Some thoughts on recent controversy...

As is often the case, I have come late to the party. The controversy over Rob Bell’s newest book Love Wins has been brewing for quite some time. Someone recently mentioned to me that Bell had come out and said that he didn’t believe in Hell, and I didn’t think much of it because I wasn’t all that surprised. I deeply enjoyed his Nooma video series, but I had to stop watching when I saw him leaning more and more in the direction of shaky theology. Bell is an iconic representative of the Emergent Church movement, which although quite popular today, has moved too far away from biblical theology for most evangelicals. An example of the skewed theology being put forth by these churches is this statement from the book Emerging Churches by Eddie Gibbs and Ryan K. Bolger, “…seeing the church as not necessarily the center of God’s intentions. God is working in the world, and the Church has the option to join God or not.” This thinking is NOT biblical. Jesus Himself said of the church, “And Jesus came to them, saying, “All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” Here we see Jesus declaring that all of the authority of heaven and earth has been given to Him. In response He chooses to impart that authority to His church and command them to go and make disciples. This is not a picture of Christ working independently in the world and the Church having the option to participate or not. “Go and make disciples” is a command. Not going is disobedience and the Bible calls that sin.

Now Rob Bell has come out with a book that sounds great. Who doesn’t like the idea of Love winning? The interesting thing to me about this latest brouhaha is that this is not a new idea. Satan has been contradicting the clear teaching of God since the very beginning, and he always offers some better-sounding version. He tells Eve, “You will surely not die. For God knows that in the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened, knowing good and evil.” Satan convinced Eve that what she heard from God was wrong, a lie, that God was holding out on her, that there was something better than what God offered her—knowing good and evil. This goes beyond just becoming aware of good and evil for the first time. Upon eating of the tree, Adam and Eve decided for themselves what was good and evil. This is exactly what is happening with the latest iteration of the “there is no Hell” idea. That is what Bell is saying in his book, and has restated in several on-air television interviews. Rob Bell has come along and decided that the Bible’s teaching on Hell is not the truth. He has decided for himself that his view is better because in his view, everybody wins.

This idea is not new, but that doesn’t make it sound. It is anti-biblical and goes against the clear teaching of Jesus Christ. I can find at least nineteen references to hell in the Bible that are written in red. That means they are quotes of Christ. He talked a lot about Hell. He believed it was a real place where real people will spend a real eternity. How much did Jesus think hell was real? So much that he was willing to be tortured and die on a cross in order to prevent anyone from having to go there. You see the reality of Hell is not just about my theological preferences. Would I prefer that there were no Hell? Absolutely! But I don’t have that option. Because not only did Jesus believe in Hell and teach about its reality, He went to the cross and died to overcome its power. If there is no Hell, Jesus was either mistaken about it, deluded about it, or lying about it. I cannot accept either of those answers. The Bible teaches that Hell was created as a place of punishment for Lucifer and his minions. When Lucifer convinced man to reject God and choose sin, man was forever separated from God. Christ came into this world to break sin’s hold on man’s destiny. By living a perfect sinless life and fulfilling the righteous requirements of the Law, and by taking the sin of the world upon Himself and dying on the cross, Christ freed man from a destiny in Hell. So the Christ’s death on the cross is intimately tied to the reality of Hell. To deny the existence of Hell is to severely undermine the work of the Cross, and by extension the power of Christianity. No matter how attractively it is packaged, or how sweet it sounds, bad theology is bad theology. Bible-believing Christians should reject it.

The power of the tongue

As someone who quite often only opens his mouth to change feet I have a great deal of appreciation for the power that words carry. I am a teacher by trade and words are my currency as well as my subject matter. With  few words I can completely control the classroom. I can, with a word or two encourage a student to greatness, or cut them off at the knees. Words have tremendous power. Consider the power of the following words, "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal . . . " Those words set the course for our nation and have been a guide to us ever since. Words have great power.

If words are so powerful, then why are we so careless with them? If you gave me twenty sticks of dynamite to carry around I would be extremely careful and intentional with the way I handled them, and yet I have done far more damage to the people around me with careless words than with explosives. I have never actually handled dynamite, but I have said the wrong thing at the wrong time and brought tears to the eyes of a good friend, on more than one occasion. It was shortly after one of those instances when I was reading through the book of Proverbs and came across this. "Like a madman throwing firebrands, arrows, and death, is the man who deceives his neighbor, and says, "I was only joking!" I was stunned. I couldn't believe that was in there. How many times have I said some horribly biting sarcastic remark followed quickly with, "I'm just kidding" and patted myself on the back for my clever wit? A disturbing number of times. Here the Bible was calling me out; telling me that my wit was caustic and hurtful and a bringer of death. I was reminded of the axiom that sarcasm is truth disguised as humor.

As my personal conviction grew, the words of James began to pound in my heart. "But no man can tame the tongue. It is an unruly evil, full of deadly poison. With it we bless our God and Father, and with it we curse men, who have been made in the image of God. Out of the same mouth proceed blessing and cursing. My brethren, these things ought not be so." James 3: 8-10. I know that in my own life I have ripped people up with sarcasm and used humor to say hurtful and even mean things. I have said even worse things about people when they were nowhere nearby. I have been rude to people directly and said horrible things about them behind their backs. Sadly this sarcastic wit comes quite easily to me. It is a part of my fleshly personality, one that I cultivated in high school as my way of getting back at people who were more socially acceptable than I. It's there with me at all times, offering up a multiple choice list of funny, sarcastic, and mean things to say; things guaranteed to get me a laugh and impress someone with my cleverness. The problem is that those things are also guaranteed to hurt someone, and they never, ever, please God.

I am learning lately that doing things that please God is far more important in our spiritual health than we may realize. I'm not talking about obeying specific commands from God, I'm talking about doing the things that God would be pleased with, whether He has specifically asked us to or not. The Bible says that people who please God, get whatever they ask of Him in prayer. I so much want to be someone who has a purposeful and powerful prayer life, and yet how often to I slip into doing that which pleases me, rather than that which pleases God. It is so easy. We sometimes just flesh out. It doesn't mean we don't love God, or even that we don't love other people, it is simply a byproduct of the weakness of our flesh and the desire of our enemy to thwart our growth. One of the first ways in which many of us slip from a focus on pleasing God is through the things we say. How often do we participate in idle gossip, or frivolous and empty debates? How often do we use our tongue to cut down someone else; someone who is created in the image of God. I can't tell you how many times I have done this. I've hurt people I care about. It is almost never intentional, it is rather a question of not being mindful. A careless word can bring devastation, and in spite of the playground sentiment, it cannot be "taken back."

So what do I do when this happens? Well I certainly don't give up hope. I must first question the condition of my heart, because Christ said that, "out of the wellspring of the heart, the mouth speaks." If I am truly sorry that I have said something hurtful, and I confess my error, and choose to turn away from that behavior, and toward God (repentance), then the Bible says that I am forgiven of my sins and cleansed from all unrighteousness (I John 1:9). If my heart is repentant than God chooses to forgive me and wash away all of my guilt. Paul reminds us in Romans that there is "no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus." Jesus expertly expressed this concept with the woman caught in adultery, by pointing out the myriad ways in which the crowd of angry judges was every bit as guilty and condemned before God as this woman. As they all dropped their stones and walked away, the one person on the scene who had the right to judge her said, "Neither do I condemn you, now go and do better."  That is God's heart on the matter of blowing it. If we are repentant, He chooses to forgive us and wash us clean and send us back out there to be His representation before the world. This encourages me greatly because I so often mess up. It is so critical that I embrace the reality that my mistakes are covered by the blood shed at Calvary, AND that God knew I would make them before I did. This is a powerful insight into the heart of God. It is the heart of a loving and forgiving father. A father who is pacing his porch daily waiting for his one son to return home. It is a heart that cares more about having a relationship with us than about our performance. God's heart toward us is a heart of love and mercy. He looked down from heaven and saw us, in all of our lowly wretchedness, at our absolute worst, and saw us as redeemable. God sees us as the pearl of great price, and He was the one who went and sold all that He had to purchase us. What do I do when I mess up and make some careless comment that hurts and upsets someone I care about? I remember the cross. I remember the love of God that saw me as worth the ultimate sacrifice, the blood of God. That was what He paid in order to buy my redemption. He shed His own blood for me. I deserve judgment and condemnation from God. I receive mercy and grace. I need to embrace that grace and remember another key passage from James. Mercy triumphs over judgment.

in His grace...

a matter of significance

I was recently struck by a conversation I had with a young person. This person has tremendous talent, intelligence, and potential, and yet seemed to be crippled by self-doubt and regret over past decisions. I was moved by their pain and their feeling that they were alone in their struggle. The conversation moved me to think about the fact that we matter. All of us, individually, matter. . . to God. We have significance because of the shed blood of Christ. God designed this universe so that we would have a place to exist aned pursue a realtionship with Him. He planned each one of us, and the Bible tells us that He knew us in our mother's womb, and that His intimate knowledge of us existed before even time began. Additionally after our blowing it and contaminating all of humanity with the plague of sin, He sent Christ to suffer and die, to redeem us. I can't imagine anything that is more valuable than the blood of God. That blood was shed for each one of us, that we might have a personal relationship with Him. We matter. We matter more than you can possibly imagine, and we can spend our lives exploring this reality and never exhaust its depth. Something to think about.

More on this later.