restored to grace

Rob Bell’s Love Wins. . .

March 21, 2011 by Nate

Few men are as polarizing in the Church world today as Rob Bell. In his latest work, Love Wins, Bell takes on the age-old debate regarding heaven and hell (and “the fate of every person who ever lived”).

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.

Category Books, Christianity, Spirituality | Tags: | 2 Comments
Counterculture. . .

March 21, 2011 by Nate

“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’.”

Category Christianity, Church, Music, Spirituality | Tags: , Church, counterculture, counterpoint, culture, Gospel, love, Music | 1 Comment
Rob Bell vs. John Piper. . .

March 2, 2011 by Nate

I’ve decided to return from my blog hiatus with a different type of post than I’ve done before.

Rob Bell’s upcoming book Love Wins is already on trial more than a month before it’s released.

On February 26, Justin Taylor denounced Bell in a post on his blog, and John Piper dismissed Bell in a post on Twitter.

Here’s the trailer for the book in question:

So where do I fall on this?

It’s no big secret to my friends and co-workers that I’m fascinated by Bell’s teaching techniques, his writing style, and his ability to captivate an audience through an artistically smart medium. He’s culturally savvy, yet not flashy or in-your-face like so many pastors and churches are becoming these days (arguing ad nauseam that in order to be hip and cool you’ve got to be loud and obnoxious. . . I love you, Perry Noble, but please, relax a little).

But now accusations are being thrown in light of the possibility that Bell might be a universalist.

This battle is nothing new. Bell has often fallen under fire from Neo-Calvinists like Mark Driscoll and Joshua Harris who follow in Piper’s footsteps and view Bell as a liberal compromiser (though perhaps not in the same way that a Fundy might call someone a “liberal compromiser”). Ever since Velvet Elvis was released, the Reformed camp has been searching for one opportunity after another to roast Bell.

And in response, Bell’s supporters and the hipster evangelicals hurl accusations at the side where Driscoll, Harris, Piper, and Taylor rest, calling them “smug, legalistic jerks who care nothing for loving people.”

Lines are drawn in the sand. The Neo-Calvinists attract intellectuals because of their systematic approach to studying scripture. They work hard to affirm the orthodox tenets of historic (whether traditional or non) evangelical theology. The hipster evangelicals attract artists and their ilk because of their narrative approach to theology.

The sides are angry with each other because one side appears to be spurning the Apostles’ Creed while the other side appears to be punching people in the face with it.

“Even worse, both sides often make the assertion they stand in for God, even as they both deny they do so. When statements like, ‘Either believe this or you aren’t an orthodox Christian’ or, ‘I think God is tired of iron clad,’ get thrown around, you know that both sides believe they are speaking for God.”

~Rev. Jonathan Weyer

I’m reminded of Christ’s parable “The Lost Son” from Luke 15.11-32. We often think of this as the story of a prodigal son, but in reality, it’s a story about two sons and their father’s transcendent love.

The younger son, like Bell and his hipster evangelical followers, dismissed his father’s love by spurning the home he’s built for his children (the “home” of theological orthodoxy). The older son (Piper and the Neo-Calvinists), while staying close to home, dismissed his father’s love by rejecting his embrace of the younger son.

I want to approach this debate in a different way. If you pinned me down and asked me what my beliefs are, I would affirm the truths set forth by Driscoll, Piper, and Taylor. But I can’t line up with them on this debate.

I think there’s more at play here than orthodoxy vs. liberalism. If it were simply about that, I’d fall on the side of orthodoxy in nearly every argument. But it’s not anymore.

It’s quickly becoming about how one side of evangelicalism treats the other side of evangelicalism with disdain. “You don’t love people like we do! You’re a bunch of jerks!”

Or “You don’t affirm the tenets set forth in the Nicene Creed. You’re preaching a false gospel!”

I’ll wait to talk about Bell until after Love Wins comes out. And afterwards I will continue to read his writings, listen to his sermons, and watch his Nooma videos regardless of whether he skews orthodox or universalist.

But I will do so as I always should have—with one or two grains of salt.

Why continue gleaning from his teachings? First, because he teaches from a fresh perspective on Jesus. He still preaches Christ, the Son of God. He still preaches Christ, crucified and resurrected, however off his interpretation of heaven and hell may (or may not, we’ll have to wait till the 29th to find out for sure) be. And second, because he remembers something that many Neo-Calvinists sometimes forget: part of being missional is being approachable.

Category Christianity, Church | Tags: , argue, christian, debate, hipster evangelicals, john piper, love wins, neo-calvinists, rob bell | 3 Comments
I’m leaving Restored to Grace. . .

November 23, 2010 by Nate

Not for good, but definitely for a while.

I think God is trying to teach me something—discernment and wisdom. Many, if not all, of my posts were impulsive and reactionary. Which, in itself, isn’t bad. But here’s where it all goes south. Restored to Grace was a public blog. One that I was using as a journal. Those are my thoughts. They’re to be wrestled with in my mind with no one but myself and God (and one or two very trusted advisors).

My life is changing at breakneck speed. I’m no longer a kid just stumbling along trying to figure things out. While I can’t say that I’ve got everything all put together (because, as we all know, none of us do. . . and thank God for that; it’s nice to know that he’s writing our story, and we aren’t), I can say with a fair amount of certainty that I know what I want from life and who I want to be. And now I’m in a position of leadership. And not the kind of leadership I had at my last job where I was just telling people to alphabetize the items on the shelves. I’m a spiritual leader.

And while something inside me shies away at the thought, I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that it’s God’s calling on my life.

And because of this calling, I can no longer vomit my initial thoughts and struggles into the public forum. I have to act differently from how I’ve previously acted. Paul wrote these words to the church in Corinth (who, incidentally, had some seriously skewed ideas about the spiritual and physical “realms,” not unlike ourselves in many ways) —

“When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways.”

This verse has been weighing heavily on my mind these last several days. I know what I have to do. First, I have to be very careful about what I allow to define me. While I’m not the sum of my blog posts, status updates, and tweets, to the people who know me primarily through those avenues I am. And I have no way of changing their views of me. My friend-pastor-boss likes to say, “We are our own PR firm.” That statement couldn’t be more true. And the task of maintaining our public image is made especially difficult in today’s world with Facebook, Twitter, and the blogosphere.

I’m not talking about not being authentic. I’m talking about being intentional.

Second, I have to be careful to not react to whatever situations or ideas may come my way. My old mentor (and former friend-pastor-boss) used to exhort me day after day to be careful about my reactions to fundamentalism. Yes, there have been personal hurts. Yes, their approach to the Gospel is quite skewed. But by constantly reacting and trying to “prove that I’m different,” I continue to give them control over my life.

Someone told me recently that in reacting, we give in to our sinfulness. While emotions are a gift from God—allowing us to experience joy, love, and even sadness, emotional highs and lows are Satan’s way of turning our emotions against us. Emotions should never govern our actions, but instead should give power to our rational thought which in turn controls our actions.

Think about it this way (the following analogy is my own, though possibly not originally, as the aforementioned acquaintance didn’t give this to me; I’m saying this so you know I’m not putting words into her mouth) — Our actions and decisions are like a car. They take us from point A to point B. Our carefully reasoned thoughts act as the steering system (wheels, rack, pinion gear, steering wheel, etc.) which controls the direction of the car. Our emotions act as the engine, setting our actions into motion. Without emotions, we don’t really take action. But actions driven by emotions alone are as dangerous as a car without a steering system.

Another of my former pastors once reminded me, after one of my errors in judgment came to light, of this principle from Proverbs 19—that although wisdom without zeal is dead, zeal without wisdom is deadly.

I’m guilty of that. I have for too long allowed the car of my actions and decisions to be governed by the engine of my emotions without the control of my reasoning. Recently a circumstance came into my life that vividly highlighted this. Thankfully it was only a fender-bender that affected an interpersonal relationship that I hadn’t yet invested much time or effort into. I’m glad God didn’t allow this to progress to the point of irreparable damage to the work he’s allowing me to do.

This lack of self-control has led me to take dogmatic stances on grey-area issues. It has caused me to make quick-snap decisions that ended in my hurting people I care about. It also turned me into a democrat.

Paul wrote about this in his second recorded letter to his protégé Timothy.

“God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control.”

Power, love, and self-control are all gifts from God. I pray these words come to describe me in time. For now, I’m progressing there. “Under construction,” if you will.

But I want to thank you all. Thanks for reading Restored to Grace these past three years. It’s been an interesting journey, and one thing I hope I’ve learned through it all is this: God is not giving up on me.

Or on you. Phil. 1.6.

Category Announcement, Direction, Personal | Tags: | No Comments
Daddy. . .

November 21, 2010 by Nate

There have been very few moments that, in the middle of a total funk, I’ve pressed in so strongly to my Father.

This is one of those moments.

I feel like a little child, helpless and lost, calling out to his dad. Hoping to hear something. Waiting for his father’s voice.

And just as all hope seems lost, Daddy’s arms scoop the little child up. All is right in the world.

Because Daddy’s here. His arms will hold you.

And he’ll never let go.

Category Personal | Tags: | No Comments
The theology in romance. . .

November 19, 2010 by Nate

I’ve become convinced that our interactions with God are best pictured in romance. While no analogy captures every aspect of our relationship with God (think parent-child picture), I can’t help but notice the romance in God’s attempt to reach us.

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.

Category Christianity, Personal, Spirituality | Tags: | 1 Comment
All those powers. . .

November 18, 2010 by Nate

My favorite comic book character is Superman. I’ve always loved his story—the tragedy of his past, the loneliness and isolation he experiences, and the sheer power of his, well, person. But if there’s one thing Superman can’t do, it’s this: he can’t save anyone from death.

Sure, he can save people from getting killed by something. But death will always evade Superman’s power. He even admits after his adoptive father, Jonathan Kent, dies of a heart attack, in a scene from one of my favorite movies, “All those powers, and I couldn’t even save him.”

If the seemingly omnipotent Kal El can’t defeat death, what hope do we have when death seems to own everything?

There’s a song by Hillsong United that repeats this line:

“The same power that conquered the grave lives in me.”

That’s a bold claim to make, isn’t it?

Not when you consider these words from Chapter 3 of Paul’s letter to his church in Ephesus:

“According to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.”

Jesus never once had to make the admission that Clark Kent did. Never once did he say, “I couldn’t even save him.”

Instead, he destroyed death.

He rendered death obsolete.

And the power he used to kill death?

Love.

Pure, raw, unadulterated love.

Paul wrote that if we “know the love of Christ,” we’ll then be “filled with all the fullness of God.” Yeah, that’s right. The fullness of the God who killed death.

That power lives in us if we know Christ’s love.

All of it. “The fullness of God.”

All those powers. . . Why aren’t we changing the world?

Category Scripture Musings | Tags: | No Comments
Ants. . .

November 17, 2010 by Nate

I remember hearing a sermon when I was in high school about what it must have been like for God to become human and live among us. The preacher said that it must be analogous to one of us becoming an ant and becoming part of their society, only infinitely worse because, as we know, God is infinitely greater.

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.

Category Christianity, Church, Spirituality | Tags: | No Comments
In the spirit of authenticity (pt. 6). . .

November 16, 2010 by Nate

Read part 1 here.
Read part 2 here.
Read part 3 here.
Read part 4 here.
Read part 5 here.

But my story didn’t end there. Because God’s story is much bigger than that. His ideas for me move far beyond what I could possibly imagine.

I can’t even begin to describe the kinds of changes God was working into my life during my first year attending Liquid Church. It was time for me to learn about his grace. I had no idea what that meant.

After I’d been attending for a few months, Tim preached a sermon series called iGod that had me questioning everything I believed about God. It wasn’t necessarily new information, but it was a new perspective—a paradigm shift, if you will.

I had somehow (during my seventeen years in fundamentalism) developed a lifestyle that belied my belief that God is personified in love. I was living like I believed God was some cosmic scorekeeper who was keeping track of everything I did, ready to put my poor score on display.

But this guy was talking about a God who really cares. Was I serving a scorekeeping God? Or was I serving a God who is Love?

I wanted to believe this, but it would be a while before I could truly accept that truth.

Six months pass, and I decided to join the Liquid Kids team. Little did I know what kind of journey God had in store for me then. But that was the beginning of something beautiful. And scary.

And even quite painful.

* * *

I think now would be a good time to tell you where I got the name for this blog (y’know, after nearly three years of writing here). My story has been one of searching for the “meaning” of grace. I’ve been trying to capture this concept and wrap my mind it for so many years, but until March 2008 (when I started this blog), I had no tangible understanding of it.

Before I started attending Liquid, I was fully invested at a church that had a vice grip on my family. Much like Bob Jones University, this church dictated the way you were to live your life, forcing you into their mold of 1950s Christianity. And if you failed to do so, they’d call your faith into question.

After being part of a “family” for seventeen years, the idea of leaving doesn’t really make sense. But after certain events took place, after certain words were exchanged (and some that should’ve been exchanged were kept silent), we had to get out. We had to get to a safe place.

But God wasn’t about to let us flounder. I’d started attending Liquid with my childhood best friend during the summer of 2007 after I’d returned to New Jersey from South Carolina. My family left our former church in November of that year, and my brother started attending Liquid a month later. My parents were a little more cautious and, after searching for a church home for several months, started attending Liquid in April 2008.

That’s where I found grace.

In his first letter, Peter (one of Jesus’ closest followers and friends) wrote these words:

And after you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you.

That’s what this blog is about.

That’s what my story is. It’s a constant cycle of suffering, grace, and restoration. There’s much more to this story than I’ve told in these six posts, but stick around. I may tell it to you one day.

And seriously, thanks for reading.

Category Personal | Tags: | No Comments
The two-way street of authenticity. . .

November 16, 2010 by Nate

I recently wrote a piece for my church’s blog that I thought would be good to add here. Enjoy!

Authenticity.

It’s become one of the newest buzzwords in the Church. I feel like it’s on the verge of losing its meaning, if it hasn’t already. So I want to try to revitalize the word a little bit.

Churches often claim to value authenticity, but there’s still an unwillingness to see that authenticity is a two-way street. It’s important for those attending a church to be authentic and open—particularly in the small-group setting—in order to obtain any real benefit from being in that community.

But that’s not easy to do, especially since churches have a history of being judgmental and even ostracizing broken people.

To their credit, church leaders are beginning to see how important it is to create a safe place for people to be authentic, open, and honest about their shortcomings, failures, and sins. Because in order to heal, people need to acknowledge their brokenness.

And in order to acknowledge their brokenness, people need a safe place to be honest.

But I would argue that churches need to go one step further than simply creating a safe environment—one step further than just not being judgmental.

Churches need to be authentic.

If we’re going to expect people to be authentic, we need to give them the gift of going second. What do I mean by that? Simply put, we as a church need to be authentic first. We need to be real with people about our brokenness. We need to be honest about the fact that we’ve messed up. We need to be open about our own sin.

It’s funny how acknowledging our brokenness allows us the opportunity to love people even better. We can love people better because we see that everyone’s in the same boat; we’re all broken, messed up people in need of saving. And we can love Jesus better because we’re reminded of what He saved us from and what He continues to save us from.

In The Message paraphrase of the Bible, James is translated as saying the following: “Real religion, the kind that passes muster before God the Father, is this: Reach out to the homeless and loveless in their plight, and guard against corruption from the godless world.”

I would argue that the “homeless and loveless” would include those that have been spurned by the Church. They’ve messed up. They’ve sinned. And we’ve turned them away because of it. So they go from community to community hoping to find healing but never being healed because they’re afraid to be authentic.

And authenticity is the first step to healing.

The Church is also in need of healing. The Church has given in to pride, arrogance, and a false belief that we are somehow the gatekeepers to the throne room of God.

And if we as a church can be authentic, we can find healing too.

My favorite band wrote a song called “Pins and Needles.” In it, the lead singer writes these words: “I’m growing fond of broken people, as I see that I am one of them.”

Do we want to be better lovers of the “homeless and loveless”? Then let’s be honest with ourselves and admit that we too have sinned.

Category Church | Tags: | No Comments