Better Late Than Never - My take on Rob Bell’s “Love Wins” (Part 2)

    (Continued from Part 1)

    As I said, Rob Bell asks some great questions and they are important, life or death questions but his approach to answering some of them is sloppy.  I found that disappointing in someone who writes so well.  When I say that Rob Bell’s approach is sloppy, here is what I mean:  In seminary we were taught that we should always allow the text of scripture to speak for itself.  We were taught how to properly interpret scripture, how to translate difficult words and to look at how that writer, or other Biblical writers used those words in similar contexts so that we could correctly discern the intended meaning.  Beyond this, we were taught never to proof-text.  Proof-texting happens when we decide what the Bible should say and then proceed to dig out Biblical texts that align with, and therefore seem to prove, our initial theories.  Rob Bell may not be proof-texting in “Love Wins” but he seems to draw awfully close to that line.  Bell begins his book with an entire chapter devoted to describing what he wants to find in the Bible and uses whatever texts that seem to agree with him and either ignoring or skipping over texts that present significant problems.  Ben Witherington even finds occasions where Bell has grossly misinterpreted scriptures so that they agree with his arguments where the correct interpretations would stand in opposition to it.

    Bell says that heaven and hell are real and that they exist here on earth.  It’s a nice sentiment, but that’s not what Jesus said.  Jesus said that heaven is in another place.  Jesus said that hell is real.  Rob Bell says that we can decide, after death, to accept Christ but Jesus says that a great chasm exists between heaven and hell and no one can bridge that gap.  Bell thinks that if we can decide to choose Christ after our deaths then sooner or later nearly everyone will come to their senses, follow Jesus and enter into heaven.  Jesus says that at the end of the age the weeds will be separated from the wheat and thrown into the fire.  Jesus says that the weeds are the followers of the evil one and the wheat are the followers of God.  I agree with Bell that some of the things in scripture are troublesome.  Like Bell, I wish that billions of unbelievers would not be sentenced to punishment in hell, but I can’t just pretend that scripture doesn’t say what it says.  We struggle with the texts of scripture.  It isn’t easy and we do no one any favors when we take shortcuts.

    If we have a high view of scripture, we believe that it says what it says.  If we have this view, then we must define ourselves and our beliefs why what we discern from it.  We cannot force what we wish to be true upon scripture.

    In summary, “Love Wins” is very well-written and engaging but for all the good ideas and excellent questions contained in it, there is too much theology that is poorly thought out, too much off-target interpretation and too many places where the layman (because it is well written and engaging)  is going to have difficulty discerning one from the other.  For those reasons, I cannot recommend reading “love Wins” unless you have a copy of a reliable  analysis (like Ben Witherington’s) alongside it to help you avoid the pitfalls along the way.

Better Late Than Never - My take on Rob Bell’s “Love Wins” (Part 1)

    Amid the hubbub earlier this year over Rob Bell’s “Love Wins” I had several friends who either read or commented on it (or both).  I have not been a follower of Rob Bell (although I have seen one or two of his Nooma videos) and so, despite the fuss, I wasn’t terribly tempted to read it for myself… until Pam, a Facebook friend, challenged me to read it for myself.  Up until then, I had limited myself to sharing links to some really well-researched and well-written blogs about it by folks like Ben Witherington  and Dr. John Byron  (who was my Greek professor in Seminary).  I promised Pam that I would read the book but I still didn’t want to buy it so I put my name on a list at the local library and waited.  As luck (or the providence of God) would have it, the book came in just as we were preparing to leave for our church’s Youth Annual conference.  I attend this conference with our youth, but the youth, and the youth leaders attend the business meetings and I only attend the concerts and listen to the speakers.  As a result, I was able to squeeze in enough time to read through the book.

    I was going to re-read the book and take notes but if I had, I would be writing a six part post (instead of two) and I would have been late returning the book to the library.  Besides, other writers have more ably and more thoroughly dissected it already. 

Frankly, the book made me sad.

    It made me sad because I really enjoyed reading it.  Rob Bell writes the way I talk.  He isn’t hung up in sentence structure or having perfect paragraphs but writes in a style that reflects how we speak with one another.  I find that style, occasionally, to be refreshing.  What’s more Rob Bell writes well, has many really great ideas and asks some very important questions.  Problems arise, however because of how Rob Bell proceeds after he has a good idea and after he asks a great question.

    Rob Bell seems to want to have things both ways.  He says that what Jesus did was done for us, with no exceptions, no confessions, and no believing required (p. 11), and yet he believes that this sort of Christianity should motivate us to do good.  Why?  If I believed that nothing is required of me in order to go to heaven, if I believed that I am not responsible for carrying the Good News to others (because nothing is required of THEM either), then what motivation do I have to do good or to tell others about the truth that I’ve found?

(continued in Part 2)

Reflections on Going Deaf

    Okay, to be perfectly honest, I may not actually be going deaf, but sometimes it feels that way.  I have cousins who were born with profound hearing impairments and they manage quite well, and often excel, in life with courage, determination, sign language and cochlear implants.  While I know them, this was always a sort of alien world to me.   I always had decent hearing, not like my wife who can hear every conversation anywhere in the house, but at least good, average hearing.  At least it was until about eight or ten years ago.  At first I noticed that when I went to the barn each morning to care for our animals and to do my chores, instead of the quiet that I normally enjoyed I could hear a quiet ringing in my ears.  Not long after, I was diagnosed with tinnitus and a very mild hearing loss was considered to be the likely cause.

    Sometime later, my tinnitus was considerably worse and so was my hearing loss which led to my first hearing aid (only one at first because our insurance would only pay for one every two years).  That helped, but in less than two years I needed the other hearing aid and we paid for it out of pocket.  At that point my audiologist wondered why a guy who was barely over forty had hearing loss that looked like he was sixty or seventy.  To answer that question he referred me to an ear, nose and throat specialist, who saw me, had an MRI taken of my head and then referred me to another specialist who was even more specialized (a special, specialist, I guess) and who only did ears or something.  I want to be clear, I never really liked to listen to loud music, I was in the Army Reserve but I was never in the artillery or subjected to a huge amount of noise other than our annual rifle qualification.  I never worked in a factory where I was around loud noises (on a regular basis) and although I mowed the lawn and used power tools, I don’t think that I used them any more than most people.  Ultimately, the special specialist’s determination was basically, “We just don’t know.” And that’s where I am today.  I wear two hearing aids but each year I can notice my hearing getting worse than the year before and there is nothing that I can do about it.

  

    Two weeks ago, along with hundreds of my colleagues, I attended our Annual Conference, a gathering of clergy and laity representatives from United Methodist churches from across East Ohio.  In settings like that, in a huge auditorium with lots of background noise, my hearing is practically useless.  Hearing aids amplify every noise and, unlike normal hearing, you are utterly unable to distinguish one conversation from another so what I hear is often just a muddle.  I could generally hear the speakers who were wearing, or who were in front of, microphones but when questions came from the floor or from someone on stage without a microphone, forget it.  I also miss many things that are said when a speaker lowers their voice for effect.  Often I can figure out parts of what was said, but not always and as a result I generally miss jokes and funny stories because I can’t hear the punch-line even if I could hear the joke. 

    Last week, we picked up our son from a week at church camp.  He had spent a week playing in a small band and the band was playing the music for a group of teens who had written their own musical.  Because the acoustics in the barn where the production was held were like many large auditoriums, even though there were two stage microphones, I understood almost none of the dialog nor any of the words of the songs.  I was glad that my son played in the band and it wasn’t his hard work that I missed out on.  

    In the next few weeks I will see my audiologist for my annual checkup.  I will get another hearing test and he will send the results to the special specialist just in case there is anything that can be done (but there never is), and I will have him turn up the volume on my hearing aids…  again.  I know that soon my hearing aids won’t be able to get any louder and I will have to buy new, bigger and uglier hearing aids but it can’t be helped.  I work in a job where hearing other people is pretty important.  For now, with my hearing aids, things are not perfect.  I miss a lot but with the patience of my family and the people of my parish, I get along fine.  My experience with hearing loss does have one benefit I suppose.  My understanding, empathy and patience toward persons with hearing loss and all disabilities is growing and I see how much that those who are not disabled often just don’t get it.  I do worry about the future.  If I have the hearing of a sixty or seventy year old at forty six, then where will I be when I reach sixty or seventy?  I suspect that I may be having some serious conversations with my cousins about what it’s like to live in their world.

Too Busy for God?

Are you too busy for God?

    Have you made all your summer plans yet?  I have to shake my head when I think of all the activities that we have been cramming into our schedules for this summer.  We have vacations to fit in, family to visit, church and community activities to attend, church camp, scout camp, band camp, cross country camp, soccer practice, church Annual Conference to attend and other summer activities all added to our regular work schedule, doctor visits and other year ‘round activities.  The problem is that our family is not all that unusual.  Most people we know are planning equally busy schedules and sometimes more.  But amid all this hubbub and frenetic activity, where does God fit in?  

    It is well known that most churches see a slump in attendance over the summer.  There is a summer slump despite the fact that many people have been using the winter snow and spring rains as an excuse for not attending church.  I have come to believe that our summer attendance falls off not because church is unimportant.   Neither is it really because people are too busy.  Instead, attendance falls because most of us never stop long enough to really think about what we are doing.

    Most rational people understand how important it is to save for retirement and yet many of us arrive at our golden years with little to show for it.  It isn’t that we couldn’t have afforded to pass up a few lottery tickets or a second Big Mac once in a while so we could set aside a few bucks a week, it’s just that we never stopped long enough to think about it and to plan for the future.  For many, our track record for church attendance is pretty similar.  We believe that church attendance is important but we think that we’re too busy to add church attendance to our plans for the summer.  Because we don’t plan, Sunday sort of sneaks up on us and we arrive at the first day of the week tired and over-scheduled and grasp at one more free day to sleep in or to cram one more thing into our busy schedule.

    In our last church there was a family (I won’t use their names) who were leaders in our church.  They loved the church, they liked the pastor (at least they said they did) and their extended family attended our church.  They disappeared every summer.  At some point they bought expensive recreation equipment and felt that in order to justify the expense of their new toy, they should use it.  And so, during the spring, summer and fall, whenever the weather wasn’t particularly horrible, they would be gone nearly every weekend. 

They probably knew that someone in our church took attendance each Sunday.  What they probably didn’t know is that I kept those attendance sheets and looked at them at the end of the year.  Even though these were good people (and our friends) who loved the church and held leadership positions in it, at the end of the year their overall attendance fell well below 50 percent and probably below 30 percent.  I’m not certain that they would have believed me even if I had told them.

    Our friends didn’t miss church because they didn’t like it and they didn’t contribute to our summer slump because church wasn’t important.  They would be first in line to tell you different.  Instead, they, like many of us, never took the time to include church attendance as a part of their plan.  Each year we plan how many days that we will miss work.  We even try to calculate how many days we might be sick.  Sadly, even though many of us would say that church attendance is nearly as important, almost none of us have planned how many Sundays that we will miss.  The end result is that Sunday sort of sneaks up on us and at the end of the year we discover that we’ve missed far more days than we ever expected.

    As you make your summer plans I challenge you to do something unusual.  I challenge you to plan how many Sundays you will miss this year.  Decide, in advance, how important church attendance is to you. Choose how many days you will be absent, and then put it on your calendar and commit to it.

We all know that your summer will be busy.

Please don’t be too busy for God.

Living Together, No Harm No Foul?

    Folks inside and outside the church are known to ask the question “Why not?” when discussing the idea of living together prior to marriage (or simply outside of marriage altogether).  Such a choice is often defended by suggesting that there is a benefit from “getting to know each other” prior to making a major commitment.  Obviously, from the perspective of the church there is no half-step toward marriage.  Few of us are naïve enough to believe that a man and woman who live together will refrain from sexual relations and so we assume that living together implies a sexual relationship outside the boundaries of scripture.  Simply put, no one believes that you can “live together” without committing sin in the eyes of God.

    None of that is news.  Most people, whether they attend church or not, know that this is the position of the church.  What’s new is that the Bible and the church aren’t the only ones suggesting that living together might be a bad idea and it’s the new voice that you might find surprising… the federal government.  Some years ago federal research revealed that women who had even one abortion had nearly double the risk of cervical cancer but that news was politically unpopular and got little press.   Likewise, I suspect that you will not hear the Surgeon General say this at a press conference any time soon, nor do I expect to hear this from any major news outlets.  

The news that I read today was on Jim Daly’s (Jim Daly is the President of Focus on the Family) blog, Finding Home.  Dr. Bradford Wilcox from the University of Virginia is a researcher who has studied and written extensively on “marriage, parenthood, and cohabitation, and on the ways that gender, religion, and children influence the quality and stability of American marriages and family life.” (from the UVA website)  Dr. Wilcox has been analyzing a recent federal study on marriage and finds some truly startling statistics.  I have asked Focus on the Family for the name of the study – I will let you know if hear anything

The data tells us that, at least if you have children, living together is far more dangerous than being married.  According to Dr. Wilcox:

"...children living with their mother and her boyfriend are about 11 times more likely to be sexually, physically, or emotionally abused than children living with their married biological parents.  Likewise, children living with their mother and her boyfriend are six times more likely to be physically, emotionally, or educationally neglected than children living with their married biological parents.”

    The church (and society, generally) has long held that it was best for a child to be raised by both a mother and a father whenever possible.  This research indicates that this is true when that man and woman are married.  In the words of Dr. Wilcox, “one of the most dangerous places for a child in America to find himself in is a home that includes an unrelated male boyfriend--especially when that boyfriend is left to care for a child by himself."

    No one is saying that women who live with an unmarried partner are bad parents.  Neither do I suggest that single parents have it easy and that living together doesn’t solve problems related to finance, child care and time management.  What these findings do suggest is that single women with children should consider such living arrangements with great care because there is a significant risk to their children.  Although I am certain that the federal government will not draw the obvious conclusion, I will.  Marriage does make a difference and the commitment represented by a simple piece of paper does mean something.

Startling news, because of its source.

Scripturally, not at all surprising.

.

20/20 Blindness

    This week at the suggestion of several church leaders, I joined the Barnesville Kiwanis club.  I've attended as a guest before, have met several members and several others belong to our congregation.  At this week's meeting I met Donald Lynn.  Many people in Barnesville know Donald and most everyone has seen him around town with Bobby his guide dog.  Donald has impaired vision but he gets around pretty well and does most things that you and I do.  At the Kiwanis meeting on Monday, Donald was telling us about a recent experience that had bothered him.  It seems that a Chinese restaurant near Wal-Mart in Cambridge (Ohio) had refused him service and asked him to leave because of his guide dog.  Besides that fact that this is probably illegal under the Americans with Disabilities Act and other legislation, most of us at the meeting found this action to be offensive.   

    In the Gospel of John (Chapter 9) Jesus heals a man who was blind since birth and the leaders of the synagogue cannot believe that the healing really happened.  They deny that this man, who can clearly see, is the same man that they had seen for years begging at the gates to the Temple.  When the man's own parents testify that this is the same man, the leaders then deny that it was Jesus who did the healing.  In John's story we are told that the church leaders are the ones who are truly blind.  It seems strange that in two thousand years we are still hearing the same story.  For all of our modernity and sophistication it seems that not much has changed.

    Donald Lynn may be a man with impaired vision, but it is pretty obvious that someone else suffers from a far worse sort of blindness.

Seeing God in the World Around You

Where have you seen God at work in your world this week?   

    I try to remember to ask this question each week during our worship service in order to help each of us (myself included) to be more aware and to really look for what God is doing all around us.  Our God is not a passive God who sits in heaven and watches events unfold here on earth.  Instead, he is a God who loves us and is constantly busy shaping people and events in order to accomplish his will.  I was reminded of that this past week.

    Recently, I was invited to speak and participate at a Walk to Emmaus weekend retreat.  While the retreat (this past weekend) lasted from Thursday until Sunday afternoon, I was unable to be there for all of it because of a funeral and other church and family obligations.  Even so, it was chillingly evident (chilling evident - in this case means that it made a shiver run up and down my spine) that God had a plan.  The Walk to Emmaus is a ministry with which Patti and I have been involved for many years.  Nearly every time that Patti and I have participated in these events, we have seen times when God has placed very specific people in specific places for a specific reason.    This weekend God was able to use me in this way.

    The Walk to Emmaus is a three day retreat where the “pilgrims” journey closer in their relationship to Christ (there isn’t much real walking – except to lunch).  On this journey they hear sixteen talks about a variety of basic Christian teachings.  This weekend, the talk that I gave was on Friday morning and as such was among the first few talks that the pilgrims heard.  Typically, this early in the weekend, the pilgrims don’t know each other very well, they don’t know the speakers very well, they are still unsure what to expect and as a result are still pretty cautious in their attitudes and reactions.  Still, God placed me at the right place at the right time. 

    In my talk, I told a part of my life story.  I told a bit about how God had led me from a career in engineering to serving in full-time ministry.  I told how God spoke to Patti and me and let us know that he had other plans for our lives.  After I was finished, I was approached by a man who was amazed at the things that I had said, not because my experience was unique or amazing but because, as he put it, “It sounded as if you were reading my life story.”  In their table discussion afterward, he had wept and asked the other men at his table how I had known so much about his life.   

Obviously, I didn’t.   

    This particular retreat was originally scheduled for last fall and the talk that I gave was supposed to be delivered by Rev. Ed Eberhart from the Barnesville First Christian Church.  Since there were not enough people registered, the entire event was postponed.  When the new dates were announced, Pastor Ed discovered that he had a conflict and so, at the last minute, the director of the weekend went looking for a replacement on short notice… and found me.

    This is how God works.  Months before I had any idea what I would be doing in March, God had a plan.  God shaped the events of last weekend so that two men, total strangers, would meet, and in the process an entire roomful of men would discover that God loves and cares for each of us with a love beyond measure.  What’s more, God shaped the events of last weekend so that one man could rediscover God’s love and find healing and hope.

    God is always at work in the world around us.  We will see Him if we will only take the time to look.

Where have you seen God at work in your world this week?