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- Written by Rex M. Rogers
The words in the title of this piece seem jarring in close association. The reason is they really don’t fit together, other than that Terry Jones has sensationally forced them into the same articles, comments, and reactions worldwide.
Jones is the pastor of the approximately 30-member Dove World Outreach Center of Gainesville, Florida, who apparently burned a Quran in his effort to “put on trial” a holy book and a religion with which he disagrees. Last fall he threatened to burn a Quran on an “International Burn the Koran Day,” but apparently demurred when General David Patraeus and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates implored him not to do so because it might cost American lives. President Obama made similar public comments at the time.
But Jones finally put his plan in action, allegedly burned a Quran, and the result to date has been more than 20 killed in Afghanistan, including United Nations employees. Related protests continue in Pakistan.
So as a Christian what am I to think of this? Here are a few things to consider:
--It’s a free country. We enjoy an incredible gift of freedom of speech (which the US Supreme Court has expanded to freedom of expression) that most of us did nothing to earn. It is our political birthright. But what may be legal is not always moral or ethical.
--As a believer we enjoy the incredible gift of Christian liberty, something we did nothing to earn. It is our spiritual birthright. But 1 Corinthians 10:23 reminds us, “’Everything is permissible’—but not everything is beneficial. ‘Everything is permissible’—but not everything is constructive."
--Scripture tells believers to speak the truth in love. It does not endorse what today we call “hate speech,” acts of violence, or incendiary in-your-face actions against those with whom we may disagree. In fact, Scripture commands us to “turn the other cheek” and to “love your enemies,” whomever we may perceive them to be.
--Jones’s “ministry,” if not a cult, is certainly “cultish.” He emulates the dictatorial pastor of Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kansas, who also has apparently burned a Quran. They do not lead as shepherds. They rule and demean and pontificate and sensationalize. They have their 15 minutes of fame. I question what rewards they will receive in heaven.
--Burning the Quran accomplishes nothing but inciting to anger those who revere it. Is this a way to express love, to build a relationship based upon trust or mutual respect? If someone knocked on your door and insulted Christ or burned a Bible would you feel inclined to initiate a friendship? Does Jones really believe he is battling for truth? Or is he applying his warped worldview in the name of Christianity, all the while enjoying his time in the media sun?
--Burning the Quran is more than burning a given book. It’s an act of political malice akin to burning any symbol vested with the ideals of a people. Not long ago, some US Congressmen submitted bills intended to make burning US flags illegal. To date these amendments to the US Constitution have not been ratified by a sufficient number of states. Flag desecration is a protected act of “symbolic speech” in the US—while in many other countries such acts against the national symbol are illegal. The point is, while according to rulings by the US Supreme Court desecrating an American flag is protected speech, as is burning a Quran, we still don’t have to like it, embrace it, consider it wise, or report it via news media. Interestingly, national media are beginning to figure that out, dropping most references to Jones and hopefully letting him fade away from lack of attention.
--Is Jones’s faith so small, so lacking in confidence, that he fears placing the teachings of the Bible alongside the teachings of the Quran and allowing people to make their own decisions about truth, love, forgiveness, and hope?
--I feel sorry for Jones and his followers, for they are clearly enveloped in a false understanding of Jesus’s ethic of love and the beauty of the Christian faith. While I condemn the killing of innocents in Afghanistan in reaction to Jones’s Quran burning, I feel badly for the families who lost loved ones as part of the ripple effect of Jones’s actions.
--Jones is no more representative of biblical Christianity or of most believers than are members of the Ku Klux Klan.
--Burning the Quran or any other holy book from any religion is not an act of Christian love or an overture toward spiritual reconciliation for those who embrace those religions. It is an act of fear and prejudice, self-righteousness and ignorance. No true follower of Christ can or should condone such acts.
© Rex M. Rogers – All Rights Reserved, 2011
*This blog may be reproduced in whole or in part with a full attribution statement. Contact Rex or read more commentary on current issues and events at www.rexmrogers.com or follow him at www.twitter.com/RexMRogers.
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No one knows where the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) are “going,” much less what the political and social landscape will look like when they get there. The region is literally changing as we watch. This is both exciting and concerning.
MENA may eventually feature, God forbid, re-closed countries and new autocratic regimes. If so, we’ll need programs like SAT-7’s (in cooperation with Overseas Council and MEATE=Middle East Association for Theological Education) TEACH/LEARN project that works to develop leaders in Church and culture. SAT-7 is a Christian satellite television ministry based in Cyprus broadcasting in Arabic, Farsi, and Turkish across MENA and throughout 50 countries in Europe. Its US support office serves an American constituency vitally interested in MENA.
MENA may ultimately feature the newly open, if not democratic, societies the freedom fighters, rebels, and the rest of us are generally hoping for. If so, we’ll need programs like SAT-7’s TEACH/LEARN project because the Church will be able to work more publicly, will flourish, and will need more leaders than ever.
I’ve learned a lot about the Middle East in the past 18 months, but I have much to learn. The latter point can be said for US government or Western leaders in general and for Church leaders. The more we learn about the Middle East the better, for a lot of reasons.
MENA is not a block, not the monolith that evening news tends to unintentionally suggest. The region of 22 countries is home to 500+ million people speaking Arabic, Farsi (Persian), and Turkish. The countries, cultures, and people are similar but vary dramatically in ever way.
MENA people are religious, vigorously so, yet many are simply culturally religious as opposed to persons holding deep-seated informed religious understanding or commitment. They generally do not understand, or at least embrace, Western ideas like separation of Church and State and do not think it wise even when they do grasp the concept. So when they look upon the nominally Christian or Christian-by-heritage West, no matter what country is doing what, it is “Christian” to them. This makes true Christian testimony both more important and more difficult.
MENA will be different tomorrow from what it is today. We should work hard to learn more about and from the people of MENA. Learning doesn’t guarantee peace, but then again, nothing but good comes from greater understanding.
© Rex M. Rogers – All Rights Reserved, 2011
*This blog may be reproduced in whole or in part with a full attribution statement. Contact Rex or read more commentary on current issues and events at www.rexmrogers.com or follow him at www.twitter.com/RexMRogers.
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Rob Bell’s book, Love Wins: A Book About Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived (2011), argues hell doesn’t exist—as it’s been understood for centuries—that God is a god of love who couldn’t possibly punish sinners for eternity, and that eventually everyone is saved and goes to heaven. Why? Because “love wins,” that is, God is love and “God always gets what God wants.”
Bell says the traditional presentation of the Gospel in which some are saved through faith in Christ, while those without Christ are damned to eternity in hell, is “misguided and toxic.” The doctrine of election is clearly on trial in this book.
Bell complains that evangelical or fundamentalist churches don’t permit people to ask questions, so he asks them here. He paints a jaundiced picture of such churches and then claims there are a “staggering number” of people who don’t like the biblical message or the “vicious,” “cruel” God these churches present. He says the traditional story of historic orthodox Christianity, which he still claims to represent, is not a good one and that “the Good News is better than that.” t;/p>
Bell believes in hell, although given the varying ways he defines hell it’s difficult to be sure what he believes. He uses the term “hell” like one might use the word “hellish.” It more or less describes anything evil, bad, or discomforting.
When General William T. Sherman famously said, “War is hell,” he meant it metaphorically. That’s what Bell is doing with the word—and a lot more. He says there are “all kinds of hells.” For Bell, hell is genocide in Rwanda, it’s “what we want,” it’s individual hells, communal, society-wide hells, hell now and later, it’s refusing to trust. Whatever it is, for Bell hell is a lot of hellish things other than the Lake of Fire referenced in Scripture.
Bell says failure is not final and hell is not forever. He conceives of hell as something akin to the Catholic belief in purgatory, an undefined but apparently limited period of time when some people experience a “period of pruning” or “internal experience of correction.” However long the time in this netherworld, in Bell’s theology, people do not stay forever. He says there’s hope for Sodom and Gomorrah and suggests Mahatma Gandhi might be in heaven (though there is no record in Gandhi’s voluminous writings that he embraced the Christ of Christianity; in fact, there’s the opposite). He even suggests people can be saved after death.
Rob Bell clearly possesses a gift for communication. I’ve heard him speak a number of times, enjoyed his ability to take listeners through a long list of Scriptures without losing them, and appreciated his teaching talent. I’ve also wondered how long people could sit under his youthful shtick or imbibe his perpetual flippancy, particularly as he grew older and the shtick didn’t align with his age.
Bell’s gift for communication shines through in Love Wins. For example, he coins a creative and thought-provoking phrase like “garage full of nouns” to describe the excesses of materialism. The man can write and he can teach, no question. His ability to create word pictures is why he’s highly regarded as a speaker, why his Nooma DVD series are best sellers, and why he’s attracted a large following.
But now comes Love Wins. The book saddens me, not only because it presents a watered-down, which is to say false, version of biblical teaching, but also because it will undoubtedly mislead a lot of people. I’ve read Bell’s earlier books. In those he attempted to re-think tradition, something the conservative church always needs. This book is different. In Love Wins, Bell attempts to re-think doctrine, central teachings of the Bible and the Christian faith.
Bell’s book is one long reconstruction of the Christian faith in terms he thinks postmodern sensibilities can handle. While he quotes a myriad of Scripture, he picks and chooses, curiously omitting entire passages relevant to his topic. So the primary evidence for his claims, especially those related to how people respond to the Church, is his own experiences and perceptions.
And therein lies an odd point: I’ve read many books written by people who grew up in the fundamentalist church. Many times the authors work very hard to demonstrate how they’ve grown beyond their spiritual roots. It’s almost like a rite of passage—in their effort to say, “I’m not like that” they bite the hand that fed them. Bell’s book is another example of this sort of public therapy session.
Bell is clearly wrestling—I’d say struggling at some points—with his spiritual heritage. He claims he’s not saying anything new, that he’s part of a “deep, wide, diverse stream” of “historic orthodox Christianity.” Then he proceeds to debunk his own caricature of evangelical Christianity and turn historic orthodox Christian doctrine upside down. He’s trying to have his cake and eat it too. He keeps implying, “I’m one of them,” while at the same time hinting, “I don’t believe what they believe.”
Pre-publication controversy about this book, and much of it since, centered on whether Bell is a “universalist.” There are varying versions of universalism, a belief that all people will ultimately be saved, escape hell, and live in heaven eternally. Universalism is not historic orthodox Christianity. Bell has repeatedly said in interviews that he is not a universalist, yet his entire book makes a case for just that.
His first chapter is entitled “What about the flat tire?” This is his dumbed down way of not dealing with the sovereignty of God and of ostensibly demonstrating how a person’s spiritual fate might turn upon whether a missionary got a flat tire on the road to share the Good News. Herein he deconstructs scriptural teaching indicating people must hear the Gospel in order to respond to it (Romans 10). He says he agrees; yet he doesn’t. He basically says it doesn’t much matter. Eventually, whether a person heard or not, whether a person responds in faith to the Gospel or not, people will be saved because love wins.
Bell does not deal coherently with the holiness of God or the biblical teaching of judgment. He talks about sin, believes it exists, yet somehow whitewashes it in terms of a sentimentalist version of God he considers palatable for contemporary culture. He works hard to rewrite Christianity as a “good story.” In the process he reveals an astoundingly underdeveloped theological understanding of the sovereignty of God.
After writing a book like this, I don’t know why Bell bothers to ask, “Will everybody be saved, or will some perish apart from God forever because of their choices? Those are questions, or more accurately, those are tensions we are free to leave fully intact. We don’t need to resolve them or answer them because we can’t, and so we simply respect them, creating space for the freedom that love requires.”
This transparency, it seems to me, evidences confusion and makes the fact he argued as he did an even greater theological and spiritual train wreck. First, he makes a case for not believing (affirming “the story”) in foundational doctrines of the biblically Christian faith. Then, with this last set of questions he indicates he’s not sure of any of it. So he’s done the classic postmodern thing—he’s deconstructed an argument only to toss what’s left into ambiguity. He doesn’t believe like he used to believe. Now he’s not sure what or if he believes at all? So where does that leave all those who follow him?
Love Wins strips God’s love and the Gospel of the power and majesty Bell wants to provide spiritually bereft people. Sadly, he teaches error and leaves them adrift.
Check these theologians’ blogs reviewing Love Wins: seminary president Albert Mohler; author Randy Alcorn, and pastor Kevin DeYoung.
© Rex M. Rogers – All Rights Reserved, 2011
*This blog may be reproduced in whole or in part with a full attribution statement. Contact Rex or read more commentary on current issues and events at www.rexmrogers.com or follow him at www.twitter.com/RexMRogers.
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Given the serious, important, or painful things going on in the world, it seems to me that we spend a lot of time, money, media, and cyberspace on things that don’t matter. Perhaps it’s irony, but I’m going to do it too, but just for this list. Here’re my nominees for unimportant things that get way too much attention:
--Charlie Sheen – Whether for real or a charade or self-parody Sheen isn’t a star, he’s sad. Inside Sheen is a person that is important, but what he’s doing to himself and offering the world is toxic.
--More New Kinds of Pet Food.
--“Blessing of the Animals” - Fountain Street Church, Grand Rapids, Michigan, part of Palm Sunday service, which happened to be the closest Sunday to Earth Day. People brought dogs, guinea pigs, cats, an alpaca, snakes, etc, to church “to be blessed.” Meanwhile there are hundreds of children within five miles of the church who need its help and blessings.
--“Reality” Television – Keeping Up With the Kardashians, Jersey Shore, ad nauseum.
--Political Correctness – Really just another way to force-feed a liberal view of “correct politics.”
--Westboro Baptist Church, Topeka, KS.
--Another Megachurch Building Campaign – Do we really need another multi-million dollar complex duplicating similar facilities across town?
--More Enormous New Professional Sports Stadiums, tearing down still useable older facilities – ala megachurches.
--Celebrities.
--Wrestlemania and Professional Wrestling.
I’m not suggesting all these things are “bad” or that there’s no redeeming social value in any of them. It’s just that by comparison to other issues the world faces—human trafficking, wars, budget crises, unemployment, hunger, poverty—these things seem superfluous and a waste of time and money.
© Rex M. Rogers – All Rights Reserved, 2011
*This blog may be reproduced in whole or in part with a full attribution statement. Contact Rex or read more commentary on current issues and events at www.rexmrogers.com or follow him at www.twitter.com/RexMRogers.