Matt's Day. Again.

December 30th is Matt's Day in our home.

He died on this day at age 23 in 2001. He was killed by a drunk driver speeding down the wrong way on I69 between I469 and the Dupont South exit. We think of him almost every time we drive past that spot. Which is often.

And we do little things on this day to remember him, though I think of him a lot anyway. Today I wore his old Montreal Canadiens NHL jersey. And listened to Rusted Root, Weezer, Wallflowers, and DMB in his honor.

I also make a point to sit and reflect about life and death, love and forgiveness, meaning and hope. I've not always handled well the tragic death of my little brother Matt. Thoughts of his death can easily fuel morose musings of the meaninglessness of life. That's where Kierkegaard comes in so handy. He has been an essential friend and guide in the many years since Matt was killed.

This evening I read and reflect in front of a lovely fire while the temperature outside dips down, down, down into deep chilliness. The heat of the fireplace, though, directs my heart towards learning to love my dead brother Matt.

You'd think that death ends the love two brothers have for each other. But St. Paul writes that "love abides." What does that mean for those that protest death and grieve the dead? Kierkegaard writes words that kindle hope for a love that abides, in this life and the next:

The one who truly loves never falls away from love.

He can never reach the breaking point. Yet, is it always possible to prevent a break in a relationship between two persons, especially when the other has given up? One would certainly not think so. Is not one of the two enough to break the relationship?

In a certain sense it is so. But if the lover is determined to no fall away from love, he can prevent the break, he can perform this miracle; for if he perseveres, a total break can never really come to be.

By abiding, the one who loves transcends the power of the past. He transforms the break into a possible new relationship, a future possibility.

The lover who abides belongs to the future, to the eternal. From the angle of the future, the break is not really a break, but rather a possibility. But the powers of the eternal are needed for this. The lover must abide in love, otherwise the heartache of the past still has the power to keep alive the break.

It is too easy to let hate and bitterness rule my heart in response to the senseless death of my brother. It's been hard work to make sense of his tragedy and let love reign over it. There were regrets I had about our relationship.

I wanted to be a better big brother. I should have been there for him more. More present and interested in him. I was busy launching my own life, getting married, finishing up school, starting a church. I was there for some of his big moments. But not for any of the little ones.

It's been difficult to figure out what kind of future I can have with my dead brother when the years preceding his death were seeds for regret after his funeral.

The whole thing depends upon how the relationship is regarded, and the lover - he abides.

Can anyone determine how long a silence must be in order to say, now there is no more conversation?

Put the past out of the way; drown it in the forgiveness of the eternal by abiding in love. Then the end is the beginning and there is no break!

But the one who loves abides. "I will abide," he says. "Therefore we are still on the path of life together." And is this not so?

What marvelous strength love has! The most powerful word that has ever been said, God's creative word, is: "Be." But the most powerful word any human being has ever said is, "I abide."

Reconciled to himself and to his conscience, the one who loves goes without defense into the most dangerous battle. He only says: "I abide." But he will conquer, conquer by his abiding.

There is no misunderstanding that cannot be conquered by his abiding, no hate that can ultimately hold up to his abiding - in eternity if not sooner. If time cannot, at least the eternal shall wrench away the other's hate.

Yes, the eternal will open his eyes for love. In this way love never fails - it abides.

May these curing words of Kierkegaard impart a fresh perspective on the breaches of love in your life. As you grieve and mourn the deaths in your life, may you learn to abide in love. Death will come for us all. We may not get to choose our death day, but we do get to choose to abide in love all the days we have left.

That's what I'm choosing to learn to do on Matt's day.

Love abides.

Our God Is Able: Martin Luther King Jr. and The Strength to Love

"Now unto him that is able to keep you from falling." Jude 24

At the center of the Christian faith is the conviction that in the universe there is a God of power who is able to do exceedingly abundant things in nature and in history. This conviction is stressed over and over in the Old and the New Testaments.

Theologically, this affirmation is expressed in the doctrine of the omnipotence of God. The God whom we worship is not a weak and incompetent God. He is able to beat back gigantic waves of opposition and to bring low prodigious mountains of evil. 

The ringing testimony of the Christian faith is that God is able.

The devotees of the new man-centered religion point to the spectacular advances of modern science as justification for their faith. But alas! something has shaken the faith of those who have made the laboratory "the new cathedral of men's hopes." The instruments which yesterday were worshipped today contain cosmic death, threatening to plunge all of us into the abyss of annihilation.

Man is not able to save himself or the world. Unless he is guided by God's spirit, his new-found scientific power will become a devastating Frankenstein monster that will bring to ashes his earthly life.

At times other forces cause us to question the ableness of God. The stark and colossal reality of evil in the world - what Keats calls "the giant agony of the world"; ruthless floods and tornadoes that wipe away people as though they were weeds in an open field; ills like insanity plaguing some individuals from birth and reducing their days to tragic cycles of meaninglessness; the madness of war and the barbarity of man's inhumanity to man - why, we ask, do these things occur if God is able to prevent them?

This problem, namely, the problem of evil, has always plagued the mind of man. I would limit my response to an assertion that much of the evil which we experience is caused by man's folly and ignorance and also by the misuse of his freedom. Beyond this, I can say only that there is and always will be a penumbra of mystery surrounding God.

What appears at the moment to be evil may have a purpose that our infinite minds are incapable of comprehending. So in spite of the presence of evil and the doubts that lurk in our minds, we shall wish not to surrender the conviction that God is able. 


Let us notice that God is able to subdue all the powers of evil. In affirming that God is able to conquer evil we admit the reality of evil. Christianity has never dismissed evil as illusory, or an error of the mortal mind. It reckons with evil as a force that has objective reality.

But Christianity contends that evil contains the seeds of its own destruction. 

History is the story of evil forces that advance with seemingly irresistible power only to be crushed by the battering rams of the forces of justice. There is a law in the moral world - a silent, invisible imperative, akin to the always in the physical world - which reminds us that life will work only in a certain way. 

In our own nation another unjust and evil system, known as segregation, for nearly one hundred years inflicted the Negro with a sense of inferiority, deprived him of his personhood, and denied him his birthright of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Segregation has been the Negroe's burden and America's shame. But as on the world scale, so in our nation, the wind of change began to blow. One event has followed another to bring a gradual end to the system of segregation. Today we know with certainty that segregation is dead. The only question remaining is how costly will be the funeral.

These great changes are not mere political and sociological shifts. They represent the passing of systems that were born in injustice, nurtured in inequality, and reared in exploitation. They represent the inevitable decay of any system based on principles that are not in harmony with the moral laws of the universe.

When in future generations men look back upon these turbulent, tension packed days through which we are passing, they will see God working through history for the salvation of man. They will know that God was working through those men who had the vision to perceive that no nation could survive half slave and half free.

God is able to conquer the evils of history. His control is never usurped. If at times we despair because of the relatively slow progress being made in ending racial discrimination and if we become disappointed because of the undue cautiousness of the federal government, let us gain new heart in the fact that God is able.

In our sometimes difficult and often lonesome walk up freedom's road, we do not walk alone. God walks with us. 

He has placed within the very structure of this universe certain absolute moral laws. We can neither defy nor break them. If we disobey them, they will break us. The forces of evil may temporarily conquer truth, but truth will ultimately conquer its conqueror. Our God is able.


Let us notice, finally, that God is able to give us interior resources to confront the trials and difficulties of life. Each of us faces circumstances in life which compel us to carry heavy burdens of sorrow. Adversity assails us with hurricane force. Glowing sunrises are transformed into darkest nights. Our highest hopes are blasted and our noblest dreams are shattered.

Christianity has never overlooked these experiences. They come inevitably.

Like the rhythmic alternation in the natural order, life has the glittering sunlight of its summers and the piercing chill of its winters. Days of unutterable joy are followed by days of overwhelming sorrow. Life brings periods of flooding and periods of drought.

Admitting the weighty problems and staggering disappointments, Christianity affirms that God is able to give us the power to meet them. 

He is able to give us the inner equilibrium to stand tall amid the trials and burdens of life. He is able to provide inner peace amid the outer storms. The inner stability of the man of faith is Christ's chief legacy to his disciples. He offers neither material resources nor a magical formula that exempts us from suffering and persecution, but he brings an imperishable gift: "Peace I leave with you." This is the peace that passeth all understanding.

At times we may feel that we do not need God, but on the day when the storms of disappointment rage, the winds of disaster blow, and the tidal waves of grief beat against our lives, if we do not have a deep and patient faith our emotional lives will be ripped to shreds.

There is so much frustration in the world because we have relied on gods rather than God. We have genuflected before the god of science only to find that it has given us the atomic bomb, producing fears and anxieties that science can never mitigate. We have worshipped the god of pleasure only to discover that thrills play out and sensations are short-lived. We have bowed before the god of money only to learn that there are such things as love and friendship that money cannot buy and that in a world of possible depressions, stock market crashes, and bad business investments, money is a rather uncertain deity. These transitory gods are not able to save us or bring happiness to the human heart.


Only God is able. 

It is faith in him that we must rediscover. With this faith we can transform bleak and desolate valleys into sunlit paths of joy and bring new light into the dark caverns of pessimism.

Is someone here moving toward the twilight of life and fearful of that which we call death? Why be afraid? God is able. Is someone here on the brink of despair because of the death of a loved one, the breaking of a marriage, or the waywardness of a child? Why despair? God is able to give you the power to endure that which cannot be changed. Come what may, God is able. 

Let this affirmation be our ringing cry. It will give us courage to face the uncertainties of the future. It will give our feet new strength as we continue our forward stride toward the city of freedom.

When our days become dreary with low-hovering clouds and our nights become darker than a thousand midnights, let us remember that there is a great benign Power in the universe whose name is God, and he is able to make a way out of no way, and transform dark yesterdays into bright tomorrows.


[selections taken from pages 107-114, Strength to Love]

This sermon of MLK was read in preparation for the Easter Sunday 2014 sermon entitled, "The Resurrection and Why God Let's Bad Things Happen to Good People." So much of the MLK sermon connected with my developing thoughts for my own sermon. By typing out many of the thoughts and paragraphs of his sermon, I hope to spread his message while also letting it shape my own.

Liberate Christians From Themselves

It is probably helpful to break down the pseudo-divide between the secular and the sacred. Especially when it comes to churchwork. As a pastor it is too easy to believe that my churchwork is not worldy work. But in reality, my work as a pastor through the church is just as much of the world as collecting garbage or managing an ER or waiting on tables in a chain restaurant.

"Work puts human beings in the world of things. It requires achievement from them.

Christians step out of the world of personal encounter into the world of impersonal things, the "It"; and this new encounter frees them for objectivity, for the world of the It is only an instrument in the hands of God for the purification of Christians from all self-absorption and selfishness.

The work of the world can only be accomplished where people forget themselves, where they lose themselves in a cause, reality, the task, the It. Christians learn at work to allow the task to set the bounds for them.

Thus, for them, work becomes a remedy for the lethargy and laziness of the flesh. The demands of the flesh die in the world of things. But that can only happen where Christians break through the It to the "You" of God, who commands the work and the deed and makes them serve to liberate Christians from themselves."

~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together, pg 75 [from A Year With Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Daily Meditations from His Letters, Writings, and Sermons]

My work as a pastor is in the world, with people of the world. I read, write, speak, plan, ponder and work with all the tools of the world. The one sacred work I do is pray to Christ. And even that task is in the world, often on behalf of the world. In breaking down the illusion that my work is sacred, I can perceive how worldly my work really is. The dismay of this acknowledgment gives way to relief.

Work in the world is a gift of God. In the beginning God blessed work, intended that our work in the world would result in a carefully stewarded Earth that was a blessing to all Creation. Work in the world has obviously been corrupted and a tool of abuse and terror.

But for the Christian, we remember the original blessing of work in the world. And my work in the church could be, as a pastor, as a Christian, a way to reconnect with work in the world as a blessing.

Unfortunately, instead of work being a tool of God to remedy my self-absorption and selfishness, I, like too many people, have merely let work become an avenue for it. The gift of work has become a form of self-enslavement to my vision and desires for achievement rooted in my selfish ambitions.

Indeed I need Christ to liberate me from myself. By the work of my hands I led myself into enslavement, and by the work of my hands, good works that Christ designed for me to participate in, I will I find myself liberated from myself.

I am tempted to squeeze too much significance out of my work. Either to satisfy my insecurities or to fuel my ambitions. The invitation by Christ, though, is to remember the embedded blessing of work itself.

Entering into the work for what I can get out of it is a corrupting action. But participating in the work that I deem is commanded by God, well that kind of work becomes liberating. It becomes liberating because if flows out of simple obedience to Christ, and I am trusting that He is the one using the work for his redemption of the world.

My work in the world is part of the renewal of all things when I let it renew me through my obedience to the tasks set before me by Christ. He saves me in part through the work he gives me to do, which requires my trust and obedience.

In looking ahead, I am hopeful that the work assigned to me in the world will be a form of purification for my self-absorption and selfishness. There is a relief in trusting that through the worldly work God assigns me, he will liberate me from myself. Much to the delight of those who work with me!

When We Humble Ourselves...

In my striving to be like Jesus, and in my desire to focus on what I'm getting right, I fail to pay attention to how "infinitely far away we are from resembling him." I nurture a toxic spiritual pride when I ruminate how far I have come in following Jesus and trying to be like him. I end up belittling the actual teachings of Christ and gloss over my many sins. Like pride. Or anger.

"It must be firmly maintained that Christ did not come to the world only to set an example for us. If that were the case we would have law and works-righteousness again.

He comes to save us and in this way be our example. His very example should humble us, teach us how infinitely far away we are from resembling him.

When we humble ourselves, then Christ is pure compassion. And in our striving to approach him, he is again our very help.

It alternates: when we are striving, then he is our example; and when we stumble, lose courage, then he is the love that helps us up. And then he is our example again."
~ Soren Kierkegaard, Provocations, pg 223

The striving to be like Jesus will produce a profound humility in us, for we will only understand how profoundly and "infinitely far away we are from resembling him" as we seek to do that very thing.

Like Peter attempting to walk on the water in the effort to imitate and follow Jesus, it was his stumbling over the stormy waves, losing courage and needing the strong hand of Jesus to save him from drowning. But Peter got out of the boat! And when he began to sink fast, he did not hesitate to call out in fear and anger to Jesus to rescue him!

What does it mean to be humbled by Jesus's example to us? And how do we approach him?

I suppose we must first take Jesus example to us very seriously. Apart from Jesus, we will have no inclination to believe or obey his instructions or follow his Way. It is too difficult. It requires too much courage and truth and love.

And yet my striving to do so, tentatively getting out of the boat and angrily crying out for help when I sink is both humbling and a demonstration of trust. With an infinite gap between my way and the Way of Jesus, there can be no pride in what I accomplish in imitating Christ. I will only barely perceive the mystery of the infinite distance between my life and His.

And yet when I seek to love others as imitation of His love, when I do so trusting that he has initiates the work of love, and will help me do it, and rescue me when I flail in pride and anger... it is then, having been humbled, that I can choose to approach Him on the Way. "He is the love that helps us up. And then He is our example again."

Revolutionary Christianity

In focusing more and more on what Jesus taught about the Kingdom of God, there is some new imagination required for what that would look like in Fort Wayne, Indiana. Especially when being a pastor in a community results in potential political activity.

I am disillusioned with our political reality in the USA. And I'm disappointed in how popular Christianity as aligned itself with politics in order to protect their assets, their power, their position, and their rights.

There is within me an instinctive repulsion to pastors and politics. What's the alternative to posturing and press statements? How to think about being a pastor and involved in politics without ending up as a pawn or a prig?

In these days of searching and listening, I turn again to Jacques Ellul. I found the following paragraphs to be immensely helpful to me as I seek confirmation of God's leading in my life's work.My interests and skills and calling have lead me into social and political work. In my vocation as a pastor, there is some inner questioning whether this direction is appropriate.  In seeking some kind of justification or spiritual foundation for what I sense to be right, Ellul is most helpful.

"The Christian can never regard himself as being on the winning side, nor can he look on with pleasure while everyone else goes to perdition; should

he do so, he would be lacking in the Spirit of Christ, and by that very fact he would cease to be a Christian.

Bound up with the lives of other men (be economic and sociological laws, and also by the will of God), he cannot accept the view that they will always remain in their anguish and their disorder, victims of tyranny and overwork, buoyed up only by a hope which seems unfounded.

Thus he must plunge into social and political problems in order to have an influence on the world, not in the hope of making a paradise, but simply in order to make it tolerable - not in order to diminish the opposition between this world and the Kingdom of God, but simply in order to modify the opposition between the disorder of this world and the order of preservation that God wills for it  - not in order to 'bring in' the Kingdom of God, but in order that the gospel may be proclaimed, that all men may really hear the good news of salvation, through the death and resurrection of Christ.

Thus there are three directions in which the Christian ought to action the world:First - starting from the point at which God has revealed to him the truth about the human person, he must try to discover the social and political conditions in which this person can live and develop in accordance with God's order.

Second - this person will develop within a certain framework which God has ordained for him. This is the order of preservation, without which man lacks his true setting. Man is not absolutely free in this sphere, any more than he is free in the physical or biological domain. There are certain limits which he cannot overstep without danger to the society to which he belongs. Thus the Christian must work, in order that the will of God may be incarnated in actual institutions and organisms.

Third - this order of preservation will have meaning only if it is directed towards the proclamation of salvation. Therefore, social and political institutions need to be 'open': that is, they must not claim to be all, or absolutes. Thus they must be constituted in such a way that they do not prevent man from hearing the Word of God. The Christian must be ceaselessly on the watch - intelligent and alert - to see that this 'order' is preserved.

But, in doing so, he will find that he is confronted by two possible errors. The one error consists in believing that by constant progress in this order we shall attain the Kingdom of God. It is enough to remind ourselves of the Book of Revelation, or of Matthew 24, to condemn this attitude.

The other error arises out of the conviction that by achieving certain reforms we shall have reached this order which God wills. In reality all solutions - all economic, political, and other achievements - are temporary. At no moment can the Christian believe either in their perfection or in their permanence. They are always vitiated by the sin which infects them, by the setting in which they take place.

Thus the Christian is constantly obliged to reiterate the claims of God, to reestablish this God-willed order, in presence of an order that constantly tends towards disorder. In consequence of the claims which God is always making on the world the Christian finds himself, by that very fact, involved in a state of permanent revolution.

Even when the institutions, the laws, the reforms which he has advocated have been achieved, even if society is reorganized according to his suggestions, he still has to be in opposition, he still must require more, for the claim of God is as infinite as His forgiveness.

Thus the Christian is called to question unceasingly all that man calls progress, discovery, facts, established results, reality, etc. He can never be satisfied with all this human labor, transcended, or replaced by something else.

In his judgment he is guided by the Holy Spirit - he is making an essentially revolutionary act. If the Christian is not being revolutionary, then in some way or another he has been unfaithful to his calling in the world."

Jacques Ellul, The Presence of the Kingdom, pgs 35-37

Venturing and Risk

One of my motivations for blogging was to share quotes.

Mum has always been a collector of quotes. I remember as a child, when my Mum was giving leadership to the youth group. She had laminated sheets of paper with quotes on them and taped them to the hallway and the youth classroom. Every time I would walk through there on my way to somewhere else in the church, I would read those quotes.

My parents started subscribing to Readers Digest, where I would always first turn to the quotes page. Often I would tear out the page and tape it to my own bedroom wall. With this blog I wanted to share quotes that I find meaningful.

And one of my favorite sources of thoughtful quotes is Soren Kierkegaard. He may not be everyone's favorite philosopher, but he has been helpful to me. And thus maybe to you. Here are some insightful and challenging quotes on venturing and risk for the Christian.


Surely Christianity's intention is that a person use this life to venture out, to do so in such a way that God can get hold of him, and that one gets to see whether or not he actually has faith.


It is dangerous business to arrive in eternity with possibilities that you have prevented from becoming actualities. Possibility is a hint from God. A person must follow it. The possibility for the highest is in every soul; you must follow it. If God does not want it, then let him hinder it. You must not hinder it yourself. Trusting in God, I have ventured, but I have failed - there is peace and rest and God's confidence in that. I have not ventured - it is an utterly unhappy thought, a torment for all eternity.


We delude ourselves into thinking that to refrain from venturing is modesty, and that it must please God as humility. No, no! Not to venture means to make a fool of God - because all he is waiting for is that you go forth. 


During the first period of a person's life the greatest danger is to not take the risk. When once the risk has been taken then the greatest danger is to risk too much. By not risking you turn aside and serve trivialities. By risking too much, you turn aside to the fantastic, and perhaps to presumption.

To venture the truth is what gives human life and the human situation pith and meaning. To venture is the fountainhead of inspiration. Calculating is the sworn enemy of enthusiasm, the mirage whereby the earthly person drags out time and keeps the eternal away, whereby one cheats God, himself, and his generation. 

A bold venture is not a high-flown phase, not an exclamatory outburst, but arduous work. A bold venture, no matter how rash, is not a boisterous proclamation but a quiet dedication that receives nothing in advance but stakes everything.

Preserve me, Lord, from the deceit of thinking that by being prudent and looking after my own interests I am necessarily using my talents aright. He who takes risks for your sake may appear to lose, but he is accepted by you. He who risks nothing appears to gain by his prudence, but he is rejected by you. But let me no think that by avoiding risk I am better than the other. Grant me to see that this is an illusion, and save me from such a snare.


~ Soren Kierkegaard, Provocations, pgs 396-400

Teaching Me To Love

In 1847 a Danish Christian wrote at length on how we can love in light of what God had revealed to us through Jesus. Soren Kierkegaard, a brilliant philosopher, turned his searching mind and heart towards the truth of love and how it works in our world. Long story short, I found his book, Works of Love in 2004 having spent a few years praying to God that he would teach me how to love.

Today, six and a half years later, I finished Works of Love. A lot of life has happened since then. It would seem that God has been helping me answer my own prayer, thanks to my wife and kids and family and friends and church. And Kierkegaard. I also realize how much more I have to learn about love. Or, what I learned was only the beginning of how to love.

The advantage of reading really old reflections on the works of love is rooted in its disconnection from our post-modern ways of thinking about God and relationships and self. But, 1847 was also among those nascent years of the Enlightenment, our Modern period of thinking. It's odd to read Kierkegaard's critiques on his culture and church - they sound so similar to ours today. What he has to say is relevant to our situations now.

I grew up in a loving home. I have loving parents and brothers and extended family. I have a loving wife and four loving children. I am part of a loving church. I am loved by many friends. There is much love in my life. What does that tell me? That I am an expert in loving? That I have much to teach about love? Or, that God has been helping answer my prayer. And that every opportunity I have to give love is also a revelation of how much more I have to learn.

If love is truly the greatest thing in all the world, then I'd be crazy to settle for a mediocre love. There is much left to understand in this world of how God gives love, of how God gives himself, of how Jesus is our supreme image of love at work in the world. There is so much confusion. So much hurt and rage. There is much discontent about the kind of love that is being offered up these days. How to enter into the most excellent way of love - and let that overflow onto all those connected to my life?

So in the final pages of Kierkegaard's thoughtful Works of Love, here are some disturbing and striving discourses on love:

Christianity's view is: forgiveness is forgiveness; your forgiveness is your forgiveness; your forgiveness of another is your own forgiveness; the forgiveness which you give, you receive, not contrariwise, that you give the forgiveness for which you receive.

It is as if Christianity would say: pray to God humbly and believing in your forgiveness for he really is compassionate in such a way as no human being is; but if you will test how it is with respect to the forgiveness, then observe yourself. If honestly before God you wholeheartedly forgive your enemy (but remember that if you do, God sees it), then you dare hope also for your forgiveness, for it is one and the same.

God forgives you neither more nor less nor otherwise than as you forgive your trespasses. It is only an illusion to imagine that one himself has forgiveness, although one is slack in forgiving others.

It is also conceit to believe in one's own forgiveness when one will not forgive, for how in truth should one believe in forgiveness if his own life is a refutation of the existence of forgiveness!

For, Christianly understood, to love human beings is to love God and to love God is to love human beings; what you do unto men you do unto God, and therefore what you do unto men God does unto you.

If you are embittered towards men who do you wrong, you are really embittered towards God, for ultimately it is still God who permits wrong to be done to you. If, however, you gratefully take the wrongs from God's hand "as a good and perfect gift," you do not become embittered towards men either.

If you will not forgive, you essentially want something else, you want to make God hard-hearted, that he should not forgive, either: how, then should this hard-hearted God forgive you? If you cannot beat the offences of men against you, how should God be able to bear your sins against him?

If you have never been solitary, you have also never discovered that God exists. But if you have been truly solitary, then you also learned that everything you say to and do to other human beings God simply repeats; he repeats it with the intensification of infinity. The word of blessing or judgment which you express concerning someone else, God repeats; he says the same word about you, and this same word is blessing or judgment over you.

Such a person will certainly avoid speaking to God about the wrongs of others towards him, about the speck in his brother's eye, for such a person will rather speak to God only about grace, lest this fateful word of justice lose everything for him through what he himself has called forth, the rigorous like-for-like.

Soren Kierkegaard, Works of Love, p348-353

There Are Two Kinds of People

Yawn. A bunch of churches getting together in a local park to worship together. Who cares! It sure doesn't look like anything is really happening. And yet...

On Sunday five neighborhood churches worshipped together in Hamilton Park for the first time. It could become an annual event. We prayed together, we sang, we took communion together, we shared ways of increased collaboration together, and we feasted together. It was good. It was fun. And it was strategic. 

We had Roger Reece, Executive Director of Associated Churches preach  - and it was good to introduce him to our congregations. Most of us are members of the organization, and in one way or another are involved in serving our neighborhood. But it's important that we think about how we can care for our neighbors together. And it's the togetherness aspect that I think was strengthened on Sunday. 

Churches have become very irrelevant and obsolete in their neighborhoods. Sure, they still find a way to contribute to the needs of the community, but ask a neighbor how they've benefited from the local church. The answer will reveal the disconnect. 

Anchor has worked hard to be relevant to our neighbors - but we don't want to continue to do that work alone. We want to learn from our other neighborhood churches from the ways they've become helpful. From the collaboration comes more helpful churches, a unity of spirit that adds strength to our good work, and new opportunities for the Spirit to accomplish the impossible in us and through us.

There were about 165 of us gathered together in front of the brown cinder-block pavilion at Hamilton Park. It was inspiring to hear the voices singing together, to see heads bowed in prayer, to join the long line for Communion. We were planting seeds. Now our vision is to grow our churches and invite our neighbors so that we fill the park, we want people sitting on the far back hill! Wouldn't that be a great testimony to the help we have given in the name of Jesus to our neighbors? 

More than anything, our churches want the Gospel of Jesus to be good news for our neighbors. We want our churches to be harbingers of that announcement. We want the kingdom to come where we live. This means, though, that we have to get involved in the lives and issues of our neighborhood. All the divorced families. All the kids without a father at home. Homes where the man is in prison. Families that are caught up in the court-system. Families that are dependent on the welfare system. Parents that don't know how to make it work together. People on disability, who are depressed, who are angry. People struggling to start over again, to get an education, to get a better job, to be a better parent. 

There are also great families in our neighborhood, homes that are good and stable and shine a lot of light. And our neighborhood needs our churches to do their best in making disciples who are the hands and feet of Jesus where they live. Disciples who use their resources, their connections at work, their influence, their skills, their wallets, their prayers, their kitchen tables, their community assets, their political involvement, their local schools, to help make our neighborhood a better place to live. Disciples who jump into a project that will outlive them, a task that is bigger then all of us, a work that requires more than we can ask or imagine. Disciples who work together, in the wisdom and grace and diligence and creativity and truth and perseverance of Jesus.

For me, the quotes below capture these ideas. They inspire me. May they provoke you as well. 

Find out how much God has given you and from it take what you need; the remainder is needed by others.  

~Saint Augustine

Wherever a man turns he can find someone who needs him.  

~Albert Schweitzer

The only way you can serve God is by serving other people.  

~Rick Warren

There are two kinds of people one can call reasonable: those who serve God with all their heart because they know him, and those who seek him with all their heart because they do not know him. 

~Blaise Pascal

The first question which the priest and the Levite asked was:  "If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?"  But... the good Samaritan reversed the question:  "If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?"  

~Martin Luther King, Jr.

There are two kinds of people: those who say to God, "Thy will be done," and those to whom God says, "All right, then, have it your way."  

~C.S. Lewis

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.  

~Margaret Meade

Click here for more information about the neighborhood churches involved.

Remember One Dead

Thus death is the briefest summary of life or life reduced to its briefest form.

What is the benefit of pondering the deaths of those you love? Yes it is painful, yes it is sorrowful, yes it is difficult. And yet much wisdom in life can be gleaned from reflecting upon the deaths of those you love.

Yes, once again go out to the dead in order there to get a look at life.

Our family goes out to visit Ben and Matt's grave each year on their deathday. We've been going to Ben's graveside since 1994. It's hard to put into words why we make the trek. Every couple of years we wonder whether we should still head out to Huntington on this evening. But we do. And Kierkegaard teaches me why we ought to continue the tradition.

In truth, if you really want to make sure about love in yourself or in another person, then note how he relates himself to one who is dead.

In our Western civilization, we turn our backs on our ancestors. Maybe it is the Western Christian aversion to pagan and Eastern veneration of our elders. Either way, we have an uneasy relationship with our dead. It causes angst, confusion, rage, despair, helplessness - but love?

How we express love to our dead reflects our ability to love the ones who live. But, you ask, am I to still love the dead? As Kierkegaard writes in Works of Love: But we do have duties towards the dead. If we are to love the men we see, then we are also to love those whom we have seen but no more because death took them away. No, one must remember the dead; weep softly but grieve long.

In this chapter on the work of love in remembering one dead, Kierkegaard asserts three things: the work of love in remembering one who is dead is a work of the most unselfish love, of the freest love, and the most faithful love.

He comments that for the living, our understanding of love is often based on repayment. Love is strengthened when it is rewarded with a thank you, with a gift, with kindness, with devotion, and so on. But the dead cannot repay you for your love. If, therefore, you wish to test for yourself whether or not you love disinterestedly, note sometimes how you relate yourself to one who is dead. Do you weep softly and grieve long over the dead you love because of what it does for you, or for how you continue to express your love to them. That you give the love is more important then that they acknowledge the love.

Not only is the work of love in remembering one dead the most unselfish love, it is the freest love. The stronger the compulsion, the less free is the love. A baby's piercing cry compels you to come care for it. The dead utter not. Your husband complains, a wife nags, a child whines, a neighbor or coworker comments... and so you adjust your works of love. But the dead you do not hear, they can't compel you to give your time, your attention, your devotion. And so if you give love to the dead, it is the most free. If, therefore, you want to test whether you love freely, observe some time how over a period of time you relate yourself to one who is dead.

The work of love in remembering one dead is unselfish, it is free, and it is the most faithful.

When two living persons are joined in love, each holds on to the other and the relationship holds on to both of them. But no holding together is possible with one who is dead. Immediately after death it perhaps can be said that he holds on to one, a consequence of the relationship together, and therefore it is also the more frequent occurrence, the customary thing, that he is remembered during this time. However, in the course of time he does not hold on to the one living, and the relationship is broken if the one living does not hold on to him. But what is faithfulness? Is it faithfulness that the other holds on to me?

Kierkegaard goes on to say: One who is dead does not change; there is not the slightest possibility of excuse by putting the blame on him; he is faithful. Yes, it is true. But he is nothing actual, and therefore he does nothing, nothing at all, to hold on to you, except that he is unchanged. If, then, a change takes place between one living and one dead, it is very clear that it must be the one living who has changed.

In our fast paced, pleasure-obsessed culture, who has time to love the dead? And who has time to love the living? How does one cultivate unselfish, free, faithful love these days? It was difficult in the 1840's, and it still is today. We honor the dead when we remember them, yes. But Kierkegaard presses us to love the one dead. Love is love is love. Love to God, love to the living, love to the dead.

He concludes: The work of love in remembering one who is dead is thus a work of the most disinterested, the freest, the most faithful love. Therefore go out and practice it; remember one dead and learn in just this way to love the living disinterestedly, freely, faithfully.

If you fail to love the dead, you can't blame the dead. And thus you are given the opportunity to consider why you fail to fully love the living around you. Maybe you should quit blaming them for your failure to fully love them.

Remember one who is dead, and in addition to the blessing which is inseparable from this work of love, you will also have the best guidance to rightly understanding life: that it is one's duty to love the men we do not see, but also those we do see.

I'm thankful my family makes the yearly trip to the cemetery. And now I more fully appreciate this work of love. I am more aware of how selfish, unfree, and faithless is my love to God, the living, and the dead. Yet with this confession comes the opportunity to learn to love in a new way. While I am alive, I will always have more to learn about the work of love. And when I am dead and join Ben, and Matt, may those I loved weep softly and mourn long.

[Soren Kierkegaard, Works of Love, pgs 317-329]

Seek the Truth

THE TRUTH IS NOT FOR ALL MEN, BUT ONLY FOR THOSE WHO SEEK IT.
~Ayn Rand

All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them.

~Galileo Galilei

LOVE TRUTH, 

AND PARDON ERROR.

~Voltaire

All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.
~Arthur Schopenhauer

The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. But the opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth.

~Niels Bohr

FICTION IS OBLIGED TO STICK TO POSSIBILITIES. 
TRUTH ISN'T.
~Mark Twain

Whenever you have truth, it must be given with love,
or the message and the messenger will be rejected.
~Mahatma Ghandi

Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing ever happened.

~Sir Winston Churchill

How often have I said to you that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth?

~Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

If one tells the truth, one is sure sooner or later to be found out.
~Oscar Wilde

Take the Long View

It helps, now and then, to step back
and take the long view.
The kingdom is not only beyond our efforts,
it is beyond our vision.
We accomplish in our lifetime only a tiny fraction of
the magnificent enterprise that is God’s work.
Nothing we do is complete,
which is another way of saying
that the kingdom always lies beyond us.

No statement says all that could be said.
No prayer fully expresses our faith.
No confession brings perfection.
No pastoral visit brings wholeness.
No program accomplishes the church’s mission.
No set of goals and objectives includes everything.

This is what we are about:
We plant seeds that one day will grow.
We water seeds already planted, knowing that they hold future promise.
We lay foundations that will need further development.
We provide yeast that produces effects beyond our capabilities.

We cannot do everything
and there is a sense of liberation in realizing that.
This enables us to do something,
and to do it very well.
It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning, a step along the way,
an opportunity for God’s grace to enter and do the rest.

We may never see the end results,
but that is the difference between the master builder and the worker.
We are workers, not master builders,
ministers, not messiahs.
We are prophets of a future not our own.

Amen.


-A prayer of Archbishop Oscar Romero, who was martyred in San Salvador in 1980

This quote was found on the justice blog for Trinity Grace Church in New York City. This church is doing some great work, an inspiration for what could happen in my city of Fort Wayne. These words of Oscar Romero add fuel to the fire for what I feel called to help create and accomplish. May his words add to your calling...

do.not.hate

Hatred paralyses life; love releases it. Hatred confuses life; love harmonizes it. Hatred darkens life; love illuminates it. 

~Martin Luther King, Jr.

You can safely assume that you've created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.  

-Anne Lamott

We have just enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another.  -Jonathan Swift

In time we hate that which we often fear.  

-William Shakespeare

Hatred is the coward's revenge for being intimidated.

~George Bernard Shaw

It is easy to hate and it is difficult to love. 
This is how the whole scheme of things works. 
All good things are difficult to achieve;
 and bad things are very easy to get.  
~Rene Descartes

Hate is too great a burden to bear. 
It injures the hater more than it injures the hated.          
~Coretta Scott King

If you hate a person, you hate something in him that is part of yourself. 
What isn't part of ourselves doesn't disturb us.  -Herman Hesse

Hating people is like burning down your own house to get rid of a rat. 

-Henry Emerson Fosdick

I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain.  
-James Baldwin

When we don't know who to hate, we hate ourselves.  -Chuck Palahniuk

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; 
only light can do that. 
Hate cannot drive out hate; 
only love can do that.  
~Martin Luther King, Jr.

My Review of Love Wins: Chapter Eight

The End is Here.

That's been a central idea of Love Wins. Instead of keeping our eyes on a future life way out there somewhere else, we ought to keep our eyes focused on life now with our neighbors, here. In the End, God comes down to us, to dwell with us Here. Here is where the End will occur - with a God who is Love. In the End, God wins. In the End, Love Wins. In the End, Love will be Here.

Whatever you've been told about the end - the end of your life, the end of time, the end of the world - Jesus passionately urges us to live like the end is here, now, today. Love is what God is, love is why Jesus came, and love is why he continues to come, year after year, to person after person. (197-8)

This is the core of Rob's summary. An emphasis on God as Love - an emphasis gleaned from an immersion of the Scriptures, from Genesis thru Revelation. God is holy, just, glorious, jealous, and righteous - but the Great Commandment is for us to Love God and Love our Neighbor (just as God in Christ loves us). It's not an emphasis on love to the exclusion of holiness or justice, but an emphasis that points to the heart of God.

...I believe that the indestructible love of God is an unfolding, dynamic reality and that every single one of us is endlessly being invited to trust, accept, believe, embrace, and experience it. Whatever words you find helpful for describing this act of trust, Jesus invites us to say yes to this love of God, again and again and again.  (194)

So here is a focal point of the controversy, of the rejection of Rob's argument: "endlessly being invited" instead of eternal conscious torment. From Rob's point of view, Scripture points to a God who loves covenantally, who loves through substitutional atonement, who loves through global redemption. A God who blesses his own people, but then curses them. The curse is part of the judgment, but it is also the beginning of the restoration. The judgment is a form of discipline that is to bring about repentance and righteousness. Judgment is designed to be ultimately restorative for those that God loves. God punishes rebels so that he might bring about their reconciliation.

Jesus invites us to trust that the love we fear is too good to be true is actually good enough to be true. Jesus invites us to become, to be drawn into this love as it shapes us and forms us and takes over every square inch of our lives. Jesus calls us to repent, to have our minds and hearts transformed so that we see everything differently. (195-6)

What's the motivation to repent if hell is not forever? If the conscious torment is not eternal, what's the motivation to cease rebelling and embrace reconciliation? As Rob seems to insist, God's love compels love as a response.  Obedience to God through fear of fire, or appeal to restoration? Is it possible that people will still repent of their sins though they don't believe in the traditional teachings of hell? Yes. But then what to do with the images and words of Jesus himself that seem to point to eternal conscious torment?

These are strong, shocking images of judgment and separation in which people miss out on rewards and celebrations and opportunities. Jesus tells us these stories to wake us up to the timeless truth that history moves forward, not backwards or sideways. Time does not repeat itself. Neither does life.

While we continually find grace waiting to pick us up off the ground after we have fallen, there are realities to our choices. While we may get other opportunities, we won't get the one right in front of us again. That specific moment will pass and we will not see it again. It comes, it's here, it goes, and then it's gone.

Jesus reminds us in a number of ways that it is vitally important to take our choices here and now as seriously as we possibly can because they matter more than we can begin to imagine. (197)

When Jesus spoke words of judgment to his fellow Israelites, it was within a particular historical and cultural context, within an economic and political reality. Those words he spoke were for them, not us. The phrases and ideas recorded by the Gospel-writers were done so in light of those contexts and realities. And so we "listen" in on their wrestling to believe and understand. As Hebrew Christians, immersed in the First Testament, expectant for a deliverer, they grappled with what actually happened through Jesus. The Messiah they had waited for did not accomplish what they had anticipated - he did something bigger and better and more beautiful. And so it is for us.

Can our choices "matter more than we can begin to imagine" if there is no eternal conscious torment? Is there another compelling way to think about the connection between our decisions today and our experience in eternity aside from the fear of burning for billions of centuries? What will God do with all the rebels and idolaters, the doubters and deceivers, the ignorant and innocent little babies? Will the mass of humanity writhe in agony as fulfillment of God's justice? Does this bring glory to God?

The End is Here. We take today seriously, tomorrow has enough worries of its own. The consequences of the decisions we make now have ramifications now that we ought to pay more diligent attention to. The threat of hell is by itself insufficient to prompt rebels to repent. The work of God is the only hope we deceived humans have for receiving a second chance. If we ignore or reject or misunderstand God's overtures for salvation now in this life, that has consequences for now, in this life. But will God continue those invitations in the life to come? Or is this life it?

Rob seems to believe the invitation is endless. Only God can turn a heart towards him - and God will not cease until every man and woman repents. Rob believes that the fires of affliction, the torment of hell that we experience now will continue - on both sides of death - until we surrender and relent in our rebellion. Love never fails. 

That seems to be what Rob believes. When God comes down to Earth, everyone who has ever lived will dwell before him - their experience in God's presence will be heaven or hell - it's their choice. Their response to God's presence, their response to God's gift of faith and grace through Jesus will determine their experience in God's midst. Those outside the gate can walk through any time they want. It's their choice. And Rob believes that God will wait out their rebellion, that his patience and kindness will prevail. In the End, God will win. Through Christ, love will win Here.

My Review of Love Wins: Chapter Seven

The Good News Is Better Than That.

Better than what?

The word "gospel" literally means "good news." But in these days, the word "gospel" has become the shorthand way of framing our message about Jesus and Christianity. There has been a great emphasis on correctly stating and preaching the "gospel." For the normal person on the street, or in the pew, if you were to ask them what is the good news of Jesus, what kind of answer would you get? Despite all the books written about the gospel, the answer will lack nuance, depth, and scope.

I think Rob is writing to those people on the street, immersed in real life, giving them a working definition of the gospel that they can remember - more than that, that they can grasp with their heart and either truly embrace or clearly reject. Rather than the gospel becoming a complex set of doctrinal beliefs, Rob seeks to reveal the thumping heart and blood of the gospel in Jesus.

To do this, Rob retells a story/parable that Jesus made up about God and his love for sinners and the righteous. You can read it for yourself in Luke 15, it's about a father with two sons. One of the interesting angles Rob takes on this story is by pointing out the different stories at work in this one parable. Rob points out that both the younger son and older brother have a version of their life-story. The challenge is this: will they believe the story that their Father is telling them?

The younger son believes he is "no longer worthy to be called the father's son." (165) The older brother believes that he has been slaving for his father all these years without so much as a word of thanks, not even a small goat for a party. The older brother also believes that the father has been unfair.

The father, when the younger son comes home, tells a different story - here is a robe for your shoulders, a ring for your finger, and soon lets fill your belly up with roast beef and fine wine! And the father, when angrily confronted by the older brother, tells him a different story - "My son, you are always with me and everything I have is yours." (167) This is followed up with an invitation to join the party.

Rob points out that the challenge for each of the sons is about trust and belief - will either one of them trust the story the father is telling them? Will they believe their father? The differences between the two stories - the one we tell ourselves and the one the father tells us - Rob says it's "the difference between heaven...and hell." (169)

Heaven and hell seem to be right next to each other in this story - the younger son enjoying the party being thrown for him, the older brother fuming just outside the tent doors, refusing to enter, "to join in the celebration." (169) Rob is going to use this parable as a launching point for ideas about the good news, about heaven and hell. This is a unique approach, sure to attract lots of objections.

Rob has made the argument in earlier chapters about the temporary nature of hell. This comes into play in this chapter about heaven and hell as thought about from the perspective of the parable in Luke 15.
"Hell is our refusal to trust God's retelling of our story." (170)

What? This is not what most people think of when it comes to hell - where's the fire and brimstone?
But in reflecting through the story, Rob observes that belief and trust are essential to our experience with God - or without him. And this story that Jesus tells points to a moment of decision for each son - will they believe their Father, will they trust his words to them about their situation?

"We believe all sorts of things about ourselves. What the gospel does is confront our version of the story with God's version of our story." (171) Some people are full of flaws, they're marked by failure, they carry around heavy weights of shame and guilt. They believe they are not good enough. Certainly not for church. Or heaven. There are others, though, who believe they are good enough. Their pride keeps them out of church, keeps them independent, keeps them convinced that is God for the weak. And God brings to each of them, to each of us, another story which will challenge the story we've been telling ourselves.

"It is a brutally honest, exuberantly liberating story, and it is good news. It begins with the sure and certain truth that we are loved. That in spite of whatever has gone horribly wrong deep in our hearts and has spread to every corner of the world, in spite of our sins, failures, rebellion, and hard hearts, in spite of what's been done to us or what we've done, God has made peace with us." (172)

Rob implies that when Jesus died on the cross, the sins of the world, of every individual who had ever lived, who ever will live, were forgiven. The blood of Jesus atoned for the sins of every person, forever. It's not fair, but it is generous. It is shocking, when you think about it. But, as Rob shares, "we create hell whenever we fail to trust God's retelling of our story." (173) When we see Jesus, we see God - and so what Jesus tells us about God, well, it's something we have to decide whether to trust it. When we don't believe the story that Jesus tells us about God and about ourselves, we miss out on the party.

One of the observations that Rob makes, though, is that the older son - and even the younger one -  he had a distorted view of God. This is what made it hard for him to trust the new story the father told them. The younger son gained a new view of of his father, and thus trusted him. The older son struggled much longer with the conflicting views - a longstanding belief that his father was a slavedriver, stingy... now challenged by a father who seems to be generously unfair and outrageously forgiving. Even towards him.

It's this idea of a distorted view of God that Rob is going to focus on - that the good news often preached today presents a distorted view of God. The summary: For God so loved the world that he gave us his one and only son, that whoever believes in him won't die, but will live forever. But if you don't believe in this God, this same loving God will throw you into the lake of fire, eternal conscious torment. Billions of years of screaming, writhing, agony for seventy or eighty years of rebellion against God. "A loving heavenly father who will to to extraordinary lengths to have a relationship with them would, in the blink of an eye, become a cruel, mean, vicious tormenter who would ensure that they had no escape from an endless future of agony." (173-4)

For those Christians that believe in eternal conscious torment, Rob's characterization of their belief and God will certainly irk and offend them. Apparently Rob has many friends, though, who are terrified and traumatized by the kind of God that would damn men and women to eternal conscious torment. Rob and others ask the question: "Just what kind of God is behind all this?" (175) The good news is better than the distorted view of God you've come to believe in...or disbelieve.

He goes on to write:

Because if something is wrong with your God, if your God is loving one second and cruel the next, if your God will punish people for all of eternity for sins committed in a few short years, no amount of clever marketing, or compelling music, or great coffee, will be able to disguise that one, glaring, untenable, unacceptable, awful reality.

Hell is refusing to trust, and refusing to trust is often rooted in a distorted view of God. Sometimes the reason people have a problem accepting "the gospel" is that they sense that the God lurking behind Jesus isn't safe, loving, or good. It doesn't make sense, it can't be reconciled, and so they say no. (175)

Hermeneutics is the science and art of interpretation of Scripture. Rob's hermeneutics are obviously at odds with that of many other Christians. His hermeneutics of Luke 15, of the gospel, of God as revealed through Scripture clash with other classic beliefs. But Rob's hermeneutics are rooted in the Scriptures, so I think his ideas are worth wrestling with - which will lead either to a strengthening of our traditional beliefs, or a doorway into a more faithful reading of Scripture. As Rob says, "our beliefs matter. They are incredibly important. Our beliefs shape us and guide us and determine our lives." (176)

Rob is challenging our traditional and culturally popular notions of God. The good news we preach is connected both to the God we believe in, and the God our audience believes in. Rob is inviting his readers to reconsider the God that is presented in the Scriptures, particularly in Luke 15, as presented by Jesus. As Rob sees it, we are free to choose what to believe - we can believe the story that God is retelling us about ourselves, "or we can cling to our own version of the story. And to trust God's telling, we have to trust God." (176) To reject God, his story, his love and grace "will lead to misery. It is a form of punishment, all on its own." (176) God's is love, what God does is love, and the essence of love is such that "it can be resisted and rejected and denied and avoided, and that will bring another reality. Now, and then." (177)

Not only is Rob challenging the notion of what we believe about God, and about heaven and hell, but also what we believe about what this relationship with God ought to look like. He describes it as the difference between entrance and enjoyment. "...when the gospel is diminished to a question of whether or not a person will 'get into heaven,' that reduces the good news to a ticket, a way to get past the bouncer and into the club. The good news is better than that." (178-9) The good news is better than fire insurance. 

He goes to say:

When the gospel is understood primarily in terms of entrance rather than joyous participation, it can actually serve to cut people off from the explosive, liberating experience of the God who is an endless, giving, circle of joy and creativity. Life has never been about just "getting in." It's about thriving in God's good world." (179)

Also:

Jesus calls disciples to keep entering into this shared life of peace and joy as it transforms our hearts, until it's the most natural way to live that we can imagine. Until it's second nature. Until we naturally embody and practice the kinds of attitudes and actions that will go on in the age to come. A discussion about how to "just get into heaven" has no place in the life of a disciple of Jesus because it's missing the point of it all. (179)

Rob notices amongst many Christians that there is a certain lack of distinctiveness. Many surveys show that there is little lifestyle difference between Christians and non-Christians. When many Christians talk about their faith, the main point of it is so that they can go to heaven when they die. And there is something in us that recoils at that over-simplification. What is the connection between believing in Jesus and life transformation? I think that is what Rob is trying to get at in his articulation of the gospel - a belief, a trust, a relationship that bleeds into a way of life that looks and smells and feels like Jesus. And so he starts with what we believe, which is a very controversial place to go.

"We shape our God, and then our God shapes us." (183) With that phrase, Rob cautions us to rethink what we believe about God. More than that, to re-examine the effects of our life, and then work backwards to see what we really believe. What we believe about God deeply affects how we live. Do you believe God is a slavedriver? Or do you believe that "God is the rescuer?" (182) The good news is better than being ruled by a slavedriver God.

More on this - it's central to Rob's big point in this chapter:

There is another dimension to the violent, demanding God, the one people need Jesus to rescue them from. We see it in the words of the older brother, when he says he "never even disobeyed." You can sense the anxiety in his defense, the paranoid awareness that he believed his father was looking over his shoulder the whole time, waiting and watching to catch him in disobedience. 

The violent God creates profound worry in people. Tension. Stress. This God is supposed to bring peace, that's how the pitch goes, but in the end this God can easily produce followers who are paralyzed and catatonic with fear. Whatever you do, don't step out of line or give this God any reason to be displeased, because who knows what will be unleashed.

Jesus frees us from that, because his kind of love simply does away with fear. (184)

What kind of love does Jesus describe for us in the story?

"Our badness can separate us from God's love, that is clear. But our goodness can separate us from God's love as well. Neither son understands that the father's love was never about any of that. The father's love cannot be earned, and it cannot be taken away. It just is." (187)

And so:

Your deepest, darkest sins and your shameful secrets are simply irrelevant when it comes to the counterintuitive, ecstatic announcement of the gospel. So are your goodness, your rightness, your church attendance, and all of the wise, moral, mature decisions you have made and actions you have taken. It simply doesn't matter when it comes to the surprising, unexpected declaration that God's love is simply yours. There is nothing left for both sons to do but to trust.

Our trusting, our change of heart, our believing God's version of the story doesn't bring it into existence, make it happen, or create it. It simply is. On the cross, Jesus says, "Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing." (188)

His summary:

Jesus meets us and redeems us in all the ways we have it together and in all the ways we don't, in all the times we proudly display for the world our goodness, greatness and rightness, and in all of the ways we fall flat on our faces. It's only when you lose your life that you can find it, Jesus says. The only thing left to do is trust. Everybody is already at the party. Heaven and hell, here, now, around us, upon us, within us. (190)

This is the Good News as Rob understands it. This is the God of the Scriptures that Rob believes. This is the Gospel of Jesus that Rob trusts.

I agree that the heart of the Gospel is God's love for us, as demonstrated through Jesus. I agree that trust/believing/faith is central to our relationship with God. I'm not sure the parable of the two sons can carry as much theological weight as Rob wants it to. And I think there is an oversimplification of the Gospel going on here in this chapter. Yet I think it is crucial for Rob to publicize the vicious views of God that are being created by the sloppy preaching of Evangelicals.

And I agree that too many people have turned away from God - not the God of the Scriptures, but the God of the different Christians who present a confusing and hard-to-love God. Rob sees in God a very non-violent being - but I think that there is much to discuss - and disagree with here. I see his point though about the way Christians can embrace a particular view of God and violence that leads them away from the way of Jesus.

Indeed, the good news is better than it is often presented. Is it better than what Rob presents?