Bellian or Piperian

In the 4th - 5th century people were defined as Pelagian or Augustinian. This month, (an possibly year) a different sort of identification has risen. John Piper tweeted, "Farewell Rob Bell" last week, creating a media, blogging, and flaming frenzy as people worked to criticize and support Bell for a book that hadn't even been released yet, Love Wins.

Both Bell and Piper are respected pastors, both Bell and Piper believe in Scripture, and both seek to serve God, their hermeneutics, (the way that they study and read the Bible) however differ.

Here's a quiz to help you figure out which side you stand on.

1. When God looks at you…
P. His Holiness sees one totally depraved, a sinner deserving nothing but damnation
B. Your Creator sees a beautiful part of God’s Good world

2. We know that God is Love because…
P. The salvation of even one sinner
B. Our Redeemer continuously, freely, and faithfully pursues us through Sin, Law, and Death

3. God’s work in the Cross and Resurrection of Jesus is Good News for…
P. A limited number of people God chose before time (and not for the reprobate majority)
B. All of God’s Creation…every person, society, and all of history.

4. The Christian Gospel is persuasive because….
P. You have to! God wills your election, gives you faith, and preserves it.
B. You get to! The story in scripture, the work of God in the world, and life in the way of Jesus is eternally good, true, and beautiful.

(HomebrewedChristianity)

Hopefully by understanding which side you resonate with more, you will be more understanding and patient with those on the other side .

Universalsm or Pluralism or ??? What??????

I believe that 2011 will bring a new schism into evangelical and popular Christianity. Being familiar with these definitions will help in the conversation:

Universalism is the general belief that all will be saved, regardless of religious beliefs. The Muslim and the Christian are on the same basic path—and for universalists all will be saved.

Universalism needs to be distinguished from pluralism (though as I have sketched “universalism” above there is precious little difference). Pluralism focuses on the legitimacy of each religion and belief system and that each of them prepares a person for final existence with God. For pluralists, there’s no unique saving place for Jesus Christ.

Christian universalism is a bit different: Christian universalism denies pluralism and balder forms of universalism by contending that all can or will be saved, but only through the saving work of Jesus Christ. While many who advocate this fail to recognize that those in other religions simply don’t believe such a thing, and in fact may say they don’t want to be saved through Christ, the Christian universalist confidently trots out the idea that whether they know it or not, God saves through Jesus Christ. But the big point here is that all can and will be saved through Christ.

Evangelical universalism is newer on the block and argues that God saves exclusively through Christ and that those who deny Christ, or who have not heard of Christ, or who have rejected God’s natural revelation to them, will be judged and will experience hell. In other words, these folks believe in hell—though they believe “less” (or as they might say “more”) than the traditionalist. But they believe hell is not eternal but instead temporary and once one has experienced judgment for one’s sins one will have, by the grace of God and through the merits of Christ, the opportunity to respond to the Gospel—and this news is so good and God’s offer so gracious that eventually hell will be emptied and all will find redemption in Christ to enjoy God’s salvation forever.

There is yet another version: annihilationism or conditional immortality. This view is traditional in its appeal to evangelism and to the gospel of salvation through Christ alone—it is an exclusive claim—and that those who don’t respond to the Gospel will be judged and will experience hell, but that eventually their punishment will run out and they will be utterly destroyed and annihilated and cease from existence. Here one has both a traditional view of hell and, at the same time, some kind of correlation between temporary sins—say 75 years of utter rejection of all things pertaining to what they know of God and Christ—and the experience of justice. When that justice runs its course that person will be utterly extinguished. Instead of an eternal consciousness of separation from God, these folks believe only in eternal consequences.

Then there’s the traditional view: those who reject Christ, and some believe God’s mercy will be wide enough to include those who have never heard of Christ but have responded to the light they have comprehended (inclusivism)—and there’s latitude here for variations of several sorts—will be judged on the basis of that light. For traditionalists and some inclusivists their number is few so that billions who have not responded to Christ will suffer eternal and conscious separation from God. Some inclusivists would contend that many, if not most, humans will be finally saved.


(Definitions from Scott McKnight from an article in Relevant Magazine)

Serving as a Family

I made the decision long ago to serve the youth as a family, rather than to serve the youth with a family.

Looks like I wasn't the only one.

Andrew Jones, Tall Skinny Kiwi, recently posted this as a major game changer in his life:

BONUS GAME CHANGER: To minister as a family instead of a trying to minister as a man with a family. My kids and my wife, and even our dog, are all an integral part of what God has called us to do. That game changer has been great for all of us and has opened up more doors than you could imagine.

Naked Religion

I haven't read Richard Rohr's The Naked Now, but after reading this excerpt posted by Zach of Jimmy Eat World, I'm tempted to.

If certitude, predictability, and perfect order were so important, Jesus would have come in a time of digital recorders and cameras, and he would have at least written his ideas down somewhere–and more clearly! He would have described his task as the establishing of archives instead of a sprawling banquet of rich food and wine, as he consistently did. He said, “I have come that you might have life, and a very abundant life at that” (John 10:10). How did we ever get correct rational ideas confused with an abundant life? This happens perhaps to folks who are unwilling to let got of their attachment to their images of themselves, the world, and God. They will not let go of their attachments for a living relationship. “The old wine is good enough,” they say (Luke 5:39), and so they miss out on the great banquet that all the mystics, the prophets, and Jesus describe.

Surely God does not exist so that we can think correctly about Him — or Her. Amazingly and wonderfully, like all good parents, God desires instead the flourishing of what God created and what God loves — us ourselves. Ironically, we flourish more by learning from our mistakes and changing than by a straight course that teaches us nothing.

Qualities for work force

Posted in the class I am subbing:

"The two most important qualities for students seeking permanent places in the work force inthe 21st century are:

Flexible thinking.

Getting along with people who are different from you.

SCANS Report - US Department of Labor"

Shane Claiborne in Esquire?

Great article, great audience.

From the guy who brought you Blue Like Jazz

A Million Miles In A Thousand Years by Donald Miller

Youth is fleeting

Wow! From woodstock to middle aged...what will my next 60ish years entail?

(taken from here)

Memories of my youth

When I was little my dad would visit me every Tuesday and take me, my brother & my sister to his house for dinner. For a solid year every Tuesday night we would pick up Little Caesars, "pizza pizza," and watch this:

Still Learning from Hume

God has used many books and people to shape me. One teacher who was influential in my spiritual development was a Hume Speaker, Mike Devries, who spoke at camp the first year I was youth pastor at OVCC. On Mike Devries blogsite, he quote's a friend's posting that I have already verbally shared with many, and that I have found tremendous in helping me to understand church.
In it, Peter Rollin's book, How (not) to Speak About God, is quoted, and I must confess, I started the book years ago, but was never able to finish it. After reading this excerpt, perhaps I'll add it to my summer reading and give it another go.


We Teach Others How to Treat Us
2009 June 8
by Rustin

I’m a fan of what Peter Rollins does with his Ikon ‘community’ in Belfast. This section (below) of a recent interview caught my attention.

I have seen too many people I love get upset at ‘the church’ because, after they withdrew from involvement and disappeared for weeks, ‘the church’ didn’t call them. I could write all day about the consumeristic assumptions behind those kinds of sentiments that I simply don’t share. But more simply, that view lets ourselves off the hook for building authentic relationships and puts all the accountability on others.

The fact is (rightly understood) we teach others how to treat us. We actively receive care and concern from others. We communicate that we aren’t interested in receiving concern and care when we don’t participate, don’t show up, don’t take responsibility, and don’t ourselves call to show concern about others. How others treat us is often an accurate reflection of our own commitment (or lack thereof) to the community.

Here’s Peter Rollins:

Paradoxically, I say, “Ikon doesn’t care about you. Ikon doesn’t give a crap if you are going through a divorce. The only person who cares is the person sitting beside you, and if that person doesn’t care, you’re stuffed.” People will say, “I left the church because they didn’t phone me when my dad died, and that was really hurtful.” But the problem is not that the church didn’t phone but that it promised to phone. I say, “Ikon ain’t ever gonna phone ya.” Pete Rollins might. But if he does, it will be as Pete Rollins and not as a representative of Ikon. Ikon will never notice if you don’t come. But if you’ve made a connection with the person sitting next to you, that person might.
Ikon is like the people who run a pub. It’s not their responsibility to help the patrons become friends. But they create a space in which people can actually encounter each other.

Jesus and Economics

While listening to Donald Miller's book, Searching for God Knows What, I came across the story of "Supply Side Jesus." When I got home I googled it, and found this video: (click here for the comic version)

Excerpt:

Shouldn't you feed the Lepers, Supply Side Jesus?

No Thomas. That would just make them Lazy.

Then shouldn't you at least heal them, Supply Side Jesus?

No, James. Leprosy is a matter of personal responsibility. If people knew I was healing lepers there would be no incentive to avoid leprosy.

Obviously there are political overtones here, but I still like the point, Jesus wouldn't be near as popular today as we would hope.

From the lips of a five-year-old

Sage:

Dear Jesus, please help all of the kids without mommies or daddies, and please help them to if they ever see a coyote to run and run and run, and not stop even if they get hot, and if they get to a house to knock and the door, and to tell the person, even if they are a stranger that they need to get away from a coyote. And please help kids that see mountain lions to go into the house. Amen.

Gospel-less, really?

Now really...I don't go looking for this stuff. I'm actually a little bit bummed out that I found it.

The internet gives a voice to anyone, and occasionally I come across these "Christian" web pages that are devoted to telling its audiences why every popular Christian leader is somehow a false leader.

James Choung, a graduate of MIT, and now a divisional director for Intervaristy, has popularized a diagram for evangelism called, "the four circles." Here it is, read below for one website's critique:



So what's your response to the diagram?

The authors of "a little leaven" wrote:

Not too long ago Christians used the "4 Spiritual Laws" to explain the Christian faith. Today we now have an Emergent influenced witnessing tool that utilizes 4 circles to try to explain the Christian faith (this 4 circles presentation is all the rage among college students). The big problem with this new tool is that it completely misses the point about Biblical Christianity and sinful man's need for a savior and Christ's death on the cross for the sins of the world. Instead, this is some squishy eco-friendly Jesus presentation where you can choose to make Jesus the leader of your life so that He can work through you to bring healing and restoration to the world.

And one of their readers surprisingly wrote:

All I could do was yell WHAT???...WHAT???...WHAT??? at the screen. Excuse me, I have to go pick my chin off the floor.

Did this diagram really miss the point about sinful man's need for a savior? Is a diagram meant to exhaust the entire conversation about a relationship with Jesus?
Which diagram, if any, would Jesus have been able to recognize?

Regarding the four spiritual laws, James Choung writes:

Well, what was missing from the diagrams I had learned was anything substantial about one of the most important themes in Jesus' own preaching: the kingdom of God. I was reading a lot about the kingdom of God, in the Bible and in recent scholarship, but when it came to sharing the core message of the faith, I'd always fall back on an evangelistic diagram that didn't include it. And it dawned on me: Even though there are tons of books out there about the kingdom of God, very few people will be able to share it with their friends unless they are given some tool or aid—some icon—that will help them remember the key points. So even though I'm not a fan of canned presentations, I felt that creating a diagram was essential to help us understand a bigger picture of the gospel that Jesus taught.

You can find an interview by Andy Crouch with James Choung here,
and the Christianity Today article, "From Four Laws to Four Circles" here.

Not For Sale...For Free!

Every month christianaudio.com offers a free book for download. This month the offering is, Not For Sale, a book that I was made aware of at a conference on human slavery a few years ago. If you have a road trip coming up, or some room on your ipod, get a $24 download for free!

What a difference a street or fence makes.

Venezuela

Brazil

I wonder how much control one has over the variables that determine what side of the fence they live on.

Excited

Hooray for presidents and their birthdays!


(On Kirkwood's website, it claims 59"-80" of snow in the last SEVEN DAYS!

Timesuck warning: Overheard

I came across a website, Overheard in New York:

Disgusted mother to little girl who picked up a Swedish fish she dropped on the bus floor: Don't eat that.
Little girl, dusting it off: It's okay, I'll kiss it up to god.
Mother: Don't you dare put that in your mouth. You have no idea what was on the floor.
Little girl, putting it in her mouth and chewing it: It's okay! I kissed it up to god! (swallows it) What are you going to do about it?
Mother, angrily: I'm not going to do anything. You're just going to die.

--Q18 Bus

Homeless man: You need to pray to Jesus everyday. Do you thank Jesus for your food or your family or the newspaper? The devil is killing you through newspapers and the media. Are you thankful to Jesus? He loves you if you talk to him everyday.
Person on train: I would be thankful to Jesus if you would stop shouting in my ear so I can listen to Beyonce's newest album.

--N train

hidden pictures

So, while this makes perfect sense to the artist, I am not the artist. I do think that it is an amazing mural regardless of whether or not I naturally see the "O-V-C-C."

Next time Sage goes to the dentist, remind me to grab a camera

I saw this video on Zach, from Jimmy Eat World's, blog site. I'll include his description too, 'cause it sums it up well:

Check out this clip of a little boy still high out of his mind after going to the dentist. It’s like a cute version of the buddy you have who always overdoes it on the booze.

"Is this real life?"

Finished Piece

6 Hours & 10 cans of paint