Actually, no. It’s literally an Anime Jesus.

I thought that since Holy Week is starting tomorrow, it’d be nice to post a reminder of what Jesus came to earth for.

FYI: if cartoon blood and gore make you queasy, you might not want to watch.

The big question that was on everyone’s mind when the trailer came out last month was this: is Rob Bell a universalist? In my earlier post regarding the fallout from the release of his book trailer I said that I’d be waiting until after I’d read the book to weigh in on whether Bell is a universalist.

But I’ve decided to avoid answering that question altogether since many of the better versed and smarter leaders in my “camp” of Christianity have released better rebuttals than I could ever hope to form.

Kevin DeYoung wrote an extensive review of Love Wins, which you can download here.

Here’s DeYoung’s summary of Bell’s book:

“Hell is what we create for ourselves when we reject God’s love. Hell is both a present reality for those who resist God and a future reality for those who die unready for God’s love. Hell is what we make of heaven when we cannot accept the good news of God’s forgiveness and mercy. But hell is not forever. God will have his way. How can his good purposes fail? Every sinner will turn to God and realize he has already been reconciled to God, in this life or in the next. There will be no eternal conscious torment. God says no to injustice in the age to come, but he does not pour out wrath (we bring the temporary suffering upon ourselves), and he certainly does not punish for eternity. In the end, love wins.

“Bell correctly notes (many times) that God is love. He also observes that Jesus is Jewish, the resurrection is important, and the phrase ‘personal relationship with God’ is not in the Bible. He usually makes his argument by referencing Scripture. He is easy to read and obviously feels very deeply for those who have been wronged or seem to be on the outside looking in.”

Instead, I’ll try to find a practical response to all this since this book is now within the top 5 bestsellers on Amazon and is probably the topic of many spiritual discussions in offices, coffeeshops, bookstores, and pubs. And because of this, no doubt the concepts of heaven and hell are on many people’s radars as well.

When faced with questions of God’s goodness—”How can a good God send people to hell for eternity?”—it’s important to know that God doesn’t operate within our concepts of good and evil. Bell’s operating premise is that God is love and cannot act outside of love. But his assumption is that our understanding of love is also God’s understanding of love.

Yes, God is a God that rescues and liberates us from sin, death, and destruction, but it’s often easy for us to dismiss the fact that God is also a God of justice and perfection.

One example of Bell’s misuse of scriptural concepts is the way he handles the parable of the lost son from Luke 15. While he correctly takes the emphasis off the character we often refer to as the “prodigal son,” he makes an incorrect correlation between this parable and the realities of heaven and hell.

But perhaps my opinion on that matter should be reserved for another day.

Throughout his book Bell makes strong statements regarding the roots of Christianity and how our concepts of heaven and hell were formed fairly recently in the history of Christianity. But is it really possible that he’s stumbled on truths that thousands of pastors, teachers, and theologians have missed for centuries?

Jake Johnson, Media & Communications Pastor at Redemption Church had this to say about Love Wins:

“Could it really be that Rob Bell has rediscovered lost truths of Christianity, this man who claims so often not to be a theologian but rather an artist? Could it be that the vast majority of church fathers, theologians, and believers have been wrong all this time? Is Rob Bell, alone, saving the church from two millennia worth of wrong thinking? Does it even matter?

Or is it possible that this one man may be wrong and misguided? And that it matters a lot?

I’d opt for the latter.

It’s clear that Rob Bell is motivated by love for people. He has many moving stories about pain and sin in his book. He definitely has a pastor’s heart. He badly wants people to have hope and love Jesus. The problem is that he has let his version of love for people become more important and a ‘better story’ than the way in which love is actually displayed by God in the Bible. It is not love to tell someone they will eventually go to heaven when the Bible is clear that they may not. That is hatred in the end, even if unintended.”

Then what can we say when our friends, coworkers, and relatives ask us these questions about heaven and hell?

Perhaps we should simply tell them the truth—that God loves them and longs to spend eternity with them, but that our sin keeps us separated from him. That until we accept Christ’s gift of eternal life with him beginning in this life (for our choices here reverberate through eternity), we will forever be separated from God.

Only after we communicate this truth can we honestly say that love wins.

“Go into the culture and speak the language of the culture so that you can be a counterculture for the culture.”

I love this word. It speaks volumes of what followers of Jesus are supposed to be in this world. At my church we use this word practically every week. It’s in our DNA. But the word is often left undefined. What is a counterculture? What does it look like to plow one? Why do I have to be one? Am I plowing it already?

We sometimes talk about what that might look like in praxis; in fact, when talking about our lifestyles we often refer to that as counterculture. Sometimes we might say something like, “living out the gospel.”

Before I dive into what that looks like practically, I want to create an image of what that might look like philosophically.

If you’ve ever studied music, you’ve probably heard of counterpoint. Essentially, counterpoint is the relationship between two independent melodies that together create euphonic harmony. In a contrapuntal line, the once independent melodies become interdependent. One melody is completely distinct from the other melody, but when brought together they don’t clash. In fact, they create a beautiful harmonic line.

Counterculture works in a similar way. Culture may be moving in a certain direction, and a counterculture moves in a completely different direction, but this counterculture doesn’t attack the culture. It’s not an anticulture. To pull from my opening quote: we need to be “a counterculture for the culture.” In other words, we work for the good of the culture around us.

For many years modern evangelicals and fundamentalists have been caught up in a “culture war,” firmly believing that the culture was the enemy, and Christianity is responsible for making it right.

But if you look at the world around you, you’ll find endless possibilities for the gospel to infiltrate and come alongside this culture, creating a distinctly beautiful counterculture.

So what does this look like in praxis? Well, it’s different for every church. But look around you. You’ll soon discover the heartbeat of the culture you’ve been placed in.

What about for the individual? Perhaps that’s a little easier to answer. God requires certain things of his followers, but there’s one command he gives that encompasses all other commands.

Love.

“Love me. Love your fellow disciples. Love those around you who aren’t disciples. Love those who hate you for being a disciple.”

And what does that even look like? Perhaps it’s partnering with a local soup kitchen and helping to care for those facing poverty. Perhaps it’s taking that homeless person walking up and down your block everyday out to lunch. Perhaps it’s sitting next to that despondent guy at the bar in your local tavern and listening to his story.

Perhaps it’s choosing to not ogle the women at your office, to care more about your coworker’s wellbeing than your own, to deflect praise for a “knocked-out-of-the-park” project from yourself to your teammates, to value your community above your individuality.

And when someone asks, “Why do you live the way you live?” you can say,

“Because the God I serve stepped out of his comfort zone and said, ‘I love you’.”

Let me tell you a story. Like many stories, this one has a beginning. It began with a man whose love betrayed him. She turned her back on him and decided to prostitute herself. She settled for a broken, disgusting substitute for love instead of the true love of her lover.

The man couldn’t bear the thought of his love selling herself, so he devised a plan to win her back. He disguised himself and entered the brothel.

While disguised he began trying to win his love’s affection again. But she didn’t recognize him. She mistook him for someone crazy, and in a terrible turn of events, she murdered him.

Her own lover. Murdered.

And I can’t help but wonder if that’s what we do time and time again. Yet he still calls out to us.

“Do you remember me? I love you. Come back to me.”

And everyday we make choices that nail him to the cross again. We can’t recognize our Lover.

But every so often someone notices. Someone looks at this life and says, “This is not right.” He looks around himself and begins to notice a shadow forming. He looks up and sees a cross.

Dark. Cruel. Menacing.

And through the darkness he hears a voice whispering to him. You were supposed to die there. You were sentenced to that death. But someone decided to rescue you. Someone decided you were worth it. And he went there instead.

He went there instead.

What kind of love is this? A love that would make that kind of trade?

If my love spurned me, betrayed me, and walked away from me, selling herself to a disgusting imitation of love. . . could I take her place in the face of her execution?

Of my own accord, no. But because I know I’ve received that kind of love, I would be unable to do otherwise. I’d be compelled to love like my Lover has loved me.

But it’s only because of that love.

I’m not sure why this particular sermon came to mind recently, but I know that something about it really bothered me especially given what I’ve been learning about God as I try to draw closer to him.

It’s not because this preacher likened us to ants (because we pretty much are), but because he likened God’s relationship with us to our relationship with ants.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t really have much of a relationship with ants. I don’t necessarily hate them, but I find them to be pesky, invasive, and an overall nuisance. I wouldn’t really want a relationship with ants. The idea of becoming one of them is repulsive to me. Given the option, I wouldn’t even bother.

Yet God, in his incomprehensible love, has relentlessly sought after a relationship with us. He longed for us to be with him that he actually became one of us, died at our hands so that we wouldn’t have to, and came back to life so that we could be with him.

That kind of relationship just doesn’t exist between a human and an ant.

I’m not exactly proud of the attitude I developed in the years following my graduation from Bob Jones University. But I understand that my “rebellion” has helped me to understand grace much better.

I acted out in a lot of the same ways that most people would act out in high school. Lots of drinking, smoking any substance that could be smoked (legally or otherwise), feeding my addiction to pornography, etc.

But all of that came about because of a question I was asking myself: does God really even care?

My biggest fear was that someone would find out about my brokenness. That someone would see what I was doing and call me out on it. So I hid it behind a polished exterior.

The problem with this is that there’s no healing possible when you hide. Thankfully, God had placed someone in my life who introduced me to an environment where healing was possible. A place where I didn’t have to hide who I was because I knew I wouldn’t be judged for how I was living.

I would be accepted, loved, and cared for. And with love comes the natural impetus to seek change.

Slowly stuff started to change. Life started to look different for me.

And my big question was answered. God really does care.

Throughout high school I played the part of the good Christian. I had to. I’d made up some story about how I’d “gotten saved” when I was just five years old. I got baptized when I was in the fifth grade. I was one of the good kids.

But no one really knew me. Because I knew that if anyone ever found out about my secret sins, I’d lose all my credibility. I knew that if anyone ever found out that I was questioning my own faith in Jesus, I’d be told to shut up.

I had all kinds of questions. I wanted to ask my pastor, but I was afraid of the consequences. I couldn’t be real with him. I couldn’t be myself.

But I wanted the church to like me. So I plugged away. I kept playing the part of the good Christian boy. And we all know that good Christian boys go to good Christian schools.

So after high school I packed my suitcases and headed down to Bob Jones University. Little did I know what was in store for me there.

I won’t go into all the details of my experience there, but suffice it to say that the institution found a way to push me far away from God. But I didn’t know any better because I had grown up being taught that God was judgmental, vengeful, and eternally angry with all of humanity.

Who would want anything to do with that kind of God?

Let me cite an example. This story is a microcosm of my entire career at the university.

I was printing a paper for one of my literary criticism classes when I noticed I had a new email. I was about to let it by when I saw that it was from the Dean of Men’s office, and they were requesting that I appear before them.

Now, here’s the thing about the Dean of Men’s office. You’re probably not going to come out of there alive. It’s not like the Discipline Committee line where you’re tried by one of your peers and/or some random person staring at a computer screen. No, you’re sitting in the fiery judgment of the man who, with one breath, can expel you from the university.

So I sat through the entirety of En305 completely unable to focus on what my professor was talking about. All I could think about was my impending doom in the Dean of Men’s office.

(Side note: does anyone else find it odd that there’s a Dean of Men at this school?)

After class I made my way down the excessively long sidewalk to the inner sanctum of the Administration Building. I sat in the waiting room outside Mr. Daulton’s office, nervous, but not nearly as scared as the first time I’d been here. Still, my fate at college hung in the balance.

He called me into his office and wasted no time getting to the point. “Do you know why you’re here, Nate?”

That was a trick question. Last time he asked me that, I got in trouble for something else entirely. I decided to keep my mouth shut this time.

“Someone from outside the university found some rather disturbing content on your MySpace page,” he said. “He forwarded your page to us because of his concern for you.”

Riiight. Because someone from outside the university who happens to be stalking university students’ MySpace pages cares enough about the university’s standards to tell the school about this.

“What kind of content?” I asked.

“For starters, what you’ve listed as your ‘favorite music’ is anything but God-honoring.”

I waited for him to continue. There was no way I was going to say anything now.

“Additionally, I see that there are several R-rated films listed here as your ‘favorite movies,’ and one that is particularly disheartening is ‘The Matrix.’ Would you like to explain?”

“No, sir.”

“Nate, do you think a film like ‘The Matrix,’ or any R-rated film for that matter, fits into the standards set by Philippians 4:8?” he asked.

I wish I’d said yes. I wish I could’ve shown him how that narrow-minded view of Scripture is what’s causing Christians to be so out of touch with culture that they’ve become ineffective and even harmful to the mission God called them to.

But I didn’t know that yet. I hadn’t discovered this perspective yet. All I knew was that I’d made his god angry. And I was going to pay for it.

From that moment on I began to slowly give up on my faith in Christ. I remember thinking, After I get my diploma, I’m done with the whole “Jesus thing.” If this is what his followers are like, I want nothing to do with any of it.

After that my life would begin to look radically different.

I knew nothing. Growing up in traditional fundamentalism kept so much hidden from me. And as much as I love my parents, they were ill-equipped to handle the whirlwind of two teenage boys in the house.

I mean, think about it. If you spurn everything in society, calling all of culture “taboo,” there are a lot of things that you and/or your children will come across that you’ll have no idea how to deal with.

Including something as important as sex.

If you look through the Bible, you’ll see just how important human sexuality is to God. Part of the Imago Dei is sex. I won’t go into all the correlations, but I alluded to them here. Unfortunately, the Church has shirked her responsibility to communicate it.

And by not owning the concept of sex, the Church has offered it up to the world’s system of handling things. As you can see, it’s pretty distorted.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not blaming the Church for my struggle with porn. But the Church needs to talk about these issues instead of brushing them under the rug, or worse yet, calling these issues out and pouring judgment on those who struggle with them.

It’s not easy for me to talk about this. It’s something I battle everyday.

I wouldn’t be much of a man if I didn’t deal with with it. But it’s just that I hate this fight, and I often wish it would just go away.

So there I was, a scared preteen boy trying to figure this world out on my own. What began as curiosity soon became fascination. And from fascination it grew into a full-blown addiction.

And I was never really honest with myself either. I always heard that people who were addicted to something lost the ability to function normally, and since I was able to go to school, study, play basketball, sing in choirs, and do all the same things “normal” people were doing, I wasn’t really addicted.

So I continued down this road. For years I fought this battle, never talking to anyone about it. I was too scared. I knew it was wrong; I knew something had to change. But I also knew that if I said anything, I’d be in trouble.

So I walked this walk alone.

Let me pause my story for a bit. If you’re battling porn like I, find a friend and talk through it. You already know that it’ll ruin you, but everything you’ve tried has failed. Trust me, you will continue to repeat your failure until you open up and talk to someone about it.

It’s not easy. These battles never are. But doing it alone makes the fight far more difficult than it needs to be.

I mentioned in part 1 of this story the author Anne Jackson. Her story has been a source of hope and encouragement to me over the last few years. If I thought I had reason to be afraid of the fallout from my admission of an addiction to porn, hers had the potential to be completely devastating.

But it resonated with me because, even though she and I are nothing alike, we have similar stories.

Check hers out below.

I never realized that what I had been taught throughout most of my life was actually antithetical to what the Scripture teaches about our lives in Jesus.

While people at the churches I grew up attending won’t admit it, they actually advocate a works-based system of following Christ. Doctrines like “rededication,” “letting go and letting God,” and “the victorious life” run rampant through these churches. There’s more of a focus on someone’s external condition than on his/her internal condition.

I could go to camp every year and “rededicate” my life to Christ but never actually follow him. And that’s exactly what I did. I prayed a prayer when I was a child, and everyday between 1989 and 2007 I lied. I lied because I didn’t really have a clue who Jesus was. I lied because I’d never encountered him, and it seemed like everyone else did.

I even lied to myself.

I came up with this elaborate story of how, when I was just five years old sometime in November of 1989, I was sitting in my grandmother’s living room, my aunt told me about Jesus, and I “accepted him into my heart” that day.

I was too afraid of not having a story that I made one up.

And somehow I believed it.

I really wanted to be a Christian, but I think I got so caught up in looking like a Christian that I never had the opportunity to find out what it really meant to be one. I felt so much pressure on me to live up to a certain standard, but I could never measure up.

The year I discovered rock music was devastating. I wrestled with it because I knew it was something that was sinful yet strangely enjoyable. While I couldn’t find anything inherently wrong with it, I knew it had to be sinful because my pastor said it was.

And I couldn’t piecemeal my life. If I broke one Christian rule, according to James 2.10, I was guilty of breaking all of it. So the fact that I liked rock music meant that I had broken all of God’s commands. Since I wasn’t completely surrendered to Christ, I was a carnal Christian, and by conclusion, of no use to God’s Kingdom.

But I tried to compartmentalize. If no one at church found out that I listened to rock music, I’d be fine. I looked like a good Christian, so therefore I must have been a good Christian.

But all that pressure to live my life according to what they claimed were God’s standards was eating away at me more than I ever realized at the time. Now add to that pressure cooker puberty, curiosity, and a new toy called the Internet. . .

After two years of online correspondence with activist/author/fellow blogger Anne Jackson, I finally got to meet her face-to-face. And she’s exactly what I expected. Who she is over email is the same as who she is in person.

But that came as a challenge to me. Because I know that’s not me. I’m still afraid to be real.

And I’m really afraid to talk about this.

So after a deep breath let’s start from the beginning.

I grew up in a fundamentalist culture, more specifically the independent Baptist fundamentalist culture. The seventeen years I spent there shaped my view of God and gave me many gross misconceptions about who God is and how he works in our lives.

Most of what I learned growing up stems from what’s called Keswick theology (chefarianism). (I’m indebted to Dr. Camille Lewis for her enlightening me on the pervasiveness of this view.)

Keswick theology is, in my opinion, harmful to a healthy view of our Creator and is the primary reason non-Christians have such a negative perception of Christians. Sadly, however, this is what’s been taught in churches across America.

Ideas like “the victorious life” or “dedicating your life to Christ” are the result of Keswick theology which essentially removes the human identity with the goal of being completely surrendered to God. Here’s how Lewis describes it.

For the Keswickian there are two types of Christian: carnal and normal. For the normal Christian, the self is dethroned, yielded, absent. Any hint of self-identity, however, is carnal. Sin, in the Keswickian perspective, is overwhelmingly powerful. And while it can never be eradicated, it must be continually thwarted. Full surrender is the only solution; anything less is willful rebellion. What this comes down to is complete capitulation of anything human or anything personal. The self is useless. It has no rights, no personality, and no humanity.

It’s in this setting that my journey begins. . .

Read part 2 here.