LOVE MEANS NEVER SAYING THE WORD “HELL”

“Love means never having to say ‘I’m sorry’ ” is a classic line from the movie Love Story starring Ryan O’Neal and Ali MacGraw.  This classic line has taken a theological twist. We now hear from some quarters of evangelicalism, “Love means never saying the word ‘hell’.”   Ironically, the universalist-leaning thinkers and writers who are incensed about the misuse of scriptural imagery regarding hell, torment, and punishment coming from God, take three little Johannine words–God is love–and use them as a sieve. These novel “God is Love” proponents pour the whole contents of the Bible through their new found sifter and to their joyful wonder no condemnation, no hell, no judgment, no eternal fire, no rejection of one human being by a loving God makes it through.  And they wonder at the misuse of the Bible by others! God is love and only love is the new good news.

A friend of mine remarked that the new defintion of God’s love means unconditional, endless tolerance and affection. Sweet, but so much wishful thinking. Discounting the perichoresis of the Trinity, the hard edge of love that compelled Jesus to voluntarily lay down his life for sinners is considered ‘bad parenting’ by God the Father, even divine child abuse. You can read it in many popular expressions of the new, soft, fireless, judgmental-less love. I think many of these new “God is love” proponents learned their definitions of love from Sesame Street rather than from the biblical text. What I think they mean when they say “God is love” is “God is nice.”

From the Old Testament term for love (‘hb), we cannot escape that, when used of God’s love, we have an encounter with the idea of election, choice.  Love is an act of God and when God loves, God chooses and when God chooses, God chooses for a purpose. That is why the metaphor of marriage between Israel and God carries the weight of love. A choice, a commitment, a covenant purpose. The Ancient Near Eastern cognates for love also carry this same idea of choice and are also used of a marital relationship. When God loves, God enters into a purposeful, relational union. The hard edge of love is that it expects response. Yes, conditions are involved. Did I write ‘conditions’? I thought love was unconditional. Nope. In the Old Testament, when God loves, he forgives and he punishes. You won’t learn that on Sesame Street.

Israel fails as a faithful partner to God and Jesus enters history as God’s “beloved” whom God has chosen. These words were declared at Jesus’ baptism. As God’s Elect One, God’s anointed one, Jesus was on a mission. Love for Jesus had a purpose. A very hard purpose.

The New Testament’s combining God’s love (agape) with the “new covenant” (diathekes) ought to give us all a clue that choice and purpose are still driving love. Love is not democratic; it is monarchial. We don’t all get a vote; we are called to surrender. Some people don’t surrender to the love of God made known through the cross of Jesus Christ. Love will then take a hard edge. God does not wink at sin, does not tolerate the rejection of his Son, does not tolerate people living as their own kings when Jesus is King of Kings. Treason, mutiny, rebellion are not loved by God.

When we in our sweet attempts to make God nice read 1 John’s “God is love” without feeling the spikes in the hands and feet of Jesus Christ, we prostitute, we blaspheme the very idea of God’s love. God loves us not because he feels nice toward us but because God wants to radically change us.  Love, God’s amazing love, is truly ineffable, yet it requires a choice. Always has, always will.

Hell is the hardest edge of God’s love. You can rant and rave about hell all you want. And I’m totally open to exploring all current ideas about judgment, hell, gehenna, hades, lake of fire and separation from God forever. What we can’t do is turn God’s love into grandma’s lap.

ROB BELL

RAISED

HELL

as a topic to

ponder.

Yes, I have read Rob Bell’s Love Wins: A Book about Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived. I wrote on my FaceBook page that I agree with 85% of the book and I am seriously troubled by 15% of the book. A friend of my wants to hold me to those percentages, but I confess they came off the top of my head the moment I closed the book.

SOME GOOD THINGS

First, the book is vintage Rob Bell. He’s creative in his style and isn’t given to well-reasoned paragraphs of theological writing. He snippets his way through the book. That’s OK by me. Second, I think the opening chapters (1-3) in which Rob expresses the serious concerns of his generation ought to be read in every church and home. Whether we want to face them or not, these are the questions being asked and the impressions (about God) being given. Third, I am with Rob on Jesus’ mentoring prayer in which we pray, “May your kingdom come. May your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” Christianity isn’t a ticket out of this world to heaven, but God’s way of bringing heaven to earth now, today.  Michael Wittmer, Professor of Systematic Theology at Grand Rapids Theological Seminary has a book that carefully expands this concept of heaven: Heaven is a Place on Earth. With that book include N. T. Wright’s Surprised By Hope. They are well worth your time to read. Fourth, I am behind any efforts initiated and accomplished in Jesus’ name to eradicate horrible injustices and sufferings in this world. Rob and Mars Hill Bible Church stand for making things right. That is very commendable. Finally, I like Rob’s presentation of the Luke 15 prodigal son story where the Father’s Story re-interprets, re-visions the prodigal’s story and, yes, the older brother’s story. I think Rob is indebted to Tim Keller for some thoughts here.

MY CONCERN

To say that I am troubled by 15% of the book is not to diminish my concern. If 15% of my otherwise healthy body has cancer, my whole body takes alert notice.  I won’t rant about Rob’s cavalier use of Bible texts (others have done that). The reason I don’t is because whatever standard we use on Rob, we have to apply to the New Testament authors’ use of the Old Testament. It seems the New Testament authors did not read our best books on hermeneutics and exegesis. However, Rob’s startling “use” (I won’t even call it an interpretation) of the 1 Corinthians 10: 3-4  is indefensible: “They all ate the same spiritual food  and drank the same spiritual drink; for they drank from the spiritual rock that accompanied them, and that rock was Christ” (emphasis mine). From this text Rob unwisely moves from the particulars in a story regarding Israel to some bizarre universal that Christ is the rock everywhere in all times for all people (pages 158-159). Rob should know better than to handle a biblical text in this way. It’s not only bad exegesis, it opens the door to a radical inclusivism that guts the missional nature of the Grand Story of the Bible, the particulars of Jesus of Nazareth as Messiah, and the passion for missional work of the Christ-following community that heralds the exclusivity of salvation only by acknowledging Jesus the Christ as LORD.  I think it is sadly misguided and dangerous to the very billions about whom Rob seems so concerned. For Rob to write that others are actually meeting Jesus, but they don’t know and don’t even need to know his name seems a sad departure from the evangelical way.

I had a friend write recently that we as Christians should read Rob Bell’s book even if we are adamantly opposed to its message(s). Rob Bell has risked opening the “hell” conversation up for all of us to engage…in this day…in this generation. I am so tired of those who think that orthodoxy simply means parroting John Calvin and Martin Luther, Jonathan Edwards and J. Gresham Machen. Those thinkers had their day in the sun. We need fresh thought and expression of enduring biblical realities. Yes, for the sake of God’s glory, for the health of the church, and for the eternal destinies of billions. Rob has knocked over a big domino to get us thinking.

The Spirit of the LORD will rest on him—
the Spirit of wisdom and of understanding,
the Spirit of counsel and of power,
the Spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the LORD –

and he will delight in the fear of the LORD.
He will not judge by what he sees with his eyes,
or decide by what he hears with his ears… (NIV)

Professor Bryan E. Beyer in his Encountering the Book of Isaiah summaries these verses, “His [the Messiah's] wisdom and discernment enabled him to get beyond what he saw and heard to the heart of the matter and to rule with true justice, righteousness, and faithfulness (11:3-5)” p 90. One of the essential traits of the Messiah was discernment. Other leaders in the Davidic line ruled for power or selfish ends, but the “shoot from the stump of Jesse” would be saturated with the Spirit of God and rule righteously. Discernment was a major player in his rule.

The tendency of evangelical leaders (pastors and teachers) to pronounce endless moralisms and offer a smorgasbord of holiness hints and rules smells bad. The odor is the absence of the Spirit. We create a distasteful atmosphere driven by what we hear and what we see. Very few take the time to contemplate why this endless litany of “Bible based” principles, guidelines, steps and how-to’s is not producing a holy church. These holiness helps pile up and begin to get musty and after a while they begin to stink. In our sincere desire to urge holy living, we think we are smarter than the Holy Spirit. The Spirit just cannot do without our holy two cents’ worth. What does it tell us if evangelical leaders do not trust that the Holy Spirit of the Living God can lead teenagers into holy living? We actually believe hormones trump the Holy Spirit. And we do this in all good conscience. It smells really bad, and condescendingly disrespects teenagers.

I don’t think we even give a compelling enough vision to the church for which holy living even matters. The Spirit-empowered Messiah (of Isaiah 11) was on a mission from God (with all due respect to the Blues Brothers). How much holiness is required to be part of the average local church? Does holiness even come up? We are so busy reacting to the sometimes turbulent obvious that we miss the weightier, unseen matters of  hearts and souls. We harp about external issues–what our eyes see and hears hear–until people can’t stand it anymore and give up. We are long past “the tyranny of the urgent.” We are in the mediocrity of the minutia. “Directions! Give the people more and more holy directions! Discernment? We don’t have time for it.” Well, we better make time.  Jesus did.

Holiness is about being long before it is about behavior(s). God urges us to “be holy, for I am holy.” God does not say “Do holy things because I do holy things.” We try to get people to tie holy behaviors on lives driven by ill-equipped, disinterested hearts. As if I would tie apples to a dead apple tree and say, “Look! It’s an apple tree.” Not long. Soon it will begin to smell. The Spirit works, always works from the inside out. That is the beauty of the Spirit. Discernment is an inside job. Any hack can give directions.

Discernment,  the Scriptures  and the Spirit are happy allies. Discernment presupposes that Jesus is in the process of making all things new. Discernment is newness directed to a specific situation or person, to a specific community or missional venture. Discernment is much more like a compass in a wilderness than like a GPS on a busy urban freeway. Discernment provides space to maneuver and learn and does not scream, “Take this exit!” Discernment is not frantic. Discernment is not judgmental, though it will lead sometimes to tough moral decisions. Discernment will never violate Scripture or the character of Jesus Christ. To the contrary, discernment will always honor Scripture and express the presence of Jesus. Discernment will rarely feel like a law. It will feel like a strong, loving arm around the shoulder of someone confused or questioning.  Because discernment cares more about the heart and maturity, it will often ask more questions than it gives answers. Discernment will not get antsy when someone suggests something new or something never tried before. Discernment, moving in the strong currents of the Spirit, will often carve new paths in old ground. The “rivers of living water” that the Spirit is will not be bottled and sold for profit. Discernment is not for sale like so many of the packaged holy moralisms of our day. Discernment will never be a commercial template on sale at the local Christian bookstore. Discernment is ferociously local and specific, communal and situational. Discernment is the Spirit guiding a surrendered community who are fascinated with the person and mission of Jesus Christ.

I sense some will bristle up with the old barb: “This discernment stuff will lead to unholy living, you just wait and see. People need rules. They need direction.” My response is “Where have all the unceasing holy rules and directions gotten the church?” Not very far.  Christians in the U.S.A. are living by the same prevailing values as the secular culture. Data confirm it. Come, Holy Spirit, come. The time for discernment is now.

I mentioned the unhealthy propensity of evangelical leaders to provide directions; to make things plain and doable. I’ve come to see that this is not a beneficial service to the church because it does not provoke thought and thus short-circuits discernment.

The Apostle Paul spent a relatively brief time in the city of Thessaloniki and a young church was birthed. Paul writes to the vigorous Jesus-followers in the city and in his first letter he addresses a serious topic: sexual purity.

It is God’s will that you should be sanctified: that you should avoid sexual immorality; that each of you should learn to control his own body in a way that is holy and honorable, not in passionate lust like the heathen, who do not know God; and that in this matter no one should wrong his brother or take advantage of him. The Lord will punish men for all such sins, as we have already told you and warned you. For God did not call us to be impure, but to live a holy life. Therefore, he who rejects this instruction does not reject man but God, who gives you his Holy Spirit.           – 1 Thessalonians 4: 3 – 8

Note Paul’s encouragement for the believers to “learn” and he offers little specific sexual direction. God calls us to a holy life. Paul concludes that on the issue of being holy (sexually) that God in fact “keeps on giving the Holy Spirit”  (present active verb). Little instruction, few directives.

I once was at a pastors’ seminar in Detroit attended by hundreds of Christian leaders being taught by a renown Bible teacher. The topic of sexual purity was on the agenda. This famous Bible teacher, based on teachings of Jewish Rabbis, taught that the Levitical sexual purity laws (e.g., Leviticus 15) given to Israel were God’s continuing directives today for the church. I am not kidding. I sat stunned. This was a blatant expression of the Galatian heresy confronted by Paul in the fiery little Book of Galatians. This guru of the faith was dragging New Covenant believers back under the legislation (Law) of the Old Covenant…without even batting an eye! I looked around and saw hundreds of leaders taking notes like this was the best news since the resurrection of Jesus.

Now compare that example of “Bible teaching” in Detroit with Paul’s words to the Thessalonians. If anyone knew the levitical code for sexual purity and cleanliness, it was the former Pharisee named Paul. When he wrote that it was God’s will for the Thessalonians to be sexually holy, he could have whipped out a divinely revealed litany of directions (from Moses) and written it to the new church. Paul did not do this, but the Bible teacher in Detroit did. Who was correct on the topic?

Most of the church in Thessaloniki were converted Gentiles. Paul even said that they had turned from idols to serve the living and true God (1:9). The levitical sexual purity laws given to Israel would have meant nothing to them. So, Paul gives directions for them to learn to be sexually holy and reminds them that holiness is best learned from, get this, the Holy Spirit. Paul could rest in the reality of the living presence of the Spirit in that young church Who would guide them into a practice of sexual purity. The new believers would learn to discern. They did not need a code of conduct. They needed only to attend to the Holy Counselor.

What a challenge discernment is! Do we have that kind of trust in the Spirit’s ability? Do we have that kind of trust in believers’ ability to develop Spirit-empowered discernment? Do we have the courage to tear up all the fine-tuned directions we want to lay on people so they will be sure to live holy lives?

By the way, that little church learning to discern sexual holiness spread the Gospel all over Asia Minor…without any training from Campus Crusade or InterVarsity or Evangelism Explosion. How can this be? Living with a discernment mind-set casts the community totally upon the Holy Spirit. Another spin-off of this joyful reliance on the Holy Spirit was a missional passion that almost left Paul speechless (see 1:7-9).

We must shift from giving directions to providing a challenge to learn to discern. Risky? Sure. But the consequences are staggering.

Jesus was not a direction-giver. He was a discernment artist. Jesus trusted people’s ability to hear his stories and reach some startling conclusions about the kingdom of God. Some individuals wanted Jesus’ ready-made answers to their dilemmas. Jesus most often refused. (“John, why don’t you tell us where these texts are?” Uh, no. Discern, my friend.)

Jesus believed that farmers and housewives and tax-collectors and lepers could imagine, think, and reach conclusions. He believed in the human ability to discern. Jesus knew that developing discernment in others was far superior than giving them point-blank directions. I am bothered that so many pastors and teachers don’t follow Jesus in this regard. Do leaders mistrust people? Do current leaders foster an informed, elite attitude over “the people of the land” as the religious leaders did in Jesus’ day? For all our teaching about the accessibility of the Bible to the “common person” and the compassionate illuminating ministry of the Spirit to light Scripture up for ordinary folk, leaders still seem bent on spelling it all out, making it clear, answering the burning questions, fostering a codependency in biblical/theological/spiritual issues.  To be proficient at giving biblical directions is no gift to people. Directions require no thinking, just compliance.

Now I know that this codependency relationship between leaders and people is fed also by people who cry, “Feed me. Feed me, pastor. Think for me. Tell me what to do. Feed me.” This lamentable mutation of so-called ‘pastoral ministry’ stunts thinking and erodes all possibility of the emergence of discernment.

I think leaders and people prefer direction-giving because it eliminates fear and offers the illusion of control. Discernment, according to my friend, Scot McKnight, requires both courage and careful thought. Why courage? Because discernment allows us to explore unknown territories of the soul and life, i.e., all those sometimes frightening areas not ‘mapped out’ by the professional direction-givers. Direction-giving tempts to a dangerous spiritual condition: pride. We know exactly what to do and we go do it.  Developing discernment is a companion of humility because we feel awkwardly suspended in mid-air and our only hope is the Spirit and other discernment-oriented friends. Discernment is a community quest while I can follow directions all day long all by myself. Discernment is genuinely creative while following directions tends toward boredom.

Jesus was a superb discernment artist. He provoked thought and he elicited unparalleled commitment in others.

We think we are so smart. The disciples are at their wits’ end in the boat on the hurricane-angered Sea of Galilee. Having awakened a sleeping Jesus, Jesus speaks, things change and Jesus asks, “Why are you so afraid?” We think, “Well, duh? Jesus. They thought they were going to die!” Aren’t we smart?

A Pertinent, Pressing Issue: Money

Having read Jeff Weddle’s book, I will offer three stimulating benefits and three pastoral concerns. Because Jeff addresses a pressing issue–money–that seems inescapable in American culture’s and its churches’  awareness, it is critical that we, as Christian leaders, offer wise counsel. With our nation’s economic downturn, the pervasive joblessness, sky-rocketing debt and a fragile global economy, we need voices of hope speaking in the Name of Jesus Christ. Enter The Gospel-Filled Wallet: What the Bible Really Says About Money.

Three Stimulating Benefits

First, I like honesty in writing. Jeff Weddle, a minister, writes honestly about his own struggles with money and what the Bible says about it. Jeff’s opening salvo regarding the stringent words of Jesus that we cannot both love God and Money catches our attention. This is both stimulating and a concern. In down to earth, no nonsense writing, Weddle challenges the readers with real, heart-felt questions. Throughout the book we sense the heart of a person who honestly wants to do the right thing. Weddle admits in the conclusion that he is “not perfect” when it comes to getting it right about money (65). Yet, we sense a person who is moving in the right direction and wants to help others to do the same.

Secondly, Weddle keeps the Bible in the center of the discussion. The subtitle does the book justice. The teachings of Jesus and the teachings of Paul are brought to the reader’s attention along with pertinent Old Testament teachings.  In the chapter titled “What They Lived,” another biblical aspect is presented: biblical characters, both honorable and faulty, who interface with the issue of wealth and riches or who trusted God in the face of deep human need. “The best way to tell if someone believes something is to look at how they live” (40).  Just two examples: Abraham–”Should he leave the security of his home, his family, and his stuff to follow God, or should he remain in his comfortable life and carry on” (41)? And Judas, the one who betrayed Jesus, “is the ultimate example of loving money and hating God” (46-47). The Scriptures inform and shape the book’s content.

Thirdly, the practical application of the money regarding money is “Spend it.” Weddle believes that this is an obvious way to show that we love God and hate money rather than the other way around. For Weddle, it is “totally awesome” that the best way to handle money is to get rid of it quickly (62). How should we spend it? Jeff offers some very plain and work-ready direction on how to spend money wisely, beginning with “spend it on the poor” (56-57).

The book is short (75 pages of content including a postscript of questions and answers) and very readable. As a fellow minister, I do have some concerns with the book.

Three Pastoral Concerns

First, While the opening salvo of “You cannot love both God and Mammon/Money” (see Matthew 6: 24) is an attention-getting declaration of Jesus, I think Jeff Weddle presses it too an unwise either/or reality for the reader. Jeff admits that as Jesus’ statement stands, Jeff must conclude that he (Jeff) “hates God.” I believe that Jeff is trying to take Jesus very seriously, as we all should, but Jeff is tripping over a characteristic debate/teaching device of 1st century Judaism. That language device is the aligning of fierce polar opposites to make a point. I don’t believe Jesus ever intended for Jeff to conclude that Jeff “hates God” because Jeff earns, spends and even enjoys money as part of his life. Jesus’ point is to press us to seriously reflect upon and readjust our use of money if money, indeed, leads us to be disloyal to God. I do not hate my mother and father, my wife and my children, my brothers and sisters in order to follow Jesus and be a loyal disciple (Luke 14:26-27). However, if any family member comes between me and obedience to Jesus, then I need to realign my relationship with God and that family member. People with very sensitive spirits and tender consciences can get extremely distraught navel-gazing, asking, “Do I really love God or money? Do I really love God or money?” Recognizing the difference in language expressions (rhetorical devices) between 1st century Judaism and 21st century America does not lessen the serious intent of Jesus’ teachings, but this recognition will deliver us from things like “If you love money, you hate God…It’s a straight up dichotomy. The two things don’t mix…” (3). I don’t think Jeff would say to me, “If you love Julie [my wife], you hate God. If you love your daughters, you hate God. If you love your mother, you hate God.” But I could use Luke 14:26 to conclude just these things if I used it the way Jeff used Matthew 6:24. I don’t even think God wants us to “hate” money (53). This is a genuine concern of mine.

Secondly, Jeff’s book came in like a lion and went out like a lamb. I was led to believe that Jeff would offer some new, prophetically-fiery teaching on money that has never been offered before (editor’s preface). Yet, after I got through the Scriptures (both texts and characters) and moved into Jeff’s practical applications, I felt like I was (re)reading stuff from others who have taught on money and Christian living. Jeff assumes that Christians “don’t hear much about this (annoying) topic” (53). That is not the case. I’ve heard/read others who offer:  “There is nothing wrong with having money, unless you depend on it and trust in what you have” (55). The places that Jeff lists to spend money (56-61) are the same places others have suggested through the years. Pretty tame stuff. After offering the content in the book, Jeff leaves it up to the reader and Spirit on how to use money since Jeff is not the judge. I was expecting some cutting-edge applications. Because Jeff has set up a fierce divide between money and God based supposedly on Jesus’ teaching, he even wonders why the Bible suggests that parents save up to give an inheritance for their children. If money is so evil, why would God want us to give money to our kids? Jeff says he doesn’t have an answer to that one (61). At the point of that question, we need a voice. Jeff goes silent, not because there are no answers, but because Jeff has raised a needless dilemma based on his tripping over the first century use of language.

Thirdly, and similar to the last point about inheritance to children, in the questions and answers ending to the book, Jeff anticipates an objector’s question, “Aren’t you a hypocrite for charging money for this book?” Jeff answers, “Yup” (75). Again, this is a needless and, in my opinion, navel-gazing scenario. I would offer that since the book is an extension of Jeff’s labor as a minister, he should be paid for his teaching (in book form). Jesus said that the laborer is worthy of his hire and Paul quotes this saying of Jesus. This applies even when that laborer is an author.

I enjoyed The Gospel-Filled Wallet and I believe the book will provoke many redeeming discussions about the Christian life and money.  It is my opinion that Jeff Weddle is really addressing greed and not money in his book. Greed is one of the seven deadly sins and needs often to be addressed. Jeff unwisely mixes money and greed together, and while related even Jeff knows that money in itself “is a just a thing, like a rock or a dog…”(55).  Jeff’s book may also provoke numerous needless, rabbit-trail discussions that could be detrimental to the healthy spirituality of some.

Dr. John W. Frye, Pastor

Fellowship Evangelical Covenant Church

Shouldn’t this create an urgent if not meaningful pause in our “use” of the Bible? Isn’t deception the Serpent’s primal strategy to lead to the fall of mankind? Paul reports that Eve was deceived (1 Timothy 2:14). The more exposure one has to the Bible and its teaching without a complementary and intentional passion to do what the Bible says is on the slipperiest slope of all. As a pastor I am forever hearing about the slippery slope of this or that or this cultural trend or that theological position. Rarely do I hear Christians admitting that they are in danger of the most horrific slippery slope. Rather, they prance around as if because they’ve read a verse or two and read some moralistic story that accompanies the verse(s) and as an result experience their fuzzy, warm devotional feeling, they are obeying the Word. The last concept that would ever enter their dutiful minds is “deception.” Some read the Bible so they can adroitly debate those who are not Christians or who are “those kind” of Christians; some read the Bible so they can be good, moral, sweet people; some read the Bible to feel delightfully comforted by it–all these are using the Bible for themselves. Could deception be reigning supreme? Because someone faithfully and diligently uses the Bible does not mean he or she is actually encountering the living, flame-throwing, love-lavishing God.

James gets to the nitty of the gritty. “You foolish person, do you want evidence that faith without deeds is useless?…so faith without deeds is dead” (James 2:20, 26). Foolish. Useless. Dead. Bummer. James even says, “…a person is justified by what he does, and not by faith alone” (2:24). A Christian who has no engagement with the marginalized of our world (the widows and the orphans in James’ day, 1:27) is living an unjustified life, a kind of faith without deeds. It is not a saving faith. Deception run rampant and because it is deception, we laughingly slide down the slippery slope. Isn’t this fun! And, no, I don’t think James is contradicting Paul at all. At the level of authentic Christian formation, James and Paul are on the exact same page.

What am I trying to say? The very Word we approach and read with ourselves primarily in mind so we can be fed, informed and comforted is the very energizing reality that can deceive. For every degree of knowledge without a corresponding degree of obedience propels us farther into the darkness of deception. The letter kills, the Spirit gives life (see 2 Corinthians 3:6). The Spirit was not given to give us Bible-reading goosebumps, but to expel us into the world of people wandering in the darkness of the fall and sin, the world of anti-Christ values and ways of relating (which the church absorbs in an attempt to be “relevant”), the world of naked, famine-ridden children crying over slaughtered parents, a world of oppressed women beaten to submission in the name of God, the world of people anesthetized to any meaning and purpose by things, things and more things. The Spirit was never given to work for us so we could live a comfortable, American life.

“You can’t reduce this book [Bible] to what you can handle; you can’t domesticate this book to what you are comfortable with. You can’t make it your toy poodle, trained to respond to your commands” (Eugene H. Peterson, Eat This Book, p 66).

Imagining that merely possessing and studying the Scriptures, the Pharisees believed they had life. Life with God in God’s kingdom. They were Book-obsessed. Book worms.  Jot and tittle types that boasted in owning “the oracles of God.”  When “the Word made flesh” stands before them, opposes them, warns them, the Book-centered folks dismiss him as an alien, as a life-destroyer, not the life-bringer.

The Pharisee syndrome is still alive and well in USAmerican Christianity. Many Christians are much more at ease with studying the Bible than coming to Jesus. Reading a Book is safer, more comfortable than relating to a Person, especially an enigmatic Person like Jesus.  An insidious pride lurks in the heart when one presumes to know the Book, to possess it and revere it and use it to fence off undesirable types of people from our tidy lives. People, well-intentioned, begin to substitute finding something new and refreshing in the Bible with relating to a holy, very present God.

As a pastor I’ve observed how the Bible is used to distance a person from God the Spirit. If I view the Bible as a box of matches from which I can draw one match and light it and see the flame and feel the fleeting warmth and call that a devotional life, then I am happy. To walk into the flame-thrower named Jesus the Christ is a different story. I don’t want to be burned up in the fiery passion and mission of God–that’s too extreme.  I’m happy with “this little light of mine…”.  Living as a whole burnt offering is too…what shall I say? Indelicate. I want to stay in charge of my commitment and piece-meal it out at my discretion. Dying to self is a nice metaphor after all.

Imagine a newly married couple reading to each other each night from a Christian book on the sexual life in marriage. They  even memorize  sentences or paragraphs of it. They write songs about love and intimacy. They arrange sexual topics into a nice groupings of thought and make charts and graphs. They study all sorts of other books to understand what is in their manual…medical and anatomical definitions, history, and issues. After years of this they wonder why they are still childless. They know the book backwards and forwards. They diligently study the book, but have not come intimately to each other as persons.

You diligently study the Scriptures…you refuse to come to me. Saints and scholars have not been reluctant to make daring parallels between the sexual life of a man and woman and life with God. The Song of Songs is notoriously used to make those parallels. Eugene H. Peterson as a pastor strongly suggests that a person’s prayer life is a mirror of their sexual life (in Five Smooth Stones for Pastoral Work on the “Song of Songs”). It is entirely possible to use the Bible as a book about intimacy with God and actually be very far from God. Jesus confronts folks who thought they were intimate with him and passionate for him, but were in fact “evil-doers” (see Matthew 7:21-23).

A common objection I hear to this is, “The only way I can know God is through the Bible. The Bible has to be first, God second. If I don’t go to the Bible first, then I may concoct crazy things about ‘God’.” This sounds noble and right, but is in fact a lie. God has not locked the awesome Trinitarian reality of Being in a book with a cover and pages with ink. Jesus had to bluntly make this plain to Nicodemas in a night conversation. My intimate life with Julie and the fact of the existence of my four lovely daughters never were locked in a sexual informational guide. Never. Adam and Eve were procreating the race long before the printing press gave us sex manuals. The living God-head Three in One has been and is and forever will be independent of the Bible. God is totally able and free to introduce God-reality to anyone, anytime, anywhere. The humbling strategy that the living God has chosen is for those who intimately know God to go and bear witness to God’s loving, present, gracious, saving Trinitarian Being. We aren’t commissioned to go read a manual to people, but to bear fruit as we abide (stay in union with) Jesus.

Behind the insidious insistence upon the Bible first and God second is the fear that God cannot make himself truly known without our help, you know, those of us who “know the Bible.” The Bible becomes our precarious and presumptuous replacement of the Spirit poured out on the planet at Pentecost.  Again, we would rather have a nice, controlled “lamp to my feet” than a fire-breathing, untameable Spirit to contend with.

Please, please don’t misunderstand me. I am not belittling or ignoring or demeaning the Holy Scriptures. My passion is that the Bible find its rightful place in our lives. The Pharisees no doubt loved God and they made a fatal mistake of placing holy writings between them and Jesus. Why do we think we cannot make the same grievous mistake? I am afraid many have…yes, even pastors.

I visit Rhea about once a week with a church member who has been Rhea’s long time friend. Rhea is 84 years old and lost her husband about eight years ago.

We were sitting in Rhea’s rooms at a local assisted living complex. My friend, Ray, was inviting Rhea to his upcoming birthday party. Ray is turning 86 years old.

I am not sure how or when the conversation turned, but I discovered that Rhea was recounting her husband’s death. I was stunned to silence as I watched her relive his death moment by moment in her mind. Rhea would speak a few sentences and stop. I could tell that in her mind’s eye she was “seeing”  the next scene. Her husband had experienced a heart attack and stroke. She painted the shocking and chaotic scene at home and the arrival of the ambulance, the hectic trip to the hospital, the crucial flurry in the trauma area of the E.R., the moving of her husband to a room. She is in the room with her husband. “He did not speak to me,” she quietly said. She sat next to him for two days. She spoke to him over and over, assured by the doctors that he could hear her. “He did not speak to me.” The words had the same impact on me as if she’d said, “My child died.”

Rhea became silent for an uncomfortable amount of time. She was seeing something she did not want to see. There in her rooms her eyes teared up and she whispered, “Then he was gone and he never talked to me.”

The way Rhea repeated this refrain made me rethink conversation. I so easily lose the pricelessness, dare I say holiness of speech between a husband and wife, between friend and friend. I will never hear her husband’s voice, but she heard it and then lost it by his death. I have no idea what they talked about, how they talked, if they ever fiercely argued, how they made up; I’ll never know. But I could not escape the profound heartbeat and loneliness in her words, “He did not speak to me.”

When Rhea stopped remembering I felt like I had walked a sacred path with her. That she had invited me (and Ray) to some “private rooms” of her soul. Ray was so sweet as he held Rhea’s hand as she relived the starkly pivotal event in her life.

Visiting older people has been like walking into a palace filled with treasures. I’ve chatted with a 93 year old man who met General George Patton in North Africa and Patton was wearing his pearl-handled pistols. Six degrees of separation and all that.

I saw Rhea today…at Ray’s birthday party. She was happy and engaged in the festivities. Yet, for a brief few minutes, Rhea had opened a door for me into the hall of all that is valuable.

Remember Ralphie Parker in A Christmas Story? Ralphie’s dream gift was a Red Ryder 200-shot Carbine Action Range Model Air Rifle. I loved the scene where Ralphie imagines that he saves his family from the bad guys who try to storm the house from the back yard. The family cringes under the table in the kitchen as Ralphie with his sharp-shooter eyes takes out the desperadoes.

As I ponder that little pardner, I think Ralphie is onto something deeply profound about cowboy stuff and boys…and men. I suggest something on the scale of Jungian archetypal, if you catch my drift. Because what happened to Ralphie’s imagination happened to mine after I bought myself a pair of  Justin genuine leather, pointy-toed cowboy boots. I bought them in, get this, Justin, TX, where they were made.

Something strangely dusty and smelling of the open range came over me as I slipped them on. I squinted my eyes and felt the urge to spit and talk with a deep Western drawl. “Yee haaa! These y’here are some mighty fine boots, y’all. Somebody rustle up some grub for this old cowhand while I go unsaddle and bed down Lightning, my horse. Then I’m gonna mosey on over to the Shady Gulch and quench my thirst. I hope none of them boys in thar is hankering for a fight ’cause I got myself an itchy trigger finger tonight. I’ll be back shortly for the grub, y’hear, Darlin’ ?”I walked away suddenly wanting to  whistle the haunting theme music to “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly…wha wha whaaaaaaa; doodle, doodle, dooooo…”.

I reached down and took the boots off and instantly I was myself wanting to parse the Greek verb apostello. I thought of brie and white wine and Starbuck’s lattes. I wanted to ride in my Pontiac and wear comfortable things like my PJ’s. Being dusty with a dry throat seemed revolting. And grub? What the heck is grub? I was stunned witless. What sort of massive electro-magnetic field exists in those boots?

Looking around to see if anyone was watching I shakily slipped the boots back on. A harmonica began to play and I heard a horse whinny. I had the urge to blurt out, “Now you git! I’m the law in this town, and this town ain’t big enough for the two of us.” And spit while I stared, all squinty-eyed, the vermin down.

Carl Jung would probably say that there is a Ralphie in all of us. Ralphie never goes away no matter how old we get.  What brings our inner Ralphie out is anything cowboy. That is the fun of a bb gun or a pair of boots. Y’all.