Love's Fire Burns Stronger

Jeremiah’s complaint echoes through time

Validating my frustration as normal

While the response he received

Hints that the worst is yet to come

I have felt the resistance – though not nearly in full

Of that which desires my death.

But indeed my Help is stronger,

And silence is not an option for me,

Nor is living in the shadow of mortal man;

No, I must let the Light shine

I must cultivate the spark and feed the fire

I must.

Although my anger burns toward them,

So does His love burn for them,

And I must only fuel the latter fire in my soul;

I must utter worthy, not worthless words.

Backlash

I've noticed something. Whenever there's a push one way ideologically, there seems to be another "counter push" or backlash in the other direction. Many cultural and social changes have come about as a response to a disagreed-with ideology or value system. Hippies had long hair in rebellion to the buzzed look of men in the army, and their parent's conservative short hairstyles.

Like it or not, this happens theologically as well; sometimes our attitudes and the things that we focus on within scripture and our faith come from an attempt to distance ourselves from what we perceive to be a false doctrine or incorrect teaching. We begin to drift into the other extreme in regard to what we're opposed to - we run to the other end of the spectrum.

When talking about God, especially to non-believers, I tend to highlight His love and forgiveness. I am continually amazed by and enamored with His insanely awesome love towards us - and I've actually been criticized for this. To me, it's frustrating to be constantly reminded that God hates sin - of course He does, that's why when He sent Jesus to die for our sins, the magnitude of His love was shown; Jesus took our punishment- God set us free through Him. Of course, "through Him" means just that; He is the only way.

I'm writing this, because I now know why I've been criticized for emphasizing God's love: Rob Bell. I've recently become familiar with the term "Universalism", as some suspect Bell of following this line of thought. Apparently Bell believes that all people go to heaven - a view clearly not supported by scripture. The Christian community has understandably begun to distance themselves from Bell, and make known that his teaching on this subject is not theologically sound.

Bell's views bring up a ton of issues, but right now I'm just concerned with a few implications of what I see as a backlash against Bell. For one, his acknowledgment that God is a loving God, is true - and in an attempt to counter him, we shouldn't downplay that love. I also think that it's unnecessary to emphasize how horrific hell is and how many people are going there. The Gospel is good news - it doesn't downplay or eliminate the reality of hell, but the focus is on Christ, and not on eternal damnation. Focusing on hell can lead to being motivated by fear.

I also have been given a hard time about expressing hope for many of the lost; I believe that God doesn't wish for anyone to perish, and that as Christians we hold the responsibility of spreading The Good News to as many on this planet as possible. In an attempt to counter Bell, we might end up expressing a kind of "there are going to be a lot of people in hell anyway" attitude and dismiss those around us that we could be attempting to share the Gospel with.

I think that Bell's views are actually a backlash as well; he is most likely frustrated with a focus on damnation, and feels that many are unnecessarily turned off by not hearing enough of the good in the good news. He is teaching unbiblical - and really, illogical - doctrine however, and I am in no way supporting his views.

I think that we as Christians have a right to feel alarmed at Bell's teaching, but I also hope that in our effort to distance ourselves from his views, we don't run to the other extreme and teach that hardly anyone at all will get into heaven, so we might as well dismiss those we consider "sinners".

A Wednesday

In a world constantly engaged in the exchange of information, where the knowledge of our past, the realities of our present, and the projections of our future flow through cyberspace and our own minds without end - I sit and begin to sort through all of the thoughts in my mind as if I were weeding out emails after not checking my account for weeks. It's tiresome work.

Sometimes when I set out to write, I have trouble picking any one of the seemingly endless ideas being entertained by myself and those around me to expound on. I often give up when this happens. Today I've decided to force myself to overcome my indecision and apprehension, and just let the verbage out - let it pour from my mind and work through my fingertips onto the screen. I'll have to wait until after my classes though, because I don't have nearly enough time now - but after enduring English 2100 and American History, I will return and unload my weary brain.

My First Real Post

It's a beautiful day in Savannah Ga, and while I could (and should) be running in Forsyth Park, or at least enjoying the day in some healthy way, I'm sitting inside surfing the web. What started as a Google search in order to clear up the meaning of a certain Lady GaGa song, turned into a great discovery - thinkers; I came across a chain of Blogs all written by refreshingly honest and thoughtful people, unafraid of causing controversy. They run the risk of doing so because they ask questions, are a bit edgy, are honest, and discuss current issues - while defending their Christian faith .

I've wanted to start a blog before, but something has always kept me from really committing to one. In the back of my mind I've always been afraid that I would come across wrong, offend people, or never get more than a few views. Finding the blogs I mentioned above though, has helped me to get past my first two fears. I feel more comfortable now saying that I am a thinking follower of Christ; I'm just trying to live and accept the realities of the Gospel while living in 21st century America.

I believe that God is far beyond our ideologies and attempts to make following Him into a culture; Christianity isn't a club. I believe that God loves the lost - something that I think He makes clear through the entirety of the Bible, but that I've seen others appear to have forgotten. I believe that there is hope; instead of having a "most people are going to Hell anyway" attitude, I choose to see that God will leave the 99 in search of the one. It's true of me that I used to hate a lot of people - I judged harshly and harbored resent - but God is turning that fire of hatred into a fire of love.

I'm not a relativist, not at all - in fact, I think it's an incredibly dangerous way to think, but I do acknowledge that people are coming from all kinds of places, and I don't know a whole lot anyway - only what God has allowed me to see so far. I have many questions, and I'm prepared to possibly never have definitive answers to them. I do know that this world is complicated, diverse and big... and that God most likely is too.