Reviews: A New Kind of Christianity … round-up
In the blogs responding to the recent CT interview, Mike Clawson's comments stood out to me as "getting" what I was trying to say in ways that many others didn't. So when he raised some good questions, I was happy to respond. He'll be blogging those responses here.
This one includes the delightful line, "Embrace your inner rabbi!"
This one nicely amalgamates conversations that are already stirring based on the ten questions. So does this one and this one.
This one focuses on the church question.
This one's provocatively entitled "Sex: Sympathizing with the Damned."
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Journey and Destination …
A thoughtful question about justice, poverty, history, and theology after the jump
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Q & R: Wrath and hell
Here's the Q:
I am a part of the Present day "Inclusion", or "Ulitimate Reconciliation Movement." Bishop Carlton Pearson and many others have been the one who influenced me. However, after reading your book "The last word and the word after that." I am seeing things in a new light. The "inclusion" movement speaks heavily of the Greek words thumos and Orge as "degrees of God's Passion." Orge is spoken of as "God's Passion." Thumos is the "inbreating of God's Passion." Yet, I got a feel from some of your writtings that we need to shift our attention to the Hebrew words for "Wrath." The Religious leaders of that day warned against the "coming" wrath while the common people welcomed it. You have obviously done alot of research. Your website comments that Your new book deals with this. I am doing my own research at Dallas Theological Seminary, SMU, Southwestern in Forth Worth, Texas. Plus I live in a Messanic Jewish Community. Can you help me see more details on your View of Wrath. Recommend something?
R: Thanks for your question. I'm so glad that Carlton - at great personal cost - had the courage to question the view of "eternal conscious torment" that we were both taught, and that large numbers of people sincerely believe is their only option. In my new book, I take a slightly different tack that isn't incompatible with other approaches, but maybe provides a larger context or frame that supports them.
The key issue I raise in the book is our assumptions about the big narrative of the Bible. (I avoid the contentious term metanarrative for reasons I explain in the book.) Once we question the precritical assumptions about the story which the Bible is telling, we suddenly find that specific words take on different meanings - meanings that are more in tune with the Jewish rabbis of Jesus' own people. You mention the word wrath - which many people assume means "anger that leads to the punishment of eternal conscious torment." But outside of the old narrative, another possibility arises: wrath means God's displeasure that allows people to experience the consequences of their negative actions. Try that out in a reading of Romans 1 and see if you think it fits. So if we neglect the poor, there will be crime and revolutionary movements ... If we neglect our children, they'll feel alienated from us, hurting themselves and us. If we neglect the environment, we'll suffer erosion and global warming. If we worship idols, we'll play to our own baser instincts.
Another powerful example is "righteousness," which I actually think would better be translated "justice" in most cases, and the related word "judgment." Most people assume that righteousness means simple religious rigor, but if it means justice, it integrates personal uprightness with social concern - doing right to my neighbor, enemy, stranger, and so on. And judgment in the conventional narrative means God sending people to hell. But what if ... what if this is based on a mistaken understanding? What if judgment means "setting things right," or "restoring justice?" So for God to come as judge to bring judgment would mean God coming to stop the oppressors from oppressing, the polluters from polluting, the violent from plundering, the greedy from hoarding, etc? It would be good news, not bad news!
A short way to say the same thing: we assume justice is merely retributive. But I believe God's justice is far better and richer than that. It is restorative. I hope my new book will add more shape and depth to this.
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Fr. Richard Rohr on Birthpangs
Richard's recent meditation on giving birth resonates powerfully with the first few chapters of A New Kind of Christianity. I wish I could have included this quote in the book!
Those of us who are seeking to give birth to a new kind of Christian faith certainly feel some pressure and pain. The controversy engendered by my new book isn't enjoyable for me or others on this quest. But I think it's important to remember that it's not easy for those who critique or oppose what we're doing either. Perhaps that realization can help us to not become preoccupied with our own discomfort, and to actually empathize - on both sides - with those who disagree with us. Empathizing with your neighbor must surely be a part of loving him or her!
If I can risk being excessively explicit, it's the "conservative" strength of the woman's cervix that keeps new life from being born prematurely, while it's the "progressive" strength of the woman's uterus that assures the resistance is overcome in due time. One without the other would be catastrophic to our survival. This is a balance I sought to convey in my book, although obviously, I'm throwing my energies into the progressive work of being sure that the cries of a healthy new generation of disciples will in due time be heard among us.
Thanks, Richard! (By the way, Richard and I will be speaking together a couple times this year - first April 9-11 in Albuquerque. Phyllis Tickle, Shane Claiborne, and others will be there as well. Maybe you should join us?)
Excerpt after the jump ...
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