The Gospel According to Jack Chick

The Baptists have spoken! Particularly Al Mohler (fundamentalist head of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary), Justin Taylor (the first blogger to fire on Bell), and Russel Moore and Denny Burke, deans of other conservative seminary/bible colleges. And their message? Farewell, Rob Bell... from their version of the gospel (which they maintain is not only the True and Right version thereof, but also the only truly effective one). But of course their version isn’t necessarily the same as God’s version. Their version is closer to Jack Chick’s.

You remember those tri-colored comic book-like tracts, right? The kind that told a story about some poor, hapless Schmuck who dies violently and bloodily and then ends up in hell. Like the rich man in Lazarus’ story, he begs to go back and tell anyone who would listen about how they need to accept Jesus into their hearts to escape eternal torment in hell. The whole gospel has been shortened to this: We’re all woefully sinful and deserve to spend eternity in conscious torment unless we accept Jesus as our personal Lord and Savior with a prayer.

photo © 2006 Matthew Robinson | more info (via: Wylio)

It’s not something that Jesus directly said, nor St. Paul, nor any of the other writers of the Old or New Testament. But it’s an interpretation that is declared to be the *Gospel Truth* by people like Mohler and understood to be what the whole bible is about for many, many people who consider themselves Christians.

And for many people who do not consider themselves Christians – at least any longer.

So when you see Mohler and his friends on Team Jack Chick talk about the “Gospel” – understand that they are not referring to something that Jesus declared, let alone a historically accurate understanding of what “Gospel” means (the declared good news of the birth or ascension of a new king).

Bell, the panelists said, has redefined the Gospel and his beliefs clearly fall outside historical biblical orthodoxy.

Well, I haven't read the Bell book yet. I've read a few reviews and snippets of reviews, but I can't say for sure... naw, who'm I kidding? Of course he's not being unorthodox, unbiblical, nor ahistorical. That's just horse-dung. Consider that the entire Eastern Orthodox movement considers hell to not be a place but a state of resistance of God. Consider that there are huge swaths within the historic church that had alternative views of hell – some denying its existence outright (which I don’t see Bell doing here). Consider that none of the creeds hold hell - let alone the Jack Chick Hell - up as a central point of the Christian faith. Consider that very little of the bible talks about hell -even if you were to read all things having to do with fire or condemnation or burning up as evidence, it pails in significance to the centralizing themes of the Bible.

What the panelists are doing here is equating the entire Church history with the Jack Chick understanding of hell as being central to its theology. Anyone who disagrees with their view is/was/will be, therefore, a heretic and themselves be responsible for leading millions upon millions into hell. It’s a very ego-centric way of understanding this living organism called The Church that existed and debated and learned (and in many ways, shirked from responsibility) long before these Baptists ever got their systematic theologies so tightly wound that the smallest picks will unravel their entire worldview (in this case, systematic theologies largely revolving around proof-texting verses of the bible out of historical, textual, and cultural context).

"There is no final, punitive, retributive justice from God," Burk said. ".. Paul says in Romans 12:19, leave room for the wrath of God. One of the fundamental errors, I think, of this book is right there: There is no room for the wrath of God in his theology."

Finally! Burk admits that "there is no final, punitive, retributive justice from God" (Sorry, did I just take Burk out of context? Silly me...).

Justice isn't retribution. Justice is making the wrong right, not about punishing (forever and ever) the wrong-doers. Justice often requires some sort of punishment, of course. But usually we say that the punishment fits the crime. John Piper - a pastor on Team Jack Chick's side who first told Rob Bell that he should fare well on his way out the door - argues that the judgment of eternal suffering is fitting because God is infinitely holy and worthy of honor. That to dismiss God's infinite honor is to be infinitely proud.

It's a pretty big bag Piper's holding there - and this version of God, to be honest, sounds petty.

Bell's view of salvation, Moore said, is wrong biblically but also flawed practically and will lead to empty church pews. If the pastor says there is no judgment and everyone will end up in heaven, then people have little motivation to follow Christ, Moore and the other panelists said.

"You never have a universalist Great Awakening," Moore said. "... The very thing [Rob Bell] is attempting to do, it never succeeds. You always wind up losing the church and unable to reach the people outside the church."

Of course, never mind that this meeting was put together because they were concerned about Rob Bell's popularity, what gets me is the functionality of this statement. The missional objective here - and generally is - preach hell and condemnation. That will win souls.

But if what they're looking for is the saving of souls in the long run, it doesn't work. If we Christians want to attract people to Jesus, we can't do that by ignoring Jesus. How one starts in their Christian journey affects how they continue it. Starting out with fear is not love ("For perfect love casts out all fear"), and being afraid of hell is not worshiping God.

Shouldn't the focus be on God? Isn't that the definition of worship - loving God with our whole heart, mind, soul, body? If faith is reduced to a 'Get Out of Jail Free Card', then it's the opposite of what proponents of Eternal Hell & Suffering have been trying to convince me. But Mohler, et al., make it sound like that's what this is about.

They're saying, If you want to win souls to Jesus, you have to tell them they'll go to hell if they refuse to. Otherwise, what's the point?

I don't know. I always thought the point was Jesus...

Of course, in a functional and practical level, it doesn't make sense. Sure, you could make a lot of conversions using hell as the grappling hook. But how many of those people will continue with their zealotry after a long period? Now all you've got (and I know because I was there) are a bunch of people unsure of their own salvation and not sure if they want to tell others that they need to get some of this. This is the opposite of a worship-and-love-centered missiology. This is a lot less effective for true Jesus-following discipleship than having people who are truly in love with Jesus and filled with the Spirit of Comfort and Love spreading that message through their deeds and engaged conversations.

"That message of 2 Corinthians 5 & 6 doesn't make any sense with this book -- 'now is the day of salvation, now is the acceptable day.' And why? Because there is a time of judgment coming. … None of that makes sense if this book is true."

This is a fundamental flaw with this view of salvation - that salvation only means to save from certain, eternal death. It's the Gospel According to Chick Tracts. Is that it? Is that the only possible meaning of salvation? Is that the entire grasp and width of Jesus' saving hands? Only works after we die?

Said Mohler, "If you believe what is in this book, you can't sing many of the hymns that are most precious to us. You can't do it. You can't mean what they mean, because there is no need for the cross, there is no need for the substitution, there is no need for the mercy [of God]."

Really?

No need for the cross? No need for mercy? That's crazy talk! If the only purpose of God's mercy is to keep us from eternally burning in hell, then why do I need to forgive those who wrong me? Heck, I'm not sure what Al is referring to here, because the steadfast love of the Lord never ceases. The Lord's mercies are new every morning - great is God's faithfulness.

I need God's mercy (and the songs certainly help) every day. While on earth. Not just to escape a torment of eternal hell after I die. But to survive my marriage and fatherhood. To go to work. To face myself and my neighbors every day. Knowing that there is hate in my heart.

I do pray for forgiveness and mercy every day. And I pray for Al Mohler and his acquaintances and for forgiveness. Because right now, I do not like them. At all.

Jesus, save me.

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Note: My friend and occasional sparring partner Carson Clark already had a point-by-point response to this essay here.

The Authority to Question

My God, My God! Why have you forsaken me?

Eugene Peterson on the Bell-Hell controversy:

I don’t agree with everything Rob Bell says. But I think they’re worth saying. I think he puts a voice into the whole evangelical world which, if people will listen to it, will put you on your guard against judging people too quickly, making rapid dogmatic judgments on people. I don’t like it when people use hell and the wrath of God as weaponry against one another.

The whole interview is short, and really worth a read for its concise power. But because of its conciseness, many of Bell's detractors seem overly-confused. So let me try to clarify.

Questions. Are. Biblical.

To not allow questions is un-Godly.

Peterson is not saying that if you don't agree with Rob Bell's conclusions, then you are a moron in need of a shrink. Nor is he arguing the time-worn Na-na-nana-boo-boo defense. Pastor Peterson is merely stating the fact that dogmatism has no room in a living, breathing community.

photo © 2009 Scott McLeod | more info (via: Wylio)

See, in the end it doesn't truly matter what our beliefs on hell are* - because they are not central to the Gospel. Jesus is. And Jesus and God are bigger than our questions, bigger than our doubts, bigger than our insecurities, and bigger than our securities.

The bible is God's story with us. And as it is the finite and limited and suffering and broken humanity coming into contact with the infinite and great and holy God, it leaves us with many, many questions. Not nice questions. Not tidy questions. Not easily answered questions. And certainly not binary, yes-or-no questions.

photo © 2008 ryuu ji | more info (via: Wylio)Anybody who thinks differently either has his ears and eyes closed to the suffering of the world (think Japan. Think of the thousands dying this morning from starvation while we suffocate on pizza. Think of bombs or mines going off on children this afternoon. Think of cancer-survivors in your family. Think of abandoned and neglected on your block), or has her eyes and ears closed to half of the Bible.

The searing suffering of Job and the Psalms. The madness of Ecclesiastes. The Father of Nations who dared ask the Lord to spare Sodom. The Jesus who dared ask his Father to spare his fate.

To ask questions of authority - whether that authority is God or the Church Fathers or, in this case, a particular strain of Catholic and Protestant theology - is necessary. It's part of our Christian walk as we follow the steps of Jesus.

But to tell us that we can't ask questions?...

A place where there is certitude - as Peterson notes, perhaps a bit irritably - is when Jesus confronts the religious leaders of his day. Not for being lax, not for their questions. But because they put restrictions on the people which limit their access to God (whom Jesus himself delivers them to):

They tie up heavy, cumbersome loads and put them on other people’s shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to lift a finger to move them...
“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You shut the door of the kingdom of heaven in people’s faces. You yourselves do not enter, nor will you let those enter who are trying to.
“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You travel over land and sea to win a single convert, and when you have succeeded, you make them twice as much a child of hell as you are.

Matthew 23

A favorite passage of the Doctrinal Police, however, is in Galatians 1:

But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let them be under God’s curse! As we have already said, so now I say again: If anybody is preaching to you a gospel other than what you accepted, let them be under God’s curse!

But the immediate and proper context makes it clear that this isn't about points of doctrine (which is unfortunately how it became standardly interpreted in the Greek-and-Roman-influenced West), it's about more burdens between Jesus and his followers. For instance, in the next chapter we find this:

You and I are Jews by birth, not ‘sinners’ like the Gentiles. Yet we know that a person is made right with God by faith in Jesus Christ, not by obeying the law. And we have believed in Christ Jesus, so that we might be made right with God because of our faith in Christ, not because we have obeyed the law. For no one will ever be made right with God by obeying the law...
My old self has been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. So I live in this earthly body by trusting in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. I do not treat the grace of God as meaningless. For if keeping the law could make us right with God, then there was no need for Christ to die. (NLT)

But of course you don't need to go there or the next chapter, since just before the curse verse is this gem:

I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you to live in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel — which is really no gospel at all. Evidently some people are throwing you into confusion and are trying to pervert the gospel of Christ.**

It's Christ - Jesus - who is in the center of this all. It's not Christ's gospel, per se. And it's certainly not, "My interpretation of the Bible." It's the Good News of the Ascension of the New and Real Lord, Jesus Christ.

Now: why do I care? I'm not a pastor. I don't have a financial stake in the Evangelical field. Why am I up at the Lordforsakenhourof 1:30am writing this?

I can't help it. Christians are my family - brothers and sisters. Even when we have spats. Even when I disagree strongly with my literal blood brothers, we're still familia. So I want to go beyond the simple talking points and certainly beyond the anger and frustration. (not so sure I can do so at 1:30, though...). Galatians 3 saiz:

For you are all children of God through faith in Christ Jesus. And all who have been united with Christ in baptism have put on Christ, like putting on new clothes. There is no longer Jew or Gentile, slave or free, male and female. For you are all one in Christ Jesus.

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* I don't want to say they're not important. They are. But they're not the end-game. They're not the litmus test. There is no indication of that whatsoever in the Bible and to point to that being the case is stretching.

** All the translations are in NIV unless otherwise mentioned.

A non-letter regarding an Open Letter to an Open Letter for yet another Open Letter to Rob Bell

A friend of mine wrote a fairly quick (and very conservative, I thought) response to an article by a prominent blogger in the Reformed camp who wrote a rather dismissive post about preacher/author Rob Bell (that Bell will most likely never read. Or would not, if he knows what's good for him) on the heels of Bell's new book coming out and the video that shocked a nation of Neo-Reformed types (both of which can be seen here). And then another blogger wrote a response to my friend's response. Three open letters, actually. But the whole thing's a digression, a rabbit trail around the edges of parsings. Nobody outside Evangelicalism (and its grumpy cousin, Fundamentalism) is going to care, and only a small (but largely vocal) segment therein.

The basic run-down is that Rob Bell (one of the more prominent Evangelicals of a new generation) wrote a book on the character and grasp of Love and how that conquers the doctrine of eternal, everlasting, burning-fire-brimstone-and-worm-infested hell. Bell doesn't seem to bring anything new to the table, certainly not unorthodox. He's not arguing that there isn't justice, nor that there isn't some form of hell (although it may not be what most pew-fillers imagine it to be) - but that hasn't stopped Team Hell from being very, very angewy (my three year old's word) and upset nor from casting him as a heretic. Err, maybe a Heretic. Capital, bolded, and italicized 'H' and all.

And now that the book is coming out today and a few people did read it and opine on it, some bloggers are angewy that others have told them not to rush to judgment when they were so absolutely sure they had judgment to bestowthrust.

Here's the money shot, though, of the third generation response from Reformed Arsenal:

You see, this is not just a matter of academic theological objection. This is not just a matter of us disagreeing with the premises that Bell puts forward. This is a matter of truth, and more importantly than that... it is a matter of salvific truth. Millions of people will read Bell's book... hundreds of thousands of Christians will question the truth that they have been taught since they were young. Thousands of non-Christians will read this and find security in the fact that Christ saves them regardless of their allegience to them... thousands will plummet into hell, because contrary to what Mr Bell argues... it is real and it is terrible.

No, you know what is terrible? Fear-based preaching. A relationship based on fear. Fear-mongering. The only one we should fear (in any sense of the word, we should say reverence with some trembling) is God.

But God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power, love, and self-discipline.

2 Timothy 1:7

Perfect love expels all fear.

I John 4:16

You have not come to a mountain that can be touched and that is burning with fire; to darkness, gloom and storm; to a trumpet blast or to such a voice speaking words that those who heard it begged that no further word be spoken to them, because they could not bear what was commanded: “If even an animal touches the mountain, it must be stoned to death.” The sight was so terrifying that Moses said, “I am trembling with fear.”

But you have come to Mount Zion, to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem. You have come to thousands upon thousands of angels in joyful assembly, to the church of the firstborn, whose names are written in heaven. You have come to God, the Judge of all, to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, to Jesus the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel.

Hebrews 12:18-22 (NIV)

What Reformed Arsenal is advocating above is that people will not come to trust in Jesus because they will not be afraid of hell. The view of hell that RA believes in, he believes, saves. Not so much Jesus. But the fear of retribution and burning, now, that's what God is looking for!

photo © 2010 Keo 101 | more info (via: Wylio)

Jesus isn't enough? He isn't the Way, the Truth, and the Life? He isn't the center of the Gospel, of the Good News?

The teaching that the doctrine of hell is central to the gospel isn't just manipulation, it is idolatry.

I hope that some of these leaders and pastors repent of this manipulation and idolatry. I'm not, however, saying they're going to hell or leading billions to hell.

Though I'm sure in trying to control a population from Rob Bell, they're leading them straight to Rob Bell. In a hand basket.

LSR: Surprised By Hope: Beyond Hope, Beyond Pity, pt. 2

Robbing Hell Blog-a-Thon

Second in three part series on NT Wright's views of hell (etc) as seen in Surprised by Hope (Part one here):

Judgment - the sovereign declaration that this is good and to be upheld and vindicated, and that is evil and to be condemned - is the only alternative to chaos. There are some things, quite a lot of them in fact, that one must not tolerate lest one merely collude with wickedness. We all know this perfectly well, yet we conveniently forget it whenever squeamishness or the demands of current opinion make it easier to go with the flow of social convention. The problem is that much theology, having lived for so long on the convenience food of an easygoing tolerance of everything, and "inclusivity" with as few boundaries as McWorld, has become depressingly flabby, unable to climb even the lower slopes of social and cultural judgment let alone the steep upper reaches of that judgment of which the early Christians spoke and wrote.

But judgment is necessary - unless we were to conclude, absurdly, that nothing much is wrong or, blasphemously, that God doesn't mind very much. In the justly famous phrase of Miroslav Volf, there must be "exclusion" before there can be "embrace": evil must be identified, named, and dealt with before there can be reconciliation. This is the basis on which Desmond Tutu has built his mind-blowing work on the South African Commission for Truth and Reconciliation. And - this is the crunch - where those who have acted wickedly refuse to see the point, there can be no reconciliation, no embrace.

photo © 2007 elaine y | more info (via: Wylio)

God is utterly committed to set the world right in the end. This doctrine, like that of resurrection itself, is held firmly in place by the belief in God as creator, on the one side, and the belief in his goodness, on the other. And that setting right must necessarily involve the elimination of all that distorts God's good and lovely creation and in particular of all that defaces his image-bearing human creatures. Not to put too fine a point on it, there will be no barbed wire in the kingdom of God. And those whose whole being has become dependent upon barbed wire will have no place there either.

For "barbed wire," of course, read whichever catalog of awfulness you prefer: genocide, nuclear bombs, child prostitution, the arrogance of empire, the commodification of souls, the idolization of race. The New Testament has several such categories. functioning as red flashing lights to warn against going down a road that leads straight to a fenceless cliff. And in the analysis offered by early Christians from Paul onward, such patterns of behavior have three things to be said about them.

First, they all stem from the primal fault, which is idolatry, worshiping that which is not God as if it were. Second, they all show the telltale marks of the consequent fault, which is subhuman behavior, that is, the failure fully to reflect the image of God, that missing the mark as regards full, free, and genuine humanness for which the New Testament's regular word is hamartia, "sin." (Sin, we note, is not the breaking of arbitrary rules; rather, the rules are the thumbnail sketches of different types of dehumanizing behavior.) Third, it is perfectly possible, and it really does seem to happen in practice, that this idolatry and dehumanization become so endemic that in the life and chosen behavior of an individuals, and indeed of groups, that unless there is a specific turning away from such a way of life, those who persist are conniving at their own ultimate dehumanization...

But if there is indeed final condemnation for those who, by their idolatry, dehumanize themselves and drag others down with them, the account I have suggested of how this works in practice provides a somewhat different picture from those normally imagined...

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I'll have to cut it there. I don't want to get sued by any publishers, as this blog is non-profit (so faaarrrr). In the next few days, I want to sum up Wright's imagination on what "hell" may entail, as well as heaven, etc. For now, a couple questions:

1. What has been your impression of either of the two extreme views on hell - either in your own experience or with Wright's characterizations?
2. What do you feel about the way Wright balances justice and mercy?
3. Wright talks about the excluded, evil "Barbed wire". What do you feel about the idea that there are people who are so defined by their evil that they are excluded from heaven?

Greg Boyd on Eternal Judgment

Robbing Hell Blog-a-Thon

Pastor and theologian Greg Boyd looks carefully at the verses used to justify the traditional view of hell (a place of eternal torment, where the worm never dies, etc.), and talks about how he envisions the Final Judgment.

Some, unfortunately, have already written off Boyd for some of his non-traditional views (Open Theism, which is not a view that I share. Nor, really, care to look into at this moment). But, first, we should take truth wherever we find it. All truth is God's truth. Second, however, and this is kind of central to my point, just because it's not traditional doesn't mean it isn't true, or that the person who brought up the non-traditional point-of-view is a false prophet and worthy of... well, hell.

photo © 2005 Aslak Raanes | more info (via: Wylio)

So please, take away about forty-five minutes and give it a good listen before dismissing it. Because, as I've come to learn, questions are good. And God is bigger than our questions.