John Piper Thinks I’m Going to Hell
John Piper thinks I am going to hell. No, he didn’t witness me murdering an enemy (at least I don’t think he did) or anything else that is out of the realm of normal sin. I don’t believe he saw me blaspheme the Holy Spirit or anything unforgivable like that. In fact, his problem doesn’t even seem to be with me. John Piper seems to have a problem with how I was saved, or at least how I think I was saved.
Let me explain. John Piper, one of the most influential leaders of the Neo-Reformed movement currently en vogue in conservative American Evangelicalism and the sponsors of my very own theological education, takes issue with dreams. Specifically, he says that he “suspicious… big time” of Muslims seeing Jesus in their dreams and converting to Christianity. While the angels in heaven rejoice at a single lost sheep being found, John’s not quite ready to break out the champagne quite yet, and not just because there are Baptists in the room. Piper’s problem, theologically speaking, is with the plan of salvation seemingly at work. He argues that people must hear the gospel to be saved, and this requires a human effort to preach to the person before he or she can be saved. He says in a recent talk to pastors,
“The Gospel needs to be heard. How shall they believe unless they hear and how shall they hear without a preacher and how shall they preach unless they be sent. That’s a pretty significant argument in Romans 10.”
His argument is simple, in order to be saved, you must first be preached to.
The problem for me is that long before I ever attended a Protestant church or heard their articulation of the gospel, a voice spoke to me from some unseen source and imprinted upon me some truths: There is a God, Jesus is God, I should be saved from my own hell but cannot do it myself, God offers needed salvation freely by his own grace. These are ideas that I accepted as fact long before I ever picked up a Bible or hung out with Christians. So radical were these ideas to my cultural background that I believed I was the only one who knew these things. Imagine my surprise some years later when a friend invited me to church only to find out that there was a whole religion based on the ideas I had carried with me. I am a disciple as a result of direct, supernatural revelation; I am not a convert because of a preacher’s words.
So what am I to do? Should I abandon my call to ministry because I can’t possibly be saved. Should I go to a Baptist church on revival Sunday and wait until the end to run down the aisle and tearfully throw myself at the preacher’s feet. I suppose I am going to have to get baptized again. Third time’s the charm you know. Perhaps I just need to critically examine Pastor Piper’s claim.
Having been educated in circles highly influenced Piper, I know that Romans is a pretty significant book for him. I know that many of his tradition view salvation through the lens of Romans as a universal truth. Evidence for this theology is granted when one simply asks, “what must I do to be saved?” Rarely will a Neo-Reformed take a person to any of the myriad occasions when someone asked Jesus the very same question, rather they will be taken down a Romans’ Road of disjointed verses that provide a simple set of propositions, that if a person agrees to, assures them of salvation. The problem with that view, is that the book letter to the Romans is a particular communication regarding a particular situation in time. Of course it is inspired and there is a great deal we should learn from it, especially the nature of sin and salvation, but to make it the exclusive plan of salvation for the world is just wrong. Romans 10, as quoted by Piper as the basis for his thought being discussed, is a great admonition for the propagation of the gospel throughout the world. But it is unfair to the text, especially in the context of the whole Bible, to declare that it presents the exclusive path of salvation. I think the writer Paul would agree; but if Piper is right, Paul is not saved anyway so who cares what he thinks.
The main problem I see with Piper’s thinking is that he falls off a logical cliff that Neo-Reformed theology likes to walk perilously close to. By turning Romans into God’s tract of salvation, and pouring over each individual verse with an a priori understanding that each individual verse is a stand alone universal truth for all time, we are forced to turn salvation into an equation which must contain specific parts. When this hermeneutic is applied to Romans 10, one has no choice to declare that people can’t be saved unless they have heard, and that they cannot hear without a preacher. Therefore a preacher becomes neccessary for the salvation of another. The problem with this thinking of course is that human effort plays an essential role in a person’s salvation. Salvation is no longer a free gift from God gotten without our merit, but has now become dependent on someone else’s merit, namely the preacher! Put another way, the fate of my soul depends not only on God’s grace or my response, but a third person who must be faithful to preach to me. This is the “Theology of Glory” that Martin Luther fought so hard against to establish “Reformed Theology.” I feel the need to say that while John Piper has said and continues to say many theologically insightful things, in this case his suspicions are wrong, proving that even good preachers can sometimes produce bad theology.
Under the direction and lordship of Jesus Christ, there are many paths to salvation. Each one of us has our story, and God hasn’t even finished writing most of them. When we equate our experience with the exclusive truth of God, we run the danger of wandering into the territory of Job, who believed that he could grasp the mind of God, not realizing the meagerness of his own understanding. We do well to take Job’s lesson to heart and not bite off more than we can theologically chew.
Recent Events
I haven’t slept much in the past few days. As I write this it is 6am Monday, and I laid my head down shortly after midnight and gave up trying to sleep around 1:30. Since then I have watch a few bad movies from the early 1990′s and thought about this weekend’s events and their possible far-reaching implications for my life.
As I drove home from work in the early hours of Saturday morning, I witnessed a bad crash. One car attempted to overtake and pass another car at a high rate of speed, just as he had done moments earlier to me. The driver seemed to be oblivious to the many open lanes on the near-deserted freeway and chose to come right up to the rear bumper of the car he was passing before changing lanes. He miscalculated and clipped the bumper of a middle-aged mechanic heading home to his wife after a long night at work. The mechanic’s car spun halfway around before slamming into the freeway’s center divider, momentarily leaving the ground before coming to a smashing halt in the carpool lane. Almost out of reflex I turned on my hazard lights and began to slow my car, moving closer to the scene of the crash. I knew that if the driver of the crashed car was injured, I may be the only person in a position to help. I passed the wreck and parked my car about 100 yards ahead of it in the carpool lane and sprinted back to the mangled car to seek the condition of the driver. I found him stumbling out of his car, dazed but only minorly injured. His raised his cellphone, which had been smashed while in his pants pocket. I used my phone to call for help. As I was being directed to the right agency, I found that the man was in decent health but confused from the crash. We stood between his wrecked car and mine when we saw a car careening toward us, seemingly unaware that there was a car right in front of him. He watched helplessly as that car narrowly avoided crashing into his wrecked vehicle. With no way to signal other drivers or protect ourselves from another collision we jumped over the concrete barrier that separated the two directions of the freeway, all while I was describing the scene to the police dispatcher. Moments after we landed on the other side of the freeway (feeling more secure as construction had closed two lanes and we had some breathing room from oncoming traffic) I saw yet another car screaming toward the wreck. I unconsciously yelled into the phone, “he’s going to hit!” Again at the last moment the driver swerved, although this time he would not be as lucky as his predecessor. The driver slammed on his brakes as he jerked the wheel, locking his wheels and skidding sideways. Although he was able to pass the wrecked car, he almost immediately skidded right back into the lane we had been standing in just seconds before. His car slammed into mine, pinning it between him and the wall. I ran to see if he was ok, only to find him saved by his airbag.
When all was said and done, the darkness and speed had claimed about 10 cars, none as seriously as the three that lay in the carpool lane. Other vehicles were damaged after hitting or running over debris, including at least two cars that hit my now-detached bumper. I stayed on scene for hours as the highway patrol tried to make sense of the incident. It wasn’t until later that the my leg began to bruise from being hit by a piece of car that flew over the median during one of the many collisions. Later still I found the abrasion on my forearm, its origin still a mystery to me, and the hole in my newly purchased work shirt indicating that something even contacted my chest without my realization.
When I returned home and the adrenaline began to wear off I realized that not only was my family’s sole car (which was our first purchase as a married couple and had only months before been paid in full) destroyed, but that I had come within seconds of my own end. Had I and the mechanic not jumped over the median when we did, we would have been struck by the car before it came to rest against mine. I surely would have either been thrown into the air onto a still busy freeway, flattened under his skidding tires, or pinned against my own demolished car. I am still strangely numb to these facts.
In the immediate aftermath of the incident, I spent most of my time on my phone, talking to my insurance company and trying to figure out how big of a financial loss this will be to my already overextended family. It wasn’t until after these conversations were complete that I realized I came very close to not having such conversations ever again.
I honestly have no analysis for this event. Was this a case of God’s providence protecting my life? Was I just lucky? Was this a case of no good deed going unpunished? I don’t know the answer, but I am unsatisfied with any of the theses. This was simply a recounting of recent events.
Grace for the Community
I spent this past weekend in community. While camping up in the mountains with a few dozen of my wife’s teammates and their families, I had nothing to do but share life with others. That can be a scary thing.
In my “normal life” I can distract myself with the countless gadgets I know. These gadgets effectively keep me isolated from real community, while at the same time fooling me into thinking that I am “socially networked.” In reality, technological isolation allows me to interact with community on my own terms, keeping it arms length away while dialogues occur in one-sided statements no longer than 120 characters. I have grown comfortable in this. The personal benefits appear immense. My public persona is chosen and directed with all intentioned, allowing for only an intentional self to be displayed. I can even adopt multiple personas to meet the perceived desires of different groups. Michael the pastor can live alongside Michael the comedian with few being any the wiser where the real person lies.
Camping does not afford one this luxury. Everything you are and everything you aren’t is on full display when you are camping. Even if well prepared in advanced, most people can only prepare a few hours worth of persona-based talk and actions. Without the ability to sneak off and replenish the well of image, the facade quickly crumbles. Despite the bugs, heat, and lack of technological entertainment, I think the facade-crumbling closeness of true community is what I dislike most about camping. What a sad revelation.
For years I have been a part of various ministries, all claiming to be authentic communities. Yet in that time I have never felt free to be me. Each church “community” was a carefully crafted image of community, not a true community. Almost every one of those groups had a clear mission statement about who they were as a community. The community was always XYZ, which left very little room for the 23 other letters. This group was a community of families who lived up the American dream and all things wholesome. That group was a rebellous antithesis to the group that spawned and paid for it, an authentic community of gritty people from the (suburban) streets, and please, no one over 30 need apply. The next group was theologically sound and confrontational to an evil world (no matter how much they imitated it). The next was all about love (as long as you fit in). No wonder church hopping is so prevalent. It’s not that I can’t find a church like me, it’s that I am not the same me every week. So I move around to find a community that fits my mood on any given day. The community values homogony, and I just want to fit in.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German theologian who ministered against the backdrop of Nazism, sought out community. In a sea of oppression and violence, Christians had to band together for survival. What he discovered was that there was no perfect community, because communities were made of people like me and him, imperfect men and women who struggled with finding spiritual and emotional respite. In his book Life Together, he explorers not only how community really works, but explains the danger of longing for the fictional perfection that one never stops hoping to find in community. He calls longing for a perfect (or even better) community idolatry, because we are seeking for more than what God has already given us.
What would it look like if we stopped searching for the better community? Would our churches be places of grace and humility? Would they be welcoming to people who clearly don’t “fit in?” Would pastors and church members stop abandoning the dilapidated city neighborhoods their churches are in for the “perfection” of the suburbs? Would churches cease trying to “fix” America and start showing God’s love to the nation?
I suppose what is most important for me to figure out is whether or not I can let the community suffer by allowing the real me to be a part of it. Can pastor Michael let loose of control long enough that the real Michael, whoever that may be, can come in?
On Certainty and Charity
I am a Christian. I have enough faith in things unseen that I can call myself certain about my beliefs. Put another way, I believe in what I believe. However, I try not to let my certainty interfere with my charity. To me this is a simple matter of striving to be more like Christ. Jesus commanded us to be charitable with others when he taught us the greatest commandment, but never did he command us to be certain. Therefore charity must always take precedence over certainty.
I live in a post-Christian America. I share this nation with many people who do not hold the same beliefs as me. Many of the people I interact with on a daily basis hold to beliefs that contradict my own, and they hold on to these beliefs with the same certainty that I hold on to mine. How then should I respond? I show them what I believe with my words and actions and I defend my beliefs if inquired of them.
Do I attack their beliefs? No. I realize that my beliefs became certain because the Holy Spirit affirmed them to me, not because I was swayed by cleaver arguments on my previous thoughts. I cannot compel the Holy Spirit to do the same for these people anymore than I can command God to make me wealthy. I also remember that it was God’s grace that illuminated his ways to me, not my own work, so I cannot blame any other person for not yet seeing God the way I do. Most importantly, Jesus told me to love them and teach them, not to argue with them weary them.
For a lot of its history, Christianity has been a minority religion. It is only fairly recently that Protestantism (the tradition that I belong to) has held sway over so much of the world and culture. To see how a Christian lives as a minority in a pluralistic world, we have to look back to a time when Christianity was not the religion that dominated the world. Philip Jenkin’s book, The Lost History of Christianity, gives us a glimpse into that world. One person the reader encounters in his book is Timothy of the East. Timothy lived during the rise and domination of Islam in the Middle East. He worked in the Muslim Caliph’s court in Baghdad, as did many Christians. One day the Caliph asked Timothy about his Christian beliefs and how he could live and work for a society of another faith. Timothy, with great insight and tremendous courage told the prince a parable.
We are all of us as in a dark house in the middle of the night. If at night and in a dark house, a precious pearl happens to fall in the midst of the people, all become aware of its existence, everyone would strive to pick up the pearl, which will not fall to the lot of all but to the lot of one only, while one will get hold of the pearl itself, another one of a piece of glass, a third one of a stone or of a bit of earth, but everyone will be happy and proud that he is the real possessor of the pearl. When, however, night and darkness disappear, and light and day arise, then every one of those people who had believed that they had the pearl, would extend and stretch their hand towards the light, which alone can show what everyone has in hand. The one who possesses the pearl will rejoice and be happy and pleased with it, while those who had in hand pieces of glass and bits of stone only will weep and be sad, and will sigh and shed tears.
Timothy was certain of his beliefs, but he could understand why others believed differently. He understood the reality that not everyone could possibly be right, but that until the light came, there was no sense in compelling certainty. He did not hide his “pearl,” but spoke about it with the princes of land, leaving to God and them whether they would accept his claim to have the true treasure. With his story, Timothy displayed both the certainty and charity that Jesus expected of his followers, and understanding and living this parable would be of great benefit to Jesus’ followers today.
Fellowship of the Sun is Real!
True Blood fans out there know well “Fellowship of the Sun,” the vampire-hating cult that revels in its own self-righteous hypocrisy. Claiming to be a Christian church, they picket vampire-owned establishments, go on TV to preach unmitigated hate, and send the occasional suicide bomber out on a holy jihad. Strangely enough, there seems to be no gospel and a lot of hate that comes from the group. Despite the ongoing infidelity, duplicity, greed, and corruption of its leaders, the church seems to think they are the only “light” in a sea of darkness. They even run “The Light of Day Institute,” a boot camp for hand-picked righteous souls called to be leaders in their movement. At its climax in the True Blood narrative we are left seeing the fellowship as the myopic hate group that it is.
Of course, we all know that this is just a fictional group. Or is it?
Recently I cam across a video from a charismatic, if not homely-looking preacher named Damon Thompson. “Pastor” Damon preaches at The Ramp, a self-proclaimed “place of awakening in Hamilton, Alabama.” Just as the original (fictional)Fellowship of the Sun was obsessed in its hatred of gays. So this group seems to with homosexuals. Boy howdy, these guys don’t like them gays. And why should they? You can’t have a TV show nowadays with some “queer” as the funniest, smartest person on the show.
We also learn from that clip that gay teens to not commit suicide because of preachers like this, but because they are gay.
Here’s the good shepherd offering to exorcize the gay out of you…
He also wants you to know that Westboro Baptist Church is right, God sent AIDS to kill them “queers.”
Of course every prophet needs his prophetess, so Damon works intimately with Karen Wheaton of TBN (sort-of) fame. Do you want to be among their elect? They have a group of young spiritual elites to help them in their god-given mission called “The Elect” and like the Fellowship of the Sun, you can’t just sign up, from The Ramp’s website the process for becoming one of the Elect…
My trusty sidekick, Sammy Sarcasm, would like to point out that there is nothing suspicious or creepy about that process at all.
So there you have it, the Fellowship of the Sun is alive and well in Hamilton, Alabama, it just has new monsters to fight.
On a serious note, I don’t know much else about them other than what is on their website and the preaching clips making the rounds online, but it doesn’t matter. The systematic use of slurs and hatred during the teaching drowns out anything else they have to say. There are plenty more clips, I just didn’t see the need to post them all. This is a hate group pure and simple. It seems to be somewhat popular, but there is a good reason for that. Anytime a church preaches woe to the outside world, everyone within the group feels better about themselves. By focusing on a classic scapegoat, the members are allowed to believe that they are in a superior standing with God. They do not have to look inward at their own defects. Even if a defect becomes apparent, they know that they are still better than those being preached against. They are filled with a self-righteousness that can only come from putting down others. They reject grace because they restrict grace. Hate and bile cannot flow from the same outlet as mercy and love. This group is a cult in the classical Christian sense. They do not conform to the clear teaching of Scripture because they reject grace for those outside while refusing to walk humbly and show mercy themselves.
The Worship Jesus Wants
wor·ship
–noun
1. reverent honor and homage paid to god or a sacred personage, or to any object regarded as sacred.
Why do worship leaders carry guitars? How did Christians get the notion that God wants to hear all three verses of “Open the Eyes of my Heart?” Do the worship wars between traditionalists and contemporary fans even have a “right” side? How does the definition of worship translate as “sing songs?” Every major religion in the world incorporates music into its worship, but do Christians do it because Jesus told us to, or because we enjoy doing it?
I have heard it said that we sing in church because in the Old Testament, the people of God sang in the temple. This is true, the Hebrew people did sing to God as part of their worship, but a much bigger part of their worship was animal sacrifice. Why don’t we still do that? Sacrifices were much more important to Old Testament worship than singing. True, the prophets did condemn how corrupt the sacrificial system had become. They argued that God wanted obedience more than he wanted sacrifices, specifically in his commands regarding care and love for others. The prophets criticized the singing too though, proclaiming that it is easy to praise God with our lips yet still disobey him with our hearts and actions. The New Testament records people singing in church, but was ordered or spontaneous? There is certainly no command for Christians to sing, and Jesus never seemed all that interested in the subject. So why do we do it? Do we believe that God wants our songs? What does Jesus want from our worship?
Worship is what we do to show God that we honor and love him. Some may describe it as simply “loving him back.” If this is the true purpose of worship, shouldn’t God be allowed to tell us what he wants?
When Jesus walked the earth, there was never a period of time when humanity heard from God so clearly. Jesus spent a lot of his time explaining things to us that we hadn’t quite grasped. We thought we weren’t just supposed to kill people, but we could hate them all we want. Jesus said we needed to love them. We thought we were a special group of people that God would saved just because he liked us the best. Jesus told us that God loves the world so much that he was going to sacrifice himself for it. Jesus also told his followers that he wasn’t going to be around on earth forever, that there was a time coming when we would be left here to live without him speaking directly to us, telling us what to do. For sure he has not left us, but he remains here through the Holy Spirit, but the Spirit does not answer all our questions about what we are supposed to do in a way that all can see. Jesus did give his followers some instructions before he left though. He gave his followers some things to do while he was away.
Jesus told his followers to be obedient to his teaching. He also summed up the entirety of that teaching by telling us to love God with all that you are, and love your neighbor as much as you love yourself. He said that that one command encompassed all others. It seems that what God wants from us today is the same thing he had always said he wanted from us, that we love him in all we do and we love the rest of his children. The prophets of the Old Testament seemed to understand this to mean that we care for God’s children. It makes sense, since if someone I loved went away, the least I could do is watch his or her kids. When Jesus talked about his return to earth, he spoke about separating people into the groups that love him and those who don’t. The ones who loved him appear to be the ones that cared for him throughout their lives, by feeding him, nursing him, visiting him in prison, etc. Those who he rejected at the end of time are those who did not care for him. Both groups though point out the obvious, that neither ever saw him while they were doing (or not doing) those things. He explained that when you do it (or not) for others, you are really doing it for him. This is what Jesus seems to want from us. So when we package up our worship for him, does this look like the gift?
Why do worship leaders carry guitars? Shouldn’t they being carrying a lunch box and first-aid kit? What if this week we save the singing until after we are done worshiping?
Casey Anthony and the Neccessity of Truth
Of all the dishonesty in the world, probably few public spectacles (in a non-election year) have matched the Casey Anthony trial. We will never know what happened to her poor child because of the utter lack of fidelity by almost every person called to her defense. Her family told wild tales; contradicting each other and at times, even themselves. When the last words were spoken, the Florida jury, like most Americans, had no chance of piecing together what actually happened to her daughter three years ago. Without a definitive story to go by, the jury had no choice but to declare Anthony not guilty. The only thing they knew for sure was that she was a liar.
I have come to believe that the most important aspect of relationships is honesty. Without honesty all interactions begin from a stance of distrust. Is it any wonder that when Adam and Eve fell from grace, the first thing they did was hide themselves from each other and from God? We often speak in terms of “misunderstanding” and “confusion,” but often these phenomenons are deliberately caused by deceit and evasion. Often times this deceit is so ingrained we don’t even do it consciously. It becomes built into our cognitive communicative process. We use words not to communicate reality, but to communicate in a way to project a version of reality upon those we speak to in order to garner a preferred response. In response, we learn at an early age to treat all incoming communication with an element of distrust. We attempt to “decode” what we are being told based on (sometimes faulty) information weighed against how honest or deceitful we believe the person talking to us is. In the end we are left with a world where we can fully trust anyone and devolve into a mild paranoia.
Contrasting this reality of the world we live in, Jesus told his followers to escape the trappings of dishonesty. He presented to his few disciples a radical standard of honesty, telling them to let their “yes” be “yes” and their “no” be “no.” By reducing honesty to the two most direct responses, and demanding fidelity in those responses, he left no wiggle-room for “miscommunication” or any other sort breach of truth. There is no difference between “little white lies” and criminal cover-ups in regards to this standard. While we may justify our lies as harmless, we rarely dismiss the same sorts of lies when directed at us. The end result is a world where we will never know the full story and will always be forced to act on bad information. We have grafted dishonesty in some form or another into our DNA, and it has reached the point where we don’t even notice or care even more.
During the trial the defense attorney told the jury that Casey Anthony lied to police because lying was all she knew how to do. That was the most honest thing I have heard in a while.
