Resurrection

Resurrection: Rob Bell.

Not long ago I heard a (rather rubbish) preacher claim that the gospel hope is "going to heaven when you die". This is a fairly common viewpoint - you get it in several Victorian hymns - but it does have two big problems: firstly it is not in the Bible; and secondly it makes this world seem like a pointless waiting room, like hanging around at Heathrow for a flight to Madrid whilst Spanish Air Traffic Control is on strike.

In the Bible the gospel hope is, on one level at least, clear enough: it is resurrection (see, for example, 1 Cor 15 and  Acts 23:6). The trickier bit is understanding what resurrection, in this context, is all about.

The Acts quote above looks to be about a general resurrection of the dead 'at the end of the age' - ie after Jesus returns, when God's Kingdom is fully realised in a 'new heaven and a new earth'. Whilst that's more concrete than just 'going to heaven', it's still not obvious what its relevance is to here and now.

The chapter to the Corinthians is different though. That starts from a statement of the gospel that Jesus died and was raised, in the past, and then argues from this that there will be a general resurrection in the future. So the basic gospel message that the Corinthians had already accepted was about Jesus' resurrection, and Paul was teasing out for them the implications of this for their present and future.

An expansion on resurrection as the 'gospel hope' then would start with Jesus' death and resurrection setting us free from anything that is wrong in our past.

Then the resurrection message for here and now is that however bad things may be, God will have the last word. When Jesus died on the cross it looked as though it was all over, but God raised him from the dead and defeat was changed to victory. When we are at our most hopeless, when darkness is all around, then God will act and everything will change in an instant. The resurrection message is that God transforms despair to joy and defeat into victory; we just need to hang in there as best we can.

Finally, resurrection is hope for the future: a double hope in that we hope to be reunited with those who we have loved, but also in that we hope to live in a renewed world where life, justice and love are all around (and within).

Rob Bell, of course, puts all this much better, so I have included a video of his about Resurrection at the top of this post. Enjoy!

STILL PAINTING: Rob Bell On Failing

A video from LiveStream of an evening where Rob Bell is speaking about failing ... and laughter.

robbell on livestream.com. Broadcast Live Free

Love Wins By Rob Bell

When the religious movers and shakers, the guys with the power and the influence, are vigorously driving people away from God with messages about how hateful and judgemental He is, what can you do about it? If you're Jesus, you walk around Galilee and Judea, teaching and healing in the name of God. If you're Rob Bell you write a book. Either way, the intent is to show that God really is a God of love and faithfulness. But in doing so, they also show up the haters as being far, far from God, and they will want their revenge.

The religious right in the US were out even before Love Wins was published - they didn't care what it said, they just wanted to attack Rob Bell. Here in the UK they're not so blatant, but I was interested to read in this month's Christianity magazine an article arguing that without Hell in the message churchgoers wouldn't be able to witness to Jesus. Curiously Greg Downes, the article's author, goes on to say that universalism - the idea that everybody will eventually be saved - only works if certain sections of Scripture are distorted or disregarded. The irony of this line is that Love Wins gives a lot of examples of Bible passages which Downes has to ignore or distort to dismiss the universalist position. Actually, I think Love Wins is probably the most overtly Scripture-based book that Bell has written.

Once you read the book, it is clear that Rob Bell is not proposing universalism anyway. What he is doing is pointing out that the Christian faith, the historical sweep of mainstream orthodox Christian thinking, is much broader than the bigots would have you think. Variants of universalism have been around a long time and are not necessarily anti-Biblical. The tension between salvation of a remnant and salvation of the whole world is a Scriptural tension: the range of passages is there and we have to accept that we are not God and we don't know everything. In the meantime we are called to be grace-full and loving in our differing interpretations.

For Bell it is God's love which has the last word, yet God's love allows the freedom to say 'no'. So he is not a universalist, but he does believe that God will give every chance He can for every person to respond by choosing life.

Bell's genius is that he writes very well and very clearly, in a modern open style which avoids the jargon and religious nonsense. He writes for anyone interested in living life better, free-er, deeper; for anyone who recognises a spiritual side to life, but needs more than the Pharisees with their blaring megaphones can offer.

This is very readable and interesting book: I don't agree with everything Bell says, but I do suggest you read it for yourself. I strongly recommend it.

I Wish I'd Written That

'The God Who Wastes Nothing', on Be Free Mama

Or, at least, I wish I could write that well about things that matter.

Rob Bell is an American speaker/preacher who is best known for his Noomas - short (10 to 14 minutes), punchy, real-life DVDs, which aim to "explore our world from a perspective of Jesus". More recently he has also done a series of speaking tours where he goes to the opposite extreme of speaking for around 2 hours; with the talk at one of the tour locations being filmed and released on DVD. His latest such film is called Drops Like Stars, which explores "the endlessly complex relationship between suffering and creativity". (Bell has never been one to avoid tricky issues). I've seen the DVD, but Stephanie Moors saw him live, in Tempe last February. And blogged about a part of it. I can't see an excerpt from the post that I can sensibly take out to include here, so I just suggest you read the whole thing; it's not long.

The odd thing about this, is that Be Free Mama looks like a blog about pregnancy and young children. I've been there done that, carry the scars (never let them tell you that the woman has the hardest part of childbirth :) ). I don't have any desire to relive the experience vicariously, thank you very much. So, if I hadn't stepped into the blog in the middle, as it were, I'd never have paid any attention to it. Yet, once I put some time time and effort in properly looking, I found it full of poetry: meditative, spiritual and earthed.

When I first started blogging, it seemed to be easy to find good blogs all over the internet (back when it had a capital 'I'). Now it seems much, much harder (not an original thought). Facebook is fashionable now, of course, but for me it is far too instant, no time for reflection, for thought, for exploration of new and interesting ideas. Lots of bloggers I really liked have stopped blogging, others have said everything once, and are changing their style to avoid repeating themselves.

Of course, it may be that back then blogging was new to me, so I spent more time exploring. Most blogs have sidebars with other blogs of interest; although it does take time to explore the web they form. But the biggest source of useful links, I think, used to be comments. A thoughtful comment on a blog I'm reading, with a link to the commenter's blog, is a reason to follow that link and explore further. Yet, there don't seem to be so many comments on posts now, and those there are tend to be in small close-knit groups. It's as though the internet, once so exciting as it opened up the world, is fragmenting into like-minded groups blogging into their own tight neighbourhoods.

Or maybe I'm just getting old.