theory in the entire Bible, and it is a cruciform moral theory: we die and in dying we learn to live.

And I want to emphasize how much I agree with Rob on this moral theory: the essence of flourishing is loving God and loving others; the essence of loving is giving to the other and that means surrendering — it means dying to our ego and living to God and to others. So, yes, totally, dying to live. I agree. But that’s not atonement, nor does it explain the meaning of the cross of Jesus as atoning.

On the cross Jesus shouldered the sins of all. 2 Corinthians 5:15: “And he died for all…” and 5:19: “that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them.” 5:21: “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” This is the stuff of atonement.

Humans today — modern and postmodern — experience guilt, and they experience broken relationships, and they experience a sense of being out of sorts with God so that they experience God’s displeasure/wrath, and they experience a sense of futility and being trapped and being captured in the systems and in their own private worlds, and they experience being enslaved — and so those old Bible images still work. And they work well. I see no need to say they are just back then. There is a way to bring those very images into our world to speak to the conditions of postmoderns.