Loving the world too much or too little?

Loving the world too much or too little?

Posted on 11. Apr, 2011 by Tim Stoner in Articles, Christian Life, Emergent Theology, Essays, Love Wins

 

I was asked a question about Rob Bell that I will admit made me just a little bit upset. It was from a friend. This is why it stung so much. It wasn’t that it was mean or rude. I just felt it to be so off the mark as to betray an almost total ignorance of who I really am. It was like someone seeing me taking spastic kangaroo hops around the bar and thrusting my fists into the air while shrieking like a manic when the Spanish national side won the World Cup, and being asked if I really felt that bad for the losing Netherlands team. 

I mean do you not know that I bleed yellow and red? Are you not aware that I fasted for three days prior to the game just in case it might help the best team in the world never to win the Cup finally pull it off? And Netherlands? Those felons? I mean really!

It just rankled.

But I tried to respond judiciously like my wife repeatedly has counseled me. When I was finished with my civil clarification, I thought that had done the trick. But, apparently, it still festers. And it has made me think about my attitude and those of others who have taken issue with Love Wins. It has made me wonder what really motivates us, down deep where the rats scurry about looking for little treats.

Let me tell you the question and see where that leads.

My friend explained that while he did not think he agreed with everything in Rob’s book he certainly disagreed with how “religious people” had responded to it. His question to me was: “Why are you so threatened by this?” I had a choice. I could have shrugged it off by interpreting the personal pronoun as an indefinite plural rather than a pointed singular.

I refused the dodge and took the blast full in the chest.

What raised the reflexive hackles was the adverb “threatened.” (It is an adverb isn’t it? Unfortunately, I missed English grammar during my elementary school years in South America.)

What is particularly offensive about that word is that it sort of drips these slippery globules of condescension. That was not the intent of the questioner, I know that. But, it happens to be the specific term I have heard others frequently use in defense of the book. And every time it has that faint reek of superiority: “Are you so insecure about what you believe that you become unhinged and have to scream “heretic” at the top of your freaking lungs to hide the deficits in your own logic?”

No, I told my friend. My disagreement is not motivated by fear or inadequacy. For one thing, I am not the one recklessly tossing 2,000 years of patristic, scholastic, reformed and post-reformational teaching over the railings of the ship. I don’t feel a compulsion to defend St. Chrysostom, St. Augustine, or St. Aquinas on the one hand, or Luther, Calvin and Jonathan Edwards, on the other, not to mention all the best preachers of the past two centuries. It isn’t a latent inferiority that drives my disagreement with cutting-edge interpretations that argue that the most influential teachers in the history of the church got it completely and totally wrong, regardless of whose minority voice may have been raised in disagreement over the years.

I don’t intend to be smug on this point. It is just that with those Fathers and Doctors and pastors of the church on one’s side, and over such an extensive period of time, one does not feel terribly vulnerable or embarrassed following their lead. So, “threatened” is just not the appropriate word to describe the motivation behind the strong reaction.

So, what is?

I cannot speak about the motives of others. I can however state that, in some, I have heard the discordant and jarring notes of a loveless anger. This is perhaps what prompted my friend’s question. Why the mean-spirited barbs and the nasty ridicule? Why the acid? I’m sure that one of the reasons I was stung by my friend’s inquiry was because I have put serious effort into avoiding that tone of malice I equate with political talk-show hosts.

I am all too aware of the seductive attraction of the ad hominem. Those like myself, and like Rob for that matter, nurtured within the sometimes spiky and belligerent folds of fundamentalism find ourselves, if we are honest, drawn almost against our wills into a posture that can look suspiciously like that of a bare-knuckled Victorian pugilist. While we may despise the acerbic barbs of Glen Beck, it is an all-too-attractive slide into the snide verbal parody of those on his left. No party, political or theological, has a monopoly on pride. And no one is more susceptible than the one who is battling hard against it.

So, if I am not prompted by an inferiority complex what is in my gut that won’t let it be?

The word I prefer is sadness.

I have not met Rob, though there are a score of people I know intimately that fall in the category of one-degree-of-separation. So, the pain that I feel is not for a personal friend who has hit the skids. It is not about feeling let down by a confidant, a colleague, or close comrade. What it comes down to is grief for a misguided and gifted teacher and for those whom he continues to influence.

The reason I am not angry is because I do not believe Rob is driven by a conscious malevolent intent to undermine and eviscerate the Gospel. I am sad because I think what it impels it is just the opposite.

At this point some may be gesticulating with their index fingers at Paul’s caustic remark about false teachers emasculating themselves. I do not take that as precedential in this instance. I think that that is the very, very last word about a Gospel-threatening heresy, not the first, or the second. And it is only to be uttered by those with a sufficiently broad authoritative mantle after direct confrontations have failed or been repulsed. The rest of us can reject, correct, and seek to instruct but anathemizing is reserved for others with a much higher pay grade than lowly bloggers or pastors with a narrow geographical jurisdiction.

I choose (until proven otherwise) to believe that what drives Rob is genuine love and that is what makes it all so terribly sad. It has made me wonder about many of those branded “heretics” (and rightfully so) by teachers of the church over the years. I wonder whether what made some of them willing to face martyrdom was the love which precipitated their error. Not all of them mind you, but some.

Was it love for purity that drove Montanus to extreme ascetism and a rejection of art? Was it love for the unique, singular majesty of God that motivated Arius to deny the deity of Jesus? Did Pelagius feel compelled by a love for the value and dignity of human freedom and choice to reject the doctrines of grace? In the 11th century was it devotion to a holy and cleansed church that pushed the Cathari over the edge? I am starting to ask myself whether these all loved their version of the truth or their conceptions of the church so much that they felt duty bound to lay down their lives for it.

It is these questions that prevent me from taking the slightest pleasure when I read an article in the local newspaper in which Rob admits that the past month has been the hardest in his life. And it brings into clear focus the deceptive power of misdirected love.

James warns us about this danger that can easily swallow us unawares. It cleverly hides behind a certain justifiable hatred. This is what makes it such a potent deception. It wraps itself in the soft glow of a kind-hearted, gentle, irenic disposition; it woos us into accepting a generous orthodoxy in reaction to a brutal, belligerent and reactionary judgementalism. It beckons us by disguising itself as the necessary antidote to smug, sanctimonius, self-congratulatory Phariseeism. And it ever so slowly spins us and twists us into the very object of our hatred.

The apostle James sounds out the warning: “You are as unfaithful as adulterous wives; don’t you realize that making the world your friend is making God your enemy? Anyone who chooses the world for his friend turns himself into God’s enemy” (Jam. 4:4 JB).

Not knowing Rob personally I can only extrapolate based on our similar religious upbringing. I have detected my issues in lots of Rob’s questions, so I do not think I am far off the beam in drawing certain parallels. When the “world” is declared to be toxic enemy number one and when cultural truths, goodness and beauty are disparaged and demonized a reverse toxicity can occur. The truths, goodness and beauty within your own camp may take on repulsive, radioactive qualities. Now, if you’re clever and good with words this can be masked to a great extent but the poison will seep out like mercury through the cracks.

But, there is more. When your eyes are opened to the unexpected and shocking splendor of culture (“the world”), in reaction to its shallow and fearful dismissal, that submerged spill of toxic waste makes you susceptible to a dangerous embrace that is equal parts love and hate: a too-great love for the “goodness” of the world and a too-intense hatred for that which has defamed and denied it.

Ever so subtly you become a defender of the world over against the culture-phobic church. And in short order you find yourself its friend in precisely the way James warns us about. You have grown to care more about how God treats humans than how they treat Him. You are far more interested in humanity being treated fairly than you are in God being worshipped, served and glorified.

Loving the world in this unhealthy way and for these unhealthy reasons causes you to reject whatever reminds you of the oppression you have grown to despise. It is love for those marginalized by an unloving church (and an angry God) that causes you to jettison all doctrines that smack of cruelty and a harsh vindictiveness.

I suspect that this is why Rob finds the historic teaching on an eternal Hell so abhorrent. It is an unconscionable assault on those he wants to protect. He tells us in his book that he wishes to shield sincere men and women from a mean God propagated by an ungracious religious establishment. This is understandable. If you are in love with the world what becomes compelling is ensuring humane justice here, not divine justice everywhere.

Unwittingly, and with the best of motives, when one’s affections are bent in one direction, one loses the capacity to empathize with the God who characterizes our misdirected loves as gross and brazen adultery; who considers humanity’s rebellion a provocative rejection of His infinite goodness, truth and beauty, and who thunders from beginning to end of the Epic Story that ignoring Him is a grievous assault on His exclusive rights as Creator and King and is ultimately self-destructive.

And what makes this whole discussion so hard is that this blindness is instigated by a faulty love that masks a subconscious hate. James tells us that loving the world in this way makes us an enemy of God. Or, put another way, when we love the world improvidently, we can easily be deceived into perceiving God (as proclaimed by the traditional, conservative Church) as the enemy.

This is why it is wrong to assume that all those who disagree with Rob are angry reactionaries.

This is why, I for one, am so sad about this whole discussion.

I am sad to see a gifted teacher defaulting on his calling to keep, guard and hand over the historic deposit of truth entrusted to him (II Tim 1); and to fail in his fiduciary obligations to “fight for the faith which has been once and for all entrusted to the saints” (Jud. 3).

I am grieved by a misdirected love and a misguided compassion.

Although I am not threatened by the error, or by the questions, I am saddened for those who will knowingly reject Christ but still be offered false hope, false comfort, false assurance and empty promises.

What makes it so heartbreaking is that when you choose to love humanity above God, you wind up becoming an enemy of both.

But let me be honest, in answering my friend’s query, I have to admit others that are beginning to bother me even more:

Has our too-hasty and untroubled defense of CET (conscious eternal torment) exposed something about us as well?

Do our assertions of concern for the lost serve as flimsy cover behind which apathy and indifference really hide?

Does all this bluster and resentment and fulmination against Love Wins mask the absence of a genuine sacrificial and evangelistic love for the world in our own hearts?

Is it all together too easy for me to rush to the defense of an admittedly terrible doctrine because rather than loving the world too much, I love it too little?

And that would be the saddest thing of all.     

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14 Responses to “Loving the world too much or too little?”

  1. Ted Kallman

    11. Apr, 2011

    Tim
    Your post was excellent and captured my thoughts and my heart for this situation. Thank you for compiling it.

  2. Kyle Douglass

    11. Apr, 2011

    Thanks, Tim. James 4:4 is a troublesome verse to me. It’s both difficult and seemingly contradictory. Didn’t God so love the world…? (Rob’s first scriptural reference in LW). How then are we to hate it? The answer lies in the various concepts tied up in the “world”, of course, as in a distinction between those lost in an anti-God paradigm and the paradigm itself. Love the sinner, hate the sin, I suppose. But on a deeper level, my trouble with the verse is that I just don’t like having to give things up. I don’t like having to be different from everybody, especially in a way that by default says I think I’m right you’re wrong. And this is where I agree strongly with your point; t’s a really hard thing to love God more than we love the people around us, especially when loving God generates the perception that we hate our neighbors. It’s hard to give God permission to be God, to give life and take it, to dole out both blessing and curse. It’s hard to say with Jeremiah, “Why should any living mortal, or any man, offer complain in view of his sings?” (Lam. 3:39) I reread Lamentations this weekend and the reality of God’s “bad side” is obvious. He harms in order to heal. God is holy and punishes sin, but out of a heart of everlasting kindness in order that we might finally confess our sin, own our guilt, and humbly hand it over through faith and repentance to a loving Father. Rob’s book was very convicting to me, because it caused me to ask the same questions of myself that you ended this post on. If hell does exist, why don’t I work harder to keep people out of it? Few of us, I think (myself included), are strong enough to love someone through the pain of the truth. Few of us believe so strongly in both a loving and a just God, that we would risk the searing offense of the Gospel. But there’s no getting around it. God’s wrath is there, always ready to be quenched by the blood of Christ, but still there. I committed myself to being more evangelistic after reading Love Wins, to care enough to speak the whole truth. That was weeks ago. I have yet to intentionally share the Good News with someone. God help me. God help us all to learn to love the world in the way that Jesus did.

  3. leslie Leyland Fields

    11. Apr, 2011

    Tim–this is a very long post–but toward the end you speak a brilliant insight:

    “You have grown to care more about how God treats humans than how they treat Him. You are far more interested in humanity being treated fairly than you are in God being worshipped, served and glorified.”

    I see this error happening around me in several other areas. I’m thankful for these succinct, true words that will help me deal with this as it plays out around me. Thank you for this spot-on defense of the true!

  4. Robert

    11. Apr, 2011

    Tim:
    Excellent response to your friend’s question, and great questions at the end of your piece that should be concerns to all of us though I’m not sure why they are asked in this context. I don’t think any of the various reactions by Bible believing Christians to Love Wins falls into any categorical masking of our own deficiencies in reaching the lost. The point (I think) really is not what we are “masking,” but what is Rob Bell masking?

    Most Mainline Protestant churches haven’t talked about a biblical hell in years. Liberal denominations have ceded the biblical Hell as allegory. Mormons have outer darkness (something akin, I think, to being a U-M fan). Catholics have Purgatory. The mega and seeker friendly churches (even the ones rooted in fundamentalism) acknowledge the reality of a biblical hell but loathe to talk about it. I was in attendance at a seeker friendly church when the pastor rightly described a biblical hell and why “good” people will be there and then promptly told the audience that he was sorry if he offended anybody who didn’t think (we) were a church like that. It seems the churches traditionally categorized under “fundamentalism” (as a whole) are the only ones who continue to emphasize the infallibility of the Scriptures in regards to Hell.

    The problem “fundamentalists” like me have with Bell is that he is the consummate “poser.” In one breath he says Jesus is important then he alludes that he is not. Next he sounds like he says Jesus is the only way then he sounds as though he is saying he is one of many. He says the bible is important then he deconstructs it to fit his “mantra” replete with out of context vulgarities describing church actions and leaders both past and present — all for his flock to feed on.

    You could never accuse Rob Bell of (as Jesus commanded) letting his “yes be yes and his no be no.” Bell seems to be more interested in blazing a path less “restrictive” and more in line with modern day humanism than in reaching the world the way Christ commanded in Matthew 28: 19-20.

    The fact remains that no one would be batting an eye if Rob Bell belonged to an organization like the National Coucil of Churches who have been walking in “lock step” with Bell’s “new way” for quite some time now. It’s his on again, off again struggle with and animosity towards his fundamentalist past that seems to give him a dogged desire to seemingly make “Christian fundamentalism ” an outdated oxymoron.

    Heresy? Chip on his shoulder? Double Talker? Well meaning agent of change? Liberator? Whatever - Rob Bell is more interested in preaching the Gospel as he sees fit than he is in presenting the life changing message of the cross in all its clarity. At best (and this is a stretch worthy of Rob Bell), he is working out his doubts on a national stage, but instead of using the bible as his road map, he’s borrowing from different religious and humanist “experiences,” and as a result comes off sounding like a non-committal Bahai Faith camp counselor rather than a Christian pastor.

  5. Tim Stoner

    12. Apr, 2011

    Robert, I thought long and hard about deleting your uncharitable and unwarranted remarks about UofM fans (University of Michigan, for those out-of-towners) but in an uncontrollable spasm of generosity I let it stand. There are limits, however. There are limits. Give the Wolverines three years and we shall see who is bashing who (or is it whom?).

  6. Spencer

    12. Apr, 2011

    Very introspective piece, Tim. It caused me to think long and hard about my own motivations for questioning/wrestling with CET. The part where you laid out the structure of unquestioned belief followed by shocking exposure followed by bewildered acceptance followed by reactionary antipathy is… well, uncannily close to home. It’s clear that you’re speaking from a place of having lived it, just like me and (likely) Bell. I have unanswered questions about CET; now I have unanswered questions about my own heart! You did a good job there. :)

    I think that Lewis’ quote here is apropos: “Aim at heaven and you will get earth thrown in. Aim at earth and you will get neither.”

    You’re almost sounding like a postmodernist here, Tim! It’s so easy to assume subtle and pernicious motives in others; we rarely turn same the measure of judgment back on ourselves. How many times have I done the same, comfortable that I have risen above the morass of subjectivism to obtain objectivity? That’s why I like your speculation on the possible motives lurking behind the defenders of CET. What is truly frightening to me is when I hear CET’s champions claiming that evangelism has no value or impetus if CET is false. To me, this displays an extraordinarily cheap and barren view of the “new creation” we become as our inheritance when we “clothe [ourselves] with Christ” (2 Cor 5:17, Gal 3:27) and are adopted as sons (Rom 8:15). What does it say for our missional spirit if we require the threat of eternal punishment to be effective? Furthermore, what does it say about our Christian life if we have tunnel vision on the hereafter? Only God knows, as you note.

    Enough of speaking about others: I myself find lurking in my heart a shocking lack of desire for the souls which are so precious to God. When I believed unreservedly in CET, it did indeed provide me a convenient motivation to fill the void of natural pathos. I have discovered that focusing on the regeneration of Christ in my heart right now gives me a passion to share His grace that I have never had before. If Bell succeeds in this endeavor for others, perhaps he is not so bad after all!

    Oh, and as an Illini fan, I weep for your unfortunate allegiance with Michigan but am thankful we can at least agree in our loathing of the Buckeyes!

  7. Robert

    12. Apr, 2011

    I love the C.S. Lewis quote. Though the Bible needs no accompaniment, Lewis and Tozer, in my opinion, are the only “outside” voices that effectively, and without consternation, magnify Biblical truth. Speaking of Lewis, read The Screwtape Letters for a politically incorrect (and a postmoderist’s burdensome) account of CET.

  8. Tim Stoner

    13. Apr, 2011

    Spencer, I shall not speak of your misdirected loves. I still have nightmares about an Illini game perhaps 10 years ago when your guys scored three or four touchdowns in the last half to win the game and destroy our season.
    But, I am not put off by being compared to a postmodernist. I think that if you aim at following Jesus not fads you will wind up, at some point, sounding like a lot of different groups. It’s about loyalty: to the Truth or to clever, or compelling ideas. St. Paul was accused of being a libertine by one side and a legalist by the other. All truth is God’s truth, as a very smart guy once said. We grab it wherever we smell it.
    And about motives of the heart: pray for me a sinner.
    Also regarding Bell, I am toying with a final essay in which I express my gratefulness for Love Wins. Even error can be a means of grace. Even our sin can be a path back to the Father. Even misdirected loves can be gateways inviting us to embrace and love the true, the good and the beautiful. We need to walk cautiously and gently and compassionately in the Lord’s garden. So, keep pursuing the light and don’t be discouraged if a good pasting is in store for the orange-clad.

  9. Tim Stoner

    13. Apr, 2011

    Robert, can you send me any particularly pungent quotes from Screwtape Letters? I would find that helpful.

  10. Robert

    13. Apr, 2011

    Tim:
    I assume you have read The Screwtape Letters, and I’m not sure what you mean by “pungent,” but isn’t the very notion of a biblical hell (with all its pathos and insistance that there is a singularly right way against which all others lead to hell) contrary to a post modern’s sensibilities. Or maybe I don’t understand post modernism, but I’m not sure I could understand anybody who, in light of biblical truth, rejects absolutes.

  11. Spencer

    13. Apr, 2011

    Some of my favorites from TSL:

    It was, I imagine, at this stage in the interview [between God and Satan] that Our Father’s disgust at such an unprovoked lack of confidence caused him to remove himself an infinite distance from the Presence with a suddenness which has given rise the ridiculous Enemy story that he was forcibly thrown out of Heaven.

    There is wishful thinking in Hell as well as on Earth

    The safest road to Hell is the gradual one — the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts

    The whole philosophy of Hell rests on recognition of the axiom that… my good is my good and your good is yours. What one gains another loses… [God] aims at a contradiction. Things are to be many, yet somehow also one. The good of one self is to be the good of another. This impossibility he calls love.

    A spoiled saint, a Pharisee, an inquisitor, or a magician, makes better sport in Hell than a mere common tyrant or debauchee.

    And one which I find very topical:
    [God] wants men to be concerned with what they do; our business is to keep them thinking about what will happen to them.

  12. Tim Stoner

    16. Apr, 2011

    Spencer: Touché.

  13. Kevin

    17. Apr, 2011

    This should quelch any doubters. That includes those believers who seem to be “softening” their stance on absolutes from the WORD.
    “For the story and message of the cross is sheer absurdity and folly to those who are perishing and on their way to perdition, but to us who are being saved it is the [manifestation of] the power of God.” - 1 Corinthians 1:18

  14. Becky N.

    20. Apr, 2011

    I find myself having the same problem as Bell when it comes to wanting to “soften” the gospel message when speaking to unbelievers especially if they’ve been hurt or offended by “the church” in the past. I can easily fall into the category of having a misdirected or misguided sense of love, mercy and compassion. I really liked what you said about how this can ever-so-subtly make God our enemy and the world our friend. If we start caring more about how God treats humans than how we treat Him…and are more interested in humanity being treated fairly than God being worshipped and glorified than we are no better off than the non-believer. This is exactly where they’re coming from and we would have no answers for them if we adapt this thinking. Divine justice becomes a concept that is null and void. I empathize with Bell’s desire to comfort and protect people who have been hurt by judgementalism or hypocrisy in the church but it seems like he is siding with the secular world’s hatred toward all things “Christian” He has lost faith in God’s perfect justice. Our pastor at Bella Vista has been emphasizing that lately - God’s justice is perfect, just as God is perfect. We can’t begin to understand it but we can completely trust in it and we can live our lives by it. It is indeed sad that Rob Bell has lost his faith and trust in a perfect God’s perfect justice.

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