The Boy and the Cars

There are some advantages to living by a busy street. For instance, the street can entertain my son when I don't feel like it...

Review: Rob Bell's "Velvet Elvis"

I won't lie: I was somewhat hesitant to read Rob Bell's book, Velvet Elvis. I had heard many disturbing things about the author. For example:

• He is a heretic
  
• He denies the inerrancy of scripture
  
• He denies the immutability of scripture
  
• He denies the immaculate conception of Christ
  
• He denies Christ's substitutionary atonement for the sins of the world
  
• He secretly devours the souls of small children

Since I do not normally enjoy the company of heretics or baby-soul-eaters, I had my doubts about reading anything by this man. However, I also believe in giving people a chance to speak for themselves. Also, my friend Joseph Lynch generously offered to lend me Velvet Elvis, so I didn't even have to check it out at the library or purchase it in order to peruse Mr. Bell's ideas.

I knew Bell's ideas have been labeled as revolutionary, so I was ready for some new concepts in his writing. Prepared though I was, what I found in this book shocked me. More on that later; first, let me summarize the book so you can be ready to make a semi-informed snap decision about how heretical it is.

Bell's project is an ambitious one. His main premise is that modern Christianity (and, in particular, Evangelical Christian ecclesiology, exegesis, and theology proper) is fair game for review, rethinking, and revision. He writes,

As part of [the Protestant] tradition, I embrace the need to keep painting, to keep reforming. By this I do not mean cosmetic, superficial changes ... I mean theology: the beliefs about God, Jesus, the Bible, salvation, the future. We must keep reforming the way the Christian faith is defined, lived, and explained."¹

Right now, if you're anything like me, you're thinking, "Them is some mighty big britches for one man to fill."

But big britches or no, Bell does an admirable job of creating an accessible, interesting, and even compelling case for his postmodern Christian credo. He uses powerful metaphors to build his approach, and, rhetorically, his use of scripture to support his assertions is masterful (especially since his arguments are fairly certain to face vocal opposition from the "sola scriptura" crowd).

Despite Bell's implication that he will be shaking the very underpinnings of the Christian faith, his project is not one of overturning orthodoxy. Rather, he wants to shift the focus of what he sees as a dry, dull Christianity back to the things that made the teachings of Jesus so compelling:

• His offer of access to an otherwise unknowable God
  
• His promise to be our Way -- our only Way
• His love for marginalized people
  
• His genuine humanity (as seen in His anguished cry, "My God, my God, why have your forsaken me?")
  
• The transcendent love and joy He offers to those who follow Him²

After the first chapter (or "movement"), Bell does a series of close readings that interpret various teachings of Christ through a sociohistorical lens. In short, he brings historical knowledge to bear in his readings of Christ as one who consciously chose to teach within his own people's tradition: that of the Jewish rabbis.


For example, Bell reads the "yoke" of Christ in Matthew 11:30 as a technical rabbinical term referring to a rabbi's body of teaching. The "binding and loosing" of Matt. 16:19, again, is a technical rabbinical term referring to the strictness of a given rabbi's interpretation of the Torah. Again, these interpretations rely on extrabiblical knowledge, but Bell sees them as having a great deal to do with how Christians should read and apply Biblical truth. They also lead him to conclude that scriptural interpretation -- the binding and loosing and wrestling that are involved in exegesis -- are, or should be, a community-oriented endeavor. (The individualistic founders of the Reformation may now begin barrel-rolling in their respective Papally desecrated graves.)³

Bell goes on to argue that:

• The world is full of God's truth -- even outside of Scripture and the lives of believers -- wherever there is Good or Right or Beauty (Movement Three)
  
• The Bible teaches invaluable lessons for modern life, such as the practice of the Sabbath and the need for leaders to draw strength from the source they point everyone else toward (Movement Four)
  
• God has a much higher opinion of people than we do of ourselves or of others (Movement Five)
  
• God's work in our lives is to take the old us -- the real, old us, that was made in His image and then fell away -- and remake us. In essence, to repair us (Movement Six)
  
• The Church's role is to be an agent of change and a conduit of God's Goodness to the world (Movement Seven)

So, then -- I'll answer the questions I raised earlier, since you're probably getting tired of my rambling and would like me to cut to the chase.

Is Rob Bell a heretic? Does he deny inerrancy, immutability, immaculate conception, and substitutionary atonement? In short, is this book teaching a new gospel?

The answer: no, not that I could see. In some areas, he dances toward the boundaries of orthodoxy, perhaps, but after prayer and close reading, I must say I did not find any false teaching in this book.

So what shocking thing did I find in this book? It was really, really encouraging to me. It made me love God more deeply and think about His word in new ways. In short, it is probably the most invigorating set of new ideas that my spirit has experienced in the past three years. I especially loved the way that Bell tries to reclaim the good things in the world -- the things which, after all, come from the unchanging Father of lights.

I don't agree with everything Bell writes, by any means. I'm not sure I buy his sociohistorical readings of the "yoke" and "binding and loosing" concepts. I'm also a little uncomfortable with the fact that he mentions atonement, sin, judgment, and redemption only in passing. Nonetheless, Bell has a refreshing perspective and a lot of important ideas. If you are a spiritually mature believer in Christ Jesus, read this book. At the very least, it'll give you something to think about.

(P.S.: No, he doesn't eat the souls of small children.)

¹ Bell, Rob. Velvet Elvis. Zondervan: Grand Rapids, 2005, p. 12.
² Ibid., pp. 20-36  
³ Ibid., pp. 66-69

Writing and WRITING and Insurance, Oh My.

Disclaimer: All situations described in this post are purely hypothetical and/or fictional. They have no bearing on any real person(s), company(ies), or letter(s). Any resemblance to any actual person(s), company(ies), or letter(s) is strictly coincidental.

I read this rather fine essay / blogpost yesterday, and it made me want to write. A lot. So, as I sometimes do, I resolved to write more. And as usually happens, that resolve was crushed into a very fine powder this morning by the inexorable, repetitive pounding of my index finger on the snooze button of my alarm clock.

After getting to work late, I worked like a madman all day because we were a person short and had a killer backlog in the wake of the three-day weekend. I worked through my scheduled shift as well as an hour of thoroughly frustrating unpaid overtime, then returned home and began to mow my jungle of a lawn.

As I mowed, I pondered the question of why my writing resolutions always come to nothing. The following Compelling And Pithy Answer came to me: Those who write for a living have a difficult time writing for the love of it. Like it or not, I am one of the former. Until that changes, I will always have difficulty forcing myself to write for the love of writing.

This line of thought led me to reflect further on my Other Writing -- the Writing I don't normally discuss with others because it is part of my daily capitalistic transactions with The Man. And, quite frankly, writing doesn't get much duller and drier than Life Insurance Letters. My first instinct was to consider this whole written genre inferior, simplistic, and much too common to be worthy of any kind of extended cogitation. Life insurance company employees write things like:

Dear Mr. Smith:

We are sorry to learn of Harriet Smith. Please accept our sincere condolences and extend them to the family.

Our records indicate the policy's beneficiary is Bill Smith, husband of the insured. In order to pay the claim against this life insurance policy, we require the following:

• An original certified death certificate indicating Ms. Smith's cause and manner of death. The certificate will be returned upon request, as we are unable to accept a photocopy.
  
• A Claim Form completed by you as beneficiary.

For your convenience, a self-addressed return envelope has been enclosed. If you have any questions, please contact our claim representatives at 1-800-LIFE-INS.

Sincerely,
Life Claims

Pretty prosaic, right? Bulleted, straightforward, written for the Lowest Common Denominator of readers. Certainly nothing my college English teachers would have given gold stars to.

But don't sell Life Insurance Letter-Writers short. They can be pretty suave and even artsy, in their own way, when the situation calls for it. For instance:

Dear Mr. Smith:

We value you as a customer and strive to provide you with exceptional customer service each and every time we do business with you. Please accept our sincere apologies for the problem that occurred with your policy's surrender check.

During a recent audit, it was discovered that you were inadvertently overpaid for the surrender of your policy. On June 1, 2010, a check in the amount of $20,000.00 was issued to you. According to our audit records, the correct surrender amount was $2,000.00.

We ask that the overpayment of $18,000.00 be returned to us. For your convenience, a self-addressed return envelope has been enclosed. If we do not hear from you within 30 days, this matter will be sent to our legal department for additional action.

Again, we sincerely apologize for any inconvenience this problem may have caused. We also apologize for any incorrect information you previously may have received regarding this overpayment. If you have any questions, please contact our service representatives at 1-800-LIFE-INS.

Sincerely,
Policyholder Services

Pretty straightforward, huh? You'd have to be pretty good at reading between the lines to guess that our hero(ine) is putting a brave face on the following facts:

• The "audit" was just one of the guys in Finance who finally caught up on his suspense reconciliations and realized that an error had happened
  
• The "inadvertent overpayment" occurred when a careless employee who had already given his two-week notice didn't stop to double-check the figures on a check he had requested (what a shock!)
  
• The error should have been caught by Finance but never was because the ridiculously Byzantine approval process fosters a fiesta of feverish clicking rather than a rational review of each case
  
• The customer had called in two weeks earlier to ask about the check and was assured that "everything is fine"
  
• A week after that, a letter was sent informing the customer that he owed $1,800.00 for this overpayment
  
• The letter-writer, having just spent an hour sorting out this issue and figuring out what the correct overpayment amount was, is tearing out his/her hair trying to leave his/her emotions out of this communiqué
  
• There is no Legal Department, and if there was, they wouldn't touch this issue because they'd be afraid of complaints filed with the state insurance commission
  
• The company doesn't utilize a collections agency for any overpayments under $20,000.00, so basically the letter-writer's only weapons are politeness and persistence

I hope you begin to see some of the artfulness and zeal that goes into this type of letter. They may not be pretty, but they can at least be functional.

In closing, I put the question to you, dear reader: With all the effort and emotional energy expended on cases like the one above, is it any wonder that people who have to write for a living have trouble writing simply for the love of it?

I thought not.

Good Gracious, NY Times!

The New York Times has really slipped of late. Once a paragon of journalistic integrity, it now regularly runs items that mislead -- if not downright lie to -- its credulous readers.

The latest example I have seen:

Mr. Scott is frequently damned and praised as a stylist, a genre-driven filmmaker whose aesthetic — the steampunk look of “Alien” and “Blade Runner” is now aped in the décor of various boutique hotels — is often seen as more influential than his films.

No, no, no, a thousand times no. This is not steampunk:

This is steampunk:

Yet another case of a second-rate journalist picking up a buzzword and running with it.  This is what happens when the copy editor of the student-run university newspaper does not possess the killer instinct of a ravenous wolverine: the mediocre reporters survive (and even thrive).  Even worse, the copy editors themselves become lazy, lethargic, and forgetful of their responsibility to be faithful fact-checkers rather than just picky punctuation police or stolid syntacticians.

While the survival of the mediocre is not an obvious evil, it does contain an insidious threat.  Survival allows these poor benighted souls, blind to their own inadequacies, to spread their terminal plague of near-competence to every corner of the journalistic world.  Regrettably, this includes even the ivory tower that, once upon a time, was the New York Times.

Human Sacrifice, Cannibalism, and Good Friday

It’s like a scene from a horror film.

. 

A terrified young man struggles against the ropes that cut into his flesh, keeping him stationary on the cold stones of the altar.  Meanwhile, a wizened old man in his twilight years, crazed eyes full of pious resignation, takes a deadly dagger from his belt and holds it shakily over the boy’s throat. 

All the man has to do is cut.  He is very good at this.  He’s done it thousands of times to sheep, to cattle, but never to a human.  Certainly never to his only son.

His eyes tear up, and his soul is anguished within, but this thing must be done.  He blinks several times, rapidly, and steels himself to do it.  He tries not to hear his son’s fearful, pleading cries for mercy.  One keen thrust, one quick pull, and it will be finished.

You know the rest of the story, no doubt.  If you don’t, it’s in Genesis 22: A voice from Heaven, a divinely appointed ram in the thicket, and a blessing from God before father and son descended together from Mount Moriah.

But what if the scene had ended differently? 

What if the knife had plunged, the blood had gushed, and the stench of burning hair and meat and bone that afternoon had come from Isaac’s body instead of from some hapless ram? 

What if Abraham had knelt down and lapped up the pools of his son’s blood?  What if he had sliced off chunks of the boy’s flesh and devoured them greedily, hoping to gain life and forgiveness of sins from the young man’s vitality and innocence?

I hope that image is disturbing to you; I know it is to me.  And yet, as a Christian, my salvation from sin and death depends on an even grimmer scene.

A man who loved all – especially the weak, the outcasts, and the misfits – is betrayed by one of his closest friends into the hands of his enemies.  He is spat on, mocked, and abused at the hands of his captors.  He is stripped naked; strangers gamble for his clothing.

A man who did no wrong – and, indeed, who spoke out against corruption and hypocrisy – is falsely accused before the civil and religious authorities.  The only charge they can prove against him is that he claims to be the son of God – a claim that his teachings and miracles seem to support.

A man who brought wholeness and joy – healing the sick, making the lame walk and the blind see, even casting out demons and raising the dead – is beaten, tortured, and crucified.  The skin of his back is torn to ribbons from repeated scourging, a crown of thorns is pressed down onto his head, and he is nailed to a cross to die the slow, painful, humiliating death of a criminal.

The very son of God —the one who left a heavenly throne for an earthly life of trouble and tears – has the full wrath of his Father poured out on him as he suffers on the cross.  He who despises sin with every part of his being becomes the very thing he hates so God can punish him on our behalf.

Somehow, surrounded by the filth and stench and buzzing flies of the town refuse heap, dripping blood and overwhelmed by the pain of the cross, my salvation was born from Christ’s suffering.  My life was wrought from his death. My darkness was suddenly flooded with a light I could not have known without the cross.

It is a fearful mystery, and one beyond my comprehension.  I don’t pretend to understand God’s motivation or why he worked it out the way He did.  I think the best explanation is probably in the 53^rd chapter of the prophet Isaiah:

He was oppressed and He was afflicted,
         Yet He did not open His mouth;
         Like a lamb that is led to slaughter,
         And like a sheep that is silent before its shearers,
         So He did not open His mouth.
    By oppression and judgment He was taken away;
         And as for His generation, who considered
         That He was cut off out of the land of the living
         For the transgression of my people, to whom the stroke was due?
    His grave was assigned with wicked men,
         Yet He was with a rich man in His death,
         Because He had done no violence,
         Nor was there any deceit in His mouth.
    But the LORD was pleased
         To crush Him, putting Him to grief;
         If He would render Himself as a guilt offering,
         He will see His offspring,
         He will prolong His days,
         And the good pleasure of the LORD will prosper in His hand.
    As a result of the anguish of His soul,
         He will see it and be satisfied;
         By His knowledge the Righteous One,
         My Servant, will justify the many,
         As He will bear their iniquities.

So that’s the human sacrifice: almighty God, in human form, gave himself up as a guilt offering for my sins and yours.  But don’t go yet; I also promised you cannibalism! 

In John 6, Christ says:

"Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in yourselves.

 "He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.

"For My flesh is true food, and My blood is true drink.

 "He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood abides in Me, and I in him.

 "As the living Father sent Me, and I live because of the Father, so he who eats Me, he also will live because of Me.

 "This is the bread which came down out of heaven; not as the fathers ate and died; he who eats this bread will live forever."

This saying was a mysterious one, and it turned off a lot of his fair-weather followers (some of whom simply saw how Jesus multiplied the loaves and fishes and wanted to get more free food out of him).  Many of his followers turned away after this teaching – and who can blame them?  Cannibalism is repulsive.  Yet, in a sense, when we come to Christ, it is what we practice.  By believing him and accepting his sacrifice on our behalf, we admit that our very sustenance comes from his broken body, and that our forgiveness comes from his shed blood.

In Mark 14, we see more elaboration of what Christ meant when he talked about eating his body and drinking his blood:

While they were eating, He took some bread, and after a blessing He broke it, and gave it to them, and said, "Take it; this is My body."

And when He had taken a cup and given thanks, He gave it to them, and they all drank from it.

And He said to them, "This is My blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many.

"Truly I say to you, I will never again drink of the fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new in the kingdom of God."

Here, Christ isn’t literally slicing off pieces of himself and passing them around as snacks.  Nor is he draining a vein and passing his literal blood around in juice cups.  Rather, he is instituting a symbol to help his followers remember who they are – and, just as importantly, whose they are and what they believe. He knows that, in the future, as often as they replicate this ceremony, they will do so in remembrance of him and of the sacrifice he made on their behalf. 

The horrors of what we remember on Good Friday are indeed strong.  In fact, when I initially began contemplating what this day means, I was a little indignant at its name.  How can such inexpressible pain and suffering be called good?  How can we call a day “good” on which the only perfect one was brutally murdered for sins he did not commit?

Then I remembered that, although this day wasn’t good for the one who died, it also brought hope to the whole world.  Upon reflection, I must conclude that my own life would be hollow and bereft of meaning if Good Friday had never occurred. Because of the suffering that occurred on that cross about two millennia ago, I have life, hope, and peace that are not my own. 

And that is reason enough for me to agree that, despite the human sacrifice and the cannibalism, it remains a very Good Friday indeed.