Steve Chalke and Brian McClaren- part 1: What did Jesus Accomplish On The Cross?

(This post is the first in a four part series that I've written about the emergent church, and two of it's leaders, Steve Chalke and Brian McLaren. Note that these posts, for most, are probably long and boring. If you have little interest in the "emergent church" or the effects of post-modernism on Christianity, this is your invitation to skip this and the next three posts.)


This has been an amazing year for lots of reason, and here are two more. The two fellows to my left (your right) of me are Steve Chalke and Brian McLaren. I spent a good many hours with these two blokes listening, and sometimes conversing, about the present and future of the church. It was fascinating, indeed!

Chalke, for those of you who don't know him, wrote a controversial book called "The Lost Message of Jesus". In this book, Chalke attacks the idea that the message of the atonement of Jesus Christ on the cross as serving as a penal substitution for each individual as the central message of Jesus Christ.

For those of you out there saying, "What's this "penal" thing Bucher is talking about? Did he just swear?", "penal substitutionary atonement" is the theory that the main thing that happened when Jesus died on the cross, and then was raised from the dead, was that he took the punishment you deserved for the life you lived, enabling you to escape Hell, and enter Heaven after you die. In other words, if after you die, your soul goes to court, with God as judge to determine if how you spent your life warranted either the reward of Heaven, or the punishment of Hell, because holiness is well, perfectly holy, and nobody on this earth could be perfectly holy, the result for all of us would be Hell. And even if you lived a perfectly holy life, you still wouldn't qualify for Heaven because you were born sinful. By choosing Jesus, by this reasoning, what happens in court is that you are given credit for having been to Hell by Christ, who has done it for you, and off to Heaven you go!

Chalke claims that at best, this reasoning (which starts largely with Augustine, but finds its voice in the writings of Martin Luther and John Calvin) is incomplete. Since Jesus talks so much about the "kingdom of Heaven being near" and things functioning "on earth as it is in Heaven", that there must be an earthly dimension to Jesus' teaching. Chalke posits that humans, by definition of Genesis 1, were not created sinful, but rather, good. If humanity was originally created good, and yet fell from that state by choosing between being holy and sinful, to be sinful, that Christ came to restore our basic goodness. So that life on earth would become as it was intended to be, good for all people and the created order. Thus, in Chalke's thinking, when one becomes a disciple of Jesus, one basically agrees to give up living sinfully, in terms of personal choices and how you live that out in a world that has been shaped by sin instead of righteousness. Thus, a change of behavior and values from what we have, to what Christ has, is fundamental to be a Christian, an idea and reality so important that not even death itself should scare us from living out his teaching in this world.

More fundamentally, Chalke's critique of penal substitution is that it focuses ultimately on the question of "who's in and who's out", when his reading of the Bible seems to indicate that "we're all in, we just don't all know it". That's an over-simplification of Chalke's argument, but would be close to it (I think... Chris Seay asked for a correction on this blog, so if Steve Chalke would like to respond and ask for correction that'd be fine).

Thus, for Chalke the aim of Christ's teachings aren't the eternal questions, but the earthly ones we all face each and every day: Why am I here? What am I supposed to do? What is my purpose? In Christ, Chalke claims you find the answers to these questions, and by living out the answers, you find life now, and life eternally.

Of course this has stirred up a hornet's nest among those who have made penal substitution the focus and foundation of their ministry. Their argument is that the eternal question is an important one, and seems to get left in the dust in this understanding of Jesus' atonement for humanity. Even more fundamentally, it calls into question whether or not "works" (doing good things) is necessary to get into heaven and if Chalke is a "universalist"(meaning that he believes everyone gets into Heaven, regardless of who there god is and how they lived their life.... which sound appealing until you start thinking that maybe Adolf Hitler or Idi Amin might have the suite next to yours in God's house).

So, what does this mean in terms of the ideas of salvation and Hell? For that we go to part 2.

Steve Chalke and Brian McLaren - part 2: What Is Hell?

Into this discussion steps Brian McLaren. McLaren (who is getting beaten in the blogosphere for his own theological views ) says that people who have based their theology on "penal substitution" have misunderstood Christ's teachings on Hell. He believes Christ doesn't introduce the idea of Hell (as is suggested by many scholars) but is responding to the way the concept of Hell - which by the way doesn't seem to come onto the scene until Judaism connects with Greek Hellenistic (no pun intended) thought which occured when Israel was conquered by Alexander the Great - as it was expoused in that age. McLaren says that in Jesus day, one of the end products of people asking the question of "How is God going to restore Israel to her proper place in the world?" is a train of thought which states,

"If in the Old Testament Israel is punished because she isn't faithful to God's law, then she'll only be restored if each and every Jew becomes faithful to God's law".

Thus, when the people who kind of followed this idea saw Roman soldiers marching through Jerusalem, they blamed those who were sinful for this fate. Thus those who were, for example, prostitutes, drunkards, the diseased and handicapped (because their physical condition was believed to be the consequence of some sin on their or their parent's part), and others who were obviously "sinful" were told that if they didn't turn from their ways, not only would Israel still be occupied and ruled by pagans, but that they as individuals would also spend eternity punished in Hell.

And who were the people making these arguments: a group of radical Jewish religious leaders called "Pharisees".

McLaren believes that Christ's teachings on Hell are commentary on Pharisaic ideas, hence all the criticism Jesus makes of the Pharisees who he claims (among others things) "makes new followers twice the sons of hell than they are" (which is a pretty strong critique). It's this idea that the sinful are to blame for all Israel's problems that Jesus takes and turns on its head. Instead, Jesus tells the sinful that theirs "is the Kingdom of Heaven", where "the last shall become first and the first shall become last". This for sinners is "the Good News" of the gospel: that Christ has come to set them free.

In this way, McLaren believes that Jesus calls everyone to a new understanding of what it means to be faithful. Instead of remembering 600+ laws, and countless scholarly commentary on them all, instead we should enter a new world (a new Kingdom) where the top priorities are a love of God and a love of neighbor that makes them as high a priority as ourselves. To be a light, to embody hope, for those who are desperate, feeling cursed by God in this life either because of the stupid things they or their family have done, or because of the evil that's been visited upon them without invitation. It is to these people that Jesus' coming is designed to bring hope, and you and I have the opportunity to join into great work of the Father.

McLaren posits that by telling people that they are going to Hell if they don't accept Jesus, and then subsequently the particular doctrinal teachings of that particular church or preacher, that essentially the Christian doing this is simply repeating the same mistake made by the Pharisees: the use of Hell to scare people into giving religious authorities the ultimate say in who gets to go to Heaven and Hell, which then has all kinds of consequences by marginalizing the earthly demands of Jesus' teaching.

A better understanding of Hell, I think McLaren would say, would be the realization that people live in pain and squalor, or essentially "Hell on earth" while religious authorities make and enforce rules leading to little more than condemnation and demonization WHICH is a perversion of what it was God intended in the first place when Abram first heard him speaking. Hell used in this way is just another religious idea meant, in the end, to give religious leaders authority they don't deserve over people who deserve better...

nay, have been promised by Jesus that something better is available.

While McLaren is reluctant to rid us of the idea of Hell completely, partly because Jesus did speak about it, and partly because he's afraid a person who heard that Hell didn't really exist would respond, "Whew! Now I can buy that second BMW." (an exact quote, by the way), his hope is that his hypothesis will lead some Christians to de-emphasize the "Heaven or Hell" question, and a concentrate more on what it means for a Christ-follower to live into, and even help usher in, the Kingdom of Heaven. An idea, he inferred, that if it had been emphasized five hundred years ago might have led the Christian church, and the development of the western world, in a different direction.

So, what might this kind of thinking do in terms of development of the Christian church, now? For that we go to part 3.

Steve Chalke and Brian McLaren - part 3: What Are The Consequences of Emergent Thinking for The Church?

So, if the primary thing Jesus wasn't trying to accomplish was taking the eternal punishment we deserve by dying on the cross and then rising to new life, then what was he trying to do? Here are some of Chalke and McLaren's thoughts:

Chalke and McLaren both are adamant that both conservative evangelical and liberal Christian thinking has gone awry in a response to centrality of the theory of penal substitutionary atonement within Christian circles since the days of Luther and Calvin.

On the one hand, conservative evangelicals have so marginalized the need for any kind of service as a means of propping up the idea of "faith by grace" that their "means" in real world terms, have no "ends". No "ends" except for the worship service itself, which has now taken the central role in the focus of these kinds of churches. Thus, as more energy is spent on how to make worship more "culturally relevant", Chalke, in particular, says that evangelical churches are "entertaining themselves to death", meaning that people are hungering for meaning and purpose, to make a REAL difference in the world, while, at best their only being invited to sit a seat/pew, enjoy the service, and perpetuate the church's ability to do more services either by helping make the worship service a reality or contributing money to make it a reality. Thus, churches like this, as they become more appealing in the commercial sense, tend to build bigger front doors to accommodate larger crowds clamoring to get into "the show", but also tend to lose scores of people out the back door who are disillusioned that there isn't something more.

On the other hand, both men pointed out that in order to make the kingdom a reality, one must not only be active in the service of the world, but also be intimate with the Creator. This idea, they say, is established by Jesus, who spends time with God both alone in prayer and in a corporate context as a means of re-fueling and re-focusing. By downplaying, or outright refuting, the idea that God can be known and that one can have a relationship with God is, particularly in McLaren's eyes, undercutting theologically liberal Christians, who do a lot of work to change the world but without the comfort and instruction of the Holy Spirit. Too often the end result is a person growing more angry and frustrated as things appear to not be changing. Or, in other words, this kind of theology offers no real hope for change, for the future, or for eternity.

Chalke, in particular, claims that the model the church in the west will need to follow will be the one established after the ministry of Jesus, who didn't go around preaching and then doing a few miracles to prove what he said to be true...

BUT RATHER...

went around ministering to the real physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual needs of people, and then commented on those works. Thus, the church must lead not with it's style(s) of worship service and brilliant orators, but with serving real needs of people in the world, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Thus churches must be counseling centers, relief agencies, schools, hostels, and clinics where people can be engaged in real ministry that makes a difference in people's lives. In this model, then, worship, bible study, and fellowship ministry rallies and holds accountable people in the ministry they happen to be engaged in. It's an intriguing model, and one that Chalke has been pursuing in the church network, www.church.co.uk, he now leads.

(NOTE: THIS NEXT PARAGRAPH SHOULD BE PARTICULARLY INTERESTING TO MY GRANDMOTHER, BROTHER, AND UNCLE FRED but the rest of you can read it too) Chalke also believes that the window for these kinds of churches are opening in the west for four particular reasons. First, he thinks that the demands of the social welfare state are beginning to crush western governments. Chalke's observation in the UK is that after more than fifty years after government took over this kind of work from non-profit agencies (mostly the church), the lack of any spiritual underpinning in these program has created social ills that are spiraling downward with ever growing force and speed, resulting in the demands of service now outweighing the ability of governmental response. Thus, he sees a growing trend in the UK where politicians are now looking to any non-profit entity that can help them more effectively begin to address these social issues, and are even willing to fund through grants, those agencies that become particularly effective in doing so. His assessment is that the force of demand for solutions to these issues is becoming so great (particularly by people who have something to lose in event of a social revolution spilling over in crumbling neighborhoods that aren't that far away), that grants will be made so easy to get that if the church doesn't begin filling this gap, some other non-profit or for-profit agency will.

Second, the new generations of adults Chalke sees emerging now don't seem to entertain the idea of the division of the sacred and secular in the same way previous generations did. For example, while in Britain I remember being intrigued by the number of billboards and advertisements for "carbon emission neutral" businesses, which are companies who make donations to environmental preservation groups/companies as a means of offsetting the air pollution they generate. Thus, if your agency engages in a work that, for example, is primarily engaged in re-forestation in parts of the world where plant growth happens not only very quickly but also is thought to be important in maintaining environmental equilibrium, you can receive money from BP Oil, or British Airways, or any number of companies in Britain, who I'm sure are making donations to this work not only because its the right thing to do, but because it's smart business for a generation worried about the ecological future of the planet. No doubt, these programs are spurred on by UK tax credits, which amounts essentially in government outsourcing environmental justice work to non-profit agencies. This is a solution to what many perceive to be a grave problem that makes sense to people who do not separate the secular nature of business from the spiritual idea that we should take care of God's creation. While it can be argued that the generations raising up now are the most materialistic in history, it is also the most aware of the corporate consequences of unchecked consumerism. Churches that tap into this ethos, will be well served in the future.

Third, as the world becomes more globalized and digitally connected, in an age where people are overloaded with messages, it is becoming clear that this has not led to them finding greater meaning. People want to be part of a solution, and even more fundamentally, to the very essence of God. Just as encountering God, and not just words about God, has become a central focus in corporate worship and personal discipleship, so too is the need for being connected to God in our work, family, and fraternization. This is an outgrowth to the idea that God is not contained in a Sunday worship service, while the other 167 hours of the week we are on our own. Particularly as people are exposed to the animistic religions in the sub-equatorial of the world and the mystic religions of near and far east, the desire for a more comprehensive expression and theology continues to grow.

Fourth, if the church doesn't begin to re-define it's purpose in terms of connecting people with God to bring healing and wholeness to the world, it's impact will be further marginalized as people associate it with empty promises, in-house bickering, hypocrisy, and violence. Particularly in a world where groups or nations identified with with a particular religion (and thus defined in that context) become increasingly willing to pick up arms to destroy their enemies, the ability of religion to do anything more but divide people in this world gains more and more credibility in the streets. McLaren, in particular, as a resident and pastor-emeritus a congregation in suburban-Washington D.C., admits that this, in particular, is controversial among Christians in the United States. But now, as our government toys with idea of not only escalating the war in Iraq, but potentially expanding it into Iran, McLaren claims that military leaders at the Pentagon are calling religious leaders to begin to speak out against the use of any further violence as they prepare for the possibility of limited use of nuclear weapons within the next 12 to 18 months.

Thus, McLaren's assertion that if Jesus says, 'Love your enemies', the Christian church had better start speaking out on that behalf, if for the lesser reason to create discord and discussion in a democratic society and the greater reason of expressing a belief that these words were not just "spiritually symbolic for the individual". A message that has no real power to shape the world, in this world, is a meaningless, useless message. Whether or not we're ready to stand upon it as a part of this "Kingdom of Heaven" theology that is emerging is a challenge he gave to us in this discussion.

Ok.... one more post, concerning the consequence of these ideas to pastors of existing churches. Here's part 4.

Steve Chalke and Brian McLaren - part 4: Consequences of Emergent Thinking For Existing Churches and Pastors

The other night, my friend Aaron, who had been running with Steve Chalke most of the mornings he was here last week, in response to Chalke's comment that in Wilmore you can't get a decent piece of fish, invited he and McLaren to a fish dinner in his home. Thus, Aaron ate dinner, not in terms of some corporate event, but in his home with two of the leading post-modern Christian thinkers in the world because his wife, Cindy, can whip up one tasty piece of tilapia. He even took a picture for proof that this actually happened (notice Cora, his youngest, trying to put rabbit ears behind sister Anna...)Well, the evening was a short one, in part, because Chalke and McLaren wanted time to talk and strategize as to how to start an organization that could support pastors who begin to preach this emergent version of the Gospel I've been writing about in pieces for the last seven days.

In other words, based on their experience and the news they are receiving, pastors who begin to emphasize Jesus call for us to "enter the Kingdom of Heaven" in real ways in this world, above and beyond the historic emphasis of calling people to make a decision for Christ so that they might avoid Hell and go to Heaven in the afterlife, will get the snot kicked out of them. Many of them are being harassed by their congregations, deemed heretics in the circles or their traditions, and are losing their jobs. McLaren, who talked about this the first day we heard him speak, estimates that these kinds of fates await the vast majority of those in my profession who decide to go in this direction for the foreseeable future. It won't be until thousands of churches start practicing this kind of theology with positive consequences that "Kingdom of Heaven" theology will begin to be embraced across the western world.

And I believe him.

I give thanks for being at Shawnee. There is an openness that doesn't exist in most churches today to asking questions about the ways we've always interpreted scripture or "done church". The people there are no longer shocked when they hear a sermon challenging literalist views of the Bible, dispensationalist (Left Behind) theological treatments of apocalyptic (Revelation, in particular) scripture, and connecting the idea of service to humanity with the fundamentals of Christian discipleship. I don't think they'd be too happy if I just started taking off in new theological directions (and, quite frankly, I'm too modernist in my own orientation to do so with any kind of speed or determination), but they are willing to hear the Gospel revealed in new ways which is a liberating kind of environment to be in. I have served in a church that contained a rather rabid group looking for "heresy" in sermons (that and the chance to stomp the heretic), and it's by no means an easy, or often pleasant, place to be engaged as a pastor.

As a matter of fact, if you asked people from this particular group at this particular church what they wanted in a pastor I'm sure their "Top Ten Demands List" would include:
1) Preaches "biblical" sermons (a definition that by many can only be defined after the pastor has preached "non-biblical" sermon, but goes right to idea that Jesus dying for our sins needs to be the core message.... this has dynamics you can't imagine)
2) Says "hi" and knows every name in the church
3) Visits members of the church, sick, shut-in, or active, on a regular basis, and makes it a top priority along with preparing a sermon
4) Is available 24/7 to meet the needs of the laity and their friends
5) Worships in a style that is comfortable for them
6) Attracts new members, particularly younger people (whose ranks in the church are dwindling)
7) Keeps the budget under control while not spending a lot of money and not asking for a lot of money, in general.
8) Is Caucasian (or looks Caucasian), married and male (although female associates are welcomed, as long as they don't preach much), preferably with young kids.
9) Seeks proscriptive solutions to shore up every existing group in the church so that the people in those groups can continue their life together.
10) Has a personal and spiritual life that is in order (i.e. the needs of his family or his own needs, don't interfere with the demands of the church)

In church that demands this kind of pastoral leader, what happens when the pastor begins to preach sermons that revolved around the idea of our participation in the Kingdom of Heaven now, in terms of serving others with real needs (needs that are often expensive and time consuming)?

What if they invite people who don't exactly have their life together sing in the choir or serve communion?

What if they invite the homeless to sleep in the church building, particularly when its bitter cold, or invite a local Hispanic population to use the building on a regular basis, and damage to the physical plant ensues?

What if the church grows so fast, or the pastor becomes so well-connected in the community, that the pastor can't possibly know everyone's name, or visit everyone on a regular basis?

What if the pastor led an initiative to engage the church in community development, meaning that the budget had to be re-structured and enlarged, meaning that an appeal for more money from parishioners was necessary?

What if a pastor preached a sermon decrying violence, or the war?

What if the pastor started preaching the Lord's Prayer as its written in The Message each week?

What if a pastor invited new kinds of music, artistic expression, and drama into a worship service to broaden its appeal, and most importantly, allow the incarnation of Christ to be manifested through these different culturally-relevant mediums?

What if a pastor said that from this point on, it was the responsibility of the laity to visit the sick, the shut-in, and one another, and he would train and pray them into this work?

What if a pastor called the local synagogue and mosque, and helped arrange a series of discussions where members of the three faith communities talked about such issues as faith, poverty, terrorism, family, the Bible, evangelism, and politics... and if not one time during the dialogue the pastor called members of the other religions to repent and accept Jesus or they were going to Hell?

Some of you are saying, "Yeah, yeah... that's the kind of pastor I'm looking for!" while others of you are nervously wondering "Um... at our church?". It'll be that kind of discord that will eat pastors alive, and make it impossible for them to discern when they have made a mistake they need to atone for or are just getting abused because they've clashed with ideologies and worldviews that may no longer be valid.

In other words.... I get the feeling that Chalke and McLaren's sense of what awaits pastors (even those who don't espouse emergent ideas, but just can't meet the demands of service levied by the "Top Ten Demands" listed above) is accurate. Here's hoping they develop the resources to assist pastors in moving this direction.

And here's what I hope the "Top Ten Demands" for a pastor becomes:

1) Helps connects people with God inside and outside the worship service, by taking serious the real challenges Christians face living out their faith in every facet in their life.
2) Takes scriptural study seriously, even to the point that this leads to sermons that challenge what has been held sacred in that particular church.
3) Emphasizes the need for people to be engaged in mutual, life-giving communities that love people into strong personal relationships with God, and work in this world.
4) Finds corporate and governmental partners to lead paid and staff and volunteers both in creatively addressing the real needs of a community.
5) Believes in serving and including people in the church's ministry who are marginalized.
6) Believes it's important that all people in the world live in a safe, secure environment where opportunity and hope abound them and their children, and facilitates all kinds of ministry that works to that end.
7) Takes seriously the OT prophecies, which find full voice in Christ that someday swords will be beaten into plows, and humanity will know war no more, while acknowledging how complicated things can be geo-politically to serve those ends, right now.
8) Doesn't demonize any particular race, ethnicity, culture, or socio-economic class as being at the root of all the world's problems, but rather seeks ways Christ's message can incarnate in every grouping of people to redeem them and this world.
9) Admits the Bible is a difficult book to understand, and wrestles with that difficulty through a Christocentric lens.
10) Believes that worship has other expressions than those conceived out of 17th and 18th century Europe, and 1970's Southern California.

And that's all I have to say (finally) about that. A truly intellectually stimulating week. Thank you Brian and Steve for your time and ideas.

The Old and New Testaments

Just a quick note.... received a nice email from Chris Seay who made it clear he wasn't angry, just trying not to give his critics ammunition against his church, which I'm sure in some narrow-minded circles isn't even considered Christian. I told him I was big fan of his work (which is true) and offered to respond to his critics, profanely if needed. I appreciated him taking the time to dialogue, via the digital media.

Just another quick note.... one of my favorite authors, and I think probably one of the most important thinkers (who was actually a practitioner) about the post-modern church, Brian McLaren, is coming to Asbury this Friday. He and Steve Chalke will be guest lecturers as part of a "J-term" class (J-term here at ATS is an accelerated term, kind of like what is offered in the summer, only it occurs in early January) focused on looking at the future of the Christian church. Have read most, if not all, of McLaren's books, and consider his latest work, The Secret Message of Jesus, to be his finest offering yet.

McLaren, if you've never heard of him, is a post-modern, post-protestant, post-evangelical pastor (and I'm sure he'd say he was a number of other post-sorts of things), who once held near and dear the kinds of things that matter to evangelical pastors until one day, he woke up, and realized that maybe he just didn't believe some of that stuff any more. Issues like the Creation/Evolution question, what was at the time indifference to environment issues on the part of Evangelical community, issues of human sexuality, and probably most controversial, the issue of the afterlife - particularly Hell - had him asking lots of questions that gnawed at his soul. In recent years he's come to some very different conclusions about these above listed issues, and others, making him a hero and villain to many in the Christian community. But he believes, with all that he is, that the thinking he, and others like him, are engaging on these issues and how they end up shaping the Christian community will have a long-lasting, important, and ultimately positive effect on the church.

To be honest, I thought McLaren coming to Asbury's campus was, well, a curious choice. The current Provost (kind of a fancy term for the person who is the Dean of all the Deans of all the schools on a campus... if that makes any sense), Bill Arnold, who is teaching our Biblical Interpretation Class has never really heard of McLaren... and I'm pretty sure if he had, he'd have raised a few eyebrows about him coming here. I mean, if you don't sign a statement saying that you won't drink alcohol while enrolled at Asbury, you can't enroll. McLaren's main character in his groundbreaking "New Kind of Christian" series, Neo, drinks Pete's Wicked Ale throughout the series, and conducts a worship service on a boat on an open bar. JC McPheeters has to be rolling over in his grave.

And that's just a mild example of how far apart McLaren is from the dominant thinking among faculty on this campus on more substantial issues like the Doctrines of Atonement, Salvation, and the Infallibility of Scripture.

Anyhow, I'm looking forward to hearing the guy speak Friday evening, all day Saturday, and then in a private session with the BP's next Wednesday (yeah.... nothing like being a pampered Beeson Pastor. How do you go back to the real world after you've been treated like a VIP for eleven months?). I've very much looked forward to hearing him think out loud. You can bet that the first question I'll ask, if I get a chance, will be "What does personal holiness look like for a Christian in a post-modern era?" That ought to get the party started, nicely.

Now on with the post...

Have you ever wondered why God seems to act one way in the Old Testament, and another way in the New? I mean, in the Old Testament he punishes King Saul for not slaughtering every man, woman, and child in a battle as He ordered before it started. God brings plagues of frogs, turns water into blood, and obliterates the sun from the sky for a number of days in a display of terrifying power. He also is convinced, many times by many different people, not to visit destruction on his people in times of anger. He appears in a pillar of fire, a burning bush, and a finger writing on a wall.

Compare that in the New Testament where the most destructive supernatural thing that happens is Jesus cursing a fig tree bearing no fruit to never bear any fruit. Barriers get broken down for women, gentiles, and children to be treated with respect. And even His own son gets abused, mistreated, and killed, and there is no retaliation whatsoever. The eye-for-an-eye God becomes the one that celebrates hated Samaritans and turning the other cheek.

So the question is this..... What do you think changes over the course of biblical history - the nature of God or humanity's perception of God?

This is the question that started our Biblical Interpretation class, which seeks to, among other things, help figure out the relationship between the Testaments, maybe in the process providing a framework with which a pastor can preach from Old Testament texts as confidently as they do New Testament ones.

The discussion around the above question was pretty fascinating to me, personally. Dr. Arnold takes the position that the Old Testament, while containing a number of different genres of literature within, contains within it history to be trusted (even as going as far as claiming that Israel, not Greece, is the father of modern history). He also took the stance that God probably did present himself differently, primarily in terms of how he communicated and related to humanity, in the Old Testament period than the New. That's an oversimplification of what he said... we was much more nuanced and sophisticated than I just made him sound. But his basic evangelical orientation, which puts great emphasis on a more literal interpretation of the text really shown through in his presentation.

And what did I think?

Well, years ago in a undergraduate religion course taught by an atheist at a state university, I tumbled down the rabbit hole that is the a skeptic's reading of the biblical text as more a mythological posit to explain how the world operates sans any true scientific, rational understanding of the creation. For a good many years, probably until midway through seminary, I was convinced that the further back you go in the Old Testament, the more mythology (and I mean mythology in a negative sense, not the sense of C.S. Lewis or JRR Tolkien who believed in the power of mythology to convey great truth about life in this world, and the God who created it) it contained. The Creation narratives, Tower of Babel, Noah and the Flood, and even the characters from Abraham up until (but not including) David, who can't be substantiated by any outside source from that period of history, were narrative, not historical, characters. After spending a couple of semesters with Albert Camus, Sigmund Freud, and some wicked smart atheists, talking snakes, people who lived to be over a thousand years old, and an ark carrying every animal on the planet, just seemed way to fanciful to be believed.

Then in seminary, I read a great book, The History of Israel, by John Bright. Bright has been one of the seminal scholars on the subject of not just ancient biblical history, but ancient world history as a whole. In his book, Bright came to the conclusion that while he had no way (at that time) of verifying the existence of Abraham, Issac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, Joshua, or any of the Judges, that the power of that history on the Israelites long-term, the accuracy of oral history in cultures that pass down history orally until (and beyond the day when) they develop a way of writing that language down, the evidence of a Semitic community in Egypt, and the number of other times in Israel's later history outside sources could confirm the history in the OT as being accurate (the OT is one of one of the most valuable sources of ancient history we have today), led him to believe that most likely that at least from the time of Abram, we were probably studying actual history of actual people.

Bright went further in discussing pre-Abram biblical text, by asserting that the first twelve chapters of Genesis seemed to have parallels in other Mesopotamian cultures. Other nation states and cultures, for example, had creation and flood narratives, something I had learned at Miami from the atheists, but Bright pointed out that the purpose or point of the OT narrative was markedly different in these two particular narratives than their neighbors. Specifically, humanity was created on purpose by a God who wanted humans around, not as some by-product of gods interacting with one another producing humans as some sort of mistake. From the beginning of the OT, humanity and God interact with one another in a relational sort of way, which is different, very different, than the understanding of how gods and people interact in other cultures at that particular time... and really throughout history.

Oh... that and there's only one God, not more than one, which is more than a little unique.

Think, for a moment, what the nature of the relationship was between the gods on Mount Olympus and humans in the Greek mythology you studied in high school. Humanity is created as a by-product of a great war between the Titans and the gods. The gods pretty much use humans for their purposes, and more often and not those purposes are not all that good. Humans are in the way, and the treatment of the gods to humans is largely unpredictable. This is a pretty good glimpse into the dominant worldview for a very long period of history. Compare that with what you know about the God of the OT, and you get a sense of how different these ideas are. It's remarkable really!

This led Bright to conclude that even if these narratives were really nothing more than just a Hebraic re-interpretation of the mythological texts passed to them by their neighbors, they still contained a train of thought that was unique and distinctive in that world, forming the foundational ideas enabling this monotheistic religion to continue to form and develop.

For me, personally, this kind of righted my ship, and got me thinking beyond the literal truth of scripture, which I had always just accepted as a child, to the truth of scripture, which is a more powerful idea. That people recorded their experience with God, or what had been told to them about God, and over time developing this very unique kind of impression of why we were created, what we're supposed to do now that we're here, and now that should be accomplished. That this tradition has continued over thousands of years, largely without the benefit of some sort of strong temporal political champion (remember that Israel's history is thousands of years longer than the age of Christendom), is in and of itself, astounding.

And the impact it has had on the world, immeasurable.

So, in conclusion, I think that humanity's understanding of who God is and how God works does change over the course of biblical history, but I don't discount the idea that God incarnated in different cultural eras in ways that could be understood by those particular people.

Now, that's a typical answer from a theological moderate... isn't it.

More on this later.

Hell

Been doing a little re-reading of Brain McLaren's The Last Word and the Word After That, particularly the part of the book addressing the topic of Hell. I've been doing this because Hell has been in the news lately. Carlton Pearson, a once prominant pentacostal preacher from Tulsa who was proclaimed a heretic for no longer believing that God sends anyone to Hell, was recently profiled on NBC's Dateline. Bart Campolo, founder and director of Mission Year wrote an article for the Journal of Student Ministries that's stirred up the evangelical world because he too disconnects the idea of God's judgment and Hell. Now too, Phillip Gulley and James Mulholland's controversial book proclaiming God to be a universalist, If Grace Is True: Why God Will Save Every Person, is out in paperback.

I picked up McLaren's book because in it there is a good de-construction of the concept of Hell as it is generally understood.... a place God sends people because they were sinners and did not ask Christ for forgiveness of those sins. And generally, the sins most cited as the ones that people stubbornly hold on to are individualized in terms of personal behavior (all forms of sexual sin, drunkenness, debauchery, wanton greed, etc...). McLaren posits the idea that this idea of individual sins meriting punishment by God is at best, an incomplete reading of Jesus' words on the subject. Matthew 25:31-46, which is generally one of the more famous judgement texts, makes it clear that God will separate the faithful and unfaithful based upon how they served others, particularly the poor and oppressed, and makes no mention of any other criteria. McLaren goes further to say that the idea that by setting individualized behavior (confession of Christ as Lord, issues of personal morality) as the standard for whether or not you make it into Heaven (and Hell), the people who interpret scripture this way are able to avoid greater questions about systemic oppression and subjugation of others.

In others words, people in power or in control of wealth, want to convey to those not in power with no access to wealth, that their lot has been determined either cause God pre-destined them to it, OR to not focus on improving their station in life but rather delaying gratification until the next one (Heaven). Also, if the improper personal behavior leads to eternal punishment, it becomes a good tool of those in authority to deter the masses from acting improperly.

Or, to make things even simpler, Hell is a tool of The Man to keep others down.

Because the concept of eternal punishment has presented in this fashion, as a manipulative tool to motivate some sort of response (whether that be a change in behavior OR a conversion to Christianity), those who have been turned off by this approaching are questioning not just the wisdom of scaring the Hell out of people, but whether the concept of Hell as it's understood in this sense if even biblical. McClaren posits the possibility that the Pharisees used the fear of Hell much in the same way preacher do today as a means of motivating people toward certain kinds of behaviors or rituals, which is exactly what infuriated Jesus. Jesus, instead, uses the concept of Hell against the Pharisees.

For example, while the Pharisees would teach that not following the extensive cleansing rituals proscribed by the law would jeopardize a person's eternity, Jesus turns that language around to say that anyone who put proscribing certain behavior or ritual above meeting the real needs of people in love is going to Hell, so as to re frame an already existing idea.

Kind of like the scene in the movie The Shawshank Redemption, where Andy Dufrane plays an opera record over the prison's loudspeakers to help the prisoners see themselves outside of the dehumanizing system designed to rob people of hope as imposed by the warden. Shawshank Prison was still Shawshank Prison, but somehow in the beauty of the music, it's walls no longer had the last word on how the prisoners should view the world or themselves or their fate. They were guilty in the eyes of the law, but that didn't mean that somehow their souls weren't yet still free. The Pharisees looked to imprison people in such a way that only they, under the guise of God's law, held the key.... Jesus says there is a way apart from them to the kind of freedom people are looking for.

The critique on the part of people like Phillip Gulley, James Mulholland, Brian McLaren, Bart Campolo, and Carlton Pearson (among many others) is that the churches have created the same kinds of prisons of hopelessness for people that the Pharisees did, where they, themselves are the only people who possess the key, under the guise of Jesus and Paul's words, to freedom from eternal punishment. While this has been a good motivational tool to help many people change their lives for the better, and push people to the ends of the earth to spread the Gospel message, somehow, these critics claim, the greater point that Jesus has died so that everyone would be free from condemnation is getting lost in the shuffle, particularly in cases where the people with "the answer" begin manipulating others for their own purposes.

Thus their question: as opposed to telling people that they will be freed from sin, death and hell if they profess Jesus as Lord, should we instead proclaim that people are free from sin, death, and hell because Jesus is Lord and invite them into living in that freedom now?

What... you think I'm going to write about football every day?

"The Secret Meaning of Jesus" Contest Update

For those who missed it on this week's "Ten Things I Think I Think", I am conducting a contest to give away two copies of Brian McClaren's newest book, "The Secret Meaning of Jesus". Have had two people who have already emailed looking to win (which is probably two more than I expected). For your chance to win, all you need to do is email me at revbdb@woh.rr.com , and briefly tell me why I should give you this book, offer at least one suggestion for a future blog post, and an address where I can send you your copy if you win (postage is on me). The winner will announced on May 8th.

For those of you who have never read McClaren's work, I think you'd find it thought-provoking and interesting. McClaren is attempting to wrestle with Christian faith in a post-modern world.

What does "wrestle with the Christian faith in the post-modern world" mean?

Well, when I was a kid growing up in the 70's, the church's position on things like how inerrant the Bible is, who Jesus was, and the nature of how the world was created was defined largely by pastors and theologians, and while under attack by a few doubters, was pretty much accepted as "truth" by the rank and file in this country. But a few things have happened since those simple days. First and foremost, as fewer people here and Western Europe went to church (attendance has steadily declined since the 60's in the US, and since WWII in Europe), fewer people were around to hear what the local pastor was saying, and began to look in different quarters for ideas on religious faith. At the same time, scientific theories (like evolution) and discoveries (like dinosaurs) began to challenge the church's worldview about how the world was created, it's age, and how it works.

By the end of the 20th Century, the church no longer was the definitive voice on morality, issues of faith, culture, and education. With the advent of the internet and other means of diffusing information in volumes and speeds we've never encountered before, now people could decide for themselves what they wanted to believe about all things, including God.

Forced into a position where now it was simply "A" voice, not "THE" voice, on spirituality, the church in this post-modern (or as some would term it, post-Christian) age is being forced to deal with ongoing scientific discoveries (cloning, DNA manipulation, etc..), new discoveries made about the Bible by archaeologists and scholars that challenge some long held (and possibly erroneous) assumptions about basic tenets of the faith, and a world where fewer and fewer people know much about Jesus Christ. Fortunately, because science has failed to correct all of society's ills, a new sense of openness, particularly among younger people, is giving Christian apologists a chance to present its message and meaning in a new, fresh way.

Brian McClaren, who founded Cedar Creek Community Church in suburban D.C., through his lectures and writings, has become a leader among those who are attempting to renew trust and faith in people who felt like the church failed them, while at the same time telling the story of Jesus from a new perspective. This book will, for most of you, challenge your basic understanding of who Jesus is, but I guarantee you it will be worth the read and the struggle.

Hope to hear from you. More updates will given as the contest progresses.