Paul Stewart

Rob Bell: Inaugurated Eschatology vs. Consummated Eschatology

Over the past few weeks I’ve read countless reviews or Rob Bell’s new book, Love Wins: A Book About Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived. Scot McKnight has put together a few of the highlights, but my favorite review so far came from my friend George P. Wood.

George and I have blogged together before and have had actually interacted quite a bit on this topic. While we don’t agree on the nature of hell itself, I think his critique of Bell as a “hell-believing universalist” is spot on.

Wood begins by pointing out that in this world there are two kinds of people: those who love questions and those who love answers. Rob Bell loves questions. His critics love answers. This difference between them - a difference that is both temperamental and methodological - illuminates the controversy surrounding Love Wins.

Bell asks, "Does God get what God wants?"--namely, "all people to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth" (2 Tim. 2:4). He further asks, "Do we get what we want?" A "yes" answer to the first question makes you a universalist, that is, a person who believes that God both desires the salvation of all people and realizes that desire. A "yes" answer to the second question makes you a proponent of hell, that is, a person who believes that we can be separated from God for eternity.

A "yes" answer to both questions makes you Rob Bell, a hell-believing universalist.

If that description of Bell strikes you as an oxymoron, you are probably an answer-lover who longs for clarity and certainty. To you, belief in universalism and belief in hell form an incoherent set. Either/or but not both/and.  

But Bell is a question-lover comfortable with ambiguity and uncertainty. God will get what God wants. And we will get what we want. Either way, love wins. "If we want hell, if we want heaven, they are ours. That's how love works. It can't be forced, manipulated, or coerced. It always leaves room for the other to decide. God says yes, we can have what we want, because love wins."

I believe as Bell does that hell is self-chosen and is a continuation of the “hell” we create for ourselves on this earth. The problem is that Bell doesn't draw a sharp distinction between this age and the age to come.

He argues--correctly, forcefully, and with great insight--that they overlap in the present age. (He also argues--again, correctly, forcefully, and with great insight--that our eschatology should shape our ethics.) Theologians describe the overlap as inaugurated eschatology. In other words, through his death and resurrection, Jesus Christ inaugurates "the age to come" in the midst of "this age." In terms of heaven, this means that we can begin to experience "eternal life" right here and right now. "Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come," Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 5:17: "The old has gone, the new is here!" But inaugurated eschatology also applies in terms of hell. Romans 1:18 says, "The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people." And 2:5 adds, "because of your stubbornness and your unrepentant heart, you are storing up wrath against yourself for the day of God's wrath, when his righteous judgment will be revealed." According to these verses, right now, we begin to experience either "eternal life" and "new creation" or "wrath" and "judgment."

But the New Testament not only teaches an inaugurated eschatology, it also teaches consummated eschatology. If the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ inaugurates, his second coming consummates. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15:51-52: "Listen, I tell you a mystery: We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed--in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed." And John in Revelation 19:11: "I saw heaven standing open and there before me was a white horse, whose rider is called Faithful and True. With justice he judges and makes war." In these passages, and in many others, Christ's return marks a definitive turning point in the relationship between God and his creatures. In the words of the Nicene Creed, "He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead."

For Bell, there does not seem to be a definitive turning point, a crisis moment where destinies are finalized. Hell, especially, is temporal and remedial. How long one spends there depends on how long one resists God's love. "Hell is our refusal to trust God's retelling of our story." Bell draws attention to Revelation 21:25, which says of the New Jerusalem: "On no day will its gates ever be shut." Then he writes: "That's a small detail, and its' important we don't get too hung up on details and specific images because it's possible to treat something so literally that it becomes less true in the process. But gates, gates are for keeping people in and keeping people out. If the gates are never shut, then people are free to come and go." Bell sees this as an image of hope. Those who have chosen hell can choose heaven. Logically, though, the image contains a note of despair, for what stops a person who has chosen heaven from choosing hell? Absent the precipitating event of Christ's second coming and the final judgment, it seems to me that life as Rob Bell portrays it will always be an ongoing struggle between heaven and hell, with no guarantee of a final resolution. And if that's the case, in what sense does love actually win?

Thanks George for this excellent review!

Hell and Human Nature - Part III

This is part of a series of posts flowing out of the conversation Rob Bell initiated in his new book Love Wins. I plan to cover the book itself in more detail next week, but before you can have a conversation about Heaven, Hell and the fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived, you have to talk about the nature of human beings themselves. You can get caught up by reading Part I, and Part II. Also, this might possibly be the longest post I've ever written. It will take an eternity for you to read it. In fact, it might feel like an eternally conscious torment. Which is ironic.

Yesterday I argued that the soul is not an immortal substance that has to exist eternally. As Jesus himself says, God is able to destroy both body and soul in hell (Mt 10:28). Humans were made mortal, with everlasting life being a gift, not a natural capacity. God created human beings with the intention of living eternally with Him, but when sin entered the world, death came along with it. This is both a physical and spiritual death resulting, without Christ, in eternal destruction.

So the key question is this: Does God intend to grant the wicked immortality in order to inflict endless pain upon them?

Many people answer, yes. This is why hell was created, to eternally punish the wicked. Mark Driscoll puts it this way “Hell is a place of punishment that God prepared for the Devil and his angels. It is where the beast and the false prophet and those who worship them will drink the wine of God’s wrath, poured full strength into the cup of his anger, and he will be tormented with fire and sulfur in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the Lamb. And the smoke of their torment goes up forever and ever, and they have no rest, day or night.”

I do not believe this to be the case for two reasons, 1) Scriptures suggest the final destruction of the impenitent and 2) hell as destruction is more in line with the justice of God.

First of all, in contrast to Rob Bell, I believe the scriptural warnings about eternal destruction are clear enough to prevent us from entertaining the hope of universal salvation (more on this next week). Evidently God values human freedom so much that he allows people to reject him finally. If there is one basic characteristic of hell, it is, in contrast to heaven, the absence of God or banishment from his presence. The consequences of this are very real, they are terrible, and eternal.

The question is whether or not hell, in addition to being real, terrible, and eternal, will involve the experience of everlasting suffering. Will the final destiny of the impenitent be eternal conscious torment or will it be a total annihilation of their being? What kind of hell would cohere with a loving God who does not desire that any perish but all have eternal life?

It is important to start by defining the nature of hell. I believe as Bell does that hell is self-chosen and is a continuation of the “hell” we create for ourselves on this earth.

CS Lewis wrote “Hell begins with a grumbling mood, always complaining, always blaming others… but you are still distinct from it. You may even criticize it in yourself and wish you could stop it. But there may come a day when you can no longer. Then there will be no you left to criticize the mood or even to enjoy it, but just the grumble itself, going on forever like a machine. It is not a question of God ‘sending us’ to hell. In each of us there is something growing, which will BE Hell unless it is nipped in the bud.” 

Lewis held that we are created for a relationship with God as human beings who bear the divine image. When we rebel against God and commit ourselves to evil ways, we move further away from this positive relationship with God—and, thereby, further and further away from our humanity. Our ultimate destiny, then, if we do not change directions, is to cease to be human: we end up as monsters who have chosen to live in an outer darkness, removed from God and from other humans. 

J.I.Packer also sees hell as self-chosen: writes: “Hell appears as a God’s gesture of respect for human choice. All receive what they actually chose, either to be with God forever, worshipping him, or without God forever, worshipping themselves.”

In Romans 1-2 Paul explains that God, in his wrath against those who reject him, ‘gives them up’ to the sinful passions of their hearts. It means that the worst (and fairest) punishment God can give a person is to actively give them their sinful hearts’ deepest desire.

Hell is only for those who persistently reject the real God in favor of false gods. So in the end, people get to be with the god they love. To paraphrase C. S. Lewis, either people will say to God, “Thy will be done,” or God will say to them, “Thy will be done.”

So hell is eternal separation from God, which recognizes both Jesus’ words ‘depart from me’ (Matt 7:23, 25:41) and of Paul’s ‘shut out from the presence of the Lord’ (2 Thess 1:9). We surely have to say this banishment from God will be real, terrible (so that ‘it would be better for him if he had not been born’, Mark 14:21) and eternal.

However, in contrast to Bell, I believe it is clear that the New Testament records no possibility of a later reprieve or amnesty. In contrast to ‘eternal life’ and ‘eternal salvation’ we read ‘eternal judgment’ (Hebrews 6:2, Mark 3:29), ‘everlasting contempt’ (Dan 12:2), ‘eternal punishment’ (Matt 25:46), ‘everlasting destruction’ (2 Thess 1:9) and ‘eternal fire’ (Matt 18:8, 25:41). And the imagery supporting this includes the picture of the door being shut (Matt 25:10-12) and the great chasm being fixed (Luke 16:26).

However, if our souls are radically contingent and dependent on God’s continuing providence for their very being, without his sustaining presence, I would argue that total extinction at death is a very real possibility.

Of course, the image we most often associate with hell is that of fire. The biblical expression ‘a consuming fire’ and John the Baptist’s picture of the Judge ‘burning up the chaff with unquenchable fire’ (Matt 3:12, cf. Luke 3:17). In both of these instances it is the fire itself is termed ‘eternal’ and ‘unquenchable’, but it would be very odd if what is thrown in proves indestructible. Our expectation would be the opposite: it would be consumed forever, once and for all, not tormented forever. Hence it is the smoke (evidence that the fire has done its work) which ‘rises for ever and ever’ (Revelation 14:11; cf. 19:3). 

Much is made of Jesus’ parable of the sheep and the goats where he contrasted ‘eternal life’ with ‘eternal punishment’ (Matt 25:46). Does this not indicate that in hell people will endure eternal conscious punishment? No, that is to read into the text what is not necessarily there. What Jesus said is that both the life and the punishment would be eternal, he did not in that passage define the nature of either. Just because elsewhere Jesus spoke of eternal life as a conscious enjoyment of God (John 17:3), it does not necessarily follow that eternal punishment must be a conscious experience of pain at the hand of God.

In the Book of Revelation it says that in the lake of fire ‘they will be tormented day and night for ever and ever.’ However, this sentence occurs only once (20:10) where it refers not only to the devil, but to ‘the beast and the false prophet.’ The noun for ‘torment’ is also used for ‘the harlot of Babylon’ (Rev 18:7, 10, 15), though without the addition of the words ‘for ever and ever.’ But the beast, the false prophet and the harlot are not individual people, they are symbols of the world in its varied hostility to God. Therefore they cannot experience pain. Nor can ‘Death and Hades,’ which are also symbols said to follow them into the lake of fire (20:13).

The most natural way to understand the reality behind the imagery John uses is that ultimately all enmity and resistance to God will be destroyed.

The fires of hell do not torture but rather consume the wicked. It would seem strange if the symbols and the people who are said to suffer destruction are in fact not destroyed. It is difficult to imagine a perpetually inconclusive process of perishing. And most importantly, the eternal existence of Satan and his minions in hell would be hard to reconcile with the promises of God’s final victory over evil.

Finally, I believe that an eternally conscious hell challenges the justice of God. Augustine conceived of hell as a literal lake of fire where the damned are embodied in order to burn everlastingly in the flames. This cannot be true, because it contradicts our moral sense and God’s moral nature. The idea that a fully conscious creature would undergo physical and mental torture through endless time is plainly sadistic and therefore incompatible with a God who loves humanity. 

Hell cannot be viewed as a vindictive, retributive punishment. Since Jesus bore the sins of the world, we know that God is not in the business of punishing people. Jesus died so that he would not have to do that. Therefore, hell has to be more a matter of self-destruction, the logical result of final rejection of God. God does not choose hell for people – they choose it.

God’s anger and wrath always comes in order to heal sinners, not to visit endless torment on them. If it fails to heal them, hell must be termination, because otherwise the picture would be one of God endlessly tormenting people for no reason except retribution. No purpose is served by the unending torture of the wicked except vengeance.

Anselm argued that because sin is an offense against God, the raising of a finite will against the will of an infinite being, one cannot consider sin to be merely a finite act deserving finite punishment. However, this conception of hell goes far beyond the Old Testament standard of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, the standard of strict equivalence. And Jesus calls us to an even higher standard than strict equivalence. No set of human choices can deserve everlasting conscious torment. No crime could deserve such punishment.

So, to sum it all up: It is my view that God created us to live as holistic human beings, both spiritual and physical. He desired for us to live forever with him in this state of perfection. However, sin entered the world and with it death, both physical and spiritual. God has been on a mission ever since to rescue human beings from destruction, so much so that he sent his own son to destroy sin and death. Christ came and died a physically brutal death on the cross, and three days later he arose, victoriously as the ‘firstfruits’ of God’s promise for our resurrection. As we approach that day of His return many believers will die physically, yet Scripture promises us that to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord. Those who have believed will be resurrected and spend eternity with God in the ‘New Heavens and New Earth.’ Those who have rejected God will be resurrected and sent to eternal destruction.

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* Some would say that the absence of an eternally conscious torment in hell does not take the consequences of sin seriously enough. I would respond that to reject God, to miss the purpose for which one was created, to pass into oblivion while others enter into bliss, this will mean weeping and the gnashing of teeth, and is all the fear we need to take Christ’s offer seriously. 

** The position that I am arguing for is often referred to as annihilationism. Some may view this is as heretical as universalism. However, a number of conservative evangelical scholars disagree including J.I. Packer and John Stott. The latter being a key architect of 20th-century evangelicalism who made his case for hell as destruction in Evangelical Essentials: A Liberal-Evangelical Dialogue.

Hell and the Nature of Human Beings - Part II

This is part of a series of posts flowing out of the conversation Rob Bell initiated in his new book Love Wins. But before you can have a conversation about Heaven, Hell and the fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived, you have to talk about the nature of human beings themselves. You can read Part I HERE.

As Christians, we believe in the 'blessed hope', the personal, imminent, coming of the Lord Jesus Christ for His redeemed ones and look forward to a new heaven and a new earth, where righteousness will dwell and reign forever. We believe that the day is coming when Jesus Christ will return personally and visibly, in power and glory, to consummate his salvation and his judgment, bringing an end to injustice and restoring all things to God’s original intent.

This renewal began with the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The resurrection of Christ was an eschatological event that has initiated the time of the end, but the end itself, with the resurrection of those who belong to Christ, will be triggered by the second coming of Christ for his Church.

The resurrection is a future event. Believers are not yet raised; we do not yet share in the resurrection. In the interval between physical death and resurrection, our souls will survive in an intermediate state until they are rejoined with our physical bodies at the second coming of Christ.

However, affirming continuous personal existence during the intermediate state does not necessarily commit one to the soul’s inherent or essential immortality.  I would argue that this is a Greek philosophical concept that became a part of accepted Christian doctrine.

Plato argued that the soul is metaphysically indestructible because it is a simple spiritual substance and cannot therefore undergo decomposition. Socrates insisted that neither those who accused him nor the poison they forced him to take could destroy his soul. It is true that some Christians, including Augustine and Thomas Aquinas, have adopted this argument in defending biblical teaching. This was often the result of early Christian theology seeking to express faith in the biblical God with the help of Greco-Roman philosophical categories. In an effort to contextualize the gospel message, many elements of Greek philosophy became a part of accepted Christian doctrine. Therefore, although Christians still spoke of the resurrection of the body, which had been a part of their faith from the beginning, they also began to think of the future life in terms of the immortality of the soul.

But the Bible nowhere says that the soul is immortal. On the contrary, in Matthew 10:28  Jesus says, "Do not fear those who kill the body but are unable to kill the soul; but rather fear Him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.” According to Scripture God possesses immortality in himself (1 Timothy 1:17; 6:16); he reveals and gives it to us through the gospel (2 Timothy 1:10).

The soul is not an absolute substance as Plato taught. It cannot be said that it is impossible to destroy human beings because they are immortal, for the immortality - and therefore indestructibility – of the soul is a Greek not a biblical concept.

In fact, I would suggest that the soul is no more inherently immortal than the body. Souls are radically contingent and dependent on God’s continuing providence for their very being. Total extinction at death is thus a very real possibility. In other words, Christian dualists are not committed to the Platonic view of immortality.

The Bible points to a resurrection of the whole person and eternal life as a gift of God, not a natural possession. The soul is not an immortal substance that has to exist eternally. As Jesus himself says, God is able to destroy both body and soul in hell (Mt 10:28). Humans were made mortal, with everlasting life being a gift, not a natural capacity. The conservative evangelical theologian Millard Erickson put it this way in Christian Theology p. 514:

“Finiteness pertains to our lives. Whether Adam as he was created would have died had he not sinned is a subject of debate. We do know, however, that he was susceptible to becoming subject to death. That is, if he was immortal, it was a conditional immortality. Thus, humanity is not inherently immortal, neither the physical body nor the soul. Even in humanity’s original state, any possibility of living forever depended on God. Only God is inherently eternal; all else dies”

I absolutely believe that God created us with the intention of living eternally with Him, but Scripture is clear that when sin entered the world, death came along with it. This is both a physical and spiritual death resulting in eternal destruction.

So what does all of this have to do with heaven and hell?

It is my contention that the Greek idea of natural immortality has skewed the Christian teaching about eternity, specifically the nature of hell. If one believes that souls are intrinsically immortal and hell exists, it follows that the wicked will have to suffer consciously forever in it. If the soul is naturally immortal, it has to spend eternity somewhere. If there is a lake of fire, then hell has to be a condition of eternal conscious torment.

But what if what is thrown into the pit of eternal destruction is actually destroyed? More on this tomorrow.

Hell and the Nature of Human Beings - Part I

Rob Bell is everywhere. On Monday night he spoke with Lisa Miller of Newsweek at the New York Society for Ethical Culture (transcript at Patheos). Yesterday, he was on Good Morning America and MSNBC. He is promoting his controversial book Love Wins, which is available now.

I read it yesterday (it’s really short) and thought I would spend the next few days addressing some of the questions this book will raise (and there are quite a few). First of all, I think you should read it. Despite the fact that you may walk away with more questions than answers and that many of the answers Rob does give are ambiguous and unsatisfactory at best, I think it is worth your time.

But before you can have a conversation about Heaven, Hell and the fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived, you have to talk about the nature of human beings themselves.

Most people assume, including Bell, that it is biblically faithful and theologically noncontrovesial to speak of human beings having an immortal soul.

Most Christians tend to regard the body as frail and finite and the soul as immortal (dualism). The body is the physical part of humans, the part that dies. It undergoes disintegration at death and returns to the ground. The soul, on the other hand, is the immaterial part of humans, the part that survives death.

Materialism, on the other hand, insists that humans are not to be thought of as in any sense composed of parts or separate entities, but rather as a radical unity. To be human is to be or have a body. The idea that a human can somehow exist apart from a body is unthinkable. Consequently, there is no possibility of post-death existence in a disembodied state.

The problem with dualism is that too often the soul is what is emphasized over the physical body, which can lead to Christian escapism. The problem with reductive materialism is that people are no more than the product of organic chemistry. Your joys and your sorrows, your memories and ambitions, your sense of identity and free will, are in fact no more than the behavior of a vast assembly of nerve cells and molecules.

But Scripture teaches that humans were created with a functional holism. The soul and the body are both aspects of the being of life, human being. Because of the incarnation and the resurrection we know that God cares about both our soul AND our body and has created a unity between them. God intends for us to worship him with all our heart, soul, and strength and operate as a whole person both now and after the final resurrection. 

In other words, God created humans as thinking, feeling, moral persons made up of spirit and body tightly joined together. Death is not normal or natural, but an enemy, the consequence of sin. Death is the tearing apart of these two intertwined parts and the cessation of life on this earth. The body goes to the grave and the spirit goes into an afterlife.

But the Bible is clear that there will one day be a bodily resurrection for everyone to either eternal life with God or eternal condemnation apart from him in hell. 

There is just one problem. The resurrection is a future event. Believers are not yet raised; we do not yet share in the resurrection.

So what happens in the interval between physical death and the resurrection? Paul says that to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord (2 Cor. 5:8) and Jesus told the thief on the cross “today you will be with me in paradise” (Luke 23:43). Although never explicit in its teaching, the Bible seems to suggest that our souls will survive in an intermediate state until they are rejoined with our physical bodies at the second coming of Christ.

The intermediate state refers to a temporary state of disembodied human existence which occurs after death and prior to the final resurrection of the body. The scriptures nowhere give a detailed description of the intermediate state, as it is primarily focused on the final consummation at the resurrection. Nevertheless it seems that human existence is so constituted that after biological death, self-conscious individuals (souls) can experience a state of joy in the fellowship with Christ and other saints or a state of misery, loneliness and regret from rejecting His love (see Jesus’ parable in Luke 16v23) until the final resurrection.

However, affirming continuous personal existence during the intermediate state does not necessarily commit one to the soul’s inherent or essential immortality. More on that tomorrow...

Ash Wednesday

If you are in Des Moines, join us tomorrow at 12:05pm for a special Ash Wednesday Service in the Temple for Performing Arts. It will be a unique time of scripture reading, song, meditation, communion and the imposition of ashes over the noon hour. The service will be approximately 45 minutes long. No childcare provided.

The Great Commission and The Great Example

Just before he ascended into heaven, Jesus gives his disciples the Great Commission.

“Do not leave Jerusalem, but wait for the gift my Father promised, which you have heard me speak about… you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” (Acts 1v4,8).

Jesus essentially says, “It’s time for me to leave, but don’t worry because something even greater is about to happen! I am sending my Spirit, the Spirit of God, and just as God’s glory once filled the Temple, I am about to fill your hearts with so much love, joy, peace and compassion that it will literally overflow from your lives out into the city and on to the ends of the earth!”

So the Holy Spirit is given for mission. We are to be witnesses.

But what does that mean? Everyone grab some gospel tracts and head out?

We get a clue in His commission to his disciples. Jesus didn’t issue individual assignments. He didn’t move one by one down the line and knight each individual. Instead he said, “You (collectively) will be my witnesses”. The Holy Spirit will create and empower this new community.

But to really understand the Great Commission we have to look at the Great Example in Acts 2. There we read that the disciples were gathered together in one place when the Holy Spirit arrives and Jesus promise is fulfilled in this incredible communal experience.

They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. Everyone was filled with awe at the many wonders and signs performed by the apostles. All the believers were together and had everything in common. They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need. Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved. (Acts 2:42-47).

The Great Commission is followed by the Great Example of the early church.

This is fascinating to me. Rather than run out and start “witnessing”, they formed this new, Jesus-kind of community. They began living out the values of the Sermon on the Mount together in community. And the people in their neighborhoods, schools and homes began to notice. They saw these people living out these incredibly upside-down, yet beautiful practices and they began to realize that they were “witnessing” something amazing. Something incredible. Something supernatural.

In Seth Godin’s book, The Purple Cow he writes, "If you aren't remarkable you're invisible." No one ever notices or talks about a brown cow, but a purple cow? That’s different. 

The Church needs to paint itself purple. But this is not about gimmicks or just being different for difference sake. It’s about making such a remarkable difference in our communities that we are un-ignorable.

Brown churches sit on the sideline and invite the community to come to them. Purple churches are always going and compelling. They are making such a big difference that they become a highly visible part of their community.

When the Holy Spirit comes he doesn’t just empower us as individuals to go out and “witness” - he comes to fill us collectively. To empower us to live with one another within the Divine community and to display for a watching world a picture of God’s remarkable kingdom.

Karl Barth said, “The church exists to set up in the world a new sign which is radically dissimilar to the world’s own manner and which contradicts it in a way which is full of promise”

The church is to be a holy nation. A people who are both distinguishable yet visible in the world. Not because of our programs or buildings. Not because of the way we vote. But as a people who are faithful to their promises, love their enemies, tell the truth, honor the poor, suffer for righteousness, and visibly testify to the amazing community-creating power of God.

Take Time to Live

A good friend sent me this quote this morning: 

In the name of Jesus Christ, who was never in a hurry, we pray, O God, that You will slow us down, for we know that we live too fast.  With all of eternity before us, make us take time to live - time to get acquainted with You, time to enjoy Your blessings, and time to know each other.  - Peter Marshall

Definitely needed to hear this on a Monday morning filled with lists and appointments and deadlines. Maybe you did too. May we live in the rhythm of grace this week. 

The Season of Lent

The historic liturgical calendar is a tool that the church uses to stay rooted in the rhythms of the whole Gospel: God’s acts of creation, humanity’s fall, God’s covenants with Israel, the coming of Christ to redeem the world, the establishment of Christ’s kingdom on earth. Each calendar season presents the church with a fresh opportunity to explore God’s truth while pressing deeper into God’s life and work.

The season of Lent begins next week on Ash Wednesday and concludes the day before Easter. Lent is a season of preparation and anticipation of the Resurrection. The forty days represent the time that Jesus spent in the desert before the beginning of his public ministry (Matthew 4:1-11).

Lent is a time to give up something so we can anticipate something greater. We observe Lent to help us identify with Jesus in his sufferings, and to prepare us for the great celebration of Easter. By fasting from certain things, we practice dying to ourselves. And by refocusing our lives, living to God, we intentionally choose things that help us become the kind of people God desires us to be.

Lent is a time to give something up, or to take something on. Here are some suggestions on how you might get started:

1. BEGIN ASKING YOURSELF A FEW QUESTIONS EVERYDAY.

Lent is a season to look at how you’ve been living and to commit to being a healthier, more loving person. Maybe these questions are a good place to start:

• What unhealthy patterns do I see in my life during the past year?
• What relationships need reconciliation or my new or renewed investment?
• How can I improve my relationship with God?
• In what ways can I join God in healing and restoring the world?

If it is helpful, try processing these questions by journaling or having conversations with someone close to you. 

2. COMMIT TO READING THE BIBLE EVERYDAY.

A daily reading schedule is common during Lent, and this year I recommend Lent for Everyone, a devotional by N.T. Wright available for FREE at youversion.com. For each day of Lent, there is a reading chosen from the Gospel of Matthew, plus a reflection by Wright. This schedule can help you develop the habit of stopping everyday to read the Scriptures.

3. CONSIDER SOME KIND OF FAST

It’s been helpful for many throughout history to remove a practice or food from their life during Lent. This has been one way of identifying with Jesus on a deeper level and hopefully helping a person focus on God more intently.

The fast doesn’t necessarily need to be from food, though that can be helpful for many. Instead, you might want to identify something that takes a lot of time or money and fast from that. Maybe it’s television, the computer or video games. Maybe it’s purchasing books, music or clothes. Or maybe it’s eating out or ordering in. Whatever would be most helpful for you, a main reason for fasting is to help raise our awareness of God.

Whenever you feel an impulse for the thing you’re fasting from, take some time to acknowledge God and ask for His strength and grace.

4. REFLECT UPON & ENGAGE IN GOD’S MISSION

This kind of fasting can be a good, virtuous endeavor, but it can also become just another way to puff oneself up, to proudly show the world just how capably you have given up certain pleasures in pursuit of Christ. “Look what I’m giving up for Lent!”

So while self-denial is crucial to our Christian identity, it isn’t so much about our own valiant efforts to avoid things or “go without” as much as it is a call to passionately place ourselves in Christ, finding our identity in him and letting him work through us for the sake of our neighbor and for the world.

As you are considering some type of fast maybe you can also put some money aside to help the poor, or go for a walk in your neighborhood and pray for everyone you see, or send a handwritten letter to a relative who could use some encouragement. 

Lent is a season to reflect on the sacrificial love of Jesus Christ, who came not for his own sake, but for ours. Lent is not about us. It’s about living our lives for another–for the sake of Christ and the Gospel, and gaining true life in the process.

How Do You Start a Conversation About Hell?

You may have heard that the Christian corner of the internet blew up this weekend over the always controversial topic of hell.

In case you missed it Rob Bell and his publisher, Harper Collins, released an extremely provocative trailer and synopsis for his new book Love Wins: A Book About Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived. Then Justin Taylor, vice president of editorial at Crossway, announced that Bell is a “universalist” and started a chain-reaction of high-profile pastors denouncing Bell on Twitter before they had read the book. Most notably, Bethlehem Baptist Church pastor John Piper tweeted, "Farewell Rob Bell. http://dsr.gd/fZqmd8" linking to Taylor's post.

In an interview with Christianity Today Scot McKnight noted, “Rob is tapping into what I think is the biggest issue facing evangelicalism today, and this fury shows that it just might be that big of an issue.” I totally agree, but this is a horrible way to start the conversation.

Like it or not, the questions that Bell raises in the video trailer for the book are the very questions I’ve wrestled with since childhood along with so many in my generation.

Will only a few select people make it into heaven? 

How does one become one of these few? 

Are people like Ghandi and Anne Frank really in hell, along with millions and millions of other people? 

Do we need a loving Jesus to rescue us from a hateful God? Is this what the gospel is all about? 

Is the gospel good news or bad news?

What is the essence of God's character? 

These are important questions that every generation must grapple with for themselves. However, it is important to remember that these are also deeply personal questions. They can be used to incite, to provoke… or to sell books. As John Deyer notes, by never directly stating what he really thinks and releasing just enough to get everyone excited, Bell and Harper Collins hit a publicity home run. It doesn’t really matter what the book actually contains, the longer Bell stays silent, the more traffic the blogs and tweets generate, and the higher Bell’s sales go. The result? Love Wins wins.

Still, the rigid certainty in Piper’s theological interpretations, and the interpretations of his close followers, make it extremely difficult for anyone to ask these questions. As Jason Boyett points out “there is no meaner, more hateful person on Earth than a Christian who suspects you have gotten your theology wrong.” 

Reading and understanding the Bible involves a lot of interpretation. And theology is best done with humility and a recognition that certainty will be very hard to come by. When Paul urges us to “teach and admonish one another with all wisdom” (Col. 3:16), the Greek verbs are to “instruct” and to “challenge” or “confront.” This certainly includes holding people to obey the Bible, but it means more than that. It means working together to understand the implications of the Word of God for our life together. We are being directed to read, discuss, mutually instruct, challenge, and make reasoned arguments about the Bible together until it shapes the way we live. We are to read and argue and study the Bible together to come to deeper unity of faith and to consensus about how to be the people of God in our particular time and place.

I agree with Taylor and others that these issues are central, not peripheral, to the gospel. But instantly using the label "heretic" for anyone who raises them does not display the gospel's equally central teaching of humility and love. On the other hand, these issues are far too important to be used as a publicity stunt. 

After all, these are not new questions. Christians (yes even Evangelical Christians) have been having these discussions for years and will for years to come. While there is general agreement on the final state of believers: that they will be resurrected to a transformed and embodied eternal life with the Lord. And clearly Jesus and the rest of the New Testament teaches judgment and hell for the impenitent, that is just where the questions begin...

Is hell the destiny of all people who do not put their trust in Christ in this life? If so, what is the nature of hell? Was Jesus speaking in literal or metaphorical terms? Does eternal destruction mean destroyed for eternity or eternally conscious torment? (I feel a sermon series coming on).

In the end, I am grateful our generation has the opportunity to discuss these questions anew. I just wish we could have gotten off to a better start.