CCBlogs thinking critically, living faithfully

I got a lot of response. I'm on retreat this week. Will collate and try to summarize and report next week. thanks John.

I'm not ready to tackle hell right now. Maybe next year when I do an extended study of the Reformed theological heritage (in honor of Calvin's 500 year jubilee). But one thing I am continually forced to deal with (and find my own theology challenged by) is the complete lack of belief in any kind of an afterlife. It's just not something mainliners are comfortable with in Southern California... even at memorial services. I suspect that several things are involved, but I think the 2 most important are:

1. Universalism, i.e. nobody's going to hell because there's no such place... so why talk about heaven?

2. Denial of death: With facelifts, work-outs, hair transplants, and converibles, we are encouraged to live our lives as though we're eternally 29. Since we deny that we ourselves are getting older, we fail to appreciate the wisdom that comes with age, thriving instead on perpetual innovation. And if we refuse to think about the blessing of age, then the end of life and what happens after we die are simply pushed from the agenda as something we no longer have time for.

Is the rest of the country like this yet? If not, then perhaps the you should all start getting ready. Remember Proposition 13? What starts in California generally spreads.

I've had some fundamentalists put me in their sights before. They have no power over me since I don't make a lot of money and am not clinging to a pulpit somewhere worried about getting fired. What can they do but send nasty emails? I'm just saying.

that said, it's no fun. I had a guy who was convinced I was an anti-Christ and a false prophet once. He plagued the comments and sent me a lot of email. I finally just deleted everything he did until he went away. I don't see that happening so much now. Too many crazy liberal bloggers out there for someone to attach themselves to just me.

Well, I do appreciate your reply. It clarified an important focus that I missed on my first reading.

I was reared in a similar tradition some 50 plus years ago. What I have learned along the way is that what we believe is based on our experiences (relational and scriptural) which create certain assumptions (which we often do not recognize or think about) which leads to our having conversations about biblical/theological sharings (witnesses) that may or may not come out of similar experiences and similar understandings of those experiences. Perhaps you and your brother and sister evangelicals have similar experiences and understandings of those experiences. Yet, if I believe what I read in scripture of how those writers sought to understand and express their encounter with God's mystery of faith and redemption and how they often expressed different understandings of similar experiences then I would want to hear of those underlying experiences to know that there is commmon understanding that would lead to dialogue.

Truth is a word that has become for me not an intellectual matter but a matter of my faith relationship with God and my faithfulness to that relationship as the Spirit nurtures and nourishes it.

I pray for you God's grace in receiving answers to your question and in your conversations with your evangelical brothers and sisters.

Grace and Peace,
Page

I am curious what kind of arguments will surface. And a bit scared for some random fundamentalist (of either pole) to declare war against you. Would it be good to give some examples of well thought arguments from different theologians, such as from the book Four Views on Hell? That might help people frame their arguments intelligibly and respectfully.

God bless you for taking this upon yourself; I agree it's high time this got out in the open.

What I DO NOT see spelled out in our writing are the assumptions that are necessary to interpret the use of scripture, the use of the word "hell", the claim of something being a "tradition", the understanding of the nature of God, and the understanding of the authority of scripture. No conversation can be conducted without the delineation of such assumptions by you or anyone else. Without assumptions we have monologues that try to be dialogues, but end up leading to neither party hearing, much less understanding, the other. This too often ends in labeling (name calling) and all kinds of intellectual gymnatics. The worse part is it leaves no room for reconciliation, since the object of such discussion without owning assumptions is win - lose.

One of my assumptions is that what we have is WITNESS to what God, hopefully, has given us to understand about the Gospel (see Romans 12:3ff). Our witness must be joined with the witness of others in order to have a glimpse of the truth of God's Word and words. I'll leave my response with this asumption about God: God sees us not through human eyes nor by human standards and we are called to have the same sight through Jesus the Christ (see II Cor. 5:16ff.).

John

Vocabulary is a powerful tool. When we look of those trapped in poverty as not simply the victims of misfortune but as victims of violence, it changes the picture. Thanks.

Peace,
Milton

Hey, Milton, thanks for wrestling with this. Where the rubber hits the road for me is not at $20M but considerably less. Yeah, lots of people make more than my family. But, the hard truth is, lots of people make less, way way less if you start counting people in other countries. I read in the Bible that when the people gathered manna, no one had too much, no one had too little. Clearly communism doesn't work, the example of the early church notwithstanding. But, seeing that $200,000 or $200M is not enough, we're discovering the flaws in capitalism, too. Gandhi said, Poverty is the worst form of violence. Maybe we need cadres of Jesus followers who seek not only to live in peace but also to live as simply as possible, lest they consume that which belongs to others. Anyway, thanks for your thoughts.

The problem with communities is, of course, that they are filled with people. This is some kind of cosmic joke or maybe the whole thing will turn out to have been a kind of spiritual boot camp. Nothing is ever the way it should be. We get quiet in church and some child will start acting up. You can take the children out of worship, but that spoils things in a different way. You get a community going and then someone leaves for a silly reason and takes their marbles with them. Or the intimacy finally brings a hidden conflict to the surface between two people who were doing okay until they started sharing meals and sharing a lawnmower.

We have a woman in our church - a Katrina survivor - who is just determined to always be poor. Nothing good can happen that she can't sabotage, not windfall arrives that she can't spend on DVDs only to be out of money at the end of the month. When Jesus said the poor will always be with us, he said a mouthful. What is our community to this person? She can never take her place as a full member of the community because she sees herself as a child.

So, we let her be a child. We don't enable. We let her struggle, helping out now and again. We give rides to church but no money that she can spend poorly. We give her occasional food vouchers and rides to the doctor, but not rides everywhere. We limp along.

That's the best community can be this side of heaven, I'm afraid. Community is a great idea, like finally gathering together in Jerusalem next year. And like the mythical Jerusalem gathering, it just never quite happens. But still we believe. Still we hope.

Thanks, Adam. I have a friend who uses only hand tools when he's woodworking; he loves the simplicity and discipline of it. Though it stirs a remembrance of something I recently heard someone say: "It's not always simple to be simple"-! There's something to be said for a good power tool once in a while... But so good to have the luxury of slowing down when we can, and being more intimately connected with what we're creating.

Thanks, Gordon. I had the stories of the anointing women on my mind while I was writing this post, as I often do when I see lavishness poured out in a way that some folks see as wasteful. I love the question that Macrina Wiederkehr poses as she reflects on one of these anointing stories in her book A Tree Full of Angels; she asks the reader, "What are you wasting on Jesus?"

I'm at the beginning of my second week at The Grünewald Guild, a wondrous retreat center in Washington State that focuses on faith and the arts. Being here is always an amazing experience of being immersed in a creative community that oozes such holy extravagance.