Throwing Out Jesus with the Bathwater- No Kind of Christian

April 15, 2008

“For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.” -Ephesians 2:8-9

“If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved…. For everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.” -Romans 10:9, 13

“Heaven is full of forgiven people. Hell is full of forgiven people. Heaven is full of people God loves, whom Jesus died for. Hell is full of forgiven people God loves, whom Jesus died for. The difference is how we choose to live... Jesus measures their eternal standings in terms of not what they said or believed but how they lived, specifically in regard to the hell around them.” -Rob Bell, Velvet Elvis, pp.146, 148

Rob Bell is not a Christian!  Okay, that may be too emphatic and I honestly cannot say that nor would I want to give the impression that I think I can.  Sure, most people consider Rob Bell to be a Christian minister in a Christian church who writes Christian books.  In fact, Rob Bell is listed as one of the 50 most influentuial Christians in America (#10).  However, I do not believe that we can rightly call his ministry or teachings Christian and feel comfortable with that, since more often than not he appears to be shooting his ball at the wrong basket.

But why would I say such a thing?  Well, first we should just look at what it means to be a Christian.  The name “Christian” comes directly from the name “Christ”, which means “the anointed one,” and is taken to be a person who is a disciple of Christ and his teachings.  The term first appears in Acts 11:26 saying, “And in Antioch the disciples were first called Christians.”  In light of this we see that a fundamental motivation behind attaching the name “Christian” to something is that it is somehow associated with discipleship to Christ.

So, how does this affect Bell’s work?  Well, if we look at the above quotes (as well as past posts) I believe that there is no honest way to say that Bell is advocating any sort of discipleship to Jesus Christ in his teachings.  We see, as we read through Bell’s popular book Velvet Elvis that he gets off on the right foot saying, “While we were unable to do anything about our condition, while we were helpless, while we were unaware of just how bad the situation was, Jesus died. (p.145)”  And then, Bell states, “Jesus died … for everybody” and that “[e]verybody’s sins on the cross with Jesus.”  This may or may not be contentious, but we’ll deal with that later.  The truly contentious part is what comes next:

“So this reality, this forgiveness, this reconciliation, is true for everybody….  This reality then isn’t something we make true about ourselves by doing something.  It is already true.  Our choice is to live in this new reality or cling to a reality of our own making.” (p.146)

Do you see it?  Do you see the problem?  What’s happened?  Why now are we able to choose for ourselves which “reality” we live in? (And what’s with all this Matrix, rabbit hole mash-up language anyways?)  If before Christ died on the cross we were “unable to do anything,” why is it that now we are?  Or, if we are all now free from the burden of sin (which I believe is what Bell would say), how is it that we can still “cling to a reality of our own making,” which would itself be sin?  Either our sin burden and God’s wrath have been removed for good or they haven’t.  There must be a solution.

But, instead of solutions, we get more of the same.  Looking at the above quote we see Bell state that “Heaven is full of forgiven people. Hell is full of forgiven people. Heaven is full of people God loves, whom Jesus died for. Hell is full of forgiven people God loves, whom Jesus died for. The difference is how we choose to live.”  But this is ridiculous.  How possibly could a forgiven person wind up in Hell.  What bit of good did God’s forgiveness do if it didn’t keep them from being damned?  Charles Spurgeon puts it best in saying,

“He has punished Christ, why should He punish twice for one offence? Christ has died for all His people’s sins, and if thou art in the covenant, thou art one of Christ’s people. Damned thou canst not be. Suffer for thy sins thou canst not. Until God can be unjust, and demand two payments for one debt, He cannot destroy the soul for whom Jesus died.”

God is no god at all if he kills his son on the cross, “the righteous for the unrighteous” (1 Peter 3:18), and yet does not remove his wrath and condemnation from us as he said (1 John 4:10, Romans 8:1).

And to top it off, Bell spits directly in the face of Romans 10:9 when he says that the people will be judged “in terms of not what they said or believed but how they lived.”  The Bible clearly states, through Paul in the book of Romans, that confessing with the mouth and believing in the heart are the necessary requirements for salvation.  Yet it is this proclaimation which Bell fully (and I would claim purposefully) denies.

So, in summary, to Bell we have a God who sent his son to die on the cross to forgive us of sins, the burden of which we were unable to do anything about beforehand, and now that everyone is forgiven we have the ultimate responsibility in determining our fate, and that being not through anything we believe or say, and not even about following Jesus, or relying on Jesus, or anything to do with Jesus, but solely upon whether or not we do “good” or “evil”.  I must say that this is the most contrived load of horsecrap I have ever seen put together in one book, nevermind a book which the Christian community raves about and longs to “learn” more from.

I may not be able to judge whether or not Rob Bell is a Christian, but I can say that I am seriously concerned about the souls of the people who turn to his ministry for their spiritual guidance.  As a Presbyterian pastor I read put it as eloquently as I could have ever imagined, “People will go to hell over this.  You just don’t get up in front of ten thousand people on Sunday and play around with the Word of God.”  Amen.

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Posted by Todd Burus

Throwing Jesus Out with the Bathwater- My God’s Too Big

April 13, 2008

“And I tell you, everyone who acknowledges me before men, the Son of Man also will acknowledge before the angels of God, but the one who denies me before men will be denied before the angels of God. And everyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but the one who blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven.” -Luke 12:8-10

“For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus” -1 Timothy 2:5

“A generation or two ago, defenses of Christianity that focused on human sinfulness were potent; a common metaphor showed God on one side of a diagram and a stick figure (you) on the other; the chasm between was labeled “Sin,” and the only bridge across was in the shape of Jesus’ cross. But emergents ask, ‘What kind of God can’t reach across a chasm?’ “ -Tony Jones, The New Christians, p.78

“But God is a being whose activity is, by definition, not contingent. God can forgive whomever God wants to forgive, whether or not the forgiven person has adequately confessed his or her sins.” -Tony Jones, The New Christians, p.99

A long standing debate among Christians is what is the role of the sovereignty of God over salvation versus the free will of man. A common way of getting to the heart of a person’s beliefs on this issue is the question of “how big is your God?” Someone who touts the free will of man to choose to be saved (loosely called an Arminian) would be said to have a small God, one incapable of saving man, whereas someone who believes in the sovereign election of God (a Calvinist) would be said to have a big God, one who irresistibly brings those who are to be saved to him. Yet, in this debate between Calvinists and Arminians, one thing is clear, that being that a person must confess and repent from their sins in order to be saved.

However, I believe the Christianity of the Emerging church movement, as pictured by Tony Jones in The New Christians, portrays a God that is even bigger then the God of the Calvinist (of which, by the way, I am one). In fact, it appears that the God of the Emerging movement is so big that he can’t even exist, and I think that this is quite possibly a big problem.

Why do I say this? Well, if we take Jones’ quotes from above we see that he, and by the premise of his book the Emergings, take God to be so big that there is nothing that can stop him from saving a person, not even sin! By the first quote we are told that God should be big enough that he can just pass over sin in order to bring us to him, without the necessity of the cross to connect us. But this is absurd! If we look at Romans 3 we see that there is only one way in which God is able to overlook our sins and justify us so that we may be in his presence (i.e. in heaven) and that is by the cross of Christ:

“For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.” (Romans 3:23-26)

So, the only way in which God is able to cross the “chasm” of sin is by the redemption which was purchased by Christ on calvary, i.e. the cross.

But maybe, if one wished to play devil’s advocate (I say that with tongue-in-cheek) they would claim that Jones is actually implying a Calvinist interpretation of salvation, that being that God is the only one capable of bringing us into a saving relationship with him. If this were the case then I would be happy and would welcome the Emergings to my team. However, I have good reason to believe this is not the case because of what Jones says in the second quote.

In the second quote above, Jones says that “God can forgive whomever God wants to forgive, whether or not the forgiven person has adequately confessed his or her sins.” Yet, if we look at the passage from Luke 12:8-10 (which is paralleled in Matthew 12:31-32 and Mark 3:28-30) we see that there exists a sin which God cannot forgive. And what exactly is that sin? As Jesus says, it is “blasphemy against the Spirit (Matthew 12:31).” But, what is blasphemy against the Spirit? Well, to understand that we must look at what the Spirit does. According to John 16:8, Jesus says of the Spirit that “he will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment.” Thus, if one is blaspheming the Spirit then they are opposing the one who convicts of sin, who longs to bring them into righteousness, and thus refusing to acknowledge or repent from their own sin. Therefore, God cannot forgive anyone he wants and maintain his righteousness, namely, he cannot forgive those who have not truly (or, in the purposefully ambiguous language, adequately) repented from their sin, since it is those who have blasphemed (rejected) the Spirit.

Then, lastly, why does this mean the Emerging God cannot exist? Because, if God were to cross the “chasm” of sin without going through the cross, and if God were to forgive the sin of those who did not seek forgiveness, then God would cease to be righteous and would be condoning the sin which in itself fails to uphold the glory of God’s name. Thus, in accepting his own name to be attacked, he is therefore denying himself, and so he is no longer God, “for he cannot deny himself (2 Timothy 2:13)”

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Throwing Out Jesus with the Bathwater- The Tragic Tale of Trucker Frank

April 11, 2008

“The saying is trustworthy: If anyone aspires to the office of overseer, he desires a noble task. Therefore an overseer must be above reproach, the husband of one wife, sober-minded, self-controlled, respectable, hospitable, able to teach, not a drunkard, not violent but gentle, not quarrelsome, not a lover of money. He must manage his own household well, with all dignity keeping his children submissive, for if someone does not know how to manage his own household, how will he care for God’s church? He must not be a recent convert, or he may become puffed up with conceit and fall into the condemnation of the devil. Moreover, he must be well thought of by outsiders, so that he may not fall into disgrace, into a snare of the devil.” -1 Timothy 3:1-7

“Although he planned to attend seminary, Frank got work as a pastor immediately out of college, first at a small fundamentalist church and then at a larger Mennonite church in Salem. Both pastorates were short-lived…. A stint as a carpenter followed and then Frank and his wife moved to Missouri to be closer to family. he was driving a school bus and teaching high school when yet another small Baptist church in the country asked him to serve as the part-time pastor, which he did for six years until his marriage broke up…. In the midst of the divorce, he swallowed a bottle of pills.” -Tony Jones, The New Christians, p.87

“But because anyone, including Trucker Frank, can speak freely in this emergent church, my seminary-trained eyes were opened to find a truth in the Bible that had previously eluded me.” -Tony Jones, The New Christians, p.92

In reading through Tony Jones’ new book “The New Christians” there was a particular passage which really struck me as being the summation of the whole book. It revolves around a trucker and recently acquired member of Jones’ church named Frank. Frank has been a pastor at three different denominational churches, at least two of which he was forced out of, and for a time was a local celebrity at a Christian bookstore in Minneapolis before the management was tired of his distracting employees from their work.

However, the crux of Frank’s story, and in parallel the main message of the book, comes out when we are given witness to a Sunday night service at Solomon’s Porch. As Jones makes abundantly clear throughout, the sermons at most emerging churches are not in the traditional expository style, but instead revolve around discussion of the text and allowing members to bring their own perspectives into the message. This night is no different, and as the message turns towards accountability in the church, one of the participants asks the group “What would it take for someone to be excommunicated from this church?” Specifically the question revolves around Jesus’ words in Matthew 18.

Now, there is no disagreement about the first three steps, but when it comes to the passage “And if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector (v.17)” Frank decides to turn the traditional understanding on its’ head. Traditionally people have interpretted this as saying that we should excommunicate the person at this point. However, in Frank’s interpretation he asks, “And how did Jesus treat tax collectors and pagans? He welcomed them. He didn’t excommunicate or ban them.” This new interpretation, as Jones states, takes the scales off his eyes:

Frank was right! This saying of Jesus doesn’t call for excommunication at all but rather for opening the church doors wide, welcoming even those who’ve committed sins against people inside the church. (Jones, The New Christians, p.91)

Now, if a truly new interpretation was brought forth which enlightened the scripture in a way we had never seen this would be something to wonder at. The only problem is, Frank wasn’t right! By definition, the word “excommunicate” means to “deprive or suspend membership in a religious community.” And taking this further, if we were to treat someone who was a brother (i.e. fellow church member) as a tax collector or Gentile, what would we be doing? That’s right, we would be removing them from membership in the church! So, this actually IS about excommunication.

But, if Frank is wrong, why was everyone so adamant that he was right? Because he spoke with (false) authority. And why was Frank so sure himself? Well, as Frank says, he had been meditating on this passage in light of the fact that he had been excommunicated from churches in the past (motive?), when he came to the conclusion that his interpretation must be the corret one. Then, to top it off, “Frank then went looking for versions of the Bible that corroborated his thoughts. (p.91)” So, not only did Frank have his own special revelation, but he was kind enough to make sure that some translation of scripture somewhere showed some semblance of agreement with him! That Frank is so great!

Really though, this is the problem. When we let just anyone come in off the street and have “conversation” with the church during the sermon, we are bound to find the inmates running the asylum before too long. It only takes the slightest bit of charm and charisma to advance the most half-baked ideas, even among the most “discerning” of people. Hitler didn’t work alone, he duped an entire nation (or world if you want to go that far). Jim Jones led 900 people to suicide/murder. And, oh yeah, in Genesis 3, the devil conned two people into ruining Creation for all of us!

There is a reason the Bible gives specific qualifications for leadership in the church. Reasons why Paul is so stern with Timothy about how to select deacons and elders. It is because this church is Jesus’ church, not ours, and there are too many wolves and lions seeking someone to devour for us to leave the doors of leadership swinging open. The gift of teaching, as we are warned in James 3, is not for everyone, and it is a dangerous thing to try and assume that role upon yourself.

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Throwing Out Jesus with the Bathwater- A Not-So Elevated View of Scripture

April 8, 2008

“Here there is not Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free; but Christ is all, and in all.” -Colossians 3:11

“I think the Pauline prohibition of women teaching over men in 2 Timothy and 2 Corinthians was culturally relevant for the time but is now superseded by the Pauline exhortations that ‘in Christ there is no more male or female, Jew or Greek, slave or free, barbarian or Scythian.’” -Tony Jones, The New Christians (p.123)

One of the biggest problems I have noticed in observing the leaders of the emerging church is their uncanny ability to play it fast-and-loose with scripture. To give oneself a modicum of credibility in the “evangelical” community, and to be able to really stick it to a questionning dissenter, emerging leaders have to use the written word of God. However, to really use it is not enough, because to really get it to say what they want they often have to ab-use it.

Take the above quote. As I was reading through Tony Jones’ recent release, The New Christians, I came across a passage in the chapter on “theology” (as he would define it) in which he describes an encounter between himself as a speaker and “the Brain”, a questionner who is “full of Bible trivia and minutiae” with a mouth that “longs to speak.” In this encounter, the Brain asks him, “Isn’t the Bible clear that women are not meant to be pastors?” Now, the point is not to get at Jones’ actual answer to the question, but instead to accuse the Brain of being a Biblical literalist who is trying to corner Jones as being a relativist. However, it is Jones’ mention of his reply that is revealing.

In Jones’ reply, which is the quote from above, he uses the statement “in Christ there is no more male or female, Jew or Greek, slave or free, barbarian or Scythian,” which he also footnotes as being Colossians 3:11. Yet, when I read this something didn’t sit right with me. In all my recollection of this scripture I could not recall ever having heard that “there is no more male or female.” So, acting as a good Biblical literalist (oops!) I pulled out my pocket English Standard Version Bible and checked. Sure enough, no mention of gender there. I then grabbed my Holman Christian Standard Bible off the shelf. Nope, none there either.

These translations, though I trust them as very faithful, may be accused as being of a “conservative” bend. Therefore, when I got home I checked online at BibleGateway.com. Scanning through the NIV, the NASB, the KJV, the NKJV, The Message, The Amplified Bible, the New Living Translation, the Contemporary English Version, the New Century Version, the American Standard Version, and Today’s NIV (there were even more, but you get the point) I found no translation which even remotely approached Jones’ statement that gender distinctions have been eradicated within Christianity. (This isn’t surprising since God created this division in a sinless world and we see it upheld throughout the New Testament gospels and epistles!) Thus, one must make the assumption that Jones, in seeking to advance his own feelings, made this subtle addition to the text, hoping it would go unnoticed.

We see the same respect for scripture displayed in another passage of the book where Tony is telling “The Terrific Tale of Trucker Frank.” In this passage, there comes a part where Frank reveals a new, nontraditional (and, as I will show in a future post, flat-out wrong) interpretation of Matthew 18:15-20. Frank has the revelation reading his Bible, which does not agree with his views, and so we’re told that “Frank then went looking for versions of the Bible that corroborated his thoughts. (p.91)” So, it was not enough that Frank had to bring about his own mistaken interpretation of the text, but then he had to seek out a Bible which justified his view. As much as the author rails against fundamentalists who misuse scripture to justify their oppression of blacks or women, it amazes me that he doesn’t have the same vitriole for his buddy who searches for a translation to justify his new liberal-minded take. (Note: the translation he settles on doesn’t necessarily agree with what he says either, but hey, when did that ever stop anyone?)

Therefore, it is clear from reading through Tony Jones’ book that this new breed of Christians holds scripture in high regard only as long as it says what they want, and if it doesn’t then they just make up their own. I think the Bible has something to say about this too:

“Every word of God proves true;
he is a shield to those who take refuge in him.
Do not add to his words,
lest he rebuke you and you be found a liar.” -Proverbs 30:5-6

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Throwing Out Jesus with the Bathwater: Jesus is Not the Only Way (Part 2)

April 6, 2008

“Now when they heard this they were cut to the heart, and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, ‘Brothers, what shall we do?’ And Peter said to them, ‘Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit’…. So those who received his word were baptized, and there were added that day about three thousand souls.” -Acts 2:37-38, 41

“But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy. Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul. Keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable, so that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation.” -1 Peter 2:9-12

“I don’t believe making disciples must equal making adherents to the Christian religion. It may be advisable in many (not all!) circumstances to help people become followers of Jesus and remain with their Buddhist, Hindu, or Jewish contexts.” -Brian McLaren, A Generous Orthodoxy

In our first discussion on the disturbing idea that many of the leaders in the so-called emerging church would deny Jesus as being the only way to salvation, we evaluated the distortion/denial of a traditional interpretation of John 14:6 by Velvet Elvis author Rob Bell. Today we will look at another, somewhat more slippery statement by Brian McLaren in his book A Generous Orthodoxy.

In this statement, given above, we see McLaren state that he believes it to be “advisable” to make people “followers of Christ” without making them “Christians.” What is difficult about this, and about his statement that they should remain with their “Buddhist, Hindu, or Jewish contexts” is that throughout scripture we see it declared that those who become “followers of Christ” will become exiles to the world, especially to those “contexts” which they were in before. Therefore, one must ask, how is it that McLaren believes someone can follow Christ while not changing their lifestyle, when Christ specifically says that “whoever does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it (Matthew 10:38, 39)”?

Beyond this, we see it exemplified throughout the New Testament literature that those who accept Christ are to be set apart from those who don’t. In Acts 2:38, the whole purpose behind Peter instructing people to “be baptized” following their repentance is to publicly and dramatically remove them from their current Jewish “context.” This is necessary because Christ himself said that “whoever denies me before men, I also will deny before my Father who is in heaven (Matthew 10:33).” If these new followers were afraid to be baptized then that stood as their public denial of Christ, and as such would cast light on the genuiness of their faith. So, to say that people may remain in their present nonChristian context after they become followers of Christ flies in the face of the earliest teachings of the church.

That said, we must look further to see what is the true motivation for this statement. For, if one must repent from sin and profess faith in Jesus Christ as their Savior in order to receive salvation (what I would assert as “following Christ”), and if thus following Christ one must become an exile from not just their “context” but actually the whole world (John 15:19, Philippians 3:20), then it would be a logical conclusion to assume that someone who has been saved cannot remain in their old, nonChristian “context.” Therefore, it must be some part of this which McLaren denies. Judging by the content of other statements he has made, as well as the statements of the people he associates with, I am convinced that the part which McLaren denies is the statement that one must actually profess a faith in Jesus Christ to be saved (though he may disagree with the other part as well).

In fact, it may eventually come to be that McLaren believes ALL ways are okay. In an article published online at Christianity Today, Brian McLaren, in explaining in part some of his views of hell and damnation says,

Tony [Campolo] and I might disagree on the details, but I think we are both trying to find an alternative to both traditional Universalism and the narrow, exclusivist understanding of hell [that unless you explicitly accept and follow Jesus, you are excluded from eternal life with God and destined for hell]…
Although in many ways I find myself closer to the view of God held by some universalists than I do the view held by some exclusivists, in the end I’d rather turn our attention from the questions WE think are important to the question JESUS thinks is most important.

So, here we truly see it. If on one end is “traditional universalism” (again, we see Slick Mc redefining stuff without any new definition) and on the other is Jesus as the only way, then for McLaren to be finding an alternative view it is implicit that he does not view Jesus as the sole path to come to the Father by.

Thus, I believe the debate is settled and the results are clear. In the emerging church it is not necessary to “confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord” in order to “be saved” (Romans 10:9). This is absolutely unacceptable!

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Throwing Out Jesus with the Bathwater: Jesus is Not the Only Way (Part 1)

April 3, 2008

” ‘Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in me. In my Father’s house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also. And you know the way to where I am going.’ Thomas said to him, ‘Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?’ Jesus said to him, ‘I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.’ “ -John 14:1-6

“Jesus at one point claimed to be “the way, the truth, and the life.” Jesus was not making claims about one religion being better than all other religions. That completely misses the point, the depth, and the truth. Rather, he was telling those who were following him that his way is the way to the depth of reality. This kind of life Jesus was living, perfectly and completely in connection and cooperation with God, is the best possible way for a person to live. It is how things are…. Perhaps a better question than who’s right, is who’s living rightly?” -Rob Bell, Velvet Elvis

“I don’t believe making disciples must equal making adherents to the Christian religion. It may be advisable in many (not all!) circumstances to help people become followers of Jesus and remain with their Buddhist, Hindu, or Jewish contexts.” -Brian McLaren, A Generous Orthodoxy

With this post (and its sequel) I would like to introduce what promises to be a recurring and lively “conversation” over the rising trend of emerging, or emergent, Christianity. I hope, through this series and this blog, to shine light on some of the more dangerous teachings that are being espoused in the writings and the pulpits of many prominent emerging leaders. (Note: as a nice introduction you may want to view this previous post).

That said, I want to begin with two statements that absolutely shocked me (though not necessarily surprised me) when I first read them. Both of the above statements, made by two very popular leaders in two very hip books, lead to one disturbing image of this new emerging theology, that being that Jesus is no longer the only way. Instead, we are being told that neither (1) is it necessary to accept Jesus to receive salvation, nor (2) is it necessary to serve Jesus once you’ve been saved. Below we will deal with (1) and the next post will handle (2).

In Bell’s quote, we see that it is his opinion of John 14:6 that Jesus is not putting himself up as the “mediator between God and men” (1 Timothy 2:5), but instead Christ is saying that of all the imaginable ways to live, living like him is the “best possible way.” This certainly was a new reading to me, as I expect that it is fairly new to most of you as well. However, I see, among others, two major problems with this.

To begin with, the text of John 14 just doesn’t seem to actually allow for this reading. As we see in verses 1-4, Jesus is describing to them the Father’s house and his travel to prepare a place for them there. He then makes the remark that “you know the way to where I am going (v.4)”, to which Thomas says, “We do not know where you are going. How can we know the way? (v.5)” It is at this point which Jesus makes the statement in question:

Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. (v.6)”

So, it seems clear that Jesus is speaking of a physical way, right? Apparently not to Bell. To be fair, if we look to the original Greek, the word translated “the way”, hodos, means primarily “a traveled road, way”, but it also has a metaphorical meaning of “a course of conduct.” Thus, Bell has to assume the second translation here. But then the question is, why does Jesus tell them that he is the course of conduct when all along he has been talking about going somewhere? As a matter of fact, why would he say “I am the course of conduct” instead of something more intelligible like “My life is the example for the course of conduct”? And, if he is talking about his life being “the best possible way for a person to live”, then why does he say “no one comes to the Father except through me”? It would make sense that, if Jesus is giving a choice here, then he would say something more to the tune of “it is more enjoyable to come to the Father through me”. This seems pretty insurmountable in my mind.

However, assuming Bell is able to convince you of this amazingly twisted-up reading of the text, there is still the question of just exactly how Jesus lived his life. If the best possible way of living is the way set out by Christ, then in order to mimic that, we must have a firm understanding of how Jesus lived. But in this we arrive at another caveat of Bell’s theology, that being that his emerging/postmodern worldview does not allow for certainty in our readings. The emerging group seems pretty certain that Jesus was about love and tolerance, but they aren’t quite sure if he actually meant to talk about Hell so much. They know that Jesus has faith in us (Bell states later in Elvis that “what I am learning is that Jesus believes in me.” Isn’t that nice!), but they don’t know if it is necessary for us to have faith in Jesus.

Therefore, it seems like a bit of a quandary if Jesus is telling us that the best possible way to live is to live like him and yet we can not quite be sure how Jesus himself actually lived. It doesn’t make much sense for him to do that now does it?

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Posted by Todd Burus