Defending God’s Right To Keep You IN?
It seems to me that in a lot of the spin regarding Rob Bell’s book, an interesting thing happened. Much of the dialogue suddenly turned to people defending people’s choice to exclude themselves from heaven. Yet the tension Rob is really confronting is God’s need (or our historical orthodox position) that God keeps people out. What say you?
There Is No Word For Coincidence In Hebrew
One of my students in my Exploring A Postmodern Gospel class wrote the following two posts. We’re working through my book Discovering The God Imagination. I wanted to share them. ——————————————————- Jonathan, As I sat in a local Taco shop finishing chapter 4 last week, I experienced a significant amount of hope and desire to worship as I have while …
Rob Bell Actually Believes In Hell
Here’s proof. There he said it folks. Are you happy?
Our Brain On God
“Contemplating a loving God strengthens portions of our brain–particularly the frontal lobes and anterior cingulate-where empathy and reason reside. Contemplating a wrathful God empowers the limbic system, which is “filled with aggression and fear.” It is a sobering concept: The God we choose to love changes us into his image, whether he exists or not.” Michael Gershon, reviewing Andrew Newberg …
Getting Fired For Believing In Love
So a good friend of mine, Chad Holtz was fired recently, and it was over his view of hell captured in this post. The story got picked up on the AP, on MSNBC and on Fox. You can see Chad explain some of it on an AP Youtube video. I actually posted the Facebook note on the Emergent Village website …
Straight From The Horses Mouth
From Bill Kinnon’s Confused by Calvinists…again. ——————————————————————– “Isn’t it a little weird that TULIP-waving Calvinists get all bent out of shape about a book that denies the eternal flames of hell? (I should say “apparently denies” – haven’t read it and I doubt I ever will – I’m no fan of Charlie Bell or Rob Sheen or whatever his name …
Question To Ponder
John the Baptist introduces Jesus by saying: The next day John saw Jesus coming toward him and said, “Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” (John 1:29 (New International Version, ©2011) What does it mean to you that Jesus takes away your sins and those of the world?
The Word “Christian”
Found this interesting. It’s easy to base our determination of who is a Christian based on how “good” we follow, making it a religion once again. What do you think?
The Tensions In The Gospel
So I’m leading a class that explores a postmodern understanding of the Gospel. The dialog walks through my book and looks at the tension within the Gospel. In each of the first two classes the students have commented on the process of seeing the Gospel in a different way, the experience they encounter in their bodies, and the process of …
Stoking The Religious Fires With Rob Bell
Well it’s official. Rob Bell has released his new book Love Wins and the world didn’t come to an end. It’s already #4 in all of Amazon for sales. Christianity is still churning along like it always has. ;-P But as the world begins to read and process the book, something interesting has occurred. The reaction is to throw out …
