After raising a lot of questions in Chapter 1 of Love Wins Rob Bell turns to a discussion of heaven in Chapter 2.

The title of Chapter 2 captures the gist of Bell's discussion of heaven: "Here is the New There." Or, in the words of Jesus: "May your kingdom come and will be done on earth as it is in heaven."

At root, Chapter 2 of Love Wins is trying to combat the other-worldliness in much of contemporary Christianity: The obsessive focus on the Judgment Day: The fetish of your ultimate destiny: The notion that the most important thing in the world, well, isn't even in this world. As Bell writes:

For all of the questions and confusion about just what heaven is and who will be there, the one thing that appears to unite all of the speculation is the generally agreed-upon notion that heaven is, obviously, somewhere else.

Bell, of course, isn't the first person to insist that heaven should have a lot more to say about this life than the next. Good places to begin dipping into this view are Moltmann's Theology of Hope and N.T. Wright's Surprised by Hope. For my part, I think Bell should get a lot of credit for getting some of this theology out to a wider audience. This is popular theology doing what popular theology should be doing.

The best line of Chapter 2 might be the best line of the whole book:

Our eschatology shapes our ethics.

Your view of heaven and hell influences how you treat people. In my tradition, this has meant privileging bible study over feeding the hungry. Marginalizing justice in order to save souls. And in one sense, I can't blame the people I've known who have felt this way. They are just enacting their eschatology. Avoiding hell is the most important thing. Even if you are starving. There is more important than Here. But if we pray "Your Kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven" we have a very different view. Here is as important as There.

I agree with all this, but I'd like to sharpen Bell's point. The dialectics that Bell uses are temporal and geographical. The relevant contrasts are Here vs. There and Now vs. Then.

I think those are fine but I believe they hide a deeper problem. The more fundamental contrast is Easter vs. Death. As I've written about before, the root problem behind the dysfunctions of Christianity isn't other-worldliness per se but a death-centered theology. Other-worldliness, in my view, is just a symptom of a death-centered faith.

The real problem is the idolatry of death.

One of the things I love about Walden is that it is a philosophical throwback, an example of when philosophy was about how to live. Nowadays when people think about philosophy, particularly academic philosophy, they imagine it to be a spectacular waste of time. It's all about abstractions that have little to do with how we should live. Once upon a time, philosophy was about wisdom. Not so much anymore.

Walden, by contrast, stands firmly in the Socratic tradition, a treatise that interrogates (perhaps a bit rudely) the person on the street--sifting through our ways of life, goading us to think, and trying to clear the path toward the good life.

In Chapter 1 of Walden Thoreau states as much:

To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts, nor even to found a school, but to love wisdom as to live according to its dictates, a life of simplicity, independence, magnanimity, and trust. It is to solve some of the problems of life, not only theoretically, but practically.

That's what I like about Walden. It was an experiment in living, yes, but it was a philosophical experiment. It was an attempt to discern the best way to live. Not just theoretically but practically.

In this regard, I think theology can learn a lot from Walden.

Truth be told, there is a lot of theology out there that seems to me to be a massive waste of time. I have little patience for this sort of work. A part of this, I think, is due to my training in the social sciences. Clarity and concision of expression are prized in our academic writing. Say what you mean, say it clearly, and move on.

These are virtues that seem to go missing in a great deal of philosophical and theological writing, where obscurity appears to be a sign of depth. A confession: There are a lot of theologians out there who are widely lauded among theological bloggers who I find to be a complete waste of time. (Rule of thumb: If Hegel and a Heidegger emerge early in the discussion you're in for a painful experience.)

It's my belief that there are no deep, inaccessible thoughts. There are only bad writers and thinkers. That and a lot of posturing. Any theological idea worth discussing can be expressed in simple, direct, and clear sentences. True, without the requisite background it might take a lot of simple, direct, and clear sentences, but that is all you should need as far as tools go. Speak plainly! Anything more than that is posturing, pretension, and the self-protective habits of the guild.

But not all theology is like this. I recall meeting my friend Mark for the first time and asking him what his academic discipline was. He responded, "practical theology." Good Lord, I thought, Isn't that an oxymoron? Apparently it wasn't. I'm not qualified to give you a precise definition of practical theology, but at root it's an attempt to do theology for the church. It's the attempt to use theology in prophetic and pastoral ways to help equip the church for mission.

This doesn't mean that practical theologians won't engage in speculative discussions about God. It's just not speculation for the sake of speculation. Generally, there is a pastoral aim. For example, Wittgenstein famously argued that a lot of the philosophical problems philosophers debate are actually pseudo-problems created by an imprecise use of language. Basically, a lot of philosophical "problems" are due to muddled thinking and sloppy word use. Proper philosophical discussion, then, according to Wittgenstein, was to be therapeutic, an effort to show embattled philosophers that their debates were misguided and useless.

I think we need to do a lot of that sort of work in our churches. Many Christians have tangled themselves up into theological knots. So a lot of practical theology is about helping untangle those knots so that all that mental energy can get redirected into mission. "To show," in the words of Wittgenstein, "the fly out of the fly-bottle." Good theology should bring peace and calm. But a lot of Christians are theologically anxious, confused and tense. Good theology within the church can help with this, therapeutically speaking.

There is much more to say about all this. But I'm not the one to say it. Practical theologians can weigh in as they see fit. My main point is simply this: I think theology would do well to take a cue from Walden. I think theology should help "solve some of the problems of life, not only theoretically, but practically." Particularly the problems faced by the church. And, in fact, many practical theologians are doing just that. May their tribe increase.

A thought heading into the weekend...

I saw that the meaning of life was to make a living,
its goal to become a councilor,
that the rich delight of love was to acquire a well-to-do girl,
that the blessedness of friendship was to help each other in financial difficulties,
that wisdom was whatever the majority assumed it to be,
that enthusiasm was to give a speech,
that courage was to risk being fined ten dollars,
that cordiality was to say "May it do you good" after a meal,
that piety was to go to communion once a year.

This I saw,

and I laughed.

--Søren Kierkegaard

Thanks to Lawton for passing on this link to a recent article in Relevant Magazine by Brandon Peach entitled Will the Internet Kill Christianity?

The article starts by citing the recent argument made by Christian apologist Josh McDowell suggesting that young people are rejecting Christian fundamentalism because of the Internet:

“What has changed everything?” Christian apologist Josh McDowell asked his audience on July 15 at the Billy Graham Center in Asheville, N.C. His talk, titled “Unshakeable Truth, Relevant Faith,” had detailed a certain uncomfortable fact in anticipation of the question: that young Christians in America are rejecting Christian fundamentalism—and doctrinaire concepts such as absolute truth and biblical infallibility—in droves. Why is faith in God being supplanted, earlier and earlier, by relativism, secularism and skepticism? McDowell’s answer was simple: the Internet.

What, exactly, is going on with the Internet that is making this happen? According to McDowell, young Christians are being exposed early and often to secular and atheistic arguments found online. Peach seems to agree with this assessment, suggesting that the Internet is dominated by the voices of irreligion:

The fact is, a relationship between irreligion and the Internet was bound to happen. Religion has long enjoyed a culturally accepted free space in which to share rhetoric—the Church. Atheism has suffered the exact opposite. America’s wariness of (or its outright antagonism toward, in its greatest excesses) irreligion has forced atheism to the fringes of its society. What the Internet has provided is a free space for atheists in this nation to connect with those across the globe whose cultural milieus are more inviting of all brands of irreligion; indeed, some in which secularism is a majority viewpoint.

It is no wonder, therefore, that atheism is gaining steam in the U.S.

I don't know if these assessments are correct. But I do think that marginalized voices at the local level can aggregate and gain steam, facilitated by the Internet, at the global level. That is, I don't think the Internet is more atheistic, but it is more pluralistic.

Regardless, I'm not sure what McDowell's solution is. Information quarantine?

Here's a radical idea. Rather than sticking our heads in the sand, why don't we come up with some better answers to the questions the kids are asking.

The new freshmen have arrived at ACU!

This morning, as a part of our Passport and Welcome Week activities, I got to visit with some of our incoming Psychology majors to get their first semester schedules worked out. This Thursday our faculty, along with spouses and kids, will eat dinner with all of our new majors.

Interacting with our new majors today I was struck by the diversity of their emotions. Some were already homesick. Some were scared and overwhelmed. Some were excited and bouncing off the walls with energy and excitement.

Thinking about our new freshmen, and all our ACU students, I was looking for a psalm of protection to pray over them. Psalm 121 is a leading and quirky contender:

Psalm 121
I lift up my eyes to the mountains—
where does my help come from?
My help comes from the LORD,
the Maker of heaven and earth.

He will not let your foot slip—
he who watches over you will not slumber;
indeed, he who watches over Israel
will neither slumber nor sleep.

The LORD watches over you—
the LORD is your shade at your right hand;
the sun will not harm you by day,
nor the moon by night.

The LORD will keep you from all harm—
he will watch over your life;
the LORD will watch over your coming and going
both now and forevermore.

Two quirky details draw me to this psalm. These occur in verses five and six.

In verse five we read that the LORD is your shade at your right hand / the sun will not harm you by day.

If you haven't heard, Texas has been baking all summer. The projected highs for the next seven days in Abilene are: 104, 103, 106, 107, 105, and 104 degrees. You get the idea. So, yes, the incoming freshmen need Psalm 121 prayed over them: the LORD is your shade at your right hand / the sun will not harm you by day.

The second quirky detail immediately follows the petition for protection from the sun: the sun will not harm you by day / nor the moon by night.

Beware the moon! Pray that it will not harm you. Pray for protection from both sunstroke and moonstroke. (BTW, that's how The Message renders these verses: God's your Guardian, right at your side to protect you / Shielding you from sunstroke / sheltering you from moonstroke.)

I worked for four years at an inpatient psychiatric hospital. Invariably, after some evening when the night shift reported all sorts of acting out by the patients, some grizzled veteran of a nurse would say, "Well, it was a full moon last night." The moon was always invoked by the staff to explain the crazy behavior of the patients on nights when the moon was full.

I've found that is is very common. In just about every profession that has to deal with a population in the evenings--hospital workers, police, prison guards, dorm supervisors--the moon is often invoked to explain why, when the moon is full, people seem to lose their minds.

Of course, you know that this is where we get the words "lunatic" and "lunacy" from, the ancient (and persistent!) notion that the full moon makes people a little nutty. It's what sits behind the whole werewolf myth, the sense that there is a "monster" inside us that gets pulled out by the sight of the full moon.

Is this a pagan notion? Well, there it sits in Psalm 121: A prayer for protection from the moon.

Which brings me back to my college students. Sure, they need protection from sunstroke in West Texas. But what they really need is protection from moonstroke. From the lunacy of college nights. Full moon or not. Their howling at the moon during the semester is probably the greater threat to their sanity, morality, life and limb and GPA.

And so, here at the start of the school year, let the righteous lift up this prayer of protection--Psalm 121--for the moonstruck college students the world over:

The LORD watches over you—
the LORD is your shade at your right hand;
the sun will not harm you by day,
nor the moon by night.

By my count, there are two ways you can end up in hell.

The first way is that God predestined for you to be there. In the second way, in contrast to the first, God wants you to be in heaven but you reject God's offer of grace. That is, you're in hell because that was your choice.

(There's actually a third way of going to hell involving Las Vegas, three chickens and a circus clown. But it's a rare that anybody goes this route.)

I grew up believing in the second way of going to hell. Specifically, I believed (and still do!) that God "wants all people to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth." (1 Timothy 2.4). If this is so, it stood to reason that if you ended up in hell you had rebelled and rejected God during your life. God wanted to save you, extended the gift of grace, and you rejected it.

When I was young, this explanation seemed perfectly cogent and reasonable. God makes a gracious offer. You refuse. You reap the consequences. Sure, hell is bad. But we shouldn't blame God. Everyone had their chance.

Or did they?

From time to time at ACU I've led a chapel where I've asked students the following question: If you had one question you could ask God what would it be? What question of faith keeps you up at night?

Overwhelmingly, having done this with hundreds and hundreds of college students, the responses fall into one of two groups: The problem of suffering and the problem of moral luck. Based upon my sampling, I'd wager that these are the two biggest stumbling blocks to faith: The problem of suffering and the problem of moral luck.

The title of Chapter 1 of Rob Bell's Love Wins is a question about moral luck: "What about the Flat Tire?" This question is associated with a discussion in the chapter about how we can expect people to accept Jesus if they have never heard the good news or if the "news" brought to them is messed up (i.e., a distortion of the gospel) or delivered by a faulty messenger (e.g., some huckster faith healer or hypocritical preacher). Basically, Bell is highlighting the contingencies inherent in the process of evangelism. So he writes:

If our salvation, our future, our destiny is dependent on others bringing the message to us, teaching us, showing us--what happens if they don't do their part?

What if the missionary gets a flat tire?

This is the flat tire of the title. It's not the only issue, problem or question Bell raises in this ramble of a chapter where he asks question after question. But the tire functions as a sort of metaphor, a metaphor for moral luck.

Moral luck is a termed coined by the philosopher Thomas Nagel. Moral luck refers to how we extend moral approbation and disapprobation to people, thinking people "good" or "bad", when many of the factors affecting our judgements these people fall outside of their control. Some people are perceived as "good" when, in fact, they are simply very fortunate. Others are deemed "bad" when, in fact, they are mainly very unlucky.

"Who sinned, this man or his parents?"
"Neither."

Some of this is fairly straightforward. I might accidentally hit a child playing in the street with my car. Wrong time. Wrong place. And that death hangs over my head. Sometimes accidents happen and sometimes those accidents have a moral cloud.

That's unfair of course. If it was an accident there should be no moral blame involved. And yet, we aren't very good at keeping that distinction clear. Ever feel guilty for something that was out of your control?

And the picture gets even more complicated when start to think about accidents of birth. Some of us are raised in Christian, flag-waving, American homes. Some of us are born to devout and patriotic Muslim families in Iran. How quickly do the kids from those two homes make their way to Jesus? Not to say that radical change and conversion isn't possible. Biographies of this sort do exist (e.g., Saul's conversion to Paul). But conversions of this magnitude are atypical and rare. Most of us go along with the god of our culture and/or family. Few Christians ponder how resistant they are to Muslim evangelism to note how it would be the same if the shoe were on the other foot.

In short, should I get "credit" for being a Christian? Or am I merely lucky?

What about that flat tire?

All this is to say that I was very pleased to see Rob Bell raising the issue of moral luck at the start of Love Wins. As I said, I think moral luck is one of the two biggest stumbling blocks to faith. And as best I can tell, few young people feel that they are getting honest, direct, and substantive answers to their questions on this issue. I've seen very little popular (or academic for that matter) engagement with this issue. That's a problem. You have this huge stumbling block to faith with every little by way of recognition, engagement and response. No wonder young people are getting fed up with church.

Of course, if you're a regular reader here, you know I've cobbled together my answer to the question of moral luck. Not saying I'm right, but at least I recognize the problem and have struggled to find something substantive to say on the subject. I think it's time for the church to catch up. And for that, I appreciate Love Wins for pushing the question.

After setting out his famous summation of the modern condition--"The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation"--Thoreau goes on in Chapter One of Walden to describe a bit about why he thinks this situation has come to pass.

His first target is a thoughtlessness that resigns itself to the status quo. The attitude seems to be "Well, this is what everyone says is the 'good life' so that is what I'll do." More, this sentiment is less a conscious thought than it is unconsciously and unreflectively assumed. We just follow others. Doing what they do. Pursuing what they pursue. Wanting what they want. Admiring what they admire. Applauding what they applaud. Blessing what they bless. Cursing what they curse.

All without thinking.

Thus we are back to the great theme of Walden--living life deliberately. And a part of this deliberation is to step back and question the patterns of life that have captured us. Mainly because people just blindly follow everyone around them. This leads me to the next quote I'd like to highlight from Walden:

The greater part of what my neighbors call good I believe in my soul to be bad, and if I repent of anything, it is very likely to be my good behavior. What demon possessed me that I behaved so well?

Here we engage with one of the other great themes of Walden: Nonconformity. The willingness to question, object, protest, and resist.

The connections here with the Christian faith are almost too obvious to mention. One famous passage will perhaps make the point explicit:

"Do not be conformed to the patterns of this world."

A confession: I'm a bit of a nonconformist. I try to dress differently. Think differently. Behave differently. I'm a little bit off. Not much mind you, but I'm not drawing precisely inside the lines. I try to blur the boundaries of every "pattern" I find myself in.

This often gets me into trouble. I go too far at times. I've offended people.

You can blame Thoreau. As I've said, this book has affected the way I live. I spend a lot of time repenting of my good behavior.

I could say a lot more about all this, how it all plays out in my life, but I've already gone too far in the direction of vanity in this post. If you are going to be a rebel don't let your left hand know what your right hand is doing. But I do want to say this.

If nonconformity is an important part of being a Christian--"Do not be conformed!"--then this is a skill that needs constant care and cultivation. And the main thing that needs to be cultivated is this: Indifference to the crowd. The main reason we conform is because we live in fear. Mostly fear of social censor or disapprobation. Fear of the sidelong glance, condescending smirk, and the whispering of the clique. We need to inoculate ourselves against these fears so that when the real tests come we have reserves of courage than can be drawn upon. We've got to get used to saying "No," used to going a different way, used to looking weird. You can't conform everyday of your life and then expect, when the heat comes, to do anything different. You have to inoculate yourself.

When the sun sets on our lives let us not lament: "What demon possessed me that I behaved so well?"

In preparing for the study I'm leading at the local prison I came across something that shed new light (for me) on Jesus' "I am the vine" discourse in the Gospel of John.

The insight came by coming to understand how a particular song in the book of Isaiah shaped Israel's understanding of her experience of exile. The song comes from Isaiah 5.1-7:

Now I will sing for the one I love
a song about his vineyard:

My beloved had a vineyard
on a rich and fertile hill.
He plowed the land, cleared its stones,
and planted it with the best vines.
In the middle he built a watchtower
and carved a winepress in the nearby rocks.
Then he waited for a harvest of sweet grapes...

The "Song of the Vineyard", as some translations designate the song, starts with verses telling the story of the "beloved" who creates and plants a vineyard and is now waiting for a sweet harvest. But Verse 2 ends on an ominous note.

...but the grapes that grew were bitter.

The song then turns, in verses 3-4, to compare Israel to the disappointing vineyard.

Now, you people of Jerusalem and Judah,
you judge between me and my vineyard.
What more could I have done for my vineyard
that I have not already done?
When I expected sweet grapes,
why did my vineyard give me bitter grapes?

Given that Israel has yielded "bitter grapes" despite all that God had done, the song concludes with God's judgments.

Now let me tell you
what I will do to my vineyard:
I will tear down its hedges
and let it be destroyed.
I will break down its walls
and let the animals trample it.
I will make it a wild place
where the vines are not pruned and the ground is not hoed,
a place overgrown with briers and thorns.
I will command the clouds
to drop no rain on it.

The nation of Israel is the vineyard of the Lord of Heaven’s Armies.
The people of Judah are his pleasant garden.
He expected a crop of justice,
but instead he found oppression.
He expected to find righteousness,
but instead he heard cries of violence.

This Song of the Vineyard shaped how Israel explained her exile. Failing to produce "sweet grapes" Israel is now "overgrown" with oppression, no longer protected by "walls" and "trampled" by "animals" (read: Romans). What was once a "pleasant garden" is now "destroyed."

The hearers of Jesus' message understood themselves to be in the state of exile as expressed in the Song of the Vineyard. The messianic expectation was that the Messiah would come as a second Moses to lead a second Exodus. Given this expectation a part of Jesus' Kingdom-message was to proclaim the end of exile in his own ministry and person. And one way Jesus does this is by proclaiming a new ending to the Song of the Vineyard:

John 15.1-8
“I am the true grapevine, and my Father is the gardener. He cuts off every branch of mine that doesn’t produce fruit, and he prunes the branches that do bear fruit so they will produce even more. You have already been pruned and purified by the message I have given you. Remain in me, and I will remain in you. For a branch cannot produce fruit if it is severed from the vine, and you cannot be fruitful unless you remain in me.

“Yes, I am the vine; you are the branches. Those who remain in me, and I in them, will produce much fruit. For apart from me you can do nothing. Anyone who does not remain in me is thrown away like a useless branch and withers. Such branches are gathered into a pile to be burned. But if you remain in me and my words remain in you, you may ask for anything you want, and it will be granted! When you produce much fruit, you are my true disciples. This brings great glory to my Father.

What I found interesting about the exilic connection with Jesus' vine imagery is that I'd always considered "I am the vine" to simply be a quaint horticultural metaphor. But in the minds of Jesus' audience the image of a "true vine" that "bears fruit" to the glory of God is a radical and epic proclamation. It is the revolutionary proclamation that in the person of Jesus the long exile of Israel has ended.

Here and there on the Internet I've seen people discuss the poetry of Czeslaw Milosz. Then, a few days ago, I ran across Milosz's poem "Meaning" at The Dish.

Suffice it to say, I was blown away. The poem is almost an exact expression (if the word "exact" is appropriate for poetry) of how I experience the life of faith. I've now got Milosz's New and Collected Poems: 1931-2001 on order.

Meaning by Czeslaw Milosz

When I die, I will see the lining of the world.
The other side, beyond bird, mountain, sunset.
The true meaning, ready to be decoded.
What never added up will add Up,
What was incomprehensible will be comprehended.
- And if there is no lining to the world?
If a thrush on a branch is not a sign,
But just a thrush on the branch? If night and day
Make no sense following each other?
And on this earth there is nothing except this earth?
- Even if that is so, there will remain
A word wakened by lips that perish,
A tireless messenger who runs and runs
Through interstellar fields, through the revolving galaxies,
And calls out, protests, screams.

On top of the other things I'm writing about (e.g., my ongoing series on the Slavery of Death) I thought it time to write a bit about Rob Bell's book Love Wins.

Perhaps you've heard of it?

As most of you are aware, the publication of Rob Bell's Love Wins kicked up a storm of controversy and discussion. Some of it started immediately when the promotional video first hit the Internet.

LOVE WINS. from Rob Bell on Vimeo.

At the height of the controversy a few readers asked me to weigh in. I demurred. It seemed that a lot of the discussion at the time was among evangelicals trying to sort themselves out and, given that I didn't have a dog in that hunt, I didn't want to contribute to the noise. But now that some of the smoke has cleared I thought I'd spend some time working through the book.

To start, my plan is to write a post about each chapter, starting in this post with the Preface. But this won't be a book review. Mainly all I want to do is pick something out of each chapter that I find interesting, either because I agree with it, disagree with it, or simply find the point to be worthy of thinking about.

But if you care about my overall impression of Love Wins here it is: I think the book is very helpful and useful. For this reason. Prior to Love Wins there weren't many good "first book off the shelf" choices for those of us wanting to hand reading material to people coming to us with questions and concerns about the traditional doctrine of hell. When people came to us asking questions our first response was often "Have you read C.S. Lewis' The Great Divorce?" That wasn't a bad recommendation as The Great Divorce is easy to read and it does expand one's theological imagination. Which, to start, is what a lot of people need. But The Great Divorce isn't for everyone. It's kind of an odd story and a lot of people have trouble working out the implicit theology in light of the biblical narrative. (Kind of how many evangelicals miss the Christus Victor atonement in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.)

Beyond The Great Divorce sometimes I would recommend George MacDonald's Unspoken Sermons. But MacDonald's prose isn't easy. More recently I've been recommending The Evangelical Universalist or The Inescapable Love of God. But those two books are a bit too polemical for a person just starting to ask questions.

In short, as best I could tell there wasn't a good book out there that fit this very important niche. What did you reach for when someone came to you with troubling questions about hell? Nothing really recommended itself. But now I can hand over a copy of Love Wins and say, "Start here. If you like this I can point you in different directions if you want to go deeper." And that further exploration doesn't have to be into universalism. I could be about annihilationism or a deeper exploration into the history and meanings of Sheol and Gehenna.

So that's my overall assessment. Love Wins a wonderful read for those just starting to ask questions or for those whose faith is starting to falter, quite understandably, due to the traditional doctrine of hell.

With that out of the way, let's start with the Preface of the book entitled "Millions of Us." The quote from the Preface that I'd like to focus on is this:

Some communities don't permit open, honest inquiry about the things that matter most. Lots of people have voiced a concern, expressed a doubt, or raised a question, only to be told by their family, church, friends, or tribe: "We don't discuss those things here."

I don't care what you think about Love Wins, but I think Bell is spot on with this particular assessment. Too many churches say to their members, and their young people in particular, "We don't discuss those things here." And I think the younger generation has had just about enough of this sort of thing. And I'm quite tired of it as well.

A lot people smacked Love Wins because it raised more questions than answers. But truth be told, I think that is sort of the point. I sure as hell have more questions than answers. (Was that a pun?) So I appreciate Bell raising the questions and giving voice to them. That's the sort of book a lot of people need. They need permission to ask questions. Hence the title of the Preface, "Millions of Us." You are not alone in your doubts. You're not faithless, weird, or strange. There are millions of us.

I could go on and on about this, but let me just end with a story.

A few years ago I was teaching in my adult bible class at the Highland Church of Christ. I was doing a lesson on doubt. I started with this question, "Have you ever had doubts? If so, let's share them as I write them on the board." It was quiet at first, but then the responses flowed out...

I've doubted that God exists...
I've doubted that God really cares...
I've doubted that prayers make any difference...
I've doubted that there is a heaven after death...

So many doubts came out that I filled the board and it took all of the class time. After class I worried. I thought the class had gone really badly. I mean, all we did for the entire class was to list our doubts and put them on the board. There was no time for a "positive" response. No pretty bow affixed. No "take home point" or encouraging application. Just one long list of doubts.

A few days later a faculty friend and member of the Highland class shared with me this story. Apparently, a prospective ACU student, a highschooler, was visiting Highland with his parents on Sunday and had wandered into my doubt class. Hearing this, I inwardly groaned. I was sure the next part of the story was going to be the parents blasting me for destroying the faith or their son. But this is what the parents said to my friend: "When you see him, please tell Dr. Beck how important that class was for our son. It just might have saved his faith. He had been struggling with church for some time, but that class opened his eyes. Never in his life had he heard an adult admit to doubting God. Consequently, he felt he was strange and that religion wasn't for him. He felt alone, like no one understood what he was feeling and thinking. But hearing all those adults sharing their doubts made him realize that it was okay to doubt and that he really does fit in at church."

Yes, there are millions of us.

Soon after offering his apology for the autobiographical nature of Walden, Thoreau quickly moves on to one of his major themes summed up in the famous words:

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.

Thoreau was writing in the midst of the Industrial Revolution. You don't see much of that revolution on the idyllic banks of Walden. But you do hear it. Thoreau, in the chapter Sounds, writes about the sound of the train that would disrupt the quiet of the woods. The Fitchburg Railroad track was about 1/3 of a mile from Thoreau's cabin and Thoreau would often walk the railroad track as this was the quickest route into town. Thoreau walked the track so much during his time on Walden Pond that, he wrote, the "men on the freight trains, who go over the whole length of the road, bow to me as an old acquaintance, they pass me so often, and apparently take me for an employee..."

It's an interesting juxtaposition, physically and spiritually. Walden Pond and the Fitchburg Railroad track. Side by side.

We tend to think of Walden as a retreat into nature, an escape from the smoke and coal and urban grime. And it is. But Thoreau's meditations on the railroad and the commerce associated with it reveal Walden to be a bit more nuanced. For example, Thoreau writes in Walden that "What recommends commerce to me is it enterprise and bravery." There was something about the railroad, in its power, energy, vitality, and regularity that won a grudging respect from Thoreau. The coming of modernity wasn't all bad. At the very least it gave him a quick path into town.

But elsewhere in Walden Thoreau would treat commerce harshly. In the chapter Economy he writes:

But I have since learned that trade curses everything it handles; and though you trade in messages from heaven, the whole curse of trade attaches to the business.

I think we understand the tensions Thoreau was articulating. There is something pretty amazing about the modern, technological world. Externally speaking, things look pretty good. I, for one, really enjoy my air conditioner here in West Texas (particularly given our recent heat wave). And I also like this laptop and the Internet. Etcetera. But internally, we sense a certain lassitude. Charles Taylor in his book A Secular Age calls this the "malaise of modernity," a spiritual dryness the seems to infect most of life. And perhaps there has been no better description of this feeling than Thoreau's famous line: "The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation."

According to Charles Taylor we often confront this desperation in crises of meaning. In A Secular Age he writes: "Almost every action of ours has a point; we're trying to get to work, or to find a place to buy a bottle of milk after hours. But we can stop and ask why we're doing these things, and that points us beyond to the significance of these significances. The issue may arise for us in a crisis, where we feel that what has been orienting our life up to now lacks real value, weight...A crucial feature of the malaise of [modernity] is the sense that all these answers are fragile, or uncertain; that a moment may come, where we no longer feel that our chosen path is compelling, or cannot justify it to ourselves or others. There is a fragility of meaning..." And because of this void of meaning "the quotidian is emptied of deeper resonance, is dry, flat; the things which surround us are dead, ugly, empty; and the way we organize them, shape them, in order to live has not meaning, beauty, depth, sense." Here in modernity we experience "a terrible flatness in the everyday."

Why has life become flat? Paul Tillich, in an 1958 essay for The Saturday Evening Post entitled "The Lost Dimension of Religion," shares an analysis that echos the spirit of Walden:

How did the dimension of depth become lost?...The loss of the dimension of depth is caused by the relation of man to his world and to himself in our period, the period in which nature is being subjected scientifically and technically to the control of man. In this period, life in the dimension of depth is replaced by life in the horizontal dimension. The driving forces of the industrial society of which we are a part go ahead horizontally and not vertically...

One does not need to look far beyond everyone's daily experience in order to find examples to describe this predicament. Indeed our daily life in office and home, in cars and airplanes, at parties and conferences, while reading magazines and watching television, while looking at advertisements and hearing radio, are in themselves continuous examples of a life which has lost the dimension of depth...

Nothing, perhaps, is more symptomatic of the loss of the dimension of depth than the permanent discussions about the existence or nonexistence of God--a discussion in which both sides are equally wrong, because the discussion itself is wrong and possible only after the loss of the dimension of depth.

When in this way man has deprived himself of the dimension of depth and the symbols expressing it, he then becomes a part of the horizontal plane. He loses his self and becomes a thing among things. He becomes an element in the process of manipulated production and manipulated consumption....

But man has not ceased to be man. He resists this fate anxiously, desperately, courageously. He asks the question, for what?

At root, Walden is asking this question, trying to recover or restore the lost dimension of depth. And to be clear, Thoreau's answers in Walden are more romantic than religious. Still, we understand why Thoreau went out to Walden Pond. We all know, deep in our bones, what he was looking for.

"[B]ecoming and being a saint does not mean being perfect but being whole; it does not not mean being exceptionally religious, or being religious at all, it means being liberated from religiosity and religious pietism of any sort; it does not mean being morally better, it means being exemplary; it does not mean being godly, but rather being truly human; it does not mean being otherworldly, but it means being deeply implicated in the practical existence of this world without succumbing to this world or any aspect of this world, no matter how beguiling. Being holy means a radical self-knowledge; a sense of who one is, a consciousness of one's identity so thorough that it is no longer confused with the identities of others, of persons or of any creatures or of God or of any idols.

For human beings, relief and remedy from such profound confusion concerning a person's own identity and the identity and character of the Word of God becomes the indispensable and authenticating ingredient of being holy, and it is the most crucial aspect of becoming mature--or of being fulfilled--as a human in this world, in fallen creation. This is, at the same time, the manner through which humans can live humanly, in sanity and conscience, in the fallen world as it is. And these twin faculties, sanity and conscience--rather than some sentimental or pietistic or self-serving notion of moral perfection--constitute the usual marks of sanctification. That which distinguishes the saint is not eccentricity but sanity, not perfection but conscience."

--William Stringfellow, from The Politics of Spirituality

In light of my recent series The Slavery of Death, particularly our discussions about "slavery to the fear of death," you might enjoy this piece from The Onion (h/t Steve): Scientists Successfully Teach Gorilla it Will Die Someday.


Scientists Successfully Teach Gorilla It Will Die Someday

In my recent exchange of essays with Daniel Kirk about universalism and the biblical narrative I argued that to rightly understand the apocalyptic imagery of the New Testament we need to master the prophetic imagination. The way the prophets told the story of covenant, unfaithfulness, judgment and eventual reconciliation.

To give one example of this, consider Hosea 11.8-9:

“How can I give you up, Ephraim?
How can I hand you over, Israel?
How can I treat you like Admah?
How can I make you like Zeboyim?
My heart is changed within me;
all my compassion is aroused.
I will not carry out my fierce anger,
nor will I devastate Ephraim again.
For I am God, and not a man—
the Holy One among you.
I will not come against their cities."

After speaking words of extreme judgment in the chapters preceding, on par with and at times exceeding the "weeping and gnashing of teeth" imagery in the New Testament, God sings out a lovesong to Israel. "How can I give you up?"

This is the theological idea, a claim about God, at the root of universalism. It is the logical outworking of the claim that "God is love" (1 John 4.8). After judgment God cries out "How can I give you up?"

That, it seems to me, is the crux of the matter. You either think God feels this way about humanity or you don't. You either think God will give up on us eternally or that deep within the heart of God there is an eternal commitment to never give up.

I think, based upon my reading of the prophets, that God doesn't give up. This is, of course, my opinion. And I could be wrong. And I need to jibe that assessment with other biblical texts. And so on and so forth. But at the end of the day it's pretty simple: I trust in the God who sings after judgment How can I give you up?

Let me also key in on the phrase "my heart is changed within me" (NIV) from Hosea 11.8. This is variously translated:

"my heart churns within me" (NKJV)
"my heart is torn within me" (NLT)
"my heart recoils within me" (ESV, NRSV)
"my heart is turned within me" (ASV)
"my heart within me is overwhelmed" (NJB)

The word here, what the New Jerusalem Bible translates as "overwhelmed," is a very strong word. And it shows up in places like this:

Genesis 19.24-25
Then the LORD rained down burning sulfur on Sodom and Gomorrah—from the LORD out of the heavens. Thus he overthrew those cities and the entire plain, destroying all those living in the cities—and also the vegetation in the land.

This parallel highlights, of course, something about the Divine Nature. That the compassion of God is the great counterbalance to the wrath of God. More, as Hosea 11 points out, the Divine compassion is greater than God's wrath. God's compassion will "overthrow," "turn," or "change" God's wrath and judgment. This produces the last stanza of the lovesong: How can I give you up?

We could read this language of "changing" and "turning" too anthropomorphically. Given my theological sensibilities I'm very willing to do that. But for the sake of a broader consensus I don't think we need to. (God bless my more conservative readers. I admire your willingness to read this blog.) I don't think Hosea 11.8-9 is talking about God changing God's mind. I think, rather, what we have is a picture of the Divine Nature. The notion that God's compassion is integrally tied up with God's wrath. More, the two--wrath and mercy--are counterweighted. God's wrath "overwhelms" us in judgment. But God's compassion "overwhelms" God's wrath. And I don't think this is best understood as a "changing" or "turning" of mind or will. This "turning" or "changing" is simply the way God is. In short, there is a "turn" and "change" inherent in the nature of God, a movement from judgment to compassion.

And really, could we describe love in any other way? Love isn't solely comprised of mercy. Nor is love solely comprised of punishment. Love involves both seasons. Just ask any parent raising a child. There is a time, when punishment has done it's redemptive work, that the parent "turns" or "changes" toward grace and mercy. As God does in Hosea 11. But the parent isn't "changing her mind" about the child. Reneging, caving or reversing course. No, the season of punishment and the season of mercy are a part of a single unified stance toward the child. Love.

And the problem, as I see it, with many Christians today is that they have no language, no way to describing, how it is a part of God's nature to have the Divine compassion "overthrow," "turn," and "change" the Divine wrath. An expression of gracious freedom welling up from the Divine pathos. This is what I mean when I say many Christians have failed to grasp the prophetic imagination, and, having failed to grasp it, have a distorted and unbiblical view of God.

The book Walden grew out of a lecture Thoreau gave in Concord on February 4, 1846. Apparently, his neighbors were curious about what he was up to with his experiment by the pond and this lecture was his first attempt to explain. As Thoreau opens Walden in Chapter 1--Economy--he states that "particular inquiries" had been "made by townsmen concerning my mode of life." In light of those inquires, in Walden Thoreau states that he will "undertake to answer some of these questions."

Immediately, Thoreau goes on to offer an apology for the first-person, autobiographical nature of the book:

In most books, the I, or first person, is omitted; in this [book] it will be retained...We commonly do not remember that it is, after all, always the first person that is speaking. I should not talk so much about myself if there were any body else whom I knew as well. Unfortunately, I am confined to this theme by the narrowness of my experience.

I'm not sure who offered this sentiment, but I've heard it said, "There is no theology; only biography." This idea, it seems, is a variant of something Ralph Waldo Emerson, friend of Thoreau, had said: "There is properly no history; only biography”

For my own part, I've always felt that philosophy and theology is a form of coping. A way of making sense of my experience. As I experience, I think. Often theologically.

Some people, it seems, have no experience of God. At least no experience they trust. Thus, they feel no need to "make sense" of an experience they lack. These persons are agnostics and atheists. And to be clear, I don't fault my skeptical friends for "making sense" of their experience in this particular way. Their experience is their experience. I can't argue them out of what they feel to be true in their bones.

In a related way, there are those of us who have (and continue to have) experiences that we can only "make sense" of by labeling them as holy, sacred, transcendent, divine, or spiritual. William James called these experiences "ontological emotions," a feeling of thereness. And in light of these experiences people often "make sense" of their lives in ways that we might label "religious."

More, even within the greater religious experience people sit with different felt experiences. Liberals and conservatives, for example, have very different experiences of the world. Consequently, their moral, political, and theological convictions differ in profound ways. This tends to lead to conflict and what I call "communal dumbfounding" in Unclean (a term adopted from the work of Jonathan Haidt).

All this tends to make me fairly skeptical about resolving theological disagreements. Specifically, when people disagree theologically my suspicion is that, behind it all, the individuals just have different felt and lived experiences. They have different religious backgrounds. Different conversion stories. Different mystical experiences. Different personalities. Different life circumstances. The list goes on and on. In the end, the surface-level biblical or theological disagreement is really being regulated by unspoken assumptions rooted in worldview and biography. And given that the discussants are rarely able to articulate these unspoken assumptions, or lay them on the table for critical consideration, the conversation tends to be futile. People just talk past each other.

I think this is why Jesus often said, "Those who have ears, let them hear." You can either hear me, or you can't. And if you can't, I'm not sure what we can say to each other. At some deep level we are ships passing in the night. I think this is the same idea behind the Parable of the Sower. You are either good soil, or not. And the same goes for how we live with each other. You are either open to me, and I to you, or we're not.

Think of hard ground in the parable. I can share with you but if you are not open to me the birds will come and pick the seeds of my life off the hard ground of your soul.

Which brings be back to Thoreau. In the end, all we can do is share our biographies with each other. Our stories. Because, like Henry said, this is really the thing we know the best. So the only issue, then, is how we receive each other's stories. Attempting to be good soil for each other. Allowing the seeds of other's insight and experience to grow in my own heart.

To have the ears to hear.

From an ancient Holy Saturday homily. I love the Christus Victor themes:

Something strange is happening--there is a great silence on earth today, a great silence and stillness. The whole earth keeps silence because the King is asleep. The earth trembled and is still because God has fallen asleep in the flesh and he has raised up all who have slept ever since the world began. God has died in the flesh and hell trembles with fear.

He has gone to search for our first parent, as for a lost sheep. Greatly desiring to visit those who live in darkness and in the shadow of death, he has gone to free from sorrow the captives Adam and Eve, he who is both God and the son of Eve. The Lord approached them bearing the cross, the weapon that had won him the victory. At the sight of him Adam, the first man he had created, struck his breast in terror and cried out to everyone: “My Lord be with you all.” Christ answered him: “and with your spirit.” He took him by the hand and raised him up, saying: “Awake, O sleeper, and rise from the dead, and Christ will give you light.”

With Unclean available on Amazon I've been honored to have some very insightful reviews published about the book. Recently, a short review of Unclean was published that I thought would make some of you smile:

It was like the secret love-child of Oliver Sacks and William Stringfellow.

Ten years ago Aidan was born. Brenden was three at the time. We only had one car and we lived four miles from ACU.

I was struggling about what to do about getting to work. On the one hand, if I took the car to work Jana would be homebound for the day with a baby and toddler. Not a good recipe for her emotional and social well-being. But on the other hand, if Jana took me to work to keep the car she, the baby and the toddler would have to get up, load into the car and get me to school before my eight o'clock classes. And that was a losing idea as well. Sleep is precious for a new mother. I wanted Jana to sleep in.

So how to get to work?

Well, there was a bus stop at the end of my street so I began to experiment with that. It was okay but I had to make a transfer and the timing wasn't reliable. To make sure I made the transfer and guarantee that I'd make it to class on time I had to get out on the corner an hour earlier. But I'm not a morning person so I didn't relish standing on the corner every day at 5:30 in the morning.

So, how to get to work?

Eventually, I hit on the idea of bike commuting. My mom was visiting at the time (I've discovered that new babies are a draw for grandparents) and she was perennially worried about my lack of exercise. So she spotted the opportunity to buy me a nice mountain bike.

I started with a backpack on my back to carry my stuff but quickly had to come up with a different solution. I didn't like the weight on my back, particularly if I was carrying a lot of books. Plus, the backpack made my back hot and sweaty. Remember, I live in Texas.

So I went back to the bike shop and got a rack and a pannier. That worked great and I've been using a rack and pannier ever since.

I was a bike commuter.

Soon, the speed bug hit me. This happens a lot to new bikers. You start surfing websites, getting a subscription to Bicycling magazine, waiting all year for the Tour de France. You start wanting to go fast.

But I wasn't ready to get a road bike. I was, after all, carrying a lot of stuff back and forth. So I traded my Specialized mountain bike for a Trek hybrid. (A hybrid has the setup of a mountain bike but has the wheels of a road bike.) Obsessed with speed, I switched the treaded 35mm wheels of the hybrid for thinner 25mm slick wheels for a road bike. I added a speedometer and odometer. I added clips for the pedals. I got the bike as close as I could to a road bike but kept the rack and pannier to carry my stuff. I maximized my speed.

The trouble was that while I was going faster I started having clothing problems. I wasn't into spandex or anything, but on my bike I couldn't comfortably ride to work in long pants, dress shoes or a suit coat. So I biked to work in shorts during warm months and windsuits in cold months. Either way, I was coming to school in very casual attire. For the most part I got away with this, but it was an object of discussion on campus. My teaching in shorts and a t-shirt was a bit scandalous to some.

I tried, from time to time, particularly if I had an important meeting that day, to bring a change of clothing. On these days, beyond the books and papers I carried, I had to pack dress shoes, socks, slacks, belt, undershirt, and dress shirt. This was a real hassle, but I didn't have to do it everyday.

But then I became Chair of the Psychology Department. And in that role I had something "formal" happening just about everyday. Meeting with faculty. Meeting with Administration. Visiting with prospective students and their families.

All this meant that I had to pack a nice change of clothing every single day. It was getting to be a pain.

But as luck would have it my infatuation with speed was waning around this same time. I was wanting to go slower. To look up from the road to enjoy the morning air, the sky, and the sunrise.

So I switched bikes again. I got an Electra Amsterdam. It's a European-style city bike perfect for what I was needing. For example, it has a fully enclosed bike chain so I can wear long pants. It has also got a coat tail protector for the back wheel, fenders, and even a mud flap for the front tire. And it has a rack. And a light. And a bell. Ring, ring!

Basically, you could be wearing a suit and tie and ride this bike to work. (The Amsterdam is seen here to the right and it's the bike with me in the picture above.)

It was perfect. Now I just jump on my bike in the morning wearing whatever I'm going to wear for the day. Most of the time it's jeans and a shirt (as pictured above; that's how I look at work 98% of the time). Sometimes (though rarely) it's dress pants, a tie, and jacket. And no matter what I'm wearing I'm comfortable on the Amsterdam.

The key, obviously, is giving up speed. I go slow. But it's not just about about the clothing. Going slow is also about smelling the roses.

Apparently, I'm a part of a growing trend. Check out Slow Bike Movement: Not all cyclists in a hurry, a recent feature in the San Francisco Chronicle:

Among the growing population of bicyclists are those who eschew speed and spandex in favor of sitting upright and slowly making their way through town in whatever they happen to be wearing that day. It's a trend that some are calling the Slow Bike Movement.

"When I think about the Slow Bike Movement, I think of bikes that allow people to sit upright, see your surroundings, be more visible to your environment that you're riding," says Public Bikes' Dan Nguyen-Tan.

And the article echos my own experience about clothing:

[A benefit of slow riding] carries over to when you're getting dressed in the morning. Slow riding means not arriving at work sweaty or worrying about wearing specific bike-riding shoes or any of the other wardrobe-related concerns that plague would-be commuters.

But the article also highlights the greatest benefit of slow riding, something I tried to capture awhile back in a poem:

Being a Slow Bike Rider...means getting to know more about the rest of your community.

"I actually like interacting with the people in my city," Logan says. "And when you're riding slowly, that tends to happen more often."

Both Logan and Colleen Stockmann, who works at the Contemporary Jewish Museum, say it's easier to strike up a conversation with people on the street while biking. When you're not rushing past, head down, people tend to talk to you - ask for directions, comment on your bike or otherwise carry on a conversation. Sometimes that means talking to curious tourists, and sometimes it means striking up a conversation with another slow rider in the bike lane.

Sure, it's easier to talk to someone who isn't whizzing past, but the laid-back pace also encourages you to look around, Stockmann says. When you're riding casually, "you notice more," she says.

UPDATE;
This was the root post of my "Slavery to Death" series.

With the encouragement of my readers here I've pulled all this material into a book which is now under contract with Cascade publishers. With the book on the way I've pulled the posts from this series out of respect for the publisher. When the book appears I'll pull this post and link directly to the book where my thoughts about the "slavery of death" can be found. Consider this first post in the series a teaser for the forthcoming book.
...
Awhile back I asked readers of this blog to recommend sources about the relationship between sin and death, with a particular focus on how the Greek Orthodox view the relationship. The idea I'm exploring is a reversal of the typical Protestant formulation:

Sin causing Death

The formulation I'm working with flips the Protestant understanding around:

Death causing Sin

The focal passage I'm working with is Hebrews 2.14-15:

Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might break the power of him who holds the power of death—that is, the devil—and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death.

The idea is that we are "held in slavery by our fear of death." Fearing death we act in various ways that are prompted by needs for self-preservation. Life is ruled by a Darwinian survival instinct that makes us selfish, acquisitive, rivalrous and violent. Mortality fears create our sinful actions and attitudes. That is the key theological and psychological insight.

Given this situation, the work of the Christ is to "break the power of him who holds the power of death--that is, the devil." (See also 1 John 3.8: "The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil.") Salvation in this view is obtained through Christ's defeat of the the devil who uses our fear of death to hold us captive to sin, using our instinct for self-preservation to tempt us into sinful practices. Christ came to destroy both the devil and death to set us free from our "slavery to the fear of death." And being set free from this fear we are able to escape the bondage of sin. This is the meaning of resurrection.

In my research the book The Ancestral Sin by the Greek Orthodox theologian John Romanides has proved very influential. More on this book to come, but at the end of the book Romanides quotes from a sermon from St. John Chrysostom that nicely articulates the view I'm working with:

[H]e who fears death is a slave and subjects himself to everything in order to avoid dying...[But] he who does not fear death is outside the tyranny of the devil. For indeed 'man would give skin for skin, and all things for [the sake of] his life,' [Job 2.4] and if a man should decide to disregard this, whose slave is he then? He fears no one, is in terror of no one, is higher than everyone, and is freer than everyone. For he who disregards his own life disregards more so all other things. And when the devil finds such a soul, he can accomplish in it none of his works. Tell me, though, what can he threaten? The loss of money or honor? Or exile from one's country? For these are small things to him 'who counteth not even his life dear,' says blessed Paul [Acts 20.24].

Do you see that in casting out the tyranny of death, He has dissolved the strength of the devil?