Love Wins (6)

Chapter 6 of this book is entitled “There are Rocks Everywhere.” The chapter opens up with various stories about the weird and kooky ways in which God has worked to get people’s attention. He asks the question…

“Should we dismiss those experiences that come out of nowhere, the love that creeps in, with no explanation, at the strangest times, the quiet grace that grabs hold of us in the middle of the night and assures us that we’re going to be fine?”

I think all of us agree that God in His divine, mysterious way often grabs people’s attention. While reading this section of his book I immediately thought of the story of the apostle Paul’s conversion, and the conversion experience of C.S. Lewis. To be sure, there are a myriad of ways in which people come to God.

However, the purpose of the “quiet grace that grabs hold of us in the middle of the night” is not just to assure of that we’re going to be fine. The grace that is mentioned in the New Testament is about being grabbed by God for his purposes, whether we are going to be fine or not. We like to think that we are going to fine from our perspective. But remember, conversion is not about us. It is about being changed by God for God’s divine purposes.

Rob Bell then refers to the allegorical interpretation that Paul uses in comparing Jesus as the rock to the rock that Moses used to quench Israel’s thirst. Though the author attempts to make the point that there are rocks everywhere, and perhaps our experience of God is everywhere with everyone and in everyway, the Pauline model is different.

Moses did not strike every rock in the desert. He only struck the one God commanded him to. Jesus is the one and only rock to which the spiritually hungry can be satisfied. In referring to this allegorical interpretation in 1 Corinthians, Bell unknowingly undermines his “universalist tendency.”

I  really like how Bell goes back and repaints for us the early Christians’ worldview and how it was different from the Greeks and Romans. Their deity was not an energy force, a mystical spirit, or life force. God is the all mighty who brings order out of chaos. God speaks and it happens.

Jesus is the mediator through which the world is created, he is before all things, and through whom all things came and through whom we live. Listen to this quote:

“Jesus, for the first Christians, was the ultimate exposing of what God has been up to all along.” 

This recognizes the sovereign plan of God unfolding in the fullness of time (see Galatians 4:4 on this point!). This Jesus has been made know to Jews and Gentiles. This mystery hidden in God is the person of Jesus Christ.

Listen to this statement: 

“He will always transcend whatever cages and labels are created to contain and name him, especially the one called “Christianity.” 

 There are several ways to unpack and understand this statement. Here are my responses…

 
1. Even though the word “Christianity” is not in the New Testament, one has to be careful how it is used. Normally, it is used to refer to one of two things: the life of faith that Jesus came to earth and uniquely modeled to the glory of God, or the history of the Christian faith that is represented by nearly 2000 years of denominational practices and religious movements.


2. Whenever we try to re-write the story of Jesus, the temptation is always to put him our cage and use our labels. This is always the result of an attempt to figure him out. Jesus does not invite scrutiny, he invites discipleship!


3. Jesus is transcendent. He transcends the ages, the empires, the religious movements and human reason. Because Jesus is transcendent, I would be compelled to have the title of a book I wrote like Bell’s “Jesus Wins,” Not “Love Wins.” Unless of course, he means that the “Love of Jesus Wins!”

 In Christian love, Curtis

Love Wins (5)

 

So far, chapter 5 (“Dying to Live”) is the best chapter of Rob Bell’s new book, Love Wins. He does an excellent job of keeping the cross and the resurrection at the center of the Christian message.

He demonstrates the real meaning of the cross as opposed to a decorative symbol. It is understood as…

Sacrifice

 Reconciliation

 Justification

 Victory

“What the first Christians did was look around them and put the Jesus story in language their listeners would understand” (Kindle, location 63%).

This is a fascinating and challenging insight. Remember that the Greek New Testament was written in the KOINE dialect. This was sort of the best of the written and spoken language of the common people. A wonderful study is to look at all of the common words that take on “spiritual meaning” when used in the context of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

For example, even the word “gospel” itself was understood as “good news,” or even more specifically the announcement of good news relating to the emperor’s birthday, or victory in battle.

When talking about the cross and the effect of Christ’s sacrifice Bell says, “…These first Christians were using images and metaphors, reading their world, looking for ways to communicate this epic event in ways their listeners could grasp”(Kindle, location 63%).

This raises some very important questions for all of us…

1.  How do we tell the story of Jesus in ways our listeners can grasp?


2.  Do we use the biblical images and metaphors still, and then explain them to our contemporary audience?


3.  Do we find corresponding images and metaphors that communicate the same thing today that the first ones did back then?


4.  Do we allow the sociological context to help us communicate (“reading their world”)?


5.  If we replace some biblical images and metaphors, will we lose anything essential to the Jesus story?

While attempting to answer these questions, I have to admit that I do have a bias. I do not think it has to be an either/or. Here is the bigger question:   “Can we still communicate the Jesus story to a contemporary audience, reading our world at the same time, using biblical images and metaphors?”

I believe that the best thing to do is appropriate the New Testament language, and then explain it, illustrate, and find a parallel contemporary image or metaphor where necessary.

I think if we give up the “Christian vocabulary” of the New Testament we may be giving up some essential aspects of the Jesus story we may not be aware of. And by the time we did realize it, it may be too late!

In Christian love, Curtis

Love Wins (4)

 

Does God get what He wants? From Scripture we learn that God’s desire is that all peoples, and all nations receive salvation and everlasting life.

What disturbs Bell is the notion that not all people will be saved, apparently presenting a contradiction between what God desires and what God actually gets.

So, if God desires that all be saved, and it ends up that all are not saved, then is God powerless, and is God impotent and unable to bring about his purposes?

Sometimes it is hard to figure out what Bell actually believes because his writing style is to throw out questions. It is in the questions as they are articulated that we find a clue to what he believes. Here is an example…

“Is God our friend, our provider, our protector, our father—or is God the kind of judge who may in the end declare that we deserve to spend forever separated from our Father? (Bell, Kindle, 51% location)

It is now easy to see the dilemma he poses…God cannot be friend and judge at the same time. God cannot be provider and judge at the same time. God cannot be protector and judge at the same time. God cannot be father and judge at the same time.

Bell is subtly (sometimes not so subtly) pushing hard for a universalism where all are saved. Here are his questions…

“Will ‘all the ends of the earth’ come, as God has decided, or only some? Will all feast as it’s promised in Psalm 22, or only a few? Will everybody be given a new heart, or only a limited number of people?”

Finally, as Bell appeals to various Christian thinkers over the ages, he concludes with this (which I assume is his belief)…

“At the center of the Christian tradition since the first church have been a number who insist that history is not tragic, hell is not forever, and love, in the end, wins and all will be reconciled to God.”

For Rob Bell trying to reconcile the notion of free will and choice with the biblical teaching about hell ends up this way…

“Love demands freedom. It always has, and it always will. We are free to resist, reject, and rebel against God’s ways for us. We can have all the hell we want.” (Bell, Love Wins, Kindle location 57%)

In short, this entire chapter is an attempt to say that since God is so loving, and God is powerful enough to get what he always wants, then the only way to explain hell is that it is of one’s own making here and now. This is because in the end a new heaven and new earth will be free of evil and we can enjoy God’s love.

Several things in this chapter that the author is right about, and causes one to ponder seriously-how each of us create our own hell here on earth, the passionate pursuit of God for sinners, God’s desire that all be saved, the reward of new heaven and new earth that we are looking for, etc.

The New Testament writers are unanimous with their witness…salvation through Jesus Christ rescues and saves us from hell, but saves us FOR the love of God with a life lived sacrificially for others. Hell, the lake of fire and brimstone, Tartarus, etc. are all appropriated in the New Testament as places or realities where the devil, demons and unbelievers reside forever separated from God. Interestingly, in the book of Revelation this is used as a motivation for persecuted Christians to remain faithful.

I understand the driving desire to want to say that everyone in the end will be saved and end up in God’s presence forever. There is one catch…not everyone will respond to God’s gift of Jesus on the cross. Therein lies the problem!

In Christian love, Curtis