Love Wins (7)

Chapter 7 of Rob Bell’s book, Love Wins, is entitled “The Good News is Better Than That.” I want to focus on how heaven and hell are conceived in this chapter.

The first big point is that heaven and hell are about separation. It is based on choice and how one conceives of this situation before the Father.

Bell utilizes the Parable of the Prodigal Son to make his point. But to use this story to prove that the Father’s love is universally dispensed no matter what a person believes or practices is to engage in “eisegesis” and spurious hermeneutics. By this I mean, that the story as utilized by Luke in his gospel is being used to argue something totally foreign.

In the Lukan context, this parable is used as exhibit #3 to substantiate the claim against Jesus that “this man welcomes sinners and eats with them.” On this specific occasion tax collectors and “sinners” were all gathered around to hear Jesus.

The NIV correctly puts the word “sinners” in quotation marks. Who are the “sinners” in Luke’s gospel? Simply,  they are the disenfranchised. They are the beggars, the lame, the lepers, prostitutes, tax collectors, and any others who might be perceived as “low-life.” Jesus’ life touched the untouchables.

Yes, Jesus sits down and eats with untouchables.

Yes, Jesus wants to touch the untouchables.

The parable of the Prodigal Son gives us another dimension of an untouchable—a wasteful, prodigal son who runs away from home, blows all of his money, and comes back home broke and dejected.

An extravagant Father’s love and a resentful, judging attitude of the older brother.

This contrast sharpens just how much Jesus goes to touch the lives of those who need him and those who do not think they need him!

This extravagant love of the Father is experienced by both sons. Both sons are part of the family already. When the son leaves home, with his inheritance in his pocket before its rightful time (and as some have pointed out was tantamount to spitting in his father’s face and one of the most disrespectful acts a son could engage in!), he goes into a distant country.  While there, the Father believes the son is “lost” and “dead.”

Listen to Luke’s closing of this parable:

 “’My son,’ the father said, ‘you are always with me, and everything I have is yours. But we had to celebrate and be glad, because this brother of yours was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.’”(Luke 15:31-32)

What makes the extravagant love of the waiting Father (Helmut Theilicke’s phrase) such good news? Because of such bad news! The good news of the gospel is that God’s invitation to come home is universally offered to all who are “lost” and “dead.” For Luke, even those who have had it so good in the Father’s family and leave, they can still return to the outstretched arms of a forgiving Father.

We need to be careful and not take the edge off of this powerful parable! When the younger son becomes destitute, hungry and with no friends, the story says, “when he came to his senses” (Luke 15:17). Actually, the Greek phrase expresses “when he came to himself he said…” This goes one step deeper than just coming to his senses. It is a statement of repentance. It is an inner change of heart and direction in one’s life.

This is substantiated by  his further monologue: “I will set out and go back to my Father and say to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you.”

Good news is only possible because we recognize the sin in our life. We recognize what we have done to ourselves and against our Father.

It is the bad news that makes the good news so good!

In Christian love, Curtis

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