The Glory of our God

This morning’s sermon is a reflection on the glory of God.  Herman Bavinck wonderfully summarized the way that God’s glory motivates all that he does.  Perhaps the Scripture references could be ones to meditate upon in your morning prayers.  Writing almost a century ago in words fresh as the morning coolness, he says:

“Scripture…says that all of nature is a revelation of God’s attributes and a proclaimer of his praise (Ps 19:1; Rom 1:19). God created man after his image and for his glory (Gen 1:26; Isa 43:7). He glorified himself in the Pharaoh of the Exodus (Exod 14:17) and in the man born blind (John 9:3), and made the wicked for the day of trouble (Pro 16:4; Rom 9:22). Christ came to glorify God (Jn 17:4), and he bestows all the benefits of grace for his name’s sake: redemption, forgiveness, sanctification, and so forth (Ps 105:8; 78:9ff; Isa 43:25; 48:11; 60:21; 61:3; Rom 9:23; Eph 1:6ff). God gives his glory to no other (Isa 42:8). The final purpose is that all kingdoms will be subjected to him and every creature will yield to him (Dan 7:27; Isa 2:2-22; Mal 1:11; 1 Cor 15:24f). Even on earth already he is given glory by all his people (Ps 115:1; Mat 6:13 KJV). Someday God alone will be great (Isa 2:2-22) and receive glory from all his creatures (Rev 4:11; 19:6). He is the First and the Last, the Alpha and the Omega (Isa 44:6; 48:12; Rev 1:8; 22:13). Of him, through him, and to him are all things (Rom 11:36). On this basis Christian theology almost unanimously teaches that the glory of God is the final purpose of all God’s works….Inasmuch as he is the supreme and only good, perfection itself, it is the highest kind of justice that in all creatures he seek his own honor. And so little does this pursuit of his own honor have anything in common with human egotistical self-interest that, where it is wrongfully withheld from him, God will, in the way of law and justice, even more urgently claim that honor. Voluntarily or involuntarily, every creature will someday bow his knee before him. Obedience in love or subjection by force is the final destiny of all creatures” (Reformed Dogmatics, II:433, 434).

God Doubters

“In contrast to the modern view that religious doubt is something to reject, fear, or merely tolerate, doubt not only can be seen as an inevitable aspect of our humanity but also can be celebrated as a vital part of faith.” (Peter Rollins, “How Not to Speak of God).

“Post evangelicals also want room to express doubt without having someone rush around in a mad panic trying to deliver them from unbelief. Far too often doubt is portrayed simply as an enemy rather than a potential friend; as something mature Christians should not suffer from, rather than a vital means by which Christians mature.” (Tomlinson, The Post Evangelical)

The emergent emphasis on doubt as a friend of faith stems from their belief that we can’t truly know anything about God, since the Bible is just human words…and God would never use human words to reveal Himself (see last post). Therefore, they teach that any doctrines held by orthodox Christianity are merely man made and cannot be trusted in, and that we should trust in a personal God instead. They challenge people to doubt anything that they know (or think they know) about God, and to seek a relationship with Him instead.

If this is the case, what is our faith based on? Is not faith “The assurance of things hoped for and the conviction of things not seen” (Heb 11:1)? If we can’t believe what the Bible says to be true about God, how are we to have assurance and conviction in His promises laid out in the Bible? It would seem to me that doubt is the enemy of faith, not the friend of faith. But I don’t want to just say that because it seems that way to me that it must be right. Here is what the Bible says about doubt and faith:

Mark 9:24

“I believe. Help my unbelief.”. Here a man’s prayer to Jesus is that Jesus would help His unbelief. He doesn’t say, “I doubt. Help me doubt more!”

Matthew 6:30
30 But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?

Matthew 21:21
21 And Jesus answered them, “Truly, I say to you, if you have faith and do not doubt, you will not only do what has been done to the fig tree, but even if you say to this mountain, ‘Be taken up and thrown into the sea,’ it will happen.

John 20:27
27 Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here, and see my hands; and put out your hand, and place it in my side. Do not disbelieve, but believe.”

James 1:6
6 But let him ask in faith, with no doubting, for the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea that is driven and tossed by the wind.

So what should our interactions with those who hold this view look like? Jude 22 says it well…”Have mercy on those who doubt.”

The Bible is very clear that we are not to doubt the truths it contains and that we are, while not exhaustively, able to know God. He has revealed Himself to us through His Holy Spirit. We can understand and know to a degree, “the mind of God”, because we have the Holy Spirit. And His Word is His primary way of revealing those truths to us.

However, I think that we can indeed learn something from the emergent view of doubting God. We should never rest content in our desire to know more about God. While we should not doubt Him, we should always seek to know more about Him and to be willing to have our views corrected if they are wrong. We must be humble in our pursuit of God, but we must not doubt God or doubt the Bible. Doubt is not humility.

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Emergent Agnosticism

“To say Scripture is the Word of God is to employ a metaphor. God cannot be thought of as literally speaking words, since they are an entirely human phenomenon that could never prove adequate as a medium for the speech of an infinite God.” (Tomlinson)

“Our words aren’t absolutes. Only God is absolute, and God has no intention of sharing this absoluteness with anything, especially words people have come up with to talk about Him. (Rob Bell)

 

That is the predominant thought on Scripture and the knowability of God among the emergent church. How sad. Kevin DeYoung and Ted Kluck do an excellent job addressing the danger of holding these views and call the emergent church out on these things by saying that their views , “fly in the face of redemptive history.” (DeYoung, 37). These emergent leaders are questioning whether or not we can have any real, certain knowledge about God. Brian McLaren actually has said that as soon as we say we know something about God that we are speaking heresy because it is impossible to speak about God using our human formulations.

The view that God is unknowable is what has lead to the emergent church’s over-use of the word “mystery.” The authors agree that the Christian faith has elements of mystery…we will NEVER know everything about God. But the emergent church sees that the Christian Faith starts with mystery:

“The Christian faith is mysterious to the core. It is about things and being that ultimately can’t be put into words. Language fails. And if we do definitively put God into words, we have at that very moment made God something God is not…The mystery is the truth.” (Bell, Velvet Elvis)

The authors rightly state that this sounds a lot like the Hindu conception of Brahman that the Christian notion of God, revelation, and authority.

It is interesting to read Acts 17:23, where Paul is addressing the men of Athens: “What therefore you worship as unknown, this I will proclaim to you.” Paul found the Athenians worshipping an unknown God and he CORRECTED them for it and showed them how the Christian God, through Jesus Christ, can be known! In light of the emergent emphasis on living as Jesus lived (which I agree with the importance of that!), you would think that because Jesus viewed the Scriptures as the Word of God, that they would too.

The emergent leaders hold to the view that we need not strive to know anything about God, since we can’t know anything about Him anyways. Rather, we must have a confident trust in God and be focused on a relationship with Him. HELLO??? Does this not seem impossible to anyone? How can you have a relationship with someone that you don’t know? The authors of Why We’re Not Emergent say the following

“ I can’t love my wife without knowing facts about her, otherwise my love for her is love of love, or worse, love for the sake of being loved. Unless I love her for the facts of who she is, what she has done, and what she does, I am loving a shapeless, formless void. No matter how much I rightly stress the importance of relationship with my wife beyond mere knowledge about her, I must have knowledge about her in order to have a relationship. After all, if I don’t know any of the “abstract” and “impersonal” facts about my wife, how can I have a personal relationship with her? I won’t even be able to pick her out in a crowd!” (DeYoung, 36)

This, as DeYoung says, all flies in the face of redemptive history (DeYoung, 37) and every page of Scripture.

“The God of the Bible is nothing if He is not a God who speaks to His people. To be sure , none of us ever infinitely understand God in a nice, neat package of affirmations and denials, but we can know Him truly, both personally and propositionally. God can speak. He can use human language to communicate truth about Himself that is accurate and knowable, without ceasing to be God because we’ve somehow got Him all figured out. We may all be, by nature, like blind men touching the elephant without knowing whether what we are feeling is a trunk, tail, or ear. But what if the elephant spoke and said, “Quit calling me crocodile, or peacock, or paradox. I’m an elephant for crying out loud! That long thing is my trunk. That little frayed thing is my tail. That big floppy thing is my ear.” And what if the elephant gave us ears to hear his voice and a mind to understand his message (cf 1 Cor 2:14-15)? Would our professed ignorance about the elephant and our unwillingness to make any confident assertions about his nature mean we were especially humble, or just deaf?” (DeYoung, 37).

A Sufficient Bible, A Prophetic Spirit - Sam Storms

If the Bible is inspired and sufficient, why do we still believe in prophecy? Great question. Sam Storms wrestles with that in his chapter called, “God Still Speaks,” from his book, Convergence. The entire discussion is wonderful, but here are a great couple of paragraphs to chew on:

[We] need to be more precise about what we mean by the sufficiency of Scripture. What is the Bible sufficient for? I believe it is sufficient and perfectly adequate to provide us with every doctrine and ethical principle necessary for us to believe and behave as we should. But the doctrine of the sufficiency of the Bible is not meant to suggest that we don’t need to hear from God or receive particular guidance in areas on which the Bible is silent. The close of the biblical canon marks the point at which the general principles of God’s universal will are complete. All the doctrines, as well as all ethical principles, essential for the life of God’s people have been revealed. Nothing further will be said by God to extend or expand or contradict them. The Bible establishes the theological and ethical boundaries of what God will ever say.

“But guidance and revelation and wisdom by which we gain the knowledge of how to apply these principles and truths in the practical details and decisions of life are ongoing. When we listen to God we do not expect him to say anything doctrinally or ethically new. But we do expect him to speak to the situation in which we find ourselves with wisdom and direction and insight and encouragement in living out the truths he has written in” (182-183).

Prayer and Study - From Sam Storms

“The person who only thinks and does not pray is as bad and dangerous and unbalanced as the person who only prays and never thinks.”

–Sam Storms, Convergence

The Emergent Journey: Are the Pilgrims Still Making Progress? Part 1

Experience, Journey, Doubt, Traveler, Introspection, Mystery. These are some of the key words of the Emergent movement. The authors of Why We’re Not Emergent rightly begin their book with the first chapter focusing on what emergent’s hold to be of great importance to their entire doctrinal system (though they would say they have NO doctrine…), namely that the Christian life is more about a journey and an experience than a destination.

The author writes how the understanding of the Christian life, by Christians, up to this point has been as follows:

“The old notion of spiritual pilgrimage used the idea of journey to symbolize our longing for heaven and our place as strangers in the kingdom of this world. As sojourners and exiles, Christians were called to abstain from the lusts of the flesh, ‘which war against the soul,’ and to ‘live such good lives among the pagans that’…they ‘see [our] good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us’ (1 Pet 2:11-12 NIV). We were supposed to be living in faith, looking forward to a better country, that is, a heavenly one (Heb 11:16). The journey of the Christian life was the way of the pilgrim fighting against fears and doubts, trying not be squeezed into the world’s mold, trusting that God has something better for us, even if we had not yet received what was promised (see Heb 11:39-40)” (DeYoung, 33).

The emergent thought on this breaks from historical Christian thought. I don’t quite understand how the “emergents” reach this without completely ignoring scripture, but they say that the destination we are awaiting, namely heaven, is of secondary importance!

“Evangelism should be seen as an opportunity to fund people’s spiritual journeys, drawing on the highly relevant resources of ‘little pieces’ of truth contained in the Christian narrative.” Similarly, Peter Rollins argues that instead of thinking in terms of destination (we became Christians, joined a church, are saved), we should think in terms of journey (we are becoming Christians, becoming church, becoming saved). Hence, ‘we need to be evangelized as much, if not more, than those around us.’” (DeYoung, 33)

Anyone who attempts to explain or define the journey of faith is highly criticized by emergent leaders as cheapening it. This is because they view this journey as “more wandering than directional, more action than belief, more ambiguous than defined” (DeYoung, 33). What about Titus 2:14…”The grace of God has appeared bringing salvation to al lmen

So, what exactly is the danger of all of this? Aren’t we supposed to enjoy our lives as Christians and enjoy our experience of God? As Paul writes in Romans 5, we are called to experience the love of God on a very deep level. And throughout the entirety of Scripture we are called to find joy in God and delight in God and even find pleasure in God (cf. Ps 16). So what’s the big deal? One danger that is right out in the front is that by having less doctrinal reflection and more personal introspection, there naturally follows a great preoccupation with our own stories, rather than a preoccupation with what Christ has done for us. We can easily become self-confident and self-sufficient, as we are led by our hearts to believe that our good qualities and our good experiences are the reason that we have been saved and enjoy the Christian life. This has great implications on how we share our testimonies of conversion. Just as an aside…when you share your testimony, do you emphasize what God did for you, or do you emphasize your experience? When someone hears it, do they walk away thinking how great God is, or do they walk away thinking how great your story is, affected emotionally by how you related your experience? Well, the emergent leaders would stress that if people aren’t walking away thinking the latter, then you have it all wrong. That should throw up a warning flag that something is wrong with this movement.  As the authors rightly say, “there are serious problems lurking along the emergent journey” (DeYoung, 35).

Over the next few posts, I hope to address the direct problems brought to the surface by the view of the Christian Journey.

I find it interesting that the emergent movement sees themselves and their ideas as new and exciting. If you take some time to review history, you would note the numerous theologians in the past who have attempted to push this exact same view, and failed miserably. Just to name one, Schleiermacher taught that the only way to understand the Christian faith was by what you experience, and not through formulating doctrines from Scripture. Revelation from God, according to Schleiermacher, was not given through human words, but through experience in the heart of man. Sound eerily familiar? Hmmm…maybe the emergent church is not so emergent. To me, it sounds more like “The Resurfacing Church that Failed in the Past” movement.

Are YOU an Emergent Christian???

“You might be an emergent Christian if: you listen to U2, Moby, and Johnny Cash’s Hurt (sometimes in church)… and always use a Mac; if your reading list consists primarily of Stanley Hauerwas, Henri Nouwen, N.T. Wright, Stan Grenz, Dallas Willard, Brennan Manning, Jim Wallis, Frederick Buechner, David Bosch, John Howard Yoder, Wendell Berry, Nancy Murphy, John Frank, Walter Winks and Lesslie Newbigin (not to mention McLaren, Paggit, Bell, etc.) and your sparring partners include D.A. Carson, John Calvin, Martyn Lloyd-Jones, and Wayne Grudem; if your idea of quintessential Christian discipleship is Mother Teresa, Martin Luther King Jr., Nelson Mandela, or Desmond Tutu; if you don’t like George Bush or institutions or big business or capitalism or Left Behind Christianity; if your political concerns are poverty, AIDS, imperialism, war-mongering, CEO salaries, consumerism, global warming, racism, and oppression and not so much abortion and gay marriage; if you are into bohemian, goth, rave, or indie if you talk about the myth of redemptive violence and the myth of certainty; if you lie awake at night having nighmares about all the ways modernism has ruined your life; if you love the Bible as a beautiful, inspiring collection of works that lead us into the mystery of God but is not inerrant; if you search for truth but aren’t sure it can be found; if you’ve ever been to a church with prayer labyrinths, candles, Play-Doh, chalk drawings, couches, or beanbags (your youth-group doesn’t count); if you loathe words like linear, propositional, rational, machine, and hierarchy and use words like ancient-future, jazz, mosaic, matrix, missional, vintage, and dance; if you grew up in a very conservative Christian home that in retrospect seems legalistic, naïve, and rigid; if you support women in all levels of ministry, prioritize urban over suburban, and like your theology narrative instead of systematic; if you disbelieve in any sacred-secular divide…if you long for a community that is relational, tribal, and primal like a river or a garden; if you believe doctrine gets in the way of an interactive relationship with Jesus; if you believe who goes to hell is no one’s business, and no one may be there anyway; if you believe salvation has a little to do with atoning for guilt and a lot to do with bringing the whole creation back into shalom with its maker; if you believe following Jesus is not believing the right things but living the right way; if it really bugs you when people talk about going to heaven instead of heaven coming to us…if all or most of this tortuously long sentence describes you, then you might be an emergent Christian.” (DeYoung, 20-21)

So begins the book Why We’re Not Emergent: By Two Guys Who Probably Should Be, by Kevin DeYoung and Ted Kluck.

My purpose in writing this is not to offer a book report or necessarily a book review, per se, of “Why We’re Not Emergent,” but rather to use the book as a guide to foster a discussion (sorry to use an “emergent” term…) on the subtleties of the emergent church and how dangerous the movement truly is to the souls of Christians and non Christians alike. By answering the questions presented in the opening paragraph, maybe you see yourself as fitting the category of emergent. I open with that in order to show you how pervasive this movement is in our culture. The emergent church rides on the postmodern drift of our culture, appealing to people’s sense for the “new and different.”

So, what is the emerging/emergent church? According to the authors, with whom I agree, defining the emergent church is like “nailing Jell-o to the wall.” And it’s not because it’s a new movement. It is completely intentional that the leaders of the emergent church do not define the movement, for they do not hold to absolute truth, therefore not holding to doctrine, or definitions. They want to make a statement that the emergent movement is a continuous discussion, and that it “becomes whatever anyone who calls themselves emergent happens to think at that moment” (DeYoung, 18).

As you read the previous paragraph, you may think, “who in their right mind would want to follow or believe something like that?” It’s not that that people are drawn to. Instead, try this on for size:

What Christian does not want to:

1. Identify with the life of Jesus
2. Transform the secular realm
3. Live highly communal lives
4. Welcome strangers
5. Serve with generosity
6. Participate as producers
7. Create as created beings
8. Lead as a body
9. Take part in spiritual activities

It all sounds good right?

The problem with the emergent church is not so much that their goals are wrong, but rather their foundation from which they pursue these goals is wrong and the means by which they pursue these goals is wrong. As the authors write, “Its their prescribed remedies that trouble us most” (DeYoung, 23). Yes, we should desire to have a deeper relationship with Christ, yes we should impact the world around us, yes we should serve one another, participate in the life of the church, reflect God’s creative ability through the use of the gifts he has given us, and pursue and practice spiritual gifts and activities. However, we must do these things by starting with the foundation of Christ and the infallible, inerrant word of God. This is where the emergent church splits off from traditional Christianity. Among many other things, they believe that Scripture is not inerrant, infallible, and inspired by God. In fact, they believe that God is unknowable, that He would never communicate to us through human words (since, according to post-moderns, words have no meaning but are just symbols), and that as human beings “we can never really know anything anyways” (Miller, Blue Like Jazz). The emergent mindset is that we should live in a constant state of mystery and doubt, because it will cause us to pursue the journey of the Christian life. They believe that the Christian life is not about living with our hope set on the eternity we have awaiting us with God, but rather that it is about the journey and the experience. Since they don’t believe in scripture as truth, they believe that experience dictates the truth. Tomlinson writes, “To say scripture is the word of God is to employ a metaphor. God cannot be thought of as literally speaking words, since they are an entirely human phenomenon that could never prove adequate as a medium for the speech of an infinite God”(Tomlinson, “The Post Evangelical”, 113-114). Rob Bell also writes, “Our words aren’t absolutes. Only God is absolute, and God has no intention of sharing this absoluteness with anything, especially words people have come up with to talk about him” (Bell, Velvet Elvis, 23). They form “communities” and they believe that the collective experience of the community determines what is true about God, their lives, and the world around them, and that that so called truth can change from community to community. One of the most popular emergent communities is Ikon, led by Peter Rollins.

In all of this, the emergent church is “allowing the immensity of God to swallow up His knowability”(DeYoung, 35). “Such statements fly in the face of redemptive history and nearly every page of Scripture. The God of the Bible is nothing if He is not a God who speaks to His people”(DeYoung, 37).

In order to facilitate a proper discussion, it is important that you be familiar with the big names in the emergent movement. These would be Brian McLaren, Doug Pagitt, Peter Rollins, Spencer Burke, David Tomlinson, Leonard Sweet, Rob Bell, and Tony Jones. However, Spencer Burke quotes:

“Contrary to what some have said, there is no single theologian or spokesperson for the emergent conversation. We each speak for ourselves and are not official representatives of anyone else, nor do we necessarily endorse everything said or written by one another.” (http://www.theooze.com/articles/print.cfm?id=1151)

Therein lies the reason that the emergent church is so hard to define…because they refuse to define it. According to them, it would take away from the “experience of the journey,” and would put an end to their “conversation.”

Interestingly, John Calvin writes in Christian Institutes, “if men are only naturally taught, instead of having any distinct, solid, or certain knowledge, they fasten only on contradictory principles, and, in consequence, worship an unknown God.”

That, in essence, is what the emergent church is doing. Refusing to accept the truth of special revelation, and holding only to natural revelation. In turn, they are leading others and themselves to worship an unknown God. How dangerous indeed.

Hopefully over the next several weeks, you will gain a better understanding of the fact that “you can be young, passionate about Jesus Christ, surrounded by diversity, engaged in a postmodern world, and reared in evangelicalism and not be an emergent Christian” (DeYoung, 15)

The Shack - A review of William P. Young’s Novel

William P. Young’s The Shack now sits at #8 on Amazon’s best-sellers list. When I ordered it, it was #5. It is a solid top ten on the Publishers Weekly trade paperback list and is gaining more press as time goes on, apparently–USA Today, NPR, etc. On the front cover Eugene Peterson says, “This book has the potential to do for our generation what John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress did for his.” That is quite a compliment–and one hopefully completely untrue.

The plotline of the story is Mackenzie Phillips working through the kidnapping and murder of his daughter, Missy. There is perhaps no more sympathetic tragedy that could be devised. That becomes the vehicle for William P. Young to reveal his theology of God, sin, suffering, the Bible, love, forgiveness, almost everything of significance in the Christian life. Eugene Peterson speaks of The Shack impacting our generation like Bunyan, but it is far more obvious that our generation has created The Shack.

The book is skillfully conceived in terms of setting up a way to unpack some heavy theology in an engaging read. Young has moments of real skill in his descriptions and dialogue, though far too often it becomes overly sentimental and too chummy to be believable:”Oh, Mackenzie,” responded Sarayu, “mistakes are a part of life, and Papa works his purpose in them, too.” She was amused and Mack couldn’t help but grin back” (196). There is a lot of looking at each other and grinning. Sarayu, by the way, is Young’s term for the Holy Spirit–more on that later. Young as a writer is adequate enough; as a theologian, not nearly.

It is the theology of the book that is causing all of the hub-bub–and rightfully so (cf. Tim Challies’ review ). Young is not an angry atheist (Philip Pullman), but nailing him down as a Christian is difficult. He plays with some ideas on the Trinity, the church, and the Bible in such a way that he seems very much in line with the Emerging Church. His casual regard for the Bible is at odds with historical evangelicalism (unfortunately, not modern evangelicalism!). Lets look at some of his thinking in more detail.

On a positive note, he has tapped into the beautifully relational dimension of our walk with Christ. God really does want a relationship with us that is open, intimate, and personal. He is our Good Shepherd that knows us (Jn 10:14-15; Ps 23), our Heavenly Father that has adopted us (Rom 8:15), our God who is in us and we are in him (Jn 14; Gal 2:20). Young has not captured the true contours of our relationship with God, but he has tapped into that desire we all have, to know God intimately. Unfortunately, it is expressed within other damaging ideas, and this ultimately distorts what is to be our true relationship with God.

Firstly, there is his “Trinity” which appears to Mack as a shockingly anthropomorphic collection that starts with an African woman we call ‘Papa’ who represents God the Father. Jesus is apparently a Jewish man–who remains human, I might add, by choice. The Holy Spirit he calls Sarayu and he is presented as an Asian woman who is always a little hard to get a good look at. All are continually jolly and even sarcastic with each other. There is never anger at anyone, only sympathy and pain, because, after all, even those who do horrible things only do that because they are hurting inside and were taught to do those things. Once our initial shock at this ‘Trinity’ settles, we learn more about Young’s Trinity. It has no hierarchy, which is a human sinful invention, but only a beautiful, circle of relationship. They are one because they all do what each of them does, all know each other’s thoughts, even to the extent that the Father becomes human through Jesus. We should add that God the Father will become masculine at the end of the book.

As we might guess, secondly, this God is not sovereign. This is discussed primarily through the issue of evil and suffering. There are moments here and there where ‘Papa’ says it remains true that he(she?) does control everything, but evil is about human free choice. “I did not purpose Missy’s death, but that doesn’t mean I can’t use it for good” (222). The reason God cannot prevent sin is because love demands freedom of choice and that is God’s desire from us. “To force my will on you,” Jesus replied, “is exactly what love does not do. Genuine relationships are marked by submission even when your choices are not helpful or healthy” (145). This is modern Arminianism, which in itself is not heresy.

Thirdly, there is throughout a bias against organized Christianity, or attempts to systematize our faith. This first appears on pp. 64-65 when Mack, wrestling with what Young calls his “Great Sadness”–a great phrase to depict the oppressive weight of certain depressions–reflects that a note supposedly written by God for him doesn’t fit with what he learned in seminary:

“In seminary he had been taught that God had completely stopped any overt communication with moderns, preferring to have them only listen to and follow sacred Scripture, properly interpreted, of course. God’s voice had been reduced to paper, and even that paper had to be moderated and deciphered by the proper authorities and intellects….Nobody wanted God in a box, just a book. Especially an expensive one bound in leather with gilt edges, or was that guilt edges?”

In a fairly common tactic, much is confused in this paragraph that is really distinct. We have on the one hand authoritarian traditionalism alluded to, but also the pages of a Bible. The takeaway is that anyone–like me!–who feels that the Bible is the inspired word of a God who reveals himself through words and phrases and sentences and books is somehow unenlightened. There is even the parallel made between God in a box and God in a book. No Biblical theologian imagines that God is fully described in the Bible or that relationship with him is not more dynamic than mere reading. But neither does any Biblical theologian consider that the Bible is anything less than “breathed out by God” (2 Tim 3:16). Young will do great harm to any audience that really buys into his brand of Christianity.

Fourthly, there are hints at a kind of universalism that is never made explicit. An example of this is on pp. 162-163 where Mack is before Wisdom-incarnate and asked to choose three of his children to send to hell. This is meant to point out the absurdity of thinking of God sending some and not others to hell. In response he pleads, “Please let me go for my children, please, I would be happy to…Please, I am begging you…” (163). He has responded as he should, and he is told that he now understands what Jesus prayed to Papa. Another example comes just a bit later when Mack asks if, “all roads will lead to you?” Jesus responds, “Most roads don’t lead anywhere. What it does mean is that I will travel any road to find you” (182).

Young here is dancing on the edge of universalism, offering suggestive comments, but then looking at the accusation of universalism as if its a simplistic one and misses the point. Yet, it is undeniable that he is piece by piece dismantling any basis for judgment by God of humanity.

Sadly, he sees such critical thinking of his book as missing the point because it was just a work he wrote to teach his children about God, not a theological treatise (from his blog). Despite his intentions, it is precisely a theological treatise, of the same sort as Pilgrim’s Progress to another generation. A good story cannot mask unbiblical thinking, and a work of fiction is not immune from doing great harm to those who buy into the worldview presented. Fiction can often lure us into the grossest fallacies simply because the story takes our guard down.

We could go into more topics, like the psychologizing and philosophizing that is supposedly coming from God to us (197), or the almost total emphasis on relationships to the exclusion of almost everything else in the Christian life–like truth, justice, holiness, obedience to actual commands, and certainly, doctrine.

Conclusion

In some ways Eugene Peterson is absolutely right that it is this generation’s Pilgrim’s Progress, in the sense that our generation certainly produced such a book. It represents a tendency to see God is more like us and certainly less intimidating than previous generations. God becomes a loving and lovable therapist trying to help us get over our issues. Instead of Isaiah’s “The Holy One of Israel,” we find, “The Nice One Those Neurotic Theologians are Trying to Keep From Us.” The Bible is stripped of its gospel-centered offensiveness and it becomes merely a journal about forgiveness and healthy relationships.

My own greater concern with The Shack is not about the specifics of his theology. He is obviously right on some things and wrong on many others. What is the great danger is the way that it presents a Christianity concerned with the teaching of the Bible as missing the point. God is not to be put in our boxes, it’s relationships and not rules, etc., and this seems to mean that the Bible is one source among others–like sunsets, babies, and paintings–where we hear from God. This tendency is the cancer of every generation, but especially ours. Ours has lost labels like “evangelical” and “liberal” and everyone is apparently “in the camp.” Those of us concerned with historical orthodoxy, biblical purity, theological precision, are seen as dusty relics of another age.

The remedy for such thinking is just what is found in the pages of our Bibles:

Thus says the LORD: ‘Heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool; what is the house that you would build for me, and what is the place of my rest? All these things my hand has made, and so all these things came to be, declares the LORD. But this is the one to whom I will look: he who is humble and contrite in spirit and trembles at my word’ (Isaiah 66:1-2).

“But as for you, teach what accords with sound doctrine” (Titus 2:1).

“Love…does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth” (1 Cor 13:4-6).

May our love be filled with truth; may our gospel have sharp edges and clear definition even as it softens hearts; may our doctrine be historically grounded and not a re-creating God in our own image; may we be lovers of truth as an expression of loving God and our neighbor. Unfortunately, Young helps us with none of these.

DJB

Can God suffer? — Carson’s “How Long, O Lord?”

D.A. Carson’s How Long, O Lord? is filled with insight on the topic of suffering in all of its myriad manifestations.  At one point he looks at the cross and sees there a definitive statement that our God is not the impassible God of the Greeks but the living God who even suffers.  He writes this:

The biblical evidence, in both Testaments, pictures God as a being who can suffer.  Doubtless God’s suffering is not exactly like ours; doubtless metaphors litter the descriptions.  But they are not metaphors that refer to nothing, that are suggestive of nothing.  They are metaphors that refer to God and are suggestive of his profound emotional life and his distinctly personal relationships with his people.

Here, then, the cross is climactic.  God’s plan of redemption cost the Father his Son; it cost the Son his life.  And the Son learned suffering in human terms: ‘Since the children (i.e., human beings) have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might destroy him who holds the power of death–that is, the devil–and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death’ (Heb 2:14-15).

The cross, then, reveals the kind of God we trust (187-188).

It is amazing grace that we have received because it is a grace that, free as it is to us, cost God dearly.

DJB