Guest Post: Bridging the Theological Divide

photo © 2010 Anshad Ameenza | more info (via: Wylio)

Today’s guest post comes to us from David Nilsen, whose contribution to the Rally to Restore Unity was one of my favorites. David is a writer from a small town in Ohio. He currently works as an IT Specialist at a bank and also runs his own used book business on the side.  He and his wife Lyndie have experienced some changes in their faith over the past few years, and are currently in the process of leaving (on good terms) their Reformed church and looking for a new one to call home. David blogs about faith, marriage, parenting and adoption. And he says he can make better paper airplanes than you.  

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One Sunday when I was eleven years old my dad was the guest speaker at a church in a nearby town. He spent much of his sermon talking about the value of human life and how horrible euthanasia was. Being eleven and having the vocabulary of an eleven year old, I spent the entire sermon thinking, What does my dad have against the youth in Asia? This seems racist. 

What made it even more uncomfortable for me was that a friend's family was there, and they had brought their sixteen year old foreign exchange student from Thailand. He was sitting in the pew in front of me. I spent half the sermon staring at the back of Thailand Pete's head thinking, This must be hard for him. 

I exited the church somewhat somber, trying to figure out what the Asian young people had done to piss my dad off so much, wondering if maybe racism was okay for Christians as long as it wasn't against black people. That didn't seem right, because even though everyone I knew was white except for Thailand Pete, I knew we weren't supposed to be racist. Like seriously ever. It was in the Bible. 

I finally asked my dad about it later that day. And he clarified himself. And I went on with the rest of my day and my life never again having to think my dad was racist, which was and is a relief.  

As an adult Christian I have often disagreed both culturally and doctrinally with the conservative believers with whom I attend church,  and yet we've remained in fellowship together. I have learned two important lessons from this that I will carry with me the rest of my life as a follower of Jesus. The first is that actually talking things out clears up a lot of misunderstandings, and the second is that it's really hard to feel hateful toward people who just fed you dinner. 

I agree on very little doctrinally with my pastors. They are Reformed, with all the beliefs that come with that. They are also among the best men I have ever known. I have given their Calvinist hearts plenty to worry about in the last few years, but they have consistently treated me with kindness, grace and understanding. They have told me when they disagree and think I am on dangerous ground theologically, but this has always been framed within the context of love. A relationship of mutual respect has allowed our differences to be a sharpening tool for us rather than a blade of division.

If I were not privileged to be in these relationships, it would be easy for me to demonize or belittle people who hold theological beliefs more conservative than my own. But when the person who holds some doctrinal position diametrically opposed to my own is sitting across the table from me eating chicken wings while we watch football, laughing at the joke I just made, it becomes a little harder to start a flame war with him online. We're friends, so when we find ourselves stuck between parting ways or talking out differences, we've so far been able to choose the latter. 

You will not always like the people who disagree with you, and you will not always be able to have civil disagreements with them. But if you can start and maintain relationships with Christians who see things differently than you do, you'll discover they are real human beings who care about other people. When they think a lot of the same things are funny, and when they like a lot of the TV shows you like, you'll have a harder time calling them (and people like them) Pharisees or Heretics or Nazis or whatever else you are tempted to call the people with whom you disagree.   

When I thought my dad had an issue with all the teenagers in Asia, two things kept me from taking the misunderstanding too far. I asked (and allowed) him to explain himself at the first available opportunity, and I trusted his heart in the mean time because our existing relationship had revealed him to be an all around good guy. If we use the same pattern with other Christians, we can often save ourselves, and I think maybe even God, a lot of grief.

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Have you ever found yourself in a situation in which you were a minority, theologically or politically? How did you maintain healthy relationships in spite of that? 

[Note: If you are in the process of deciding whether or not to stay at your church, David's been working through that on his blog and has some great thoughts.]

Rob Bell, the SBC, and The Age of Accountability

photo © 2007 Meena Kadri | more info (via: Wylio)

As you may have heard, last week the Southern Baptist Convention responded to pastor Rob Bell’s controversial book, Love Wins, with a resolution declaring that “the Bible clearly teaches that God will judge the lost at the end of the age,” and that such judgment will  include the “conscious, eternal suffering" for all non-Christians. 

Al Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, explained the rationale behind the resolution as such: 

The publicity surrounding Bell’s new book indicates that he is ready to answer one of the hardest questions -- the question of the exclusivity of the Gospel of Christ. With that question come the related questions of heaven, hell, judgment, and the fate of the unregenerate. The Bible answers these questions clearly enough, but few issues are as hard to reconcile with the modern or postmodern mind than this. Of course, it was hard to reconcile with the ancient mind as well. The singularity of the person and work of Christ and the necessity of personal faith in him for salvation run counter to the pluralistic bent of the human mind, but this is nothing less than the wisdom of God and the power of God unto salvation."

Rustin J. Umstattd, assistant professor of theology at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary added:  

It is clear that Bell is not comfortable with the idea that billions of people may suffer in hell. But then, who is comfortable with that? The majority of evangelicals who hold to the orthodox understanding of hell…are troubled by its implications. But being troubled, even deeply troubled, by the implications of the biblical text does not give us a reason to abandon the text or force it into a mold that rests comfortably with us. It should be our goal to let the Bible be the source and shaper of our doctrine.” (emphasis mine)

In other words, Christians cannot allow their instincts to inform their theology, only Scripture. 

But this rationale represents a major inconsistency in Baptist teaching. 

If the members of the Southern Baptist Convention truly believe that only those who place personal faith in Jesus Christ will be saved and that no concessions to this belief should be made on the basis of its troubling moral implications, then for consistency’s sake, they must also vote to condemn the teaching of the age of accountability. 

The age of accountability refers to a belief that children under a certain age (usually twelve or so), will be granted salvation regardless of the religious affiliation of their parents. Most Baptists I know believe in the age of accountability, and even the SBC's Baptist Faith and Message makes it implicit in its statement that people are not morally accountable until “they are capable of moral action.”

And yet this concept is never explicitly stated in Scripture, nor does it appear in any of the historic Christian creeds.  

The age of accountability is a concept born from the compassion of the human heart, from a deep and intrinsic sense that a loving, good, and just God would not condemn little children or the mentally handicapped to such suffering when they could certainly bear no responsibility for their faith.  It is a theology created by discomfort. 

I’m not interested in defending Bell’s book in its entirety—I thought some of his exegesis was sloppy—but the questions he raises about the destiny un-evangelized are not that different from the questions traditionally raised by Baptists about the assumption within other Christian traditions that unbaptized babies spend eternity in hell. 

What is the difference, really, between a four-year-old child who is incapable of making a conscious decision to trust Jesus because of his age and an adult living in outer-Mongolia in 50 A.D. who is incapable of making a decision to trust Jesus because he couldn’t possibly hear of him? Aren’t both of them born with a sin nature? And aren’t both of them inherently valuable to God? If exclusivism is true, then the majority of the human population was damned to hell without even the possiblilty of being saved. 

I am often told by fellow Christians that an inclusivist reading of Scripture is the result of a sentimental “bleeding heart.” And yet most of those people embrace without question the age of accountability and reel at the idea of a non-elect two year-old burning alive for eternity.   I believe we were created to reel at that idea, just as we were created to reel at the idea of a young Muslim woman being tortured forever by a God whose name she never knew.  I believe that our impulse towards grace is a reflection of God’s image inside of us, not a weakness of which we should be ashamed. 

In matters like these, Christians should of course be careful of asserting with absolute certainty how God will judge our fellow human beings. We should also be wary of any suggestion that our instinctive desire for love and compassion is a weakness that should be overcome. The very formation of the Southern Baptist denomination reflects the disastrous consequences of confining morality to that which is explicitly stated in Scripture to the neglect of the conscience. Conscience should be tested with Scripture, certainly, but it should never be silenced. 

Regardless of one’s position on the theological issues here, it’s plain to see that if the members of the Southern Baptist Convention intend to hold to their exclusivist position consistently and condemn as dangerous all who seek to harmonize scripture with the human conscience, then it’s time for them to confront their own theological accommodations and declare the unconverted child as hopeless as the unconverted adult. 

I only hope that this time it will be harder for the delegates to raise their hands. 

For more on why exclusivism is not the only view supported by Scripture, check out this older post.

When grace is just a doctrine

photo © 2009 Slawek Puklo | more info (via: Wylio)

Grace is my middle name.

Literally. 

I was born Rachel Grace Held—named after my great-grandmother, Grace Burleson, who taught school in rural Appalachia during the Depression and who, when I was young and she was old, used to pull me onto her lap to tell me stories about the ghost that lived in the hen house at the old farm. 

Grace is a good name, a gentle name, one I’d like to pass down to my own daughter someday.

In addition to that, grace is something that Christians really like to talk about. Indeed one could argue that grace is the thing that separates Christianity from all other faiths. This idea that God does not withhold his love from us, that he gives it freely in spite of our sin and rebellion, that it is ours to receive without condition or merit is indeed very good news. 

And yet Christians have a bad habit of letting grace get stuck in our heads. It becomes a doctrine we defend rather than a virtue we exhibit; an idea around which we rally rather than the animating force behind how we live. Interestingly enough, Elizabeth Gilbert gets the essence of grace just right in Eat, Pray, Love when she describes a conversation she had with her sister: 

A family in my sister’s neighborhood was recently stricken with a double tragedy, when both the young mother and her three-year-old son were diagnosed with cancer. When Catherine told me about this, I could only say, shocked, “Dear God, that family needs grace.” She replied firmly, “That family needs casseroles,” and then proceeded to organize the entire neighborhood into bringing that family dinner, in shifts, every single night, for an entire year. I do not know if my sister fully recognizes that this is grace.

I realized when I read this  just how rarely I thought about grace as way of life, and how tragic it is that grace is often reduced to a proposition, a mere religious idea.

Now we could get into a rather ungraceful argument about the true meaning of grace, but as I see it, grace is about giving without expecting anything in return. It’s about cutting ourselves and one another some slack. It’s about letting go of grudges and extending love when it is not deserved. It’s about acknowledging all the brokenness within us and around us…and loving in spite of it. 

The ultimate denial of grace, then, is not to misunderstand it theologically, but to withhold it. The minute we withhold grace because of some prejudice or fear on our part, it becomes nothing more than a doctrine. 

Grace is just a doctrine when we withhold it from ourselves. 

Grace is just a doctrine when we withhold it from one another.

Grace is just a doctrine when we withhold it from the world.  

When I look ahead to my thirties, the quality I most want to nurture is grace—for myself, for the people around me, and for this planet I call home. I want to be less judgmental and more open. I want to be quicker to forgive myself when I make a mistake. I want to look for the divine under every stone, down every forgotten street, and in every puddle of rain. I want to give others the benefit of the doubt. I want to make more casseroles and give more time.  I want to listen better to those who live differently than me. I want to forgive. I want to let go.  I want to relax a little and let my guard down and not take things quite so seriously.  

I want grace to move from my head into my heart and my hands, so that I live up to my name. 

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Do you find yourself reducing grace to an idea rather than a lifestyle? Do you see this happening in the Church? In what ways have you given or received grace within the past day or two—I’d love to hear some stories!

The trouble with litmus tests

photo © 2006 David Bleasdale | more info (via: Wylio)

Popular evangelical pastor and activist Rick Warren was put through the wringer recently in an interview with Reformed theologian John Piper. Designed to test Warren’s doctrine on everything from the sovereignty of God, to unconditional election, to substitutionary atonement, to homosexuality, the interview was seen by Piper as proof that Rick Warren was indeed a “doctrinally sound” evangelist.

But not all of Piper’s colleagues agree. One blogger and pastor, who a few years ago criticized Piper for inviting Rick Warren to speak at a conference, responded to the interview with a post calling Warren “just another run-of-the-mill evangelical Arminian” whose credibility should continue to be questioned by people of faith. Among his critiques was that Warren held in high esteem Mother Teresa, who he dismissed as “a Catholic of Catholics” and “a universalist.” (Even Mama T. doesn't make the cut!)

The sentiment behind the interview and its fallout is as clear as it is absurd: It matters not how a professing Christian loves, or how much fruit of the spirit is exhibited in his or her life; the only way to determine whether someone is a “real Christian” is to sit around a coffee table and talk about theology. 

Doctrine is the litmus test for faith. 

This approach ignores significant portions of New Testament teachings that suggest that “by their fruit you will recognize them” (Matthew 7:16), that “faith without works is dead” (James 2:20), and that “he that loves not knows not God” (1 John 4:8). 

Now, before you think I’m about to digress into a rant against neo-Calvinism, you should know that I see an equally troubling trend among those in the more progressive camp of Christianity. 

While some Christians like to use specific doctrines as a litmus test, others like to use specific lifestyles as a litmus test. We bumped into this in the conversation that sprung from my post aboutfollowing Jesus without being Shane Claiborne. Several folks in the comment section argued that one cannot seriously follow Jesus in the context of suburbia, and that true Christians will sell their belongings, move to the inner-city, and live in intentional community among the poor. 

In this case, zip code is the litmus test for faith. 

I’ve been in conversations with progressives that are every bit as judgmental and prideful as those of fundamentalists—only the targets are not democrats, gays and lesbians, and the poor; they are Republicans, “homophobes”, and the rich. 

In both cases, the standard by which other people are judged is one’s own beliefs and lifestyle. The closer a person is to me, we tend to reason, the closer he or she must be to God. 

 This is unadulterated arrogance if ever it existed, and I am just as guilty as the next guy of indulging it. I confess that I have judged Christian women in my community for their lack of theological depth, despite the fact that when somebody gets sick or has a baby, they are the first to show up with casseroles, tissues, offers to help, and shoulders to cry on. I confess that I have judged conservatives for not caring about “justice issues” when their resolve to protect the unborn often puts my resolve to protect the poor to shame. I make snap judgments about people based on what they wear, what news station they watch, and what favorite quotes they chose for their Facebook profile.

I apply litmus tests to my fellow Christians because, for about five seconds, they make me feel better about my own decisions and beliefs. After those five seconds have passed, however, it becomes painfully obvious that my efforts at “fruit inspection” or “doctrinal correctness” are being seriously hampered by the massive log stuck in my eye. If one must have God entirely figured out and Jesus perfectly imitated in order to be a true Christian, then where does that leave me? 

The trouble with issuing litmus tests—be they of the beliefs variety or the works variety--- is that when we’re honest with ourselves, we know that we too would fail them. 

 Unless someone has committed egregious acts against the testimony of Jesus (which being an Arminian, a Catholic, a Republican, or a suburbanite most certainly is not!), Christians owe one another the benefit of the doubt.  We need not waste our time finding the right boxes in which to cram one another, the right labels with which to dismiss one another…not when there are so many more important things we could be doing together.

The way I see it, I can spend my life trying to figure out whether other people are true followers of Jesus or I can spend my life trying to figure out if I'm one.  One path is a heck of a lot easier than the other…which is why I suspect I am so prone to taking it.

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Do you find yourself applying litmus tests to fellow Christians? Which did you grow up with and which are you most prone to using? (fruit inspection? spirit filled? doctrinal? denominational?)

How can we maintain our opinions about theology and praxis without challenging someone’s commitment to Christ when theirs are not the same?

12 Ways to Make Arminianism Cool Again

Roger Olson’s interview with Homebrewed Christianity got me thinking about how, with all the talk about the Neo-Reformed movement, Arminianism has been underrated. Maybe we just need some better PR.  Here are some ideas:

1. Petition Microsoft to make Arminian an actual word so that bloggers ranting about the pros and cons of Armenians don’t sound like complete racists. 

2. Create a Stuff Arminians Like blog. Entries could include: love, freedom, and “secretly wondering if we’re not elect.”

3. Three words: Driscoll. Boyd. Cagefight. 

4. Instead of the “Gospel Coalition,” we’ll form the “Gospel Welcoming Committee.”

5. Get Roger Olson some thick-rimmed glasses and a pipe and send him to Catalyst. 

6. The Calvinists have their own flower, so why shouldn’t Arminians? But instead of TULIP (“total depravity, unconditional election, limited atonement, irresistible grace, and perseverance of the saints”) we’ll adopt the DAISY (depravity of all, atonement for all, inclusion of all, salvation is a gift,you can accept or reject). 

7. Start referring to Donald Miller as “Arminian Donald Miller.” (I don’t know if he’s actually an Arminian, but it’s worth a try.)

8. To counter the “young, restless, and Reformed” movement we’ll create the “middle-aged, Arminian, and not-in-the-mood-to-argue ” movement. 

9. Start a “I bet we can find 1 million people who don’t want to be predestined to hell” Facebook group. 

10. Launch an Arminianism Awareness Day to address some of the common misconceptions about Arminians—that we think grace is earned, that we have a “man-centered” theology, that we’re all dispensationalists,  that just because we lost that one argument with our Calvinist roommate back in 2003 we’re always wrong. 

11. Calvinists make T-shirts that say “Jonathan Edwards is my homeboy.” Arminians can make T-shirts that say “Arminius is my homeboy…but not in such a way that I uncritically accept everything he teaches” (because we’re nuanced like that). 

12. Keep talking about how real love requires freedom while extending kindness and grace to those with whom we disagree…because living your theology is more important than arguing it. 

Can you think of a #13?