People of the Books: The Universalism Debate, part 1

School is just around the corner—that is, if you think of weekends as corners, which makes a weird kind of sense to me.  We begin Tuesday, and IN NO WAY am I prepared for this year.  I have a strong sense that next weekend will be me peeling myself off the floor from having been utterly stomped by the overwhelming nature of my unpreparedness.

But, in the spirit of the ending of summer, I felt like I can do a sort of What I Did With My Summer Vacation essay (I mean, besides attending funerals).  Remember these?  All the other kids always had grand adventures, like going to Disney World or learning to rock climb.   When I was a kid, highlights of my summer usually included making friends with the tree in my front yard and reading for hours on end perched in a branch.

But this summer, I accidentally made a wide study of two things:  the television representations of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, which was actually pretty awesome, and the general arguments about the existence and nature of hell.

So these two weeks be a review of all the books connected with that.  It will be long.  Sorry about that.  At least you’ll get lots of pictures.  And snark.

Love Wins by Rob Bell (4 stars):  The One That Started It All.  My church read this for a book study back in the spring, and I got curious.  Nothing good ever comes from that, of course.  Academically speaking, the book is crap—the typeset is terrible and wasteful, the editing is sub-par, there are absolutely no citations for his assertions, and even his Biblical references lack verse numbers.  But then, this clearly isn’t meant for academics.  It’s a pop culture call to assess what we mean when we tell someone they’re going to hell, and for that I respect Bell.  Granted, this would have done better as a pamphlet, but his style is accessible, his attempts to take incredibly dense theology and present it in such a way that it’s neither forced nor didactic are laudable.  I really appreciate his views on heaven and the importance of not screwing up the only planet God gave us.  Bell made me think, and I really appreciate books that make me think.  I also really appreciate that Bell doesn’t say “I am right” but “I am trying to start a conversation.”  Granted, a lot of the ways he starts that conversation feel an awful lot like “I am right,” but that’s the nature of arguing.  Not everybody can be right.  Whatever else I disagree with Bell in, I do agree that these questions need to be asked, and we need to continue to push ourselves to think about the things that play havoc with our boxes of a defined God.

Christ Alone by Michael Wittmer (4 stars):  Since I’m an academic and strenuously trained to question everything and everyone ever, I wasn’t content to stop at LW.  So I went looking for responses, and found this one, which is actually a direct response to Bell.  As in, it’s in the subtitle.  And the marketing.  And it’s a decent response.  Again, I respect that Wittmer doesn’t start with “I’m totally right and y’all suck” but instead “Bell invited us to a conversation, and I’m entering that conversation.”  His views are totally the other side of the fence, as Wittmer is coming from a heavily Reformed theology where We Have Screwed Up So Very, Very Badly and again, I don’t agree with everything.  But he brings up some great points about church tradition and the nature and impact of the cross that I felt even before I’d read this.  I taught two sections of a book study on this at church this summer (hence the Summer Vacation) and I think we really got some great moments out of recognizing what we’re saying when we talk about elective salvation, sacrificial theology, and the human demands for a loving God Who also has to be holy.  Like I said, I don’t completely agree with this, either, but I’m very glad to have read it so as to be aware of the ends of the spectrum.

God Wins by Mark Galli (2 stars):  Let me start by saying there were good things about this book (although most of them were also stated in CA).  Calling Bell out for the way he treats the doctrine of substitutionary atonement is a good thing. Really hammering the difference between the boundaries allowed by grace and those of judgment is a good thing. But so much of this is so short-sighted in taking on Bell’s statements. The book itself claims to be “not about Rob Bell or Rob Bell’s theology,” and for the most part that’s true, which is good, because some of the response books are just vicious attacks of idiocy. But this gets really bogged down in Bell’s statements: in trying to say that we can’t talk about Christianity as if it’s all about us, Galli never provides a way that we can talk about it when the only lens we have is ours. It makes assumptions about the assumptions of LW and doesn’t fully present a case to replace its “incorrect” ones (like on page 71, when Galli asserts that LW “assumes that human beings are unbiased moral agents who stand above the fray and make independent decisions about the most important matters.” Wrong. LW is always aware of the bias of humanity; it just has more faith in our making the correct decisions despite this than Galli does). And where LW errs on the side of human choice, GW seems to err on the side of sovereignty—I think for the doctrine of free will to be true, you have to allow a certain amount of breaking away from God and yet accept that this does not make Him “helpless.”  I felt there was more righteous indignation than real theological argument here, and I don’t care about how much you think Bell is making Christianity look bad.

There are two more, which I’ll save for next week because this is running long by now.  Oh, the anticipation!

Have a delightful holiday weekend, Reader.  Wish me luck for whatever’s around the corner—I seem to have misplaced my hand mirror so I can be ahead of it.

 

 

The Surprising Resilience of Humanity

I have so many book reviews to do for this blog, each patiently sitting on my desk (or my futon, which has become an extension of my desk in the lack of real desk space and/or visitors), some for months.  And I will get to them—I need to get to them, if only because they come with pictures and I do hear my own lectures that websites cannot be all text.

But sometimes the subject matter for this comes totally out of left field, completely overturning my other plans.  With the Deity I serve, I really should stop being surprised by this, and yet…

I finally went to see The Dark Knight Rises last night.  I got my first paycheck from my new job (huzzah!) and congratulated myself by taking me out to a film.  I’ve not been to see a new film since the end of June, and there were many I’d so wanted to see this summer; this was one I refused to let go.  I’m a superhero junkie, you see:  I love Batman, Superman, the Hulk, Iron Man, Captain America, even the Fantastic Four.  I never followed the comics as a kid—my folks wanted me to be reading “actual” stories, and I’m not that much a fan of pictures, anyway—but I befriended the comic book geeks, learned the universes and their rivalries, and now eagerly await each new movie installment.

(By the by, I will own up, proudly, to the fact that I did follow one comic series—Sonic the Hedgehog.  I remember many trips to the bookstore to

buy the latest with the my allowance, having cleaned the whole house so I could know in what way Dr. Robotnik was defeated this time.)

In any case, I love superheroes.  Superheroes show us what we are—and what we can be.

Not literally, of course.  Most of us aren’t billionaires, aliens, or genetic experiments gone wrong (although if you are indeed in this category, please leave a comment, I’d love to meet you).  But we are more than supermarket devotees, floor cleaners, television watchers.  We are this crazy strange human thing, whatever that means.

I’ve been leading two sections of a book study at church, which has been an incredibly odd ride.  One section finished this past week (a bittersweet success for me).  In it, we’ve been talking a lot about sin and Original Sin and the power of doctrinal control—the fun stuff.  In this era of post-humanism, it’s wicked hard to cling to Original Sin, because we don’t ever want to believe that we are born broken.  And then I see films like The Dark Knight Rises and I think, there has to be some God in us somewhere.

I freely admit that much of this observation is manipulated by Hans Zimmer, who as far as I’m concerned can do no wrong.  I’m a sucker for a good film score and totally recognize the emotional hold music has on me.  But there’s more to it than that.

There is great evil in the world, no doubt.  We are a fallen people; this I hold to with all of my experience.  I do believe that, on our own, we will choose against God every day of the week and twice on Friday (because holiness kicks in on Sundays, you know).  This film’s inaugural weekend proved this existence of evil.  The characters themselves prove it, as betrayal after betrayal rolls across the screen, as it seems the hero will never succeed.  We have missed, we are continually missing, the mark.  We cannot deny this.

But we are not only this; there can be     goodness there.  Other characters rise:  Commissioner Gordon gets up and keeps fighting, Alfred loves against all of the pain it causes him, Lucius Fox continues to hold the company together.  Duplicitous villains change, because you must never, ever underestimate the power of having someone believe in you.

And this Godness is not just in films.  It’s in a world pulling for a double amputee in the Olympics, it’s in the people who continue to fight against diseases like Alzheimer’s because it’s worth doing.  It’s in Watchful answering a late night phone call from me and being willing to talk because she senses I need to, even if I never tell her it’s because I finally just deleted my grandfather’s name from my contacts list and my heart is breaking all over again.  It’s in Magister’s quiet reassurance that I actually do know what I’m doing sometimes.  It’s in the swell of support for those people who died in that Aurora cinema, in every police officer who puts on a vest every morning to serve, in the neighbor whose name you don’t know who thoughtfully left you a note about a low tire you may not have noticed.

We are broken, yes, and I’m in no way endorsing the idea that having a part of God within us makes us in any way God ourselves.  But we are still God’s creations, and in that is some piece of what we were intended to be, which was so much more than we are.  It’s unlikely that I will ever save a city while dressed as a bat—but it’s quite likely that watching someone else do it will remind me that humanity means more than just a collection of people, will inspire me to be willing to help that next stranger.  We were never meant to be broken; what can we become when we recognize who we could be, and Who shows us that possibility?

Go indulge the God in you, Reader.  (And you even got pictures.)

 

And we urge you, brothers, admonish the disorderly, console the discouraged, help the sick, be patient toward all [people].  See to it that no one pays back evil for evil to anyone, but always pursue good toward one another and toward all [people].  (1 Thessalonians 514-15)

 

How Can I Keep from Singing?

The Summer of Loss and Gain continues, dear Reader.  Only yesterday I remarked that a couple of years ago was the Season of the Wedding, in which I attended at least 8 in a 14-month span and knew of 3 or 4 more.  This year, I have attended 3 funerals within a month and known of 4 more in less.  I have now filled the Deaths and Marriages pages in the Bible given me as a graduation present from college—3 years ago.

Tomorrow will be such a day as this season has been.  It will be my great uncle’s memorial, the celebration of the last of my grandfather’s 12 siblings.  I am watching a generation die out, and the loss of their voices telling their stories is one I feel keenly.  I cannot go to Uncle’s service, but I do not grieve overmuch for it.  He and I were not close, which I find unfortunate as I learn more about who he was.  I am aware of this death, though, and am sorrowful in my own way.

Tomorrow is also the service of a man from my church—again, someone I knew but with whom I held no special connection.  His has been a hard road of late, but the end is never totally eclipsed by its own relief.  He, too, is in my memory, and I mark his passing with a weighted heart.

One of the hymns my grandfather requested at his memorial service was “How Can I Keep from Singing?”  It has been often on my mind as I find this loss side of love.  As I sat listening to the rain last night wash the world clean after having attended the funeral for Mr. Great-Heart’s mom that morning, I realized why I’ve been humming it so often.

What do we do when we are sad?  We sing laments, play the blues, listen to the music that makes us remember.  What do we do when we are happy?  We sing songs of celebration, dance jigs, stamp the beat of our acknowledged life-pulse.  And sometimes we swap actions, as when I danced out of my friend’s memorial last Saturday to a Brazilian tune he loved, as I play bluesy jazz when it rains and I want the world to be as joyously slow as the steeping of my peppermint tea.

Tomorrow is so many things; it is the celebration of my great-aunt’s 90th birthday—and a celebration it will indeed be, if she has anything to say about it.  And in all 3 occurrences tomorrow there will be singing, because we humans are a musical sort whether we have any talent at it or not.  In this is our prayer for all that is lost, all that is gained, all that dances in the darkness with the salt of tears shining as light.

How can I keep from singing?  How can I keep from expressing that which must be said and cannot be spoken?  How can I hold my grief, my love, my joy and that of those around me silent?

At the funeral for Mr. Great-Heart’s mom, he read some poems she had written.  It was somewhat odd to me to be at the funeral of someone I’d never met, but he and his family are very dear to me—and as he was there for me in my loss, so would I be there for him.  This friendship I am discovering, these rules that are in no way rules, continually surprise me, but I sat in that church and listened to him read, and I felt the power of who she had been.  This is the magic of writing, as with singing; it is not the skill, but the heart of it that reaches the reader, the speaker, the seeker.

One of her poems was about being in the church choir, a subject near and dear to my own heart.  It reminded me of a banner hanging in our choir room—“it doesn’t matter how well you sing, but why you sing.”  Her poem had that feeling to it; the worship is the thing, at the end.  All of the beautiful voices in the world mean nothing if there is not this prayer behind them, this joy that is not happiness but is undimmed by death, by grief, by sadness.

The lament and the celebration come together in this song, this voiced prayer of rhythm and hope, this metered cry that tomorrow will be life as well as death, the creation as well as the retelling of memories.  How can I keep from singing?

 

 Sing, barren woman who has borne no child; break forth into singing and cry out, you who were never in labor, for the children of the wife who has been deserted will be more numerous than the children of the married, says the LORD.  Enlarge the site of your tent, and stretch out the drapes of your dwellings; don’t hold back. Lengthen your tent ropes and strengthen your stakes.  To the right and to the left you will burst out, and your children will possess the nations’ land and settle their desolate cities.   (Isaiah 54:1-3, CEB)

 

The Call

There have been many people, this past week, who have asked me, “How was camp?”  The rules of my answer obey that of any trip; most people don’t actually want to hear your stories, they just want to know that you had a good time.  This doesn’t mean they don’t like you, but it is the case that you should always pay attention to how you’re being asked about a trip before launching into a breakdown of all the things that have happened to you.  A very wise friend of mine taught me this difference, and it’s saved me from a lot of long and mildly awkward conversations.

That being said, I’m truly grateful for the handful of people who have asked and genuinely wanted to know what happened, patiently sitting with me for an hour or more as I detoxed the experience.  (Interpreter and Mr. Great-Heart—a man I’ve known for some time now but hasn’t yet made it into these discourses; he was one of my deans at the camp and I could not have made it through without his support—come instantly to mind.)  I won’t say that camp was an utterly life-changing experience, because I came back to my life and it hadn’t changed that much.  I got a job (praise the Lord!) and am going through orientation for that, which is a difference.  (A welcome one, for sure.)  But life didn’t really change a lot.

I did.

I started this blog a year ago to explore the possibilities of being called (Called?) to some form of ministry rather than a life of “pure” academics as I had planned.  I could never have dreamed all that has happened in the intervening time, and have roughly the same reaction to it as I have to camp—if I had truly understood what I was getting myself into, I would never have had the guts (insanity) to take the first step.

Camp taught me two things:
1)  Serving to the loss of yourself is stupid.  Not serving at all to avoid this possibility, however, is also stupid.  It is not all about me, but then, it’s not all about other people, either; God loves me enough that I don’t have to be anything or have all of the answers in order to be helpful and in His service.  I don’t know that I can ever fully explain to you, Reader, what a freedom this realization is.  Just because I am not everything doesn’t mean I am nothing.
2)  I have no dignity, and that is perfectly fine, because God loves me anyway.  (Seeing a theme here?)  I am, by nature, a somewhat fastidious and rather proud human being; at camp, I ate dinner with no hands, flopped down slip ‘n’ slides, got pushed around in a mudpit, hopped like a madman in the highly energized morning worship, danced like a fool in the dance class I taught, and generally abandoned the idea that I was ever going to be anything other than totally lost to the moment so that my middle schoolers could feel safe enough to do the same.  The freedom in being whoever you are is actually pretty incredible.

Releasing your pride like that is something else.  And you know what?  I don’t want it back.  I like being able to look like an idiot and not worry about whether people will still love me.  Granted, I’m not going to go tangoing down West Main any time soon, but I will dance when the Spirit moves me, clap when I feel the rhythm, and laugh hysterically when something is that funny.  Because God loves movement and laughter and sadness and expression, and everyone else can kind of bugger off.

I have been so wrapped around the axle of what The Call means that I’ve totally missed all of its complication.  One of the speeches (sermons?) given the first or second day of camp included a reference to us counselors as people who had answered the call to be there, to serve in this way.  It was a facepalm of obvious moment to me to hear that; yes, we were answering that call to serve, however reluctantly.  That was ministry, and all of the other places I work that cause me to be at church 5 days out of 7 are answers to some call, and that is ministry.  And this ministry is not less or more than Professional Ministry, because we can’t all be God’s hands—some of us have to be the elbows, or the left shin.  And that’s okay, as long as each day brings a new readiness to serve in whatever ways come to us—and not to serve in ways we don’t feel equipped.  I actually turned down such a service opportunity this week because I knew that I wasn’t ready for it, and that is also hearing the call in all its tones.

The dance class I taught spent the week learning a piece I had choreographed to Regina Spektor’s The Call, because humor abounds in the unwatched places of my life.  And it was awesome to see my gals perform it, to watch their hard work pay off and see how proud they were of themselves—and how proud I was of them.  It was also pretty cool to hear this song and realize that, wherever I am, He is there when I call…and I’m tired of pretending that I have any real objection to being there when He calls.

Much prayer will be appreciated as I head into this final year of grad school, Reader, because taking these lessons into a life that wants me to be something different—in which I want me to be something different—is going to be bloody difficult.  But I can’t keep saying that God happens in the church sphere of my life; He is in all of it, and I want Him there, and I will follow Him even to the grimy ridiculousness of middle school camp because I know He will never abandon me there.

 

After breakfast, Jesus said to Simon Peter, “Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these?” “Yes, Master, you know I love you.” Jesus said, “Feed my lambs.”  He then asked a second time, “Simon, son of John, do you love me?” “Yes, Master, you know I love you.” Jesus said, “Shepherd my sheep.”  Then he said it a third time: “Simon, son of John, do you love me?” Peter was upset that he asked for the third time, “Do you love me?” so he answered, “Master, you know everything there is to know. You’ve got to know that I love you.”  (John 21:15-17, MSG)