We are exposed to stories all the time. Tonight we will be exposed to yet another, the story of a common girl, who wins the heart of a Prince. Interestingly there seems to be far more interest in the Royal Wedding outside of the UK, in places like Australia and the US, where we have a whole generation raised on the repeated tellings of the disney princess story. The reason that so many will watch the marriage of Kate and William tonight is because it is in the news, there is blanket coverage, and so on. But many will watch because it taps into a deep hidden desire. A desire communicated to us through story since childhood.
In our Western secularized world we are surrounded by stories, stories that carry with them worldviews. The unimportant man made rich and famous by a force of will, the transformation and personal enlightenment that comes through pursuing pleasure without limits, the touch of heaven on earth that we can achieve through changing our exteriors.
We may read scripture, or hear it in Church, but often is fragmented. So many of our cultures good things are the fruit of an attempt to live out of the biblical story, but as time goes by, we as a people become distant from the story of God’s creation of, and involvement with the world.
That is why I believe it is essential that leaders, regularly take your Churches, small groups, ministries, teams through the story of the bible in a macro sense. In order to again understand the plot, the pace, the turns, the twists of the biblical narrative out of which we live. Yes we need more effective and more relevant Churches and ministries, but perhaps more importantly we need the people of God to live their lives out of the Biblical story.
Here are three great tool to use to help yourself or your people reorient themselves back into God’s story for the world.
Roshan Allpress and Andrew Shamy the Insect and the Buffalo is a light, readable, and yet deep introduction to the biblical story. Great to give to someone to give them an overview of the way the story of the Bible interacts with our lives.
Sean Gladding’s The Story of God, the Story of Us: Getting Lost and Found in the Bible is a fantastic retelling of the biblical story, the way you would have heard it you were sitting around a campfire in ancient Israel hearing the story of your people, or in the early Church hearing about the coming of Christ.
Michael Goheen and Craig Bartholomew’s The Drama of Scripture is a great starting point to understand the overall themes of scripture and the way that those themes interact with our daily lives. Goheen and Bartholomew use six acts–creation, sin, Israel, Christ, church, and new creation to help us navigate and grasp the overarching story.
At Red Church we plan to each year take our congregation through the overarching themes, in order to continual reorient ourselves. This Sunday the whole service will be geared around a dramatic retelling of the biblical story complete with images and spoken word. It is a good idea to do for your community. If you are in Melbourne feel free to drop by to see how it is done.
So let’s get to the answer you have all been waiting for. Is Love Wins heretical?
Pardon the pun, but hell yeah!
Does Love Wins advocate a heretical doctrine of universal salvation, condemned by the majority of the Church since the fourth century? Well if Bell was clearer I might be able to answer that. He certainly flirts with the notion. Love Wins however, is heretical in a different and perhaps more profound way than just theologically.
Bell claims that Love Wins is centered around our view of God, I think the great irony is that the book is really about our view of ourselves. The book is a telling expose of how we, view ourselves as believers today. What drives the sales, what the marketing of Love Wins connects with is a deep desire to live heretically amongst young adults raised in evangelicalism.
whether “sacred” or “secular” – shape and constitute our identities by forming our most fundamental desires and our most basic attunement to the world. In short liturgies make us certain kinds of people, and what defines us is what we love. They do this because we are the sorts of animals whose orientation to the worlds is shaped from the body up more than the head down. Liturgies aim our love to different ends precisely by training our hearts.
Love Wins plays the cultural heresy card. It is according to Smith’s definition a liturgy, powerfully tapping into our deeper desires. It is not just about the concepts and theologies contained in its words. It connects with a submerged, heart held desire amongst evangelical young and not so young adults, to hold onto faith, whilst maximising social status in a culture which values highly the horizontal self. To define against, rather than for.
By purchasing a copy of Love Wins and rocking up to your Baptist young adults gathering in small town Ohio, you are not just ensuring heated discussion and worrying looks your way to see if you are backsliding, you are building up your personal feeling of worth through what Heath and Potter expose as a rebellious consumer purchase.
So yes Love Wins is heretical.
Heresy is punk rock. Heresy is hip, heresy is sexy, heresy sells. Heresy is the middle finger to the establishment. Heresy is currently Christendom’s hottest underground commodity. Heresy is today’s must have accoutrement for the Christian Horizontal Self. By advocating heresy within a subculture of orthodoxy, you will instantly tap into a rich cultural vein which worships the countercultural, romantic individualist, who walks against the mainstream, whilst piling up social currency.
Jumping the Shark, Getting Drunk and Punching Fonzie
To use that much loved analogy from Happy Days, Love Wins and its accompanying media storm feels like the moment the emergent church/post-evangelicalism/whatever you wanna call it, jumps the shark. In fact I would say that it is more than Fonzie jumping the shark, it feels more like the final season of Happy Days, when everything went weird and it felt like the 80′s even though it was meant to be the early 60′s, Arnold’s had burned down, and Richie came back to the series and was all angsty with a moustache, said ‘damn’ and ‘hell’ a lot, got drunk and threw a punch at Fonzie.
So much of the movement of which Bell is a part of, and that probably I have been a part of more than a decade, was a reaction to what was seen as an evangelicalism that was too obsessed with dogma, which had no time for mystery, for questions, for doubt. An evangelicalism which at the time seemed as if were permanently wedded to the values of the enlightenment. An evangelicalism which seemed distant and disconnected from what was happening on the ground with the 90′s, Generation X and what was described as postmodern culture.
So a natural questioning began, a re-evaluation. A great sorting out occurred. Everything seemed up for questioning. Mainstream evangelicalism had sold its soul to modernity and we wanted to walk away. Driving these initial questions was a missional impulse, a desire to connect those culturally disconnected from the Church with Christ. But overtime this agenda was at worst hijacked or at best forgotten. The heart desires to lessen the friction with mainstream culture, to find a place with both the camp of hipness and social acceptance, and the camp of faith took over the conversation. And alas, we got drunk, grew a moustache and threw a punch at fonzie.
Unjust Economies of Cool
Yale professor of French history John Merriman, has wisely noted that most revolutions seemingly are sparked by ideas and new concepts, they really are kicked off by what are perceived as unjust economies. We all know that the French revolution symbolic stared in 1789 with the storming of the Bastille, but there was also the storming of the tax offices. The American revolution was sparked by the Boston tea party, a reaction to what was seen as an unjust economy. And so it is with the so called current revolution of what it is to be Christian today proclaimed by Rob Bell in Time Magazine, in the New Christianity of Brian McLaren, and the great emergence revolution named by Phillis Tickle,
The Bell’s, McLaren’s and Tickle’s are probably pushing intellectual and theological agenda’s designed to move the centre of faith to a less conservative positioning. But the sales, the response, the movement is fuelled by a reaction to what is seen as an unjust social economy. That is the fact that it is totally uncool and socially isolating to follow Jesus in a 21st century culture driven by an existential hedonism. We sort of know this deep down, we know that despite all of the dressing up, all of the slick make overs, that faith cannot be truly cool in our culture of unbelief. So we engage in a new posture, we choose to be the hip fish in a small, square sea. This explains the rise of what Brett McCraken calls the Christian hipster.
Heresy Feels Cool
This is where Heresy comes in.
Why? Because cultural Christian heresy feels awesome.
It feels good to be sitting up the back of the young adults gathering thinking that you are only person in the room hip enough to be pondering if Jamie XX’s solo work as a remixer is superior to his work with the XX.
It feels good to put up a facebook status update which carries with it a whiff of heresy, knowing that the Mark Driscoll fans in your intro to New Testament class will soon fill your profile with angry comments, making you appear like a modern day cyber martyr minus the pain, torture and imprisonment.
You were probably completely morally and biblical right to confront your denominational leader with the fact that there was no fair trade coffee on offer at the national gathering. But admit it, you loved watching him squirm, you enjoyed the fact that for a second, you felt spiritually superior to him.
In the past when someone within the evangelical world, moved into theological liberalism, the natural progression was to move to a more liberal church, college or denominational. Now we stick around for the street cred.
Heresy and the Unbounded Self
Historian Peter Gay who more than anyone has communicated the social power of ideas, notes in his expansive study of modernism, that the movement is defined by two attributes, a fascination with heresy and the self. If I was Rob Bell I would make the point like this,
Heresy
plus
Self
So telling…
At first heresy or new post-orthodox expressions of Christian faith seem progressive and appealing, they seem to be the perfect antidote to a faith with a P.R. problem. But the lure of heresy has more to do with our desire to be free as individuals rather than the need for a new theological agenda. Alistair McGrath in his exploration of Heresy notes that our culture has bought the belief that any boundaries, limits or orthodoxy has been in set in place by the powerful and must be challenged. Yet Peter Berger reminds us that we are living in a culture in which demands of us heresy. A culture in which every individual is free to pick their own path, their own truth, Berger defines this as the essence of heresy. The Chief Rabbi of the Commonwealth Sir Jonathan Sacks goes as far in his commentary on Genesis as to label the the desire to break boundaries, limits and orthodoxies as profoundly pagan, carrying with it the spirit of the builders of Babel.
The contemporary self is drawn to heresy because ultimately it offers us absolute freedom as individuals. I wholeheartedly believe that underlying the discussion on the after life and Hell driven by Bell’s book, is also driven by our desire to live in what Smith and Denton have called a morally insignificant universe, in which the individual is ultimately freed from eternal consequences to their choices. Heresy permits the promethean individual to be completely unbound, free to wreck their destruction upon creation.
The Sin of Forgetting Sin
The great irony is, whilst jumping into every tradition bar those of our own pasts, we ignored the reformational heritage under our feet. The doctrine of original sin, lay a forgotten and unused resource. A reminder that humans need boundaries and limits. Our evangelical forebears, understood that orthodoxy is the canvas upon which creativity can be painted. G.K Chesterton and the
magnificently named Dorothy L Sayers both reminded us of the mystery and magic of orthodoxy. They could both fly as high as kites, explain faith to a disbelieving world in such creative words and forms, because they were tethered to the solid ground of dogma.
Doubt has become a virtue while boldness and assuredness have become marks of arrogance. The only thing we should be sure of is that we cannot be sure of much of anything. Doubt has become synonymous with humility. And so it was with the people who used to be known by that term emerging. This was a faith devoid of boldness, a faith that emphasized the unknowability of God at the expense of what we can know with confidence.
Doubt becomes disingenuous, a cover for not wanting to commit, for wanting it both ways. Heresy becomes an excuse for the individual to do what the hell (boom boom) they want.
The Garden of Doubt
On Good Friday just past, I stood with my Church community in the cold at Box Hill Gardens as we read and remembered the story of a young adult, in his early thirties, who had his moment of darkness, of questioning, of doubt. A young adult disconnected, socially isolated from his peers because of his belief.
As we walked up the hill away from the gardens, I felt my stomach tighten as I thought of this young man, despite his doubt, despite his profound loneliness, despite his social disorientation, who made a choice, a step of faith, a move marked by a gutsy determination. In his actions there was no wanting it both ways.
The site chosen for the reading of the crucifixion was behind the mall, in the loading bay filled with dumpsters and garbage, symbolising the way Jesus was thrown out of the city, onto the dumping ground of Golgotha. As the passage was read, as wafts of the stench of garbage moved across us, the thought of a God, the Creator of the Universe, dying in such a mundane, offensive, filthy environment filled my mind. Giving his life so that I do not have to die, so that the poor may be lifted up, that the unjust and the evil brought to justice, that the universe will be made anew. My heart was filled with thanks that two thousand years ago – that young man who was God in Human form, walked out of the garden of doubt and towards the cross of faith.
Ok today we are going to examine what the structure and style of Love Wins tells us about our current Christian culture.
Love Wins has been the biggest selling book on amazon. Bell has appeared on almost all of the major US news cable channels promoting the book. The book has been on the front cover of Time Magazine, in the interview Bell proclaims,
“There is a massive shift coming in what it means to be a Christian…Something new is in the air.”
They are some big words, they are St Francis, Martin Luther, John Calvin, John Wesley kinda words. To punch in that weight division, to link your book to a massive sea change in the worldwide Christian movement of billions of people, you need to bring some major theological chops to back that kind of talk up.
Thus after all of the buzz, the epoch shifting pronouncements, the warehouse emptying pre-sales, Love Wins comes as a profound anti-climax. Instead of a weighty theological tome, arguing powerfully for a new understanding of what it is to be Christian. We are given what seems like various thoughts, roughly welded together. There are bits of C.S Lewis’ the Great Divorce, some of Tom Wrights eschatology, some elements of Jewish teaching on Olam Ha-Ba, some dips into New Testament Greek interpretation, but on the whole the thoughts don’t gel together. Super blogger Andrew Jones succinctly sums up the book as a Lemon.
So what is going on here? How could such a short book, with no real new insights, roughly sown together, create such a maelstrom?How could it herald such derision and praise in equal measure? Well, as we established in the first section of this review, marketing is at play here, but there is something deeper also going on.
Bell begins his book with a Rabbinical insight, in which it is noted that surrounding the black letters of the Biblical text is white space. Bell uses this to ram home the point that discussions and questions are a key part of Biblical study, but as I read this illustration, I could not help thinking of another analogy. What is in the white spaces around Bell’s words? What are the assumptions, agendas, unspoken memes at play aside from the content and the text?
What is being sold and what are we buying?
The Product of Faux Depth
We have to begin by asking how can a book so short, that I am able to read the whole thing while I ate my lunch (two pieces of toast with apricot jam), do justice to the project that it sets out to achieve? How can a book address such a weighty theological subject in so few words? Was Bell caught in the pressure of wanting to write a theological tome, while his audience demanded another pop release?
I don’t think so, rather what Love Wins offers, is similar to the way a forty second background piece at the end of the newscast, fools us into believing that we understand the complexities and nuances of inter-tribal loyalties in the Afghan war. In affect we are sold faux depth.
Therefore Love Wins gives the impression of depth, but the writing style disables the ability of the author to deliver actual depth and clear answers. Single sparse lines like,
“We are that Free”
“Beautiful”
May seem profound, but upon deeper inspection leave us empty. Such writing reminds me of the film Garden State, which is part of a whole genre of movies which contain scenes or sentiments which seem deep and profound but which after a second viewing minus the soundtrack seem really lame.
Love Wins offers consumers raised in conservative Churches, who wish to differentiate themselves from what they see as stifling forms of religion, yet who still wish to hold onto faith at the same time as their street cred, a feeling that they have sufficiently tackled and understood something theological, deep and profound. A get out of jail card, for an element of Christian dogma, that it is perceived to create friction with the current therapeutic culture.
The Reduction of Language
Love Wins mimics the way that we digest information today. Short, loosely connected soundbites of information. A book for a post literate culture which doesn’t read, which has micro attention spans, who has grown up with the quick cuts of MTV. The language to me in the book does not feel poetic, rather it feels reduced, kind of like the way that twitter takes language and conversation and reduces it. The more I read, the more I kept thinking of the media theorists Marshall McLuhan and Neil Postman, who both advocated for clear communication, who felt that in our media driven culture, language was being reduced into soundbites. Yes Love Wins maybe be easy and quick to read, but the problem, to misquote Spinal Tap, is that it is a fine line between pithy and paltry.
Choose Your Own Theological Adventure
So does Love Wins advocate Universalism? Well before I finally read the book, I noticed some bloggers who had read the confirming that the book did indeed promote universalism, while others blogged that the book reafirmed a belief in Hell and was not universalist. What was going on? As I read at first it seemed that Bell advocated Universalism, then he seemed to reaffirm the doctrine of Hell. What his definition of Hell was exactly was again confusing. So why the lack of clarity? Why did it seem that readers could leave the book with their own answers, was this the 21st century version of the Choose Your Own Adventure series in which the reader was offered alternate endings?
The more I read, the more I felt that Bell wanted it both ways. To push the theological envelope outside of evangelical boundaries, but to stay in the sweet spot of evangelical publishing. It is intriguing that in his recommended section at the end of the book, that he tells us to read evangelical heavyweight Tim Keller on the parable of Lazarus, yet Bell also advocates that in order to understand who and what God is, we must consult multi-faith practionor, pantheist and LSD enthusiast Houston Smith’s book on Christianity. Strange bedfellows indeed.
‘With Love Wins, Rob Bell moves solidly within the world of Protestant Liberalism. His message is a liberalism arriving late on the scene.’
I empathize with Mohler’s concern, but rather than a reintroduction of Liberalism in its classic form, I think that this is something new. Theological Liberals from Schleiermacher to Spong have clearly articulated their positions. Rather it feels like what Bell is trying to do is to carve out a new space. A mutant theological encampment, in which questions, doubt and a lack of dogma move us into a kind of Bordertown in which we cannot be pinned down or defined. In which, in accordance with the zeitgeist, we can subscribe to the myth that we can have it both ways and not lose out. A place to belong for those who love the ‘maybe’ button on Facebook events.
In the next and final instalment. Is Love Wins Heresy?
Well I was not going to read Rob Bell’s book Love Wins or blog about it, but a number of people have contacted me asking about my view on the book, and my perspective on the whole phenomenon. So here goes.
The book has been theologically dissected by far sharper minds than I, so in keeping with the theme of this blog I thought that I would offer an alternative review from a cultural perspective. My question as I read the book, and followed the media buzz, was ‘what does this book tell us about our current christian culture?’. In short the answer is lots.
The ‘Hero or Heretic?’ marketing strategy
Love Wins was number one on amazon before its release. The internet flamethrowers on both sides of the theological divide were shooting off before 99% of people had even read the book. So what does this tell us? Well the obvious answer is that we should not judge a book before we read it, but the more intriguing and less obvious answer is, that the furore around Love Wins has little to do with the actual book Love Wins. It is about the story that we are being sold. It’s kind of like Angelina Jolie’s career, no one cares about her movies, or her wooden performances (as Ricky Gervais recently reminded us). Rather it is the story and the media buzz around Jolie that gets her A list status.
There is the story of the dark and mysterious seductress who stole Brad from Jen, the woman who likes to play with knives, who has quotes from Nietzsche tattooed onto her skin. Then there is the counter story of the altruistic working mum, adopting kids from the two thirds world, estranged from her father, raising her children in the Kingdom of Cambodia, her and Brad rebuilding homes in post -Katrina New Orleans, the UN advocate on the plight of refugees.
These two stories or personas are sold to us by the marketing and publicity machine that surrounds Jolie. They force us to take sides. Is she the epitome of every wives nightmare? The temptress with otherworldly beauty just waiting to steal you husband from you? Or is she the underdog, suffering from bi-polar, estranged from her husband, trying to escape the fame machine? Are you part of Team Jolie or Team Anniston?
The marketing machine gives us a choice to choose between two polarities. Both which play on our hidden fears and desires. Notice in the Vanity Fair cover picture on the left that a question mark is attached to her name. She becomes a mystery that we constantly want to know more about. These twin messages, these two personas ensure that Jolie stays in the media. To use a marketing cliche, she becomes something that you discuss at the water cooler.
Its the same marketing technique that has been used by Harper One to promote Love Wins.I find it interesting that Harper One sent only parts rather than whole manuscript to bloggers who they knew would lash out at Bell’s books. The troops would be mobilised, heading for their keyboards, beginning the flame war, and thus ensuring maximum media buzz for the book well before its publication. There were two media stories sold to us, one was of the heretical hipster pastor, pushing the wheelbarrow of orthodoxy off of the cliff, the emergent seducer, lurking ready to lead thousands of young believers into heresy.
The other story was of the open, progressive, creative poet/pastor/communicator, humbly asking questions. The (in the words of Harper One) rockstar of the Evangelical publishing world. The indie kid with glasses being beaten up online by the nasty, brutish, MMA loving, New Reformed guys.
Thus we are forced to ask the question which corner do we stand in? Is Bell a heretic or a hero? Whose side are we on? Pepsi or Coke? PC or Apple? Taylor Swift or Kanye West? Charlie Sheen or CBS?
Thus Rob Bell is now Rob Bell? Like Angelina, a question mark is now permanently attached to his name, ensuring constant internet chatter and maximum sales.
The marketing line we were being fed was that the people who were criticizing the book, were doing so unfairly because ‘they had not bought the book’ (again the question must be asked why only samples of such a short book were sent around, when the normal protocol as I understand it is to send the manuscript around months before release). As the speculation flew across the twitterverse as to whether Bell was leaving behind orthodox faith, this short audio clip appeared on youtube and spread across the web like the common cold, what I found interesting was not Bell’s statement of faith but his final line.
The marketing talking point that we were sold was, that we HAVE to buy the book to find out what Bell really says. The implicit message was, ‘don’t let the raucous theological gatekeepers decided if Love Wins is heretical. Only you the consumer can truly decide!’
Pseudo Events – Pseudo Books
Daniel Boorstin in his book The Image, noted that our current age was marked by a manufactured buzz around things rather than the worth of the actual things themselves. Boorstin called such manipulations Pseudo-Events, in which hype was created around an event in order to create a faux sense of importance. This is why Richard Branson is always creating Pseudo Events to launch his services or products.
Who cares if Virgin is opening a new service from Manchester to Mumbai? Well, we do if Branson stages a media launch in which he jumps a speedboat through a burning hoop, returning to the shore for the photo op, in which he beams at the camera, sprouting flirty double entendres with a bevy of beautiful flight attendants on his arms.
The reason that Love Wins has sold so many copies, the reason that it has set twitter and the net alight, the reason that I am even talking about it here, it not because of its importance, its theological insight, its high quality writing or its radical new viewpoint. Rather we are discussing the book because of successful marketing.
Hidden Persuaders
Clark Pinnock was airing similar viewpoints to Bell’s in his books in the 90′s, but his books did not go gang busters. Perhaps because his books had really bad covers, with crayonesque pictures of doves on them, plus Pinnock was an old bloke, who looked totally uncool in his suit and non ironic eyewear.
So if you found yourself tweeting in defence of Bell, or banging out face book status updates warning others over Bell’s book, or buying the book in order to find out if Love Wins advocates universalism, inadvertently you just joined the Harper One marketing team on a volunteer basis (And yes I realise the irony that I am doing the same thing.)
One of the real issues that has been lost in the controversy behind Love Wins, is around communication. Essentially marketing and advertising are forms of communication at their most basic. I have no problem with advertising or marketing in their purest forms, I have no problem with Christian books or publishing, I am an author and my books are marketed.
We need good Christian books out there to build up the people of God. What I am concerned however about, is the cynical tone and tactics that seem to be at play here. The real question for Christian publishers or in Bell’s case Christian authors being published by secular publishing houses, is how do we reflect the values of the kingdom in our communications? How do we not fall into the trap of simply mimicking the questionable tactics of those whom Vance Packard calledthe Hidden Persuaders?
Next time we will examine what the structure, tone and style of the book itself tells us about our current culture.
We are exposed to stories all the time. Tonight we will be exposed to yet another, the story of a common girl, who wins the heart of a Prince. Interestingly there seems to be far more interest in the Royal Wedding outside of the UK, in places like Australia and the US, where we have a whole generation raised on the repeated tellings of the disney princess story. The reason that so many will watch the marriage of Kate and William tonight is because it is in the news, there is blanket coverage, and so on. But many will watch because it taps into a deep hidden desire. A desire communicated to us through story since childhood.
