What No One Yet has Said About the Triumph of Love

In case you've been living in the evangelical world's version of a sensory deprivation tank in Siberia and somehow missed it, let me catch you up to speed. Recently, the popular and/or controversial pastor of a mega-church in Michigan published a book about Heaven and Hell that made big waves in the sea of all-things-evangelical. Actually, it was the pre-game show that really made the wave: a 3 minute advert for his book, which he posted on the Internet, in which he hinted that he would be giving some non-traditional answers to some hard questions about the doctrine of hell, about which some self-appointed watch dogs over at a blog called "The Gospel Coalition" cried universalist! and heretic!, and after which Harper Collins bumped the book's release date up by two weeks.

Here's the video:

Just how big a wave did it make? To compare: if you google Jesus of Nazareth, Pope Benedict's most recent publication, you'll garner around 668,000 hits. A google of this pastor's Love Wins will earn you 606,000 hits. So the literary crest he's carving, it would seem, is at least as big as the Pope's. Heck: even CBC News, that pillar of secular liberalism, caught wind of it and figured it was worth a mention, though their story reads like a third-grader's account of the theory of relativity, for all the sensitivity to the real issues it shows (read the article here).

Bloggers better than I have taken more pains than I to review, dissect, respond and otherwise put their theological surfboard to the wave. I'd suggest you start here; then read this nuanced deconstruction of some of the theological terms being used in the debate; and then read this 10-part series by Steve Holmes, lecturer at St. Mary's College, St. Andrews Scotland. He offers, by all accounts, the most thorough and theologically erudite analysis of the book you'll find on the web.

Of course, after Don Miller published this scintillating review, it seemed like there was simply nothing left to say.

But there is something I haven't yet heard anyone say, and it stands out glaringly to me, so I'll offer it here.

The crisis over this book, such as it is, is not really a crisis about the doctrines of Heaven and Hell at all. It is more a crisis, I think, of ecclesiology. The problem that the guys who have come out swinging really have with this Michiagan pastor is not that he may hold untraditional views on the afterlife. By most accounts, he isn't saying anything that hasn't been said before; and to be sure, pastors who have called themselves Christian have said far more radical things than him, with impunity as far as the likes of the Gospel Coalition are concerned.

Their real problem is that "he's one of us" (so to speak), or at least in lots of other ways he sure sounds like it. He talks evangelical Jesus talk like "one of us." He's published by reputable evangelical publishers like "one of us." He calls himself evangelical, like "one of us." He upholds the Lordship of Jesus in old fashioned ways, like "one of us." If he were just a "flaky" "liberal" pastor, they could dismiss him and be done with it. And it's no coincidence that many conservatives with the hardest cores have tried to stick the anathema of "liberalism" on him in disingenuous ways, because if he were simply a "liberal" they would have just cause to turn down his application to the club without even considering it.

But he's evangelical. And because Evangelicalism is such a loosely defined tribe, a tribe where inclusion is based on whether or or not your "version" of the Gospel is like mine, or you "feel" like me when you talk about the Bible, or you "sound" like me when you pray, or sing, or wax theological, a tribe where membership is more often based on our self-identification as evangelical and, for all our talk about Sola Scriptura, authority is more often based on worldly measures of popularity (who has the biggest church, the best-selling book, the most popular broadcast, the most endorsements from other self-appointed leaders of the movement)... because evangelicalism has no Magisterium other than blog stats and book sales... because we suffer this crisis of ecclesiology, self-appointed Gospel Coalitions and self-described Christian Hedonists feel it is necessary to guard the ford, ready to execute any brother who can't pronounce Shibboleth. (And as an aside, this is why the uproar over Rick Warren's invitation to the Desiring God Conference last year was so significant-- it illustrates the same crisis in ecclesiology-- an "evangelical leader" had invited someone we weren't quite sure about to the party).

Let me try saying it this way: "Heretic" and "Orthodox" are as much ecclesiological designations as they are theological. To be orthodox is to be in keeping with the received teaching of the Church-- and to be a heretic is to be contrary to the received teaching of the Church. But the crisis is that there is no Church, as such, in Evangelicalism. There are only churches. There is no legitimate, single "body" which uniformly "receives" teaching; there are only bodies-- Zondervan and the EFC and the good folks at Christianity Today and the Gospel Coalition and the Billy Graham Association and Big Idea (until Hollywood bought them) and Vineyard (well, we'll sing their songs but we're not so sure about their methods) and so on.

In an ecclesiologically fragmented universe like this, anyone who doesn't agree with me is a heretic and anyone who does is orthodox, and it's not just my right, it's my duty to personally defend my "truth" against your "error"; and since we'll never get to sit together at the next Ecumenical Synod, the easiest way to do so is to lash out (in ways that are by turns pompous, stingy, dismissive and silly).

I haven't read Love Wins, and probably won't; I have read Stan Grenz's Beyond Foundationalism, which is perhaps a more helpful book anyways, in that it helps us to understand the interplay between the community, theology, Scripture, tradition, Church and truth that's at work here. But thinking about all this, and looking for something to say about it that 606,000 posts haven't yet touched on, I want to ask: what if, instead of 606,000 passionate posts about the controversy over Love Wins, we devoted that much web-space to equally passionate discussions about the crisis in Evangelical ecclesiology that the Love Wins controversy has simply brought to light?

Perhaps then the energy spent on self-righteously denouncing a "suspected heretic" (who, as far as I can tell, is no heretic at all) might be spent instead on making Ephesians 4:1-6 our reality as evangelicals.

A Parable for a Wedding Homily

I had the honour of officiating at my first ever wedding on Saturday. There's much I might say about the day, but for now I thought I'd share a short excerpt from the introduction of my wedding homily.

I heard a story once about a Rabbi whose student came to see him after an absence of many months. The young Talmid had been looking to marry, so the Rabbi asked him: “And have you found your wife yet, my son?”

“No, Rav,” said the Talmid. “I met a woman who is quite lovely. When she smiles she lights up the room; and when she laughs it is like the brook in a spring meadow.”

“And will you not marry her?” asked the Rabbi. “I think not,” came the reply. “I am, after all, looking for the perfect woman.”

The Talmid went away for many years. When he visited his Rabbi again, he moved a bit slower, and the world had etched lines around his eyes. “And have you found your wife yet, my son?” the Rabbi asked.

“No, Rav,” said the Talmid. “I have met a woman who is quite noble. When she speaks her words are pearls of wisdom and when she works her hands are full of grace.” “And will you not marry her?”

“I think not,” came the reply. “I am, after all, looking for the perfect woman.”

Well, the Talmid was gone for many years and when he visited his Rabbi again, he moved slower still, and the world had dusted him with grey. “And have you found your wife yet, my son?” the Rabbi asked.

“Oh, Rav. I met the perfect woman. When she smiled it lit up the room, and when she spoke her words were wisdom, and when sat and did nothing, even then my heart was content. She was the perfect woman, indeed.”

“And did you not marry her?” Asked the Rabbi.

“No, Rav,” came the reply: “She was looking for the perfect man.”

Battling Blogger's Block

When I started terra incognita two years ago, I never expected that 275 posts later I'd have run out of things to say. For the last three weeks, however, I've been lugging around a blogger's block the size of the Rock of Sisyphus. Every idea that comes to me seems over-done or hardly worth the effort, and that plain old green header kept staring me down every time I sat in front of the screen. Enough hits come up when I google "blogger's block" to suspect this is a common malady, and will run its course in due time.

All of that to explain the aesthetic overhaul here at terra incognita: out with the old, plain-Jane green header and white-washed colours, in with a whole new theme. This was partly an effort to inject some new life into my blog; but more to the point it was a blatant exercise in procrastination (my hope was that the blogger's block was ice, and by stalling a bit it would simply melt on its own). My first effort at re-design included a theme called "Dark Ritual," but my son, after asking cautiously if I wanted his "honest opinion," told me that when he saw it he felt like he was sitting down to read the "morbid thoughts" of a "teenaged-girl Twilight Series fan" (as though there were other kinds of Twilight fans). I squinted my eyes and tilted my head and realized he was right. This is effort two.

Anyways, I hope you enjoy. More to the point, I hope it serves its purpose and inspires some new blogging enthusiasm. Nothing like moving the furniture around to get a new lease on the place.

Hypocrisy and the Modular Mind

So today's episode of CBC's The Current provided more than its fair share of blog-fodder for an explorer of spiritual terra incognita like myself. First was Neil Morrison's fascinating report about social scientist Alex Todorov, who has conducted indepth studies of our subconscious reactions to the human face. He found that when he showed children photos of political candidates and asked them to choose, based solely on facial appearance, which person would "make a better captain" for an ocean voyage game they were playing, their immediate gut reactions were able to predict actual election outcomes with more than 70% accuracy. This was fascinating enough, but then he reproduced his results with a group of PhD-credentialed psychologists, who should have known better than to let such prejudices get the better of them. His conclusion: our immediate, gut-level reaction to the faces of candidates plays a substantial (even deterministic) role in shaping how we will vote.

And while I was mulling over the theological significance the Scriptures place on the human face, and how the Pharisees, for instance, commended Jesus precisely because he refused to "look into the face" of men, and what light this might shed on Alex Todorov's study, The Current went on to talk about the controversy surrounding circumcision. They interviewed a lady who's heading a movement in the States to have neo-natal circumcisions banned, despite recent studies which suggest that circumcision significantly reduces the risk of HIV and other STD's (the lady from NO-CIRC they interviewed bandied about words like "child mutilation," "torture," and "excruciating, unnecessary pain"). And I couldn't help but ponder the theological significance the Scriptures place on circumcision as the mark of the Abrahamic covenant.

Anyways, for a blogger curious about intersections between culture and faith, The Current's fruit was indeed low-hanging and tantalizing today.

But then they went on with this segment about hypocrisy. If you have the 25 minutes to spare, give it a listen; if not, let me give you the Coles notes. Robert Cursban argues that it is decidedly hypocritical of us to denounce our politicians as "hypocritical," inasmuch as hypocrisy is built into the very architecture of our brains. He shared some neuroscience which suggests that the neurological systems which govern our behaviour and the systems which govern ethical decision making are distinctly isolated from one another, and there is nothing in us that naturally keeps these systems functioning in consistent ways. He describes this "natural inconsistency in our neuro-physiology" as having a "modular mind" (i.e. a mind in which behaviour and ethics are neurologically compartmentalized). And he says that biologically speaking, we all have modular minds.

Hearing Robert Cursban talk about the "modular mind," and that missing "something" which keeps our neurological systems functioning consistently-- the predisposition to hypocrisy that seems coded into our very DNA--I couldn't help but think of Jesus. And Matthew 7:1-6. And the vitriol he reserved for only the most hypocritical of his religious contemporaries. And I couldn't help but wonder if the wholeness that Jesus invites his followers to experience is profoundly more than any mere metaphorical wholeness. Perhaps it is a breaking down, in a very real sense, the natural walls of our modular mind.

The Wisdom of Qohelet (VI)

Here is sermon 6 in our series on the Book Ecclesiastes:

Ecclesiastes 4:7-12. Life Together

The Wisdom of Qohelet (V)

Here's my fifth sermon in our series on the Book of Ecclesisastes.

Ecclesiastes 4:1-3. Tears

A Few Random Dispatches from the Movies

Not sure if it's because we're trapped in the late-winter doldrums, or what, but the last few weeks at the Harris household we've been watching more movies than usual; and this may be a result of the late-winter doldrums, too, but today I can think of nothing more profound for blog-fodder than to share some of my random impressions of what we've been watching.

Iron Man. This was better than many of the films I've seen in the super-hero genre, and the story of Tony Stark's redemption is not entirely without merit (even if it is a redemption-by-works-not-grace), but the idea that he created an arc-reactor-powered-battle suit out of spare parts while holed up in a cave somewhere in Afghanistan was such a big pill to swallow at the outset that my sympathy for the film was greatly diminished going forward. I'm as willing to suspend my disbelief as the next guy (usually more), but even science fiction has to set the terms of believability somewhere. But then again, lots of things blow up.

The Simpsons Movie. I stopped watching The Simpsons somewhere around Season 11, so maybe this film was just the final throes of a gradual decline that I've not been privy to, but I have to say I was pretty disappointed with this movie. I felt like all their best jokes had been told by the 25 minute mark, all their best characters were reduced to cameos and catch-phrases, and their best satire amounted to little more than obvious cheap shots at easy targets. Probably one of the biggest challenges in producing a film based on a long-running television franchise is to tell a real story that stands on its own merits while staying faithful to the series; this film, I think, did neither.

The Social Network. "Film of the Year" (Rolling Stone) seems a bit grandiose to me, but I really enjoyed this one, nonetheless. With the exception of the final exchange between Zuckerberg and the Junior Lawyer for the Defense, I appreciated how carefully they handled the (fictional) Zuckerberg as a dynamic and complex character. The lawyer's line in that final scene, "You're not an a**h*le, you're just trying too hard to be one" seemed a bit too preachy and transparent to me, as though the film didn't trust the audience to draw its own conclusions about Zuckerberg but had to force-feed us a verdict. Oh yeah, and as characters, the Winklevoss twins were almost embarrassingly flat and cliched.

The King's Speech. This was an inspiring and enjoyable movie, and Bertie was one of the most genuinely sympathetic characters I've seen in a long time: he's dynamic and complex and well-portrayed. The cinematography took creative risks that worked, and the way the film conveys the ominous uncertainty that must have overshadowed this period of history is effective. That said, it lost me (though not irredeemably) at two points: 1) Timothy Spall's Churchill seemed like he'd just stumbled out of a Monty Python sketch, or off the set of SNL (if SNL ever parodied historical British politicians, that is); 2) Bertie's "I have a voice!" assertion when Logue taunts him by sitting on St Edward's Chair seemed almost laughably contrived and transparent. This scene almost sank the movie for me. As with my critique of The Social Network above, it left me wondering: when did film-makers get the impression that audiences were so stupid that they had to club us over the head with the theme of their film at least once before the movie is done?

Sisters in Christ

I feel like I'm always the last to find out about these things, but today they announced on the radio that it's International Women's Day-- a day set aside to recognize and celebrate "the economic, political and social achievements of women past, present and future."

Of course, you sometimes hear the claim that the Christian Faith is one of the main reasons we need things like an "International Women's Day" to rectify years of marginalization in the first place; but my experience and general impression is that people who make this claim have actually given Christianity at best a cursive and cliched reading. Not everything the Church has always said and done when it comes to gender equality has always been above reproach, to be sure, but it's not for nothing that the (highly macho) ancient world dismissed early Christianity derisively as a religion of "women and slaves."

Be that as it may, for my part on this International Women's Day and all, I began compiling a list of sisters in Christ through whom God has left a significant Kingdom-mark on the world, women whose contributions theological, pastoral, literary or missiological have spiritually enriched the heavenly coffers of the people of God, so to speak. This list morphed into the short quiz below.

Each of the following quotes are by (or in the case of those marked with an asterisk, about) a well-known woman of the Faith, past or present. How many of these Sisters in Christ can you identify correctly?

Who said (or in the case of 5 and 6, about whom was it said):

1. ...the soul is now wounded with love for its Spouse and strives for more opportunities to be alone and, in conformity with this state, to rid itself of everything that can be an obstacle to this solitude.

2. Oh, what a happy child I am, although I cannot see! I am resolved that in this world, contented I will be!

3. The saint in prayer, friends around the dinner table, the mother reaching out her arms for her newborn baby are in kairos. The bush, the burning bush, is in kairos, not any burning bush, but the particular burning bush before which Moses removed his shoes; the bush I pass by on my way to the brook. In kairos that part of us which is not consumed in the burning is wholly awake.

4. I am not a man nor a minister, yet as a mother and a mistress I felt I ought to do more than I had yet done. I resolved to begin with my own children; in which I observe the following method: I take such a proportion of time as I can spare every night to discourse with each child apart. On Monday I talk with Molly, on Tuesday with Hetty, Wednesday with Nancy, Thursday with Jacky, Friday with Patty, Saturday with Charles.

5. O how great is the devotion of this woman that she should be counted worthy of the appellation of apostle. *

6. For thy hands, O my God, in the hidden design of thy providence did not desert my soul; and out of the blood of my mother's heart, through the tears that she poured out by day and by night, there was a sacrifice offered to thee for me, and by marvelous ways thou didst deal with me. *

7. A great benefit of Sabbath keeping is that we learn to let God take care of us — not by becoming passive and lazy, but in the freedom of giving up our feeble attempts to be God in our own lives.

8. The poets began drifting away from churches as the jurists grew louder and more insistent.

9. So I discovered that it is not on our forgiveness any more than on our goodness that the world’s healing hinges, but on His. When He tells us to love our enemies, He gives, along with the command, the love itself.

10. People say to me. ‘What about the rich?’ They need Jesus too.’ Well, that’s fine if you’re called to them, but we’re called to the poor. The rich can look after themselves.

On Sentences and Theolo-tweets

If you're here today because you're like me and you're curious about the relationship between words and spirituality, do yourself a favor and listen to this. It's an interview Anna Maria Termonti had on CBC's The Current with acclaimed literary critic Stanley Fish, about the place and power of the sentence in our lives. He has some thought-provokingly insightful things to say about the power of a well-crafted sentence, and he says them articulately and eloquently. If nothing more, it will inspire you to try your hand at writing
a scintillating sentence.

If you don't have the 25 minutes to treat yourself today, let me offer you this sample of his musings, by way of tantalization:

"A sentence is an admission by each of us who writes a sentence, or reads one, that we are not where we want to be; that is: a sentence is a statement which indicates distance, both from the people we're talking to, and the objects we're hoping to commune about. And in a theological vision of unity with God, everyone is united, speech is not necessary, meaning is full, and sentences need not be produced. [In other words], sentences, and the need to write them, are signs of our mortality."

Later he will talk incisively about modern technologies like Twitter, and the limitations they place on our ability and willingness to express ourselves in sentences longer than 140 characters. He won't say what you might expect a literary critic to say (that Twitter has somehow irreparably "undermined" the sentence). But he will say this: "If your entire imperative or sense of obligation in relation to sentences can be summed up by words like brevity and concision, you've cut yourself off not only from the pleasures of reading other kinds of sentences, but from the pleasure of trying to produce them." (And he'll say that off the top of his head, too.)

But this brings me to the reason I haven't been able yet to shake this interview.

It's because recently, a rather well known, if controversial Evangelical Pastor from Michigan announced that he's got a new book coming out about Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person who ever Lived. And he made his announcement by means of a brief 3 minute promotional video that did little more than ask rhetorical questions about the traditional Christian position on our prospects in the hereafter. And true to his controversial reputation, he implied that some sacred cows may be on their way to a theological burger-joint near you; or, put less metaphorically: that he was about to give the traditional doctrine of Hell some sceptical scrutiny.

The book's slated for release March 29th.

Before the book hit the shelves, however, another well-known, if vociferously straight-laced Evangelical Pastor from Minnesota saw a brief blog post which denounced the book (and its author), unread, as "universalist" (i.e. not "believing in" Hell). This third-hand, hear-say evidence prompted the pastor from Minnesota to tweet this cursive dismissal of the pastor in question: Farewell, Rob Bell.

Rob Bell trended, briefly. The barometer of the Evangelical blog-o-sphere plunged, briefly. Bell's publishers moved the release date for the book up to March 15th. And I think I heard laughing on the way to the bank.

But here's where Stanley Fish comes in, because I'm wondering today what light he might shed on this sordid business, with all his philosophical musings about the power of carefully crafted sentences to enrich our worlds and deepen our lives and humble us with a sense of our own limitation. Because a humble, deep, and generous contribution to theological discourse "Farewell Rob Bell " is not.

To be fair, the aforementioned pastor from Minnesota has tackled pastors that he's disagreed with in book-length dissertations, too (he's sort of the Michael Strahan of the Evangelical world when it comes to tackling pastors he disagrees with). But this 4-word dismissal of a man, an (unread) book, a theological issue and all those who are willing to engage it made me feel especially sad. After all: has Twitter really reduced theology to this? Is our dialogue about God and his plan for his creation worth no more effort and grace than we might exert in vetting the Oscars?

To paraphrase Fish quite liberally: "If your entire imperative in relation to theological issues can be summed up by words like brevity and concision, you've cut yourself off from more than just the pleasure of reading a well-crafted sentence." You've cut yourself off, perhaps, from the pleasure of really truthing one another in love.

Seven Words to the Wise

As I mentioned before, I've been working through the Book of Ecclesiastes for about a month now, and finding it challenging, inspiring and poignant. At one point I said to my wife: I feel like I'm being converted, all over again. My tongue was in my cheek, of course, but what I meant was: when I read Ecclesiastes, I discover this way of being in the world that is very wise, but in many ways very different from how I've learned to be Christian over the years.

Here are some of the lessons The Teacher's been coaching me on so far:

1. Don't flatter yourself: ennui over the fact that there's nothing new under the sun is itself nothing new under the sun.

2. All we are and all we do is "under the sun": contrary to appearances, human potential-- even human wisdom--is not limitless, nor was it meant to be.

3. To accept the existential absurdities of life is a source of great wisdom: Everything is "hebel" ("vapor," KJV's vanity, NIV's meaningless) not because it's worthless, but because it refuses to line up with our human intuition of rational cause and effect; don't rage against this, but accept the Creator's prerogative.

4. Work is only good because it's not ultimate: accepting the limitations the Creator has placed on the outcomes of our work (and our ministries) sets us free to enjoy our work for what it is.

5. Savor simplicity: luxury itself is "hebel".

6. Stay in the Now: "There is a time for everything," and right now is the time for what's happening right now.

7. Hold your tongue: "The quiet words of the wise are more to be heeded than the shouts of a ruler of fools." Full stop.