It's the 1,000th Post Clip Show

This is my 1,000th post here at the Thatjeffcarter Was Here blog.  It's time for the dreaded clip-show. Nobody really likes clipshows... but they're cheap to produce and are a quick fix when the writers are on strike. Here are a few of my favorite posts:

Sermons
I'm a pastor (and an artist),so I preach.  These are a few of my favorite sermons that I've posted.  It's not that I think they're world changing sermons that will forever be immortalized in homiletics textbooks for future seminarians to study.  I just like them.
Jesus Loves the Little Children...Doesn't He?
With Wild Abandon
He was Cut and Not Cut Where it Mattered, But it Didn't Matter
The Introvert and the Leper
The Burden of Nahum
Beyond the Valley of Dry Bones
A Fire Burning in My Bones - Not A Good Sermon

Paintings
I'm an artist (and a pastor), so I paint.  Not as much as I'd like to.... but I keep my brushes ready.
Cognitive Dissonance 
Capture
Cats After Dark
Silver and Gold in the Morning
Self Portrait
In the Kitchen
Valley of Bones
Overboard

Poems
I also try my hand at writing poetry.  Admittedly, my poems tend toward the weird.  But I've had a few of them published and I happen to like them.

The Second Coming of Jonathan Edwards Bickle
Rock and Roll Apocalypse (Tom Waits Style)
Ezekiel 23 (A Limerick)
Sweet Dolorous Jane
No More Christmas
Holiday Haiku (these were written by my son)
Pas de Deux
Lamentations: An Incomplete Theodicy

Music
I make a lot of music too.  And much of what I create I've made available online.  You can download these songs.
No Time for Treatment
Artifacts One and Two
Ase! Oh, Ase! Where Have You Gone?
Don't You Tell Me What to Do (featuring Captain Jean Luc Picard)
Before the Foundation of the World
The Secret Place of Thunder
Mark 1: 35

This Accursed Melody / The Stones Cry Out
I frequently collaborate with my youngest brother, Brad.  We've made a movie together - This Accursed Melody  and we are currently working on an Arabic language television program -The Stones Cry Out

Powerpoint Slides for Everyone

Each week I create a new Powerpoint (or similar presentation program) background image - and I give them  away.  You are free to download and use any of these images in any of your projects - at home, work, school, or church.  I only ask that you share them freely and that you tell others that you found them here.




Book Reviews
I like to read.  I never go anywhere without a book or two.  Today I went to get my haircut and to the DMV - both great places to read. I often share here on my blog about the books I've been reading.

The Changing Faces of Jesus - by Geza Vermes (in five parts)
The Human Faces of God - by Thom Stark
The Only True God - by James McGrath
Valley of the Dead - by Kim Paffenroth
Love Wins -by Rob Bell

This has been the 1,000th post. Perhaps we'll see 1,000 more.

Different Versions of the Same Story - A Review of Chapter Seven of Love Wins

French existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre wrote in his play No Exit that “hell is other people.”  (l'enfer, c'est les autres)  And sometimes I think he was right.  Other people limit my freedoms, and my choices. Other people force themselves upon me with their demands for my attention and my concern.  Other people demand my time and my energy.  They take and take and take.  They drain me. They devour.  They consume me.

But I’m also convinced that heaven is other people.  They share with me.  They give gifts. They tell jokes and make me laugh.  They comfort and console. They help. 

I don’t remember where I read it first (and a brief search of the internets hasn’t helped me to discover the original source…) but there is a story of a man (or a woman) who was given a glimpse of hell.  She (or he) saw people seated at a long table for a feast.  Foods of every variety were laid out for them, roasted meats, hot warm breads with melting butter, succulent fruits, and deserts to die for.  “How is this hell?” he (or she) wondered.  Then she (or he) realized that the people gathered for this feast had no elbows.  They could not, no matter how they bent themselves or twisted or stretched, put that sumptuous food into their mouths.  They were tortured by the unattainable feast in front of them.

This person then saw a corresponding vision of heaven – again there was the gorgeous feast and again, the people had no elbows.  “How is this heaven?” the observer wondered. “This looks a lot like hell.”  But then he (or she) watched as the people gathered for that feast used their elbow-less arms to feed each other.

Heaven is other people.

In chapter seven, the penultimate chapter, of his newest book, Love Wins, Rob Bell reminds us of the story of the prodigal son – or, rather, he reminds us of the stories (plural) within that parable.  There is the story that the younger son believes of himself and his father, and there is the story that the father tells his returning son.  There is the story that the older brother believes and the story that father tries to tell him.   They are different versions of the same story.

Hell is other people.  Heaven is other people.
Hell is a feast without elbows. Heaven is a feast without elbows.
Hell is older brother who won’t join the party.  Heaven is the younger brother who can’t believe he receives a party.

Different versions of the same story and, according to Bell, “Hell is our refusal to trust God’s retelling of our story. (Love Wins, pg. 170)”

We're All Seeking the Same Savior - A Review of Chapter 6 of Love Wins

We're all seeking the same Saviour,

We're all seeking the self-same Lord.

We're all claiming the same cleansing,

We're all finding our peace restored.

General John Gowans

I can understand why this chapter – chapter six of Rob Bell’s Love Wins - might upset some people If someone were to read this chapter without careful attention to what he is actually saying, or if they were reading it with an already prejudiced attitude.  I’m sure that they would find something in it that’s not really there.

That’s what I’ve been discovering as I’ve compared the  hullabaloo about this book with the actual content of the book.  The hullabaloo is about something that’s not really in there -UNIVERSALISM.

It’s sentences like “Jesus is bigger than one religion” (Love Wins pg. 150) that get people all twitchy. 

No one comes to the father except through me… (John 14:6)

I used to think of this as a very exclusionary statement (and that is because that’s how much of the evangelical community teaches it…) but I’m starting to see it in a much broader way.  And I really like the way Bell describes it.  Jesus is as exclusive as himself and as inclusive as containing every single particle of creation... (pg. 155)

If this is Universalism it’s not a wishy-washy, it doesn’t-matter-what-you-believe-so-do-whatever-the-hell-you-want (though, again, that’s how much of the evangelical world teaches it)

No one can enter into the presence of the father, except through the person of Jesus.  But what is the process? What is the form?  Is it a specific prayer?  An altar experience?  Is it a specific creedal statement of faith?  A confession of Jesus as Lord?

Okay…

But what about Matthew 25- the parable of the sheep and the goats?  There’s no confession of Jesus as Lord in that story. In fact, those that are ushered into the kingdom prepared for them are not even sure they’ve ever met Jesus…

Do you remember the character Emeth from C.S. Lewis’ The Last Battle?  Emeth (whose name is "truth" in Hebrew) was a devoted follower of the cruel and evil god Tash – but is granted salvation by Aslan who welcomed him with these words:

...all service thou hast done to Tash, I account as service done to me. 

Does Aslan (the Christ of the Narnia series) welcome Emeth because he’s a Universalist (in the evangelical disparaging use of the word)?  Because it really doesn’t matter what one believes or because it doesn’t matter what religion on follows?   No. Aslan growled to shake the earth at that suggestion.

Not that he [Tash] and I are one, but because we are opposites, I take to me the service  which thou hast done to him.  For I and he are of such different kinds that no service which is vile can be done to me, and none which is not vile can be done to him.  Therefore if any man swear by Tash and keep his oath for the oath’s sake, it is by me that he has truly sworn, though he knew it not, and it is I who reward him. (The Last  Battle,  pg. 205)

In a letter to Joan Bennett, written in 1939, Lewis wrote:

I think that every prayer which is sincerely made even to a false god or to a very imperfectly conceived true God, is accepted by the true God and that Christ saves many who do not think they know Him. For he is (dimly) present in the good side of the inferior teachers they follow. (Letters of C. S. Lewis, ed. W H. Lewis  pg.247)

No one comes to the Father except through me.

It is Jesus who is saving the world. There is no other way. He is the door, but that door is open to everyone everywhere.

Passing through Nature into Eternity - A Review of Chapter Five of Love Wins

All that lives must die
passing through nature into eternity.
Hamlet Act I Scene ii

A few days ago my children and I had a discussion about the differences between the “Disneyfied”  version and the original versions of various fairy tales.  “The original stories,” I told them “are all about death.  All of them.  Cinderella.  Goldilocks. Sleeping  Beauty.  Beauty and the Beast.  They’re all death.”

I may have been exaggerating slightly for comedic effect, but there is a smidge of truth there.  It’s all about death.  And it’s all about life. It’s all about resurrection. These themes are Universal.  They are everywhere.  .  The universe, it seems, is designed to show us this progression from life through death to life. Rob Bell notes this in his newest book, Love Wins

This death-and-life mystery, this mechanism, this process is built into the very fabric of creation.  The cells in our bodies are dying at a rate of millions a second, only to be replaced at a similar rate of millions a second.  Our skin is constantly flaking off and our body is continually replacing the skin cells with new ones; we have entirely new skin every week or so. (Love Wins pg. 131).

The atoms and molecules that form our body were once part of stars.  We live because a star burned out. We live because something has died. 

Hamlet – A man may fish with a worm that hath eat of a king,
            and a cat of the fish that hat fed of that worm.

Claudius – What doest you mean by this?

Hamlet – Nothing but to show you how a king may go a
            progress through the guts of a beggar.

Hamlet Act IV Scene iii

We live because something has died.  The fruits and vegetables we eat to keep us alive and healthy once lived themselves.  The meat we eat once lived.  But now we live because of it.

It’s all about death.  It’s all about life.  It’s all about resurrection.

Nothing that has not died will be resurrected.
C.S. Lewis – The Weight of Glory

A seed has to be buried in the ground – it has to die – before it can grow.

And when it comes to Christianity it’s about Dying to Live.  Bell writes about some of the ways that this is understood in the bible – and there are several different and overlapping ways of understanding the death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth.

“Motivation of fear, motivation of love
one of these is hell, but it gets the job done”

Dighayzoos

Some are better than others, but no one metaphor can fully encapsulate the cosmic scope of that resurrection life.  And those descriptions that make Christianity merely an eternal fire-insurance policy are especially inadequate.  There is much, much, so much more to it than the avoidance of hell.

How Mighty is the All-Mighty? - A Review of Chapter Four of Love Wins

I am at camp again.  It's a wonderful, beautiful place and I enjoy being here with the kids.  We are sleeping in tents, sitting around the campfire, hiking in the woods, shooting arrows at the archery range, climbing on the high ropes, and later in the week going on a white-water rafting trip.  It's pretty exciting.

Well most of it.

I spent the morning at the emergency room with a young man who broke his arm.  I told him that he needs to tell the story that he broke it while wrestling with dinosaurs atop a 100 foot cliff because the fact that he fell off the swings is really rather embarassing.  The four hours we spent waiting (and waiting and waiting) at the ER was not the most exciting part of the week.  But it did allow me some time to read.

And now that I have - at least for the moment - some connection to the internets, I want to continue my reviews of Rob Bell's newest book - Love Wins.

Chapter Four - Does God Get What God Wants ? continues some of the thoughts he began in chapter three.  (You can read some of my thoughts about his thoughts here...)  In chapter three Bell described some of this thoughts on Hell -  which, contrary to some of the hullabaloo I heard about the book before I read the book, Bell does not deny. 

Can God make a rock so big that even he can't pick it up? 

It's a frivolous kind of question, I know.  But it's a question about the limits of Gods' power.  How powerful is God?  How mighty is the "all-mighty"?  How great is God?  How good is God?

If we believe that God is all-mighty
and
if we believe that "God wants all people to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth. (1 Tim. 2)
is God able to get what he wants?

How great is God?
Great enough to achieve what God sets out to do,
or kind of great,
medium great,
great most of the time,
but in this,
the fate of billions of people,
not totally great.
Sort of great.
A little great. (Love Wins, pg. 97-98)

Hell is there for those who would refuse and reject the love of God, but is that the end?
Is that all? Or does God’s great (all-mighty) love pursue us even there?

Which is stronger and more powerful, the hardness of the human heart or God’s unrelenting, infinite, expansive love? (pg. 109)

Bell observes that Christian history is full of believers who have affirmed that even death cannot contain God’s boundless love, and that the eternity of the hell of separation from God isn’t necessarily forever. 

Bell doesn’t use the story of Jonah, but in my own thinking and my preaching I’ve found the same thought expressed in that ‘fish-story’.   Think of Jonah, that obstinate anti-prophet , who tried to escape the presence of God – even to the point of being thrown into the bottomless abyss of the raging sea.  Jonah even tried to flee from God by sinking down into the depths of death.  But even there he was pursued by the unrelenting hound of heaven.

There is a hell for those who would reject the love and grace of God.  And If Bell and C.S. Lewis and many, many others are correct, the doors of hell are locked from the inside – and those who suffer in hell suffer because they refuse to submit to God.

But is that the last word. Sorry you’re too late.

If we want isolation, despair and the right to be our own god, God graciously grants us that option. If we insist on using our God-given power and strength  to make the world  in our own image, God allows us that freedom. … If we want nothing to do with love, we are given a reality free from love.

If, however, we crave light
we’re drawn to truth,
we’re desperate for grace,
we’ve come to the end of our plots and schemes
and we want someone else’s path
God gives us what we want.

…

That’s how love works.  It  can’t be forced, manipulated, or coerced.
It always leaves room for the other to decide.
God says yes,

we can have what we want,
because love wins. (pg. 117, 119)

If the hound of heaven can follow Jonah into that bottomless pit of death, can’t he do the same for all who would attempt to flee from his presence? 

I think he can.

What the Hell? - A review of chapter three of Love Wins

Okay, really?  This is the chapter that got people so fired up?  What the hell, people? 

First off – if anyone is still claiming that Bell has denied the existence of hell, he hasn’t.  So stop saying it. When you repeat it you’re only repeating a baseless slander.

There are individual hells,
and communal, society-wide hells,
and Jesus teach us to take both seriously.

There is hell now,
and there is hell later,
and Jesus teaches us to take both seriously. (Love Wins pg. 79)

There is heaven in the here and now (or there can be if we will see it and make it) and there is hell here on earth, and humans are very good at making that.  But beyond the hell we create for ourselves in the here and now with our selfishness and depravity, there is the hell of separation from God in what comes after this life.  And Bell doesn’t deny that either. 

What he does say is that forever may not be forever.

Bell argues (and argues from scripture) that Hell may not be the eternal conscious torment that so many have taught.  Bell argues that the awful fury of God’s righteous wrath isn’t poured out just so that the wicked will spend billions and billions and then billions more years more in sulfurous torment, but is instead meted out for the purpose of reconciliation.

Gasp!

The dominant theme in scripture is restoration to God.  That’s what the book (the collection of books) is about – the way that the ever loving God has set out to restore his lost and broken family. 

It comes up again and again and again.  Sins trodden underfoot, iniquities hurled into the depth of the sea.  God always has an intention.

Healing.

Redemption.

Love.

Bringing people home and rejoicing over them with singing. (Love Wins pg. 87-8)

But before you start shouting UNIVERSALIST and throwing stones at the supposed heretic, you should recognize two things.

ONE - Bell never says (at least not in this chapter, I haven’t read the entire book yet…) that everyone will be saved.  In fact he pointedly acknowledges that that redemption and love that God is so keen to offer to everyone can be refused.

I tell these stories because it is absolutely vital that we acknowledge that love, grace, and humanity can be rejected.  From the most subtle rolling of the eyes to the most violent degradation of another human, we are terrifyingly free to do as we please.

God gives us what we want, and if that’s hell, we can have it. (Love Wins pg. 72)

And TWO – If you reject Bell as a vile heretic based on this, you’re also going to have to pin that label on and throw stones at the venerable C.S. Lewis who held a very similar view of hell.  Lewis believed that “humanity is already ‘saved’ in principle (Mere Christianity, pg. 156)” and that it is up to each one to accept or reject that salvation, even from within the torments of hell.   The difference between Lewis and Bell is that Lewis is more pessimistic about the eventual repentance of those in the torments of their own hell.  Bell, “ has more faith in the ability of some to eventually repent, that is the only real difference between them—and it is a belief about people not about God and God’s desires.”

Finally, it is objected that the ultimate loss of single soul means the defeat of omnipotence. And so it does.  In creating beings with free will, omnipotence from the outset submits to the possibility of such defeat.  What you call defeat, I call miracle:  for to make things which are not Itself, and thus to become, in a sense, capable of being resisted by its own handiwork, is the most astonishing and unimaginable of all the feats we attribute to the Deity.  I willingly believe that the damned are, in one sense, successful, rebels to the end; that the doors of hell are locked on the inside.  I do not mean that the ghosts may not wish to come out of hell, in the vague fashion wherein an envious man “wishes” to be happy: but they certainly do not will even the first preliminary stages of that self-abandonment through which alone the soul can reach any good.  They enjoy forever the horrible freedom they have demanded, and are therefore self-enslaved just as the blessed, forever submitted to obedience, become through all eternity more and more free. (The Problem of Pain, pg. 127-8)

This is the “jacked up theology” people have been screaming about?  What the hell?

Here and Now - a Review of Chapter two of Love Wins

Love Wins – Chapter Two – Here and Now

In heaven everything is fine.
In heaven everything is fine.
In heaven everything is fine.
You got your good things,
And I got mine.

- The Lady in the Radiator

This strange song from David Lynch’s 1977 surreal horror movie Eraserhead is one of my favorite little songs – especially as recorded by the Pixies.  And, though I don’t think many of my Christian friends would endorse this movie or this song, I think it accurately describes what many Christians believe about heaven.

The dominant cultural associations and
misunderstandings about heaven has been at work for
so long, it’s almost automatic for many to think of heaven
as ethereal, intangible, esoteric, and immaterial.

Floaty, dreamy, hazy,
Somewhere else.
People in white robes with perfect hair floating by on
clouds, singing in perfect pitch. ( Love Wins pg. 56 -7)

Heaven is – or will be – that perfect place of perfect rest and perfect peace.  Everything is perfect. And everything is wonderful.  And nothing ever happens.

I think that it’s strange that so much of the outcry and outrage surrounding Rob Bell’s newest book, Love Wins, is about his alleged denial of hell as place of eternal conscious torment.  I haven’t read as far as the chapter on hell yet (It’s the next one) but the chapter on heaven should have provoked some outrage as well, I think.

A lot of what passes for Christian teaching and evangelism is about “going to heaven when we die,” and as Bell points out, the bible says nothing (or very little) about us “going to heaven.”  That’s not what it’s all about. Not at all.

In fact.  It’s just the reverse. Heaven has come to us.

Heaven is in the here and now… or it is if we make it so.  The founder of the Salvation Army, General William Booth, once said that “making heaven on earth is our business.”  (You can actually hear him say it here.)  But if that’s the case, why are always talking about going to heaven “some glad morning when this life is over”?

Heaven is the presence of God. Heaven is the presence of Christ and where two or three are gathered in his name, he’s there with them, with us.  This is heaven. When we share the love of God with each other it’s heaven.  When we share the compassion of Christ with the poor it’s heaven.  Heaven here and now.

So why, you will assuredly ask, does it not look very much like heaven?  Why do we still hurt and cry and suffer?  There should be no tears in heaven, right? Doesn’t it say that God will wipe away our tears?

And you’re right. It doesn’t look very much like heaven around here sometimes.  And I think that part of the reason for that is that so many Christians are still thinking of heaven as somewhere else eventually.  They’re still hoping for God to push the EJECT button and for us to be raptured away from this dung heap.  Too many people have a Christianity of escapism. 

But even if we accept the idea of a transformative heaven in the here and now, there is still going to be hurt and tears.  Yep.  And the wonderful thing – WONDERFUL thing  - is that God is here with us to comfort us and to wipe those tears away, each time.

There is more to heaven, of course, especially in the life after this life (which is better than saying life after death…) but if we fail to recognize the heaven that is here and now – if we fail to create heaven on earth in the here and now, how ready will we be for that heaven?

What I’m Reading – Love Wins by Rob Bell

I’m often a bit behind the crowd, late to the party and uninformed.  Here I am, five months after the release of Rob Bell’s newest book, and 6 months or so after the heresy-furor began, only just now getting around to reading Love Wins. 

It’s not a difficult book to read.  Bell writes in short declarative sentences, and with very brief paragraphs.  He is the Ernest Hemmingway of theological writing.

But, as easy as it would be to breeze through the book, I am going to limit myself to reading one chapter a day. And I am going to share some of my thoughts on each chapter with those of you who read this blog.

Preface -Millions of Us

I always read the preface to books.  I know some people skip them, but I don’t.  The preface is a bit like a musical prelude. It establishes some of the motifs and melodies and rhythms that will be heard later.  And one of the motifs found in the preface of Love Wins is the Question.  This is going to be a book about questions.  Big Questions.  Ultimate, Life, the Universe, and Everything kinds of Questions.

Many have these questions.
Christians,
people who are Christians
people who were Christians,
but can’t do it anymore because of questions about
these very topics,
people who thing Christians are delusional and
profoundly misguided,
pastors, leaders, preachers -
these questions are everywhere. (pg. ix)

I believe in questions, so I’m excited to read this book.  Will I get all the answers I want? No.  Because I’d only have a dozen more questions for each answer I received.  But I ask and I read anyway.

But not everyone is as keen to ask questions.  Discussion is sometimes viewed with suspicion and distrust.  Many people would rather have an issue cut and dried, settled, and pinned down to the mat for permanent display.   But not me.  And not Bell.

I believe the discussion itself is divine. Abraham does his best to bargain with God, most of the book of Job consists of arguments by Job and his friends about the deepest questions of human suffering, God is practically on trial in the poems of Lamentations, and Jesus responds to almost every question he’s asked with… another question. (pg. ix - x)

This reminds me of a line from another book I read recently.

In the beginning was the Argument, and the Argument was with God and the Argument was: God. God was the subject of the Argument, and the Argument was a good one.

I like questions and I ask questions.

And the first chapter – What About the Flat Tire? – is all about questions.

While I was at music camp last week we watched one of Bell’s Nooma videos.  During the video devotional one of the camp leaders walked over to me and said, “This is okay so far, but this guy has some jacked up theology.”

I knew (or at least I thought I could guess) where he was leading with that statement, but I asked the question: “How so?”

Maybe the question caught my friend off-guard. Maybe he expected that I would just nod in agreement.  He fumbled for a response, “Well… in his new book.  I haven’t read it yet, but…” and he let it trail off with that.  I don’t know what “jacked up” theology my friend believed would be found in Love Wins.  But the question caught him surprised.

Questions can do that.  Surprise us. 
Questions can cause us – force us – to reconsider what we thought we knew

(Have you noticed how I am now writing like Bell?)

Socrates knew the power of the Question.
Jesus knew the power of the Question.
Jesus rarely answered a Question.  Instead he gave more questions.

And in the first chapter of his book, Bell asks a lot of questions about what it means to be saved, or to be converted, or to have a “personal relationship with Jesus Christ.”  We talk about these things all the time, but we rarely ask what they mean.

What is “being born again”?

What is Salvation?

Going further with these questions, Bell asks how salvation comes. 

Is there a specific prayer?
Is there a class?
Is it by baptism?
Is it what we say?
Is it what we do?
Is it what we say we’re going to do?

Is it who your friends are or what your friends do?

Is it who you’re married to?
Is it whether or not you give birth to children? (pg. 5, 15)

We don’t usually ask these questions.  Because asking all these questions makes it difficult. And we don’t want difficult.  We want it clean and simple.  We want a tract.  We want the 4 Spiritual Laws . We want Salvation in 7 simple steps. We want the ABCs of salvation.

But I am convinced – and have been for most of my life – that the simple answers aren’t really answers at all. 

The task must be made difficult, for only the difficult inspires the noble-hearted.  -Soren Kierkegaard

We could go on,
verse after verse,
passage after passage,
question after question,
about heaven and hell and the afterlife
and salvation and believing and judgment
and who God is and what God is like
and how Jesus fits into any of it.

But this isn’t just a book of questions.
It’s a book of responses to those questions. (pg. 19)

I like that it’s not just a book of questions.  It’s important to start with questions, but I do want to move forward toward some answers – even if that involves asking more questions.

And I like that it’s a book of responses to those questions. Plural.  Responses.

I look forward to reading this book over the next several days and to asking questions, and to discovering (or re-discovering) some of those responses, and to (inevitably) asking more questions.

Any questions?