The dust up over Rob Bell’s new book is outstanding.  Lots of great dialog, even when it gets nasty.  We need these kinds of conversations.

To give you context, Jason Boyett gives a great summary of the conflict. I appreciate Jason’s comment when he says:

“There is no meaner, more hateful person on Earth than a Christian who suspects you have gotten your theology wrong.”

I have yet to receive my advanced review copy so I can’t really weigh in yet, but I will do so very quickly when it comes.

But after reading some of the comments, I was imagining an idea. Let’s assume Rob is a universalist.  He’s standing before God, ready to face the reality of what many call the final judgment. Yet he believes that God is big enough to restore all of reality and all of creation.  He’s not really a universalist in the traditional sense, that he believes God just ignores suffering and lets everyone off the hook.  He believes that the work of Jesus on the cross reveals the reality of grace for everyone, even when they don’t see it or accept it.  It’s true because God established grace before time.

In other words, he holds conflicting ideas that are not necessarily orthodox in today’s evangelical world.  He holds an emergent view of restoration but believes in the final judgment. He takes the risk to believe God will restore it all.

What will God do with him?  Is believing something that a specific community deems unorthodox or even heretical grounds for missing out on life?

What say you?

“ONE thing, and only ONE thing is necessary for Christian life, righteousness…and freedom.” Martin Luther

Wait….Isn’t that two things?  Leave it to Luther to throw us for a mental loop.

I feel sorry for Piper.

If you’ve been anywhere near a blog in the last couple of days you probably couldn’t go two or three clicks before running into something about John Piper’s now infamous post on the ECLA’s “Consideration: Proposed Social Statement on Human Sexuality.”  Piper concluded that the tornado than ran through the city was in his own words.

“The tornado in Minneapolis was a gentle but firm warning to the ELCA and all of us: Turn from the approval of sin. Turn from the promotion of behaviors that lead to destruction. Reaffirm the great Lutheran heritage of allegiance to the truth and authority of Scripture. Turn back from distorting the grace of God into sensuality. Rejoice in the pardon of the cross of Christ and its power to transform left and right wing sinners.”

Many have offered great responses.  Adam Walker Cleaveland wrote, John Piper Contributes to Culture of Fear. Drew Tatusko wrote, The Tornado To Stop Gays. Jake Bouma offered a large list of responses in the press and others in the religious world to the approval of the statement. But my absolute favorite was Jenell Paris’ The Toddler, The Discharge, and The Humidity.  Jenell writes:

“Wow. Today the weather in Grantham, PA is “82 degrees, feels like 88.” The humidity is 73%. God is speaking to us, too, and he preordained me to interpret today’s weather for the residents of Grantham, and perhaps even Mechanicsburg, our surrounding suburb. My spirit is unclear regarding Camp Hill or the city of Harrisburg, so I don’t think the prophecy extends that far.”

The point has been well made already.  John took it too far in his desire to extend a theology that contributes to fear.  I can easily see this becoming the butt of a joke for a long time.  Any time something negative happens I can see someone saying, “It was a gentle but firm warning to the (insert name of party) to turn from sin.”

But believe it or not that’s not what this point is about.  As I was watching the whole thing unfold, I couldn’t help but feel sorry for John Piper.  His cards were now out on the table.  If his response did anything it was to give us a glimpse of Piper’s image of God.  And what is sad to me is that is the God Piper lives with, one who is always ready to strike the moment John does something wrong. In contributing to a culture of fear, Piper has inadvertently revealed the culture he himself lives in.

Can you image how that feels?

PS: Tony Jones offers a compelling question.  Who in the Evangelical intelligensia will call out Piper for his remarks?  It’s a serious question that suggests an interesting bias.  But the real juice is found in the comments. Many question why God would send Jesus and then get angry all over again.  Brilliant observation. One guy named R. Jay Pearson says,

QUESTION: Exactly what kind of “god” comes down to the world, becomes human, offers himself as a sacrifice for all humankind’s sins, but then turns around and uses cancer and other events as punishment for sins he supposedly had already died for?

ANSWER: A “god” of human invention and human imagination.

What’s ironic about this statement is that it’s so easy to create an imaginative version of God and become subject to that version.  We need God to be angry so we can be angry at the world around us.

Brian McLaren recently quoted a friend on his blog and said, “The kingdom of God is always at hand – but it’s never in hand.”  I love that.  There’s this quality about the Kingdom of God that is always present in our lives but is impossible to control.  To grasp for it it to reduce it to something that looks like us.

And then a friend of mine, Jim wrote the following about Brian’s post.  He said, “Wow! That hit the spot with what I’ve been wrestling with today. Leaves me still searching for answers, but I loved his response. Thanks!”

The Kingdom of God is like that.  It leaves us still searching.  The tension of following Jesus is that we can never fully grasp it in a way that we can control it.  It leaves us searching for more.  But maybe that is a good thing.  I find that the things I am completely satisfied in leave me ultimately wanting.  The Kingdom of God always leaves me wanting more.

I have a friend who is very self-destructive.  And I know enough about our own brokenness to understand why.  But some times his acts are so self-destructive that they boggle my mind.  And then Peter Rollins went and offered an interesting take on an old movie, The Bridges of Madison County. And in it he mentioned the quote from Nietzsche.

“we still prefer a more violent displeasure to a weak pleasure.” Nietzsche

I can’t help but see this in my friend and in the world.  But here’s why.  It is so easy to reach a state of numb complacency or even self-hatred for what we have become that we must resort to a violent displeasure to wake us up.  A weak pleasure just won’t do it. Violence can then feed us even as it destroys us.  An in a very strange way the very act that is design to destroy us can often be the very act that saves us too.

What do you think?