Weekend Link List

What you’re looking at is the actual default font size for this blog’s text.

I chose “Silver is the New Grey” as the theme for this blog because of the wide column but noticed immediately that the font size was too small for some readers. So… for the past 4 1/2 years, I’ve been taking 10-15 seconds before posting to manually insert the HTML tag <big> in front of each paragraph. It has given this blog it’s distinctive look and style.

However, a problem has arisen this week, and the HTML tag for enlarging the typeface won’t ‘stick.’  I’ve investigated some different themes, but because the entire history here is encoded for larger type, the end results end up looking HUGE.  Since this blog has operated for nearly five years on a capital outlay of $0.00, I’m reluctant to get a custom theme, but I am also reluctant to walk away from all the existing content.  So suggestions are welcomed.

• On Sunday, Cross Point Church (Pete Wilson) hosted Bob Goff, the author of Love Does.  For the few minutes I watched it was absolutely amazing; a killer sermon. Here’s a link for it [wrong message is currently playing], and also a ten minute Q&A that was filmed for the Cross Point internet campus.  [Cross Point has a history of 'losing' sermon videos when they have guest speakers; they lost the Jon Acuff week entirely. So if they get it working we'll add the link.]
• No blogger — not one — does a consistent job of narration like author Karen Spears Zacharias, as seen in this story.
• Chaplain Mike at Internet Monk proposes some rather interesting parallels between worship and sex.
• More than one in twenty atheists and agnostics pray every day. 
• In a world of online addiction where sexual ethics have been shattered, some resources to help face the problem.
  
• An outraged pastor suggests that sending out or posting your ultrasound pictures is completely inappropriate.
• The Very Worst Missionary is now back in the U.S. operating as The Very Worst Pastor’s Wife. (Catch her  as a guest today on Drew Marshall — see link under radio at right.)
  
• Here’s another short film from Moving Works a Film-making ministry: Father of the Fatherless.
• Well, here’s hoping you can read this in one font size or another…

To My Skeptic Friend

Dear __________,

Here’s an idea.

There’s nothing I can say or do today that will convince you that God exists, that the Bible can be trusted, or that Jesus has a legitimate claim to be God. But humor me for a moment.

All I’m asking today is that you begin with a God-exists hypothesis. Not the Bible. Not Jesus. Just that there is a God, in the more or less traditional way that’s understood.

Now then, ask all your questions, and frame your answers along the lines of the hypothesis. In other words, “Why is there so much evil and suffering in the world?” becomes, “If there is a God, why does he permit so much evil and suffering in the world?”

And so on.

What possible answers might you come up with to your various questions? Maybe some fairly crazy ones!

I’m not saying assume anything or commit to anything. I’m just saying take your toughest questions, your philosophical questions, your metaphysical questions, your ethical questions; and instead of framing them within a vacuum, frame them within the hypothesis.

Oh yeah, one more thing: For 48 hours. Do this for a couple of days, not a couple of minutes.

You might even want to say this — don’t think of it as a prayer, but more as a role play to get you in the right head space — “God, I don’t believe you exist, but for the next couple of days, I want to see how the world adds up if I were to believe you’re really out there.”

Think of this ‘let’s pretend’ game as meeting me halfway.

~Paul

The Paganization of Daniel Surrey: A Short Story

Ten years ago a fresh wave of new authors and speakers breezed through the Evangelical landscape. With the seeker-sensitive initiative now entrenched for two decades, the discussions about how to do church accelerated, along with a renewed look at what exactly constitutes a church.

Emerging, Emergent, Missional, Post-modern; words that might have been foreign-sounding in the ’90s became part of the broader discussion in the new century, and the movement was not just a crusade of words; there were changed lives to back up the new approach.

None of this was lost on Daniel Surrey. With just enough counter-cultural DNA to resonate with the new movement, Surrey was a deep thinker whose relationship with his conservative church had possibly always been fragile. While the new breed of writers and communicators may have been missed by those part of the Evangelical status quo, Surrey jumped in with both feet; attending the conferences, buying the books and downloading the audio teachings.

To know his past, it was quite a change. Daniel and his wife Bonnie had raised five children in the Sunday School, midweek kids ministry programs and finally the youth groups of their groups. They had been bus captains, ran the car washes and been chaperones on the junior high winter ski trip. Bonnie was part of the women’s ministry and Daniel had served two years on the church board and was a relief teacher for the largest adult Bible study class. You don’t do all that and then expect to simply go off the grid and drop off the radar.

Their church attendance record suddenly plummeted as they took in house church meetings, alternative worship events, and even did the backyard “we can worship God better in nature” thing during the summer months. As the fresh look at ecclesiology gained traction, it became increasingly easier to find people of like mind. They finally wrote a letter to the Evangelical church in which they had invested a quarter of a century and half their lives, and requested their names be removed from the membership rolls.

Since part of the missional ethos involves being incarnational, they quickly joined a number of community groups involving everything from woodworking to organic gardening to roots music. But their greatest personal investment was in the area of social justice projects. Anything that reached out to the marginalized was fair game, and they gave countless hours of their time to just about every charitable project going.

One particular project particularly energized them, to the point where Daniel eventually took on a leadership role. The housing projects in the south end, next to the coal-fired power plant were home to people who had no aspirations for living elsewhere. Abuse, addiction and chronic unemployment gave way to various types of health and financial problems, and also left the people in those projects as prey for unscrupulous landlords.

While the south end projects outreach had its beginnings with Christian people and church support; with Bonnie’s constant encouragement, Daniel was determined to expand the scope of the project, to the point where partnerships were formed with individuals and agencies from the broader community.

Soon, the work began to downplay its Christian origins and intentions.

With each passing day, something changed in Daniel Surrey. He met a lot of good people waging this battle for social justice, because when you’re giving help to people who are poor or disadvantaged, the people who tend to join in that fight are indeed good people. They are good because they are created in God’s image, and they reflect that nature in their desire to spread compassion and care.

Their beliefs, however, take a variety of forms. One can still serve in this type of environment, but it’s also true that a house is known by the company it keeps, and before too long, Daniel was being influenced more than he was influencing. His personal belief system at this point was more the product of syncretism than any one particular systematic theology. He had been absorbed into another world.

Which is where I last saw him, through a broadcast on the local community access television channel. He and Bonnie were there at the dedication of a new triplex to house three families, and several representatives of aboriginal spirituality were banging drums and passing some kind of large pipe, while a New Age Shaman conferred words meant to impart some measure of financial blessing and fertility — he mentioned fertility ten times even though all three families had children — to the homes’ new occupants.

And then they all shared a vegetarian potluck meal which centered around deep fried cauliflower, which may have offered some theoretical health benefits in its conception, but those benefits had been diminished by the degree of breading and deep frying. But before they ate, they paused for “a word of thanks” and Daniel Surrey, the former Evangelical Church board member began his “prayer” with an address to “the great spirit of the earth and sky and sun and moon,” at which point I completely tuned out whatever words folllowed.

And I listened to the drumming and watched the passing of the smoking pipe and thought, ‘The secularization of Daniel Surrey is now complete.’

The cable television reporter then did an interview with Daniel, where he talked about the amazing things that can happen when people lift themselves out of their own pain and peril and circumstances by self-will and determination, and my mouth formed the words, ‘You’ve come a long way, Daniel Surrey. A long way.’

Rachel Held Evans’ Monkey Town

I know it’s generally uncool for a blogger to review a book that’s two years old, but then again, I actually paid for my copy, so technically this isn’t a review review; whatever that means. I was more overcome with curiosity, having become a regular reader of Rachel’s blog.

Sometimes a great blogger does not a great book author make, but in this case — sorry, Rachel if this seems uncomplimentary — the book was far better than what I’m accustomed to reading each day in blogland. The thing that struck me was that the book was so readable; the first hundred pages flew by in a single sitting.

Rachel Held Evans’ title refers to growing up in the town that was the venue for the Scopes Monkey Trial, the trail concerning the teaching of evolution and creation in public schools that some Christians see as having been as pivotal as Roe v Wade. I’d love to say that it ends there, that Rachel isn’t personally a proponent of some kind of theistic evolution, but in fact, this is one of the issues she deals with.

And Evolving in Monkey Town: How a Girl Who Knew All The Answers Learned to Ask the Questions (Zondervan, paperback, June 2010) is definitely about raising the tough questions and allowing doubts to nurture somewhat without ending with a total abandonment of either God or some of the primary fundamentals of the conservative faith in which she was raised.  To that end, this is a book that will appeal to readers of authors like Rob Bell and Brian McLaren.

It’s also a ‘growing up Christian’ type of memoir, and as Rachel herself admits, to do something of that nature while still in one’s twenties, is a bit of daunting task. This book will certainly resonate with anyone in Rachel’s demographic, or who identifies with postmodern culture.

While the book is edgy, it didn’t stir up the hornets’ nest that her next book — A Year of Biblical Womanhood: How a Liberated Woman Found Herself Sitting on Her Roof, Covering Her Head, and Calling Her Husband Master — is bound to when it releases in late October. (See an article on this subject here at TOL.)

In the meantime, you’ve got Rachel’s blog to enjoy if you’re looking for more.

Approaching Christianity Philosophically

Working in and around the Christian publishing industry, I am constantly frustrated by requests for resources that are appropriate to give as gifts to people who do not identify as Christians, but may be interested in reading something that resonates with their current worldview, or communicates in terms more familiar to other materials they are currently reading.

But then, when something arrives on the scene from outside the fold — not bearing the Seal of Approval of a publisher like Moody, or Zondervan or Baker or Tyndale — I find myself straining for clues that will verify that the title in question is sufficiently Evangelically kosher; and that the author is worthy of my unconditional recommendation.

I’m not sure you can have it both ways. If a book is going to absolutely connect with people of other faiths, there are times it’s going to seem foreign to those of us deeply embedded in modern church culture.

Ellis Potter’s book 3 Theories of Everything (2012, Destinée Media) arrived in my mail last week from Switzerland as the clear winner in my “curiosity of the month” category. At a trim 112 pages, nothing was stopping me from reading it cover to cover, but who was this author and where was he going with this?

It turned out not so important where he was going as where he was coming from.  A visit to the website of Eastern Europe Renewal provided this:

Mr Potter, a native Californian now residing in Switzerland, is a former Buddhist monk who became a Christian under the influence and ministry of the late Dr. Francis Schaeffer. Mr Potter’s dramatic conversion came about as a direct result of several intense, personal discussions with Dr. Schaeffer during the turbulent seventies.

In 3 Theories of Everything, Potter looks at the overarching structure of many popular religious worldviews, which can be classified into one of the following: Monism, Dualism and Trinitarianism.  Looking at each, he then shows the ways in they succeed or fail to succeed in explaining the world around them, with a particular emphasis on the problem of suffering.

The book would be of special interest to anyone who has experience with Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism, Confucianism, Astrology, Meditation or New Age religions; as well as anyone who has done basic reading in Philosophy including cosmology or metaphysics. Here’s a fairly accessible sample

Freedom and form is another pair of opposites that we see in the world. A good illustration is gravity. Gravity is one of the basic forms, or structures, of reality but it gives us a certain freedom. If gravity were not here and I began to walk, I would float and spin and soon I would be dead. Form or structure is necessary. Let me give you an equation to express this idea:

total freedom = death

There is nothing postmodern about this equation. Postmodernism as usually understood and practiced in western culture regards freedom as the highest value and sees the purpose of freedom as fun and play. But freedom cannot really be valuable or life-giving unless it is accompanied by form. If you want to be totally free to fly you can go to the top of a building and jump. You can say, ‘I am free;’ but you won’t be free, you will be dead because you have not respected form. But if you study the various forms of reality — the laws of properties that give reality, structure and shape, such as gravity, aerodynamics, thermodynamics, metallurgy, jet propulsion, stress, torque and so on — then you will be able to build an airplane and fly across the ocean. That’s a great freedom, but the freedom is connected to form. Freedom and form are not independent of each other in reality. Again, their relationship is complementary rather than competitive.  (pp. 48-9)

Having worked through alternative worldviews, Ellis gently builds a case for the Christian worldview incorporating a fresh (but orthodox) retelling of the fall, the incarnation and the atonement.

But then, as a bonus, the author appends answers to 45 questions that have been asked in seminars he has given in different parts of the world; some clearly arising from Christians and others from skeptics. He is not unwilling to tackle things like, ‘Is it possible you might one day find a different answer and abandon Christianity?’ In answering that most candidly he defines Christian commitment, while at the same time indicating the scenario to be unlikely. In another question, he’s asked if his years as a Zen Buddhist monk informs his present occupation as a Christian pastor. His answer would make a few people I know uncomfortable, but in the answer that follows immediately after, he says he identifies theologically as close to Baptist or Brethren.

Again, this is that book that I mentioned at the beginning; a rare gem of a book for that person not ready for Paul Little or Erwin Lutzer or Josh McDowell; and for reasons of length and style and the writer’s background, I think this would also be a good book to give to a man who is looking at faith questions from a distance; or with whom you want to begin a deeper conversation. It’s also a pre-apologetic title fitting for a college or university student.

3 Theories of Everything by Ellis Potter is available for bookstores to order worldwide as a print-on-demand book through Ingram Publisher Services, the largest book distributor in the world; in paperback at $13.99 U.S. 

Read another excerpt from the book at Christianity 201.

Wednesday Link List

Lloyd the Llink Llist Llama

In case you missed it, there was an epic link list here on Saturday, too.  Well, we thought it was epic. Or mega. Or just plain large.  And if you’re reading this on the actual Wednesday, between 00:00 and 23:99 EST, you’re reading it in an internet world without Wikipedia.

• Photo blogging social justice: What does a lavish cathedral say about God to the people living in poverty in the surrounding slum? A must-see.
  
• Rick Apperson’s blog Just a Thought continues its 5 Questions series with two Canadian authors: Rest of God author Mark Buchanan and Cost of Community author Jamie Arpin-Ricci. The series kicked off this year with 5 Questions with Joni Eareckson Tada.
  
• Dan Kimball responds to Justin Bieber’s recent statement about belief and church. Quote: “the entertainer might not be taking into consideration what ‘church’ is ‘theologically.’”
  
• What’s not to like about spiritual formation? C. Michael Patton has some issues with the way that particular paradigm is broadly applied.
  
•  ”If you confess with your mouth and believe in your heart …”  Yeah, we know that verse, but what does Romans 10:9 say about eternal security?  Bill Mounce digs deep.
  
• A couple of years ago, a local pastor was telling me about author and pastor Voddie Bachum.  Here’s an extended length book trailer for, Family Shepherds.
  
• Historical research or guessing game? At CNNBelief, a writer asks the musical question: What would Martin Luther King Jr.’s response be to today’s gay rights movement?
  
• Finally, a story in the courts involving a Roman Catholic priest that doesn’t have to do with the sexual abuse of young boys or girls; though he did siphon off $650,000 US of church funds to support his gambling habit.
  
• Komedy Korner: Christian author and stand up comedian Anita Renfroe breaks down her parenting role on In The Muthahood at GodTube.
  
• The preservice at North Point before the holidays featured carol covers rocked out by the teen band All We Know featuring Holden Fincher.  Record company execs: Are you watching these guys?
• And speaking of the music industry, that religious sounding album, All Things Bright and Beautiful by Owl City is now also a 21-song live tour DVD.
• Every few years an Evangelical/Charismatic fad diet blows into the Christian culture.  Lyn Hallewell has embarked on The Daniel Fast. Hopefully future blog posts will keep readers up to date.
• Been awhile since we linked to ASBO Jesus, so here’s a recent cartoon from the mind of Jon Birch:

Why I Wouldn’t Quit The Episcopal Church Over Gay Marriage

In the past several years, there has been much division in the Episcopal Church in the U.S., the Anglican Church of Canada, and the Worldwide Anglican Communion over the issues of ordination of gay clergy and marriage of gay couples. 

I can honestly say that if were a member of such a church, I don’t honestly believe that either of these two issues would surface as a deal-breaker for me, for one simple reason:

I would have been gone long before that.

For me, the “gender issues” and “sexual orientation issues” are really secondary.  They are symptoms, but there is a deeper cause, and that cause is the rejection of the ultimate authority of scripture.  And that in turn stems from a stronger desire to nitpick over Biblical text and engage in the academic sophistication of  “higher criticism” than a desire to respond to God’s offer of genuine relationship and thereby to understand the ways of the Lord.

At least with a title like "Jesus Never Existed" by Kenneth Humphreys, you know where you stand. With other authors, the theological implications can be more insidious.

So a church which reveres Bishop Shelby Spong — or his sometime partner in crime, Marcus Borg — is of much deeper concern to me than a church which is wrestling with the gay issue, which I believe that all churches are wrestling with to different degrees.

Here’s a sample of Spong’s latest proclamation on the CNNBelief page:

…Jesus of Nazareth, according to our best research, lived between the years 4 B.C. and A.D. 30. Yet all of the gospels were written between the years 70 to 100 A.D., or 40 to 70 years after his crucifixion, and they were written in Greek, a language that neither Jesus nor any of his disciples spoke or were able to write.

Are the gospels then capable of being effective guides to history? If we line up the gospels in the time sequence in which they were written – that is, with Mark first, followed by Matthew, then by Luke and ending with John – we can see exactly how the story expanded between the years 70 and 100.

For example, miracles do not get attached to the memory of Jesus story until the eighth decade. The miraculous birth of Jesus is a ninth-decade addition; the story of Jesus ascending into heaven is a 10th-decade narrative.

In the first gospel, Mark, the risen Christ appears physically to no one, but by the time we come to the last gospel, John, Thomas is invited to feel the nail prints in Christ’s hands and feet and the spear wound in his side.

Perhaps the most telling witness against the claim of accurate history for the Bible comes when we read the earliest narrative of the crucifixion found in Mark’s gospel and discover that it is not based on eyewitness testimony at all…

This is Spong’s opinion, and he is entitled to it, and should count himself blessed to live in a country where people can write this sort of drivel and not be burned at the stake as a heretic.  Living elsewhere, or in other times, might not have proved as beneficial.

Mark’s gospel is not based on eyewitness testimony?  That should come as a surprise to those who have looked closely at Mark 14:51-52 and concluded that this sentence is completely superfluous — and even unnecessarily comic — unless Mark’s clear intent is to position himself directly in the middle of the story.

Spong’s obsession with undermining the Biblical text — a rather odd preoccupation for a clergyman, don’t you think? — also makes a liar out of Luke where he attests in Luke 1: 3-4 to the veracity of the Christ story as it has been told to his correspondent Theophilis.

And the concept of the miracles of Jesus being “attached” to the story in the eighth century is simply baffling.  There were many rabbis, many itinerant teachers, and we only have the names of a handful around the time of the gospels.  True, Jesus taught in ways that no one had before; his following went from a dozen young men to crowds in the thousands; but absent the supernatural miracles, there might be no particular reason why he would be remembered.  In fact, scholars tell us that the Pharisees — perhaps Spong denies they existed as well — were looking for very particular and unique miracles as signs of the Messiah:

1. The casting out of a spirit from someone who was mute.  The customary approach was that the spirits would first name themselves before being cast out.
2. The healing of an individual who was born blind. 
3. The healing of leprosy.
4. The raising from the dead someone who had been dead more than three days.  (Other such resurrections were to be discounted because of a belief that the spirit ‘lingered’ around the body for three days afterward.)

The Pharisees had an interest in knowing if Jesus was indeed the Messiah that goes beyond the adversarial relationship we normally associate them with.  These miracles proved beyond the shadow of a doubt that Jesus met all their criteria, though they remained blinded to the possibility of crossing the line of faith themselves. 

Suddenly, in the late 20th Century, the Jesus Seminar experts decide that every phrase and sentence in the gospels is suddenly open to debate.  Spong takes the ball and runs with it, and expresses his twelve main thesis as outlined below; I’ve highlighted certain words from the Wikipedia article:

1. Theism, as a way of defining God, is dead. So most theological God-talk is today meaningless. A new way to speak of God must be found.
2. Since God can no longer be conceived in theistic terms, it becomes nonsensical to seek to understand Jesus as the incarnation of the theistic deity. So the Christology of the ages is bankrupt.
3. The Biblical story of the perfect and finished creation from which human beings fell into sin is pre-Darwinian mythology and post-Darwinian nonsense.
4. The virgin birth, understood as literal biology, makes Christ’s divinity, as traditionally understood, impossible.
5. The miracle stories of the New Testament can no longer be interpreted in a post-Newtonian world as supernatural events performed by an incarnate deity.
6. The view of the cross as the sacrifice for the sins of the world is a barbarian idea based on primitive concepts of God and must be dismissed.
7. Resurrection is an action of God. Jesus was raised into the meaning of God. It therefore cannot be a physical resuscitation occurring inside human history.
8. The story of the Ascension assumed a three-tiered universe and is therefore not capable of being translated into the concepts of a post-Copernican space age.
9. There is no external, objective, revealed standard written in scripture or on tablets of stone that will govern our ethical behavior for all time.
10. Prayer cannot be a request made to a theistic deity to act in human history in a particular way.
11. The hope for life after death must be separated forever from the behavior control mentality of reward and punishment. The Church must abandon, therefore, its reliance on guilt as a motivator of behavior.
12. All human beings bear God’s image and must be respected for what each person is. Therefore, no external description of one’s being, whether based on race, ethnicity, gender or sexual orientation, can properly be used as the basis for either rejection or discrimination.

Actually, as I said at the outset, the twelfth item is really the least of my concerns with Spong in particular or Anglicans in general.  But the other eleven points represent a complete undermining of the Christian message as the early Church fathers understood it.

So what do we do with all this?

Marcus Borg and Sheldon Spong occupy an inexplicable amount of space in the “religion” section of general bookstores.  Pastors, priests and rectors of liberal denominations encourage the reading their books. For many such parishioners, authors of this ilk represent the only “Christian” books they will purchase in a given year.

I don’t.  Despite a sweetheart relationship with publisher HarperCollins, I have never ordered a book by either author for a customer, in fact, I have been rather outspoken that I do not wish to make it easy or convenient for someone to access their materials.

While I have strong feelings about the gay clergy and gay marriage issues that are found elsewhere on this blog, for me, the major issue is the authority of the Bible. Sola scriptura is not a hardline absolute for me, but as a guideline to understanding the major doctrines and ethics that form Christianity, it is reliable in 99% of all test cases and issues that arise.

The buck has to stop somewhere and for me it stops with the canon of scripture, not with a radical theologian from North Carolina who makes a living undermining the history and centuries-old practices of the faith that today, ironically, pays his salary.

From the Best-Of Vault

Things have to be a year old to get reposted here, so a new month brings new possibilities.  Here’s some things from May, 2010:

The Best of Christian Blogging I think real Christian blogging is being transparent. It’s sharing our lives with others. It’s relating to the struggle that some find themselves in. It’s celebrating what God is doing through local churches. It’s dreaming about what churches could be doing. It’s spreading the word about a new Christian book or CD or DVD. It’s encouraging one another. It’s confessing our faults. It’s keeping great quotations and stories alive on the internet. It’s laughing together. It’s praying for someone in the online community who is facing a great need.It’s about helping, informing, inspiring. And all of it aligning with Scripture; God’s word that must be carefully studied; must be correctly interpreted; must account for the past, present and future; must be defended from time to time; and must leave us somewhat ‘apart’ or truly ‘different’ from the world if we live out its teachings. From a comment I posted months ago at Beauty of the Bible

This is a series of charts and graphs that got posted when I got carried away doing a link list:

• C. Michael Patton may call his post Why I Am Not Charismatic, but he’s more Charismatic-friendly than most. Besides, I have a thing for charts:

• This post on theological systems isn’t very long, but makes a good point, and besides, like I said, I’ve got a thing for charts. Go to Matt Stone’s blog and double click the image there for a clearer vision.

• Will Mancini says that when you break down Jesus’ spoken word content, his influence boils down to the use of metaphors. As a matter of fact, this blog post even has a chart:

• This actually isn’t part of the Wednesday Link List — It was in my image file and I truly have no idea where I got this — but like I said, I have thing for charts:

And while we’re going chart crazy, here’s one from Christianity 201, from a year ago: A guy I knew locally, Paul Kern, is now pastoring the Highland Park Wesleyan Church in Ottawa, Ontario the capital city of Canada. I decided to see what he was up to by checking the church’s website and got more than I bargained for.

This chart shows their purpose as a church. The third horizontal section is about their particular ministries and won’t make a lot of sense to you and I, but I left it intact, since it shows how a theoretical purpose is played out in practical ways through their weekly programs and special events.  It begins: Our purpose at Highland Park Wesleyan Church is simple: We want to be disciples who go out and make disciples.

An Open Letter re. Theology Wars

Colin, at the simply titled blog Words, despairs over the recent theology wars that have erupted over things like heaven, things like hell, and things like the fate of every person who has ever lived; if you get my drift.  And so, he addresses both Christians and non-Christians in an open letter on his blog.  My first preference would be that you click and read it in context of his introduction, but failing that, I’ve reprinted it here.  In order to let its message fully percolate, he decided to close comments, and I’ve decided to follow suit here…

[to enlarge text hold down Ctrl and press + sign]

First, to my non-Christian friends:

I’m sorry. I can’t say this enough. Speaking on behalf of my incredibly dysfunctional family, Christians, I’m sorry that we’ve come across as the same self-righteous, I’m-right-you’re-wrong, jumping-to-conclusions, ignorant assholes that we always have. If you have Christian friends, I’m sure you’ve read some tweets, some Facebook discussions, or have even seen a news article on your favorite mainstream news website about how “evangelicals have called one of their own a heretic.”

“One of their own.”

It’s a shame, really.

I want to tell you that the true Gospel of Christ is so much bigger and so much better than these petty arguments that are going on right now in the Christian world. These debates don’t really matter in the long run. So please, try and look past the rhetorical argument (screaming match) going on right now and look at the living, breathing Christ standing behind it, because he sure as hell isn’t in it.

Matthew 7:16 says “by their fruit you will recognize them. Do people pick grapes from thornbushes, and figs from thistles?” And Galatians 5:22-23 says “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.” So as you look out across the Christian landscape, if you are going to judge us by anything—let it be that.

And I can’t stress enough that you try your hardest to not judge the God of the Bible by the way His followers are acting. Christ is alive and incarnate among us in Grace and Truth.

(And a side note, the earthquake/tsunami in Japan wasn’t Him either.)

Now, to my Christian friends:

We are not doing anything good for the Kingdom of God. Nothing. Our current arguments are nothing but rhetoric and in no way represent the living Christ.

Whatever “team” you are on in this current landscape, chances are that you are just “defending the true gospel.” The Gospel does not need to be defended. If we are walking in Grace and Truth like Jesus did, the true Gospel will speak louder than we ever could.

We must remember that we are one body with many parts. Our head is Christ. The body can’t survive if it cuts one of it’s own organs out. Well, it might survive, but it will walk with a limp at least.

If you are a Bell supporter, stop defending him. He’s a big boy and can take criticism. Defend nothing but the Gospel of Christ. His death and resurrection.

If you are a Bell detractor, please look at the fruit of his work before you start saying things like “false teacher,” “itching ears,” and “heretic.” Because if someone is leading folks toward the living Christ—that’s not false teaching. The false teachers the Scripture talks about would draw people away from Christ, not toward.

Regardless if you agree with Rob Bell or not (this is not about him by the way, this would be the same if any one else—Rick Warren, John Piper, John MacArthur, I don’t know—brought this conversation to light), he is doing work for the Kingdom of God. Matthew Paul Turner said on his blog yesterday that the fact of the matter is because of Bell’s message, many who probably closed the door on God a long time ago have a reason to reopen it. Let’s not give them a reason to slam it shut again. The Holy Spirit is the one who convicts, not us. If Bell’s teaching is off, the Holy Spirit of God will convict accordingly.

In John 13 Jesus, speaking to his followers, says that we will be known to the world by our love for one another. We must keep this at the top of our minds as we engage in public discourse. We are looking to the world right now less like two brothers who can’t get along, and more like two brothers who have decided to divorce themselves from their family.

If you believe the Bible is composed of the inerrant, literal words of God, that’s fine. I don’t. Which is also fine. I believe the Bible is authoritative, inspired by God, breathed by the Holy Spirit. I believe it’s the living, breathing Word of God. Literalist or not, we can both agree with that. The Word is Alive. Let’s let it be that and agree to disagree. If the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus is at the center of our teaching, preaching, and conversation, everything else is just theology.

One more thing, Christians:

The fruit of the Spirit is

love,

joy,

peace,

patience,

kindness,

goodness,

faithfulness,

gentleness,

and self control.

Matthew 7:16 says “by their fruit you will recognize them. Do people pick grapes from thornbushes, and figs from thistles?”

Correct answer: they don’t.

Wednesday Link List

I want to do something different this week and begin with a link to a page that contains about a dozen other links.  Last week seven influential pastors gathered together to discuss “the elephant in the room” — several of them actually — at the appropriately titled Elephant Room Conference. Trevin Wax does a subject-by-subject set of links to two other bloggers, Canada’s Chris Vacher and Arizona’s Jake Johnson.  It’s not full transcripts, just what you’d expect to post yourself if you were listening with two ears and typing with two fingers (or thumbs).

The Elephant Room subjects and speakers were:

• Session 1: Preaching to Build the Attendance vs. Preaching to Build the Attendees
  - Matt Chandler & Steven Furtick
• Session 2: Culture in the Church vs. Church in the Culture
  - Mark Driscoll & Perry Noble
• Session 3: Compassion Amplifies the Gospel vs. Compassion Distorts the Gospel
  - Greg Laurie & David Platt
• Session 4: Unity: Can’t We All Get Along? vs. Discernment: My Way or the Highway
  - Steven Furtick & James MacDonald
• Session 5: Multi-Site: Personality Cult vs. God’s Greater Glory
  - Perry Noble & Matt Chandler
• Session 6: Money?
  - David Platt & James MacDonald
• Session 7: Love the Gospel vs. Share the Gospel
  - Greg Laurie & Mark Driscoll

…I know, I know; now you’re curious.  There are a lot of interesting quotations from this one-day conference, which originated at one of the Harvest Bible Chapel locations and was simulcast to 15 U.S. and one Canadian location.  So here again is the magic link.  Also, Zach posted a video clip from the conference yesterday.

And now here’s the rest of this week’s blog connectivity:

• Yesterday marks one year since the passing of Internet Monk founder Michael Spencer.  His wife Denise shares Michael’s approach to adventure.
• Tony Campolo suggests to Huffington’s readers that there’s other dynamics at play in the saga that might be called, “The Rise and Fall of the Crystal Cathedral;” dynamics owing to the changing ethnic demographics of Garden Grove, California.
  
• Here’s a special link to the first chapter of former Planned Parenthood employee Abby Johnson’s book Unplanned — file opens as .pdf .
  
• If your first name is Tim and your second name begins with Ch—, chances are you have a new book about pornography.  First it was Tim Challies, and now Tim Chester.
  
• Summer is coming!  If you want to get dirty on the streets of Philadelphia with Shane Claiborne’s Simple Way community, here’s how you connect to attend events.
  
• Donald Miller buys a copy of Love Wins online and offers a straight-forward and concise review.
• For all you worship leaders out there:  Here’s how to tell if you’re a classical music nerd.
• This one’s from 2007, but our YouTube link this week asks the musical question, “What if Worship was Like an NBA Game?“
• From the blog, Small Steps to Glory, here’s a look at a modern day Goliath (well the height part anyway) which gives some perspective to the “David And” story.
• At Arthur Sido’s blog this week, I discovered this trailer for an upcoming documentary on the education system, Indoctrination.
• For all you techies out there, here’s a step-by-step guide on how to broadcast your church services on the internet.
  
• 130 Churches in Calgary, Alberta, Canada are coming together to raise $1.5M to reduce the mortgage on a transitional housing facility established in 2009.
  
• Proverbs 3 promises us, “When you lie down, you will not be afraid;when you lie down, your sleep will be sweet.” So then what about those of us who simply don’t get a good night’s sleep.  Ryan rumbles through a topic that I totally identify with.
  
• If you find the links I run to religion stories at CNN and USAToday a little too American for you and you’d like to explore stories from the broader world of spiritual interest, here’s the link to the religion page of Reuters News Service.
• send your own link suggestions by 8:00 PM EST on Monday.
  
• Today’s picture:  Songwriter Mandy Thompson cures writer’s block by going analog:

• I’ve always had a huge interest in the spiritual themes that turn up in the comic pages of the daily newspaper.  Comic writers can say things in ways others cannot.  I’ve used Dennis the Menace — now drawn by Marcus Hamilton — here a few times, with the result that one of the panels now hangs in my office.  Here’s another kids-eye-view of God as only Dennis can see it: