Archive by Author
Flattening Crowns or Casting Them Down
Posted on 20. Apr, 2011 by Tim Stoner.
I wonder why we have such trouble taking the biblical depictions of heaven seriously. It seems to frighten and shame us somehow. Whether conceived as place or state, it is weightier and infinitely more substantial than ours. So we must fold, flatten and reshape it. Do we find it embarrassing because it exposes our smallness and lightness of being? Admittedly, it is too bright and too concentrated by far. After all, it is where saints live, and maybe this is why we dislike the shattering images, because it reminds us that that is precisely what we are not. But, there is hope that we still can be.
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Loving the world too much or too little?
Posted on 11. Apr, 2011 by Tim Stoner.
A friend asked me a question about my disagreement with Love Wins. I have to admit it kind of rankled me. It implied fear, inadequacy or inferiority. So, yes, it stung my pride. Though it had a bite to it, it forced me to uncover the motivation for my negative response to Rob’s core message. And in doing so I had to confront the masks we wear: misdirected love, reactionary love and, more to the point, a cold and careless apathy hiding behind proclamations of love.
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Does Shakespeare Always Get What He Wants?
Posted on 04. Apr, 2011 by Tim Stoner.
Rob Bell asks good questions. In the middle of Love Wins he devotes a whole chapter to one of his better ones: “Does God Get What God Wants?” On the surface this appears to be a simple, straightforward question with an obvious answer. Despite misunderstanding the complexity of the question, Bell, surprisingly, gets the answer right, but for the wrong reason. And he proves that love does indeed win, but not in the way he thinks
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Who’s afraid of the little ole Gehenna?
Posted on 27. Mar, 2011 by Tim Stoner.
When Jesus referred to Hell as Gehenna He had a lot more in mind than the municipal garbage dump. Gehenna was not only physically disgusting, it was spiritually terrifying. Think of a haunted house. Think of Freddie Kruger and Hannibal Lekter rooming with Ted Bundy in that house and you are getting the picture. It was a place of horrific evil where the abominable demon-god Moloch was worshiped. It is a place that you would not risk going to for a minute, not for all the pleasure in Las Vegas or all the riches in Saudi Arabia.
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Hell’s response: “Let us alone!”
Posted on 24. Mar, 2011 by Tim Stoner.
Recently, a thoughtful young man asked a question that jarred me. This was how the question was posed: “What’s so special about the moment of death that it suddenly cuts off the availability of God’s grace?” I had no good anwer until I happened to read through the story of the encounter between Jesus and a demonized Jewish synagogue attendee. What he screams at Jesus wipes off any ironic, postmodern smirk and reveals a lot about the irrevocable line between life and death.
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No Doxology No (eternal) Hell
Posted on 19. Mar, 2011 by Tim Stoner.
Something has been steadily seeping out of our discourse over several decades–the gripping awareness of God’s majesty. It is in this generation that the resultant lightness of God’s being is becoming impossible to ignore. There was a time when men and women lived in a world drenched with God, they blazed with a white-hot devotion. As I read Love Wins I was compelled to pick up a book by such a man: Knowledge of the Holy. It shows us why where there is no doxology Hell makes no sense.
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“Then all H—ck broke loose!”
Posted on 17. Mar, 2011 by Tim Stoner.
In Love Wins Bell is launching a serious critique against belief in the conscious, eternal torment of those who reject Christ. Now, the really bad news hidden beneath Bell’s sympathetic and generous dismissal of the church’s historic teaching is that it drives all evil and suffering, as well as catastophes like those in Japan, completely outside the providence of God. A good God who is too good to condemn to an eternal Hell is incapable of having anything to do with the major traumas of our life, except to (after the fact) put a kindly but impotent hand on our shoulder and sympathize with our pain. This good-natured, frustrated bystander to suffering can offer us no real hope or comfort at all.
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We Tried To Do Something
Posted on 28. Feb, 2011 by Tim Stoner.
While the outcome of the Egyptian revolt was still very much in doubt, Hosam Khalaf, a 50-year-old engineer brought his wife and daughter to Tahrir Square to join the protesters. “When we meet God,” he said, “we will at least be able to say: ‘We tried to do something.” Those fearless words made me wonder: What I have risked for Jesus? When I look into “the eyes of Him to whom we must give account,” what will He see in me? Will there be exposed a long, unbroken history of fearful timidity, commitment to ease, security and avoidance of pain? Will there be any record at all of heroic obedience, costly sacrifice and courageous devotion? Will I have done anything of significance for Christ?
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A Walk to Remember?
Posted on 12. Feb, 2011 by Tim Stoner.
A Walk to Remember is a heartbreakingly romantic book. In it the protagonist, now in his late 50’s, remembers a walk that he has never been able to forget. In my fundamentalist tradition the walk we were never to forget was that one we took during the “altar call.” It would serve as the reminder of the iron-clad guarantee of our eternal security. However, Hebrews disabuses us of all notions that our confidence is in a brief stroll in the past. Instead the picture is that of a grueling race in which victory is not at all certain. There is great danger of falling short, falling away, or falling down. Thanks to a sermon by David Platt on the Rich Man and Lazarus, I am wondering whether I am in danger of doing all three.
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Generous Justice: Justified by works not faith alone
Posted on 22. Jan, 2011 by Tim Stoner.
In Generous Justice Timothy Keller does something almost impossible: he wrestles a golden calf off its marble pedestal while keeping the conservative reader from pushing the eject button. The argument he makes is that caring for the widow, orphans, immigrants and the poor is not an option, it is a duty—it is a necessary act of love. Starkly: choosing not to sacrifically serve those in need is not stinginess but “an offense against God”. And most starkly of all: refusing to “do justice” means we have not been truly saved. He does this gently, but for those with ears to hear Dr. Keller has issued a prophetic pronouncement that will rock the boat and hopefully the world.
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Unbroken: Impossibly true
Posted on 15. Jan, 2011 by Tim Stoner.
This astonishing, miraculous true story makes you believe it is possible to transcend yourself. If nothing else it tempts you to think that there is no wall too high, no limitation too restrictive, no pain too intense, and no suffering too excessive, that it need stop us from performing feats of heroic grace. It also says to us that there is always the very real possibility of a miraculous transcendence—despite the terrifying impossibility of the present moment. It is “a celebration of gargantuan fortitude” and easily, the most inspiring book I have read in a decade, at least.
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"Then all H---ck broke loose!"
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No Doxology No (eternal) Hell
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Hell’s response: “Let us alone!”
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Loving the world too much or too little?
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Tim Stoner: Spencer: It's the Saturday after the killing on a ...
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Spencer: Tim: I completely agree that Lewis shakes my compl...
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