Love Wins

I finished reading Love Wins (March 15, 2011) by Rob Bell. Until September of 2011, Rob Bell served as the pastor of Mars Hill Bible Church, a church he founded in Grandville, Michigan, just outside of Grand Rapids, which had grown to a 10,000 member church. He wrote several books before Love Wins, the first named Velvet Elvis in 2005. Time Magazine recently named him in their 2011 100 list as among the most influential persons in the world.

Though I think this book is important, and should be read, I didn't like it. For one thing,

I

don't like it

when people

write

like this.

Bell employs this device throughout this book to emphasize his points. It may seem trite, but it annoys me, and I think there are better ways to emphasize a point.

Another reason I didn't like it is throughout the book, and especially in the first chapter, he likes to pose many questions, one right after another in a series, sometimes 7 or more in a row. Now I like questions. But these are gotcha-like questions, and the author is clearly not interested in an answer (even if he could hear you), nor is he interested in carefully providing a careful consideration of the question, with possible answers, as it seems to me a writer should. Instead, the purpose seems to be to make you feel dumb for whatever position you might have held.

Many Christians are upset with the book, because they say he supports universalism (the belief that all will be saved). In an interview with Martin Bashir, Rob Bell said he doesn't, though he didn't make that clear in the book where he addresses the subject many times. It seems to me that if an author addresses a subject in a book as a major topic, and he disavows a position, he should state it clearly in that book, and not leave others guessing.

Mark Galli, the Senior Editor of Christianity Today, in his lengthy review of this book states, After reading the book, it's hard for me to believe that Bell doesn't espouse universalism, but to be fair, he never formally affirms such belief. I agree.

Bell fairly points out that universalism finds a tradition within Christianity. What he fails to state is that it is a tiny minority position - most traditions in Christianity reject it, and many have outright condemned it. It might be interesting if his book undertook a serious study of this position in church history. Instead, he doesn't seriously engage in the arguments against universalism, and glibly asserts that if all are not saved, that means God doesn't get his way, an assertion those opposed to universalism do not agree with, and have answered on numerous occasion before. However, the book raises an important issue within Christianity. At least Rob Bell is trying to discuss it in a relevant manner for our generation. I just wish Rob Bell had done a better job of addressing it, and I hope someone else will address this issue in a manner that is relevant to our generation.

The Confessions - Book XI

Augustine moves from exploring memory (in Book X) to exploring time by asking something most of us never consider - what is time? Augustine wants to explore this in part to answer some silly questions and objections that had been raised, such as - did God just do nothing before he created the world? Did God change his mind when he decided to create the world? - and other such questions (and challenges).

Augustine begins by admitting that questions about time involve difficult matters, and he prays to God for help. Part of the problem is God, who is eternal, exists outside of time - while we exist in time. So for us, it's difficult to understand existence where everything past, present, and future, exists now and always.

Another problem involves the existence of time. Augustine points out the future does not exist, we only anticipate it's coming. The past equally does not exist, we only have a memory (which he explored in Book X) of it. Only the present seems to exist, but it very quickly passes from future to past. Oddly, when we measure time, we measure something that does not exist - we only measure the time it takes for the future, which does not exist, to move to the past, which does not exist. While we think we might be measuring the present, in fact, we can't truly measure the present. Yet, while time may only exist in our mind, we cannot exist, or even think, without it, and so, we live with it because we must.

For Augustine, time is intimately connected with God, since God created time along with the universe - so that a contemplation of time should bring us to praising God - to be in awe and wonder of Him and His creation. For Augustine, the words "In the beginning . . . " in Genesis should be viewed as being for our benefit, since we are in time, and in a spritual sense (following Ambrose) as God being the source of our being, as well as the First Cause of everything. So for us, who are in time, the creation occurred at a point of time before everything else. For God, who is eternal, the creation occurred in eternity, even though, in part, God stepped into time, so to speak for our benefit, so that, from our perspective, the creation occurred in the beginning. Though Augustine finds this reasonable, he readily admits the mystery this involves which goes beyond our complete understanding.

On to Book XII

Back to Book X.

The Great Divorce

A friend and I recently discussed universalism in Christian history. He suggested I read The Great Divorce by C.S. Lewis, which addressed the topic. I just finished it.  Lewis meant to contrast this work to that of William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, in which Blake told of a union of the two.

In this fantasy, the no-name narrator awakes in a bleak, lonely city. He eventually discovers it's hell. Though anyone can wish anything into existence, they keep wishing new houses further and further apart from each other because they can't stand each other.

He finds a bus stop, and gets in line. He discovers the bus takes you to the beautiful foothills of heaven (on sort of a holiday). There the passengers can move on to the high country of heaven (in which case hell becomes purgatory for them).
After they roam around some, shining ones come to meet them and urge them on to the high country. Each shining one is someone they knew in their past life who has chosen to come down from the high country to urge the passengers to repent and move up. The narrator gets to observe these interactions.

Usually, the passengers have clung to something they refuse to let go of which would enable them to move up. The interactions provide the most fascinating aspect of the book. Through the narrator, you hear just about all the excuses and justifications for sin and self-absorption that basically exists. Sadly, most of the passengers can't wait to get back to the bus and return to the bleak city (hell).

The shining one guide for the narrator, who explains what is going on, turns out to be George MacDonald (a 19th Cent. fiction author, poet, and Christian minister) whom Lewis considered his imagination mentor.  MacDonald promoted the possibility of universalism (God's love will save everyone). The book in part seems to be a way for Lewis to reconcile himself with some of MacDonald's views.

Many of the issues of heaven and hell, salvation, predestination and election take a different perspective as the guide attempts to put them in the perspective of eternity instead of our linear way of looking at time. In any event, the guide conveys the notion that those in the bleak town have chosen to live there, and will not likely want to give it up.

In the end, the narrator wakes up and realizes it was all a dream which reinforces what Lewis said in his preface that all this was a fantasy - a means of exploring these issues (not a theological essay - which some seem to confuse it with - Lewis always renounced any claims to being a theologian.)

The Silence

I watched "The Silence," (Tystnaden in Sweedish) a film by Ingman Bergman from 1963. It's the third film in what is known as Bergman's "Silence of God" trilogy, "Through a Glass Darkly," (1962) and "Winter Light" (1962). I haven't yet watched the first two films, but I understand that what is implied there is made very clear by the third film, there is no God in the world, and thus only silence remains from the cold, bleak universe.

The story focuses on two sisters, Ester (played by Ingrid Thulin) and Anna (played by Gunnel Lindblom). Ester represents the intellectual (who is dying), and Anna represents the sensual. Yet both are bereft and without hope in their own ways, and both resent each other.

It's unclear where they are, but wherever it is, it is bleak, cold, dark, and all out war is about to break out, though they stay in a largely vacant hotel, where the only other guests seems to be a troupe of performing dwarfs, who are much more alive than the two sisters, though the dwarfs are despised in the social order and only tolerated at the theater.

Anna's very young son, Johan (about 9), serves as the only connection between the two sisters, the dwarfs, and the rest of the oblique, yet plush, hotel. (The camera angles there give a sense of alienation.) He is the only basis for an irrational hope in an irrational world.

It's quite clear that in a silent, godless universe, there's no basis for morality, and many in a 1963 were shocked by some of what goes on in the film. There's also no love, only sex, except for love for Johan, who provides the only real connection left between the two sisters, again providing the irrational hope in an irrational world.

Most find the film deeply disturbing, which is exactly what Bergman hoped to convey, and mainly why it is considered a great film. Bergman wants to disturb complacency with a realistic view of a nihilistic universe. However, in providing a sympathetic, curious, and mostly innocent child, Bergman points to an existentialist hope for meaning, hope, and love, though it is in the area of non-reason. Bergman's later works expanded on this existentialist hope.

(I previously posted on another Bergman film, "Hour of the Wolf.")

The Confessions - Book X

Book X marks a major division in the Confessions, since Austine ends his autobiography in Book IX. Augustine begins a journey into the mind and the soul.

He journeys into the mind by exploring memory. Augustine wonders how the memory holds so much, and can recall things and events not before us with such vividness at times that we can almost feel, touch, smell, hear, and even see it. Augustine cannot grasp the vastness of this storehouse, which means his mind cannot fully know itself, and "I myself cannot grasp the totality of what I am."

Augustine goes on to examine the different kinds of memories, how they were formed from our senses, and ponders how our mind knows the external world through our senses, and then process those experiences and stores them in our memory. Part of this goes into epistemology - that part of philosophy that explores the basis for knowledge (how we know we know). Augustine wonders how we know about things we forgot about, as well as how we recognize things we haven't yet experiened. This delves into a-priori knowledge (knowledge before experience). Most importantly, Augustine explores how we know or recognize God before or without sensory experience.

It's questions and explorations like this that makes Augustine so read by so many, Christians and non-Christians alike.

From here, Augustine goes on to relate his search for God, and an examination of himself before God, a journey into his soul. He carefully considers what John broadly describes as the three main sins that encompases everything in the world, "the lust of the flesh. and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life (KJV - see other translations for alternative )." As Augustine carefully examines each area in his life, he confesses he is full of sin, especially in the pride of life, since he often seeks the praises of others, and places that above seeking the approval of God.

Augustine concludes that he can find no safe place for his soul except in God.

Onto Book XI

Back to Book IX

The Shack

A friend recommended The Shack to me, not because he agreed with it, but because he found it thought provoking. I had heard about it from others, and some of what I heard was a bit discomforting, though they often highly praised it. I decided to read it for myself, especially upon hearing it had sold somewhere between 10 and 15 million copies.

William Paul Young (who goes by Paul) wrote The Shack, his first published book, as a fiction. However, those who told me something about it tended to treat it as something between a theological work or a true story. Though the sales figures show many love this book, many have attacked it as heretical, again treating it as a theological work rather than as a fiction.

Paul grew up as a missionary kid in West Papua New Guinea. There he suffered sexual abuse at school by members of the New Guinea tribe they lived among. His father verbally abused him, and he was emotionally distant from both his parents. Throughout his life, close friends and relatives died unexpectedly, often young. He later cheated on his wife, Kim. To remedy the adultery, Kim said he had to face every awful thing in his life.

Young initially wrote The Shack for his six children as a way to explain his understanding about God and how God helped heal his inner hurts. He gave some extra copies to friends who urged him to get it published. Two friends, Wayne Jacobsen and Brad Cummings, both writers, collaborated with him to rewrite the book. They sent it to many publishers who all rejected it, so they formed a new company, Windblown Media, and self-published it.

In the story, Mack, the central character, goes, at God's invitation, back to the place of his deepest hurt, the shack where a serial child killer murdered his 6 year old daughter, Missy. When he arrives, he finds that God the Father appears to him as an African-American woman (Papa), God the Son appears to him as a Middle Eastern man (Jesus), and God the Holy Spirit appears to him as an Asian woman (Sarayu). Papa clarifies he chose this appearance for now to get beyond Mack's stereotypical pictures of him (he later takes the appearance of a man). They spend a weekend (or do they?) in discussion with Mack, sometimes all together - and sometimes one on one, sometimes in the Shack and sometimes outside near the Shack (one evening, Mack lays with Jesus on a dock staring up at the stars talking away). During that time, they explain to Mack who they are, what they want, but most importantly, they help Mack with the hurt and anger about Missy's murder, especially with his anger at God about it.

In a fiction, you can explore what ifs - it doesn't have to be true. You can explore something like, "what if the Trinity appeared to me in a shack - how would they appear to me?" You can explore different theological positions - they don't have to be true. You can even advance a message (usually called a theme in literature). However, good fiction usually advances the theme by relating the actions of characters rather than primarily by dialogue. And good fiction usually avoids making a character into a mere mouthpiece for the author.

A problem I have with The Shack is that the Trinity seems to mostly become a mouthpiece for expressing Paul Young's theology. While I thought some of it was spot on (especially about God's love and His desire to heal us), other aspects unabashedly contradict answers to the same questions orthodox Christianity carefully developed from Scripture to the same questions over two millennia. This is likely why Young has come under fire from many Christians. At the same time, many love his book, since many identify with the hurt place he is writing from, and the way he portrays God responding to that hurt.

Young expresses a definite theology. He attended Canadian Bible College and graduated from Warner Pacific College with a degree in religion. He attended (but did not complete) seminary, and pastored a church for a time. His favorite author is Jacque Ellul, who was heavily influenced by Karl Barth - a prominent neo-orthodox theologian. He made it clear in interviews that he has given up on the church, his seminary training, and what he would view as traditional Christianity. Most disturbing, Young often had the Trinity put the views they expressed above what the Scripture said.

Yet in many ways, I enjoyed reading The Shack, even if I didn't always agree with the theological views Young expressed through his Trinity characters. Because the book reflected the very real process Paul went through to seek healing from all his hurts, and because he initially wrote to communicate this to his children, there are many parts of the book that come across as deeply personal and very touching.

The Confessions - Book IX

Though Augustine relates other events in Book IX, he focuses on the death of his mother, (St.) Monica. Now that her son has fully converted to God, and safely rests in the arms of the church, Monica feels she has accomplished all she had to do on earth. She soon thereafter falls gravely ill, and serenely dies. However, before she goes, she and Augustine get to share an extended discussion about life and more at Ostia by the Sea. Augustine praises his mother and the life she led, prompting him, her husband, and many others to find Christ by the exemplary life she led. Though he rejoiced she went to be with the Lord, he finds he experiences deep pain at her loss, and concludes God accepts his loss since God is deeply compassionate.

Augustine also resolves several other matters. He leaves his career teaching rhetoric ("a salesman of loquacity"). He reexamines his studies in Manicheanism, and finds amazement that he ever believed it. He finally accepts baptism, and immerses himself in the study of Scripture, especially the Psalms.

Onto Book X

Back to Book VIII

The Confessions - Book VIII

Augustine continues to struggle to make a full commitment to Christianity, mostly centered around his passion for sexual sin, but also in his concept of God given his previous experience and thought in the Manichean (Gnostic) religion. He feels paralyzed and unable to move forward to fully embrace Christianity. He is especially embarrassed when some of his intelligent friends not only embrace Christianity, but commit to a chaste lifestyle. Augustine feels torn by his two natures, though at the same time he tries to reject the dualism inherent in Manicheanism, especially since he feels the promptings of "Lady Continence" and moves off to a bench in a garden to weep.

At this point, one of the most poignant moments in literature, philosophy, and the Christian Church occurs. Augustine hears the voice of a child next door saying in a sing-song refrain, "Pick it up and read it." After pondering what this might be, Augustine concluded it's the voice of God that he should open his Bible and read the first chapter he found. He found, "Not in riotousness and drunkenness, not in lewdness and wantonness, not in strife and rivalry,: but put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh and its lusts. (Romans 13:13-14.) Augustine remarks he didn't need to read more. "No sooner than had I finished the sentence than it was as if the light of steadfast trust poured into my heart, and all the shadows of hesitation fled away."

On to Book IX

Back to Book VII

The Confessions - Book VII

Though by now Augustine has somewhat abandoned a dualistic (good and evil are equal combatants) Manichaeism, and though he is dealing with Christianity as he hears it through Ambrsose' sermons, and as he begins to read Scripture, he is also trying to deal with it in the context of the current Neo-Platonic philsophy he is now reading.

He sort of understands that Scripture teaches that God is all spirit, and not any part material. However, since both Manichaeism and Neo-Platonism teaches that God is at least part material, Augustine mightily struggles on this point.

He also mightly struggles on the problem of evil - how to account for evil in the world? He finally reaches the point of believing that God created everything good, and that the evil we see today, including sinful man, is a corruption of the original good that a good and holy God made.

As Augustine studies more Scripture, he begins to realize much that the Neo-Platonists have left out in explaining all of what is around us. For example, they left out any explanation about how Jesus Christ is God in human form, the Word made flesh who dwelt among us. They leave out any praise to God. Worse, they tend to believe in more than one God (polytheism). He did heed their advise to turn inward, and there, inspired by reading Scripture, he found a powerful vision of God, seeing a light "higher than my mind." However, Augustine finds that the weight of sin drags him back from this vision, and a lack of humility keeps him from enjoying God and putting his full faith in Christ.

While Augustine was certainly aware of Neo-Platonism, and certainly influenced by its thoughts, his writings here certainly indicate that he did not accept it whole cloth, and tended to accept its thoughts only so far as he could find it accorded with Scripture.


On to Book VIII
Back to Book VI

The Confessions - Book VI

In Milan, Augustine struggles with Christianity as he listens to the sermons of Ambrose. He wants to meet with Ambrose and discuss Christianity at length with him, but Ambrose, a busy bishop, does not have the time, so Augustine listens to his sermons, which impresses him. He thinks through his problems with Christianity. He realizes that Christianity does not have to prove all its claims to him, and that he needs to trust, a form of faith. He thinks this is superior to the claims of Manicheanism, which claims it can prove all its claims, but he finds it really proves nothing. Augustine comes to realize that he believes most things by trust, a form of faith, and usually does not ask that everything be proven to him before he believes, so he reasons, why would he ask Christianity to do so.

Augustine mightly struggles with sexual pleasures during this time. He is amazed that a close friend has spurned sexual pleasure in order to pursue wisdom. Augustine is not sure whether to admire his friend or despise him. In any event, Augustine decides he must marry a respectable woman, and becomes engaged to a young girl which he must wait two years before he can marry her. Thus he decides he must send away the woman he has been living with, though he decides to keep the boy they have parented together. This breaks both her heart and his. However, despite his best efforts, he finds that he cannot keep away from another woman before he can marry his young bride to be. He knows God should punish him, wonders why God doesn't, and believes it is because of his mother's earnest prayers for him. All the while, it is clear that Augustine is drawing nearer to God, and getting more ready to make the commitment to become a Christian.

On to Book VII

Back to Book V