I’ve been chewing on this for a little while as I work my way through Paul’s epistles. During this project, I’ve discovered a funny side effect of getting to know the biblical authors better: I get annoyed when people say things about them that I don’t think are true. In this case, I found myself chafing at a rather pervasive idea commentators seem to have have about Paul. Many of them consider him to be quite possessive of the churches he planted.

At one level, I can see how they could arrive at this conclusion. With texts like these…

Ga 4:16-17; 5:12 Have I therefore become your enemy because I tell you the truth? They zealously court you, but for no good; yes, they want to exclude you, that you may be zealous for them. …I could wish that those who trouble you would even cut themselves off!

2Co 10:13 We, however, will not boast beyond measure, but within the limits of the sphere which God appointed us–a sphere which especially includes you.

2Co 11:5 For I consider that I am not at all inferior to the most eminent apostles…

2Co 12:11 …I ought to have been commended by you; for in nothing was I behind the most eminent apostles…

…it’s easy to walk away with the idea that Paul was a little jumpy about losing his ministry base.

Combining this idea with verses where Paul talks about not encroaching on someone else’s work (Romans 15:20 and 2 Corinthians 10:16), some commentators see Paul’s approach to apostleship as a very territorial one. They explain his sharp tone in Galatians and 2 Corinthians as a reaction to people butting in on his turf, which he didn’t appreciate. Paul had put in all the work to plant the church, the commentators reason, and so he should be the one with continuing influence and authority over the people there (and, not inconsequentially, be the recipient of their financial support).

That was his territory. Those were his churches. Those were his people. He was good and careful not to step on other ministers’ toes, and he resented it when people stepped on his and tried to reap all the benefits of his work. …Or so the logic goes.

Such a notion might fly in our modern capitalistic society, but I have the feeling that Paul would take exception to it. As John the Baptist put it a few decades before Paul, “He who has the bride is the bridegroom” (John 3:29). In other words, the Church is the Bride of Christ, not the property of the minister. A minister’s job is to be the “friend of the Bridegroom”, and it would be a grievous error to claim any ownership of the Bridegroom’s betrothed wife. It’s the reason John was able to say without bitterness, “He must increase, but I must decrease” (John 3:30).

It is unthinkable that the anointed apostle to the Gentiles would fail to grasp this point. In fact, we know that Paul did understand it quite well. He wrote about it himself, though employing somewhat different language to do so.

At the beginning of 1 Corinthians — Corinth being one of the cities that Paul is supposedly so possessive of — Paul dismantles the idea of preacher loyalty. It’s the first thing he addresses after his customary opening greetings and prayers. He expresses dismay over the divisions and contentions among the Corinthian church (1:10-11), noting that they were splintering into factions to support their favorite teachers (v. 12). Some people claimed to follow Paul, some Apollos, some Cephas (Peter), and others, in an evident attempt to look more spiritual than the rest of the squabbling lot, claimed simply to follow Christ, rather than any mere human teachers. Paul points out the foolishness of such arguments:

Now I say this, that each of you says, “I am of Paul,” or “I am of Apollos,” or “I am of Cephas,” or “I am of Christ.” Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Or were you baptized in the name of Paul? (1Cor 1:12-13)

Rather than commend his supporters against the rival fan clubs of Apollos and Peter, Paul corrects the very people showing most loyalty to him. He makes it blisteringly clear where their commitment should lie. Paul didn’t die for anyone’s sins. Paul had no power to baptize people into new life in his own name. He was actually grateful that he only baptized a small handful of people in Corinth (v. 14-17), giving less grounds for anyone to think that he was the be-all and end-all of Christianity.

Paul could care less about having a big following. He cared intensely that Christ should have a big following.

The apostle actually spends the next two chapters of 1 Corinthians expounding on this point, countering the believers’ pride in their own wisdom and upholding Jesus as the true wisdom and power of God. He chides the Paul/Apollos fan clubs as being carnal and immature, with the jarring statement that they are “behaving like mere men” (1Cor 3:1-4). He cinches his point with two analogies: farmers and builders.

Who then is Paul, and who is Apollos, but ministers through whom you believed, as the Lord gave to each one? I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the increase. So then neither he who plants is anything, nor he who waters, but God who gives the increase. Now he who plants and he who waters are one, and each one will receive his own reward according to his own labor.

For we are God’s fellow workers; you are God’s field, you are God’s building. According to the grace of God which was given to me, as a wise master builder I have laid the foundation, and another builds on it. (1 Cor 3:5-10a)

How… territorial? Somehow, this does not sound like a chorus of “Mine! Mine! Mine!” to me. Paul seems to be completely neutral, and even positive, to the idea of someone else building upon the work he has begun in Corinth. It’s not a reason for division or for accusations of “sheep-stealing”; it’s a sign of the unity of the Body, and ultimately, the sovereign hand of God raising up the Church by His own will and for His own purposes.

So how do we reconcile Paul’s desire to disband his groupies in 1 Corinthians with his fierce defensiveness in Galatians and his expectation to be recognized by the church in 2 Corinthians?

Fortunately, we don’t have to guess. Paul talks about it himself in those respective letters, and even hints at it in the next few verses of 1 Corinthians 3: “…But let each one take heed how he builds on it. For no other foundation can anyone lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ” (vv.10b-11).

Paul did not oppose other teachers simply because they were other teachers. He opposed them because they were false teachers. And by “false teachers”, it was not a matter of sprinkling or dunking in baptism, contemporary choruses versus old hymns, or whether communion was served with one loaf and real wine, as opposed to oyster crackers and grape juice.

It was a matter of whether or not Jesus’ death and resurrection really was enough to save a sinful human being.

In other words, Paul was not having a theological spat, much less a turf war. He was fighting for those churches’ salvation. It was a matter of literal spiritual life or death. Is it any wonder his tone was fiery?

Consider his explanation in 2 Corinthians 11 for his defensive boasting:

Oh, that you would bear with me in a little folly — and indeed you do bear with me. For I am jealous for you with godly jealousy. For I have betrothed you to one husband, that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ. But I fear, lest somehow, as the serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness, so your minds may be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ. For if he who comes preaches another Jesus whom we have not preached, or if you receive a different spirit which you have not received, or a different gospel which you have not accepted–you may well put up with it! (2 Cor 11:1-4)

There is not a word said about Paul’s right to the territory. He’s not concerned about whether people regard him as the biggest name in preaching. He’s being a friend of the Bridegroom, and is fighting for the heart of the Bride to belong, not to himself, but to the Man to whom she is betrothed. His concern is not about a different preacher, but “a different spirit” and “a different gospel”. To put it bluntly, he is concerned that the church will fall away.

In fact, it is this very passion that is overriding his deep aversion to boasting. His reluctance to promote himself comes through frequently in this passage (see 10:12; 11:1, 16-18, 23; 12:1), and in the end, he ends up boasting in his weakness (11:30; 12:9), that the glory may go to Jesus. He hates having to even bring these things up, but he has a higher purpose: he is defending the Bride of Christ (11:1-4), and cutting off the opportunity of the ministers of Satan (11:12-15).

It’s a similar context in Galatians. Galatia was a province full of new believers, mostly Gentiles, who were being targeted by false teachers. The issue at stake was whether or not Gentiles must become circumcised in order to follow God — a question that would be settled very soon at the Jerusalem Council (Acts 15). Whether or not these false teachers were even followers of Jesus is unclear, but in any case, a very current question of the day was whether or not there was any such thing as a Gentile Christian. Paul held that there was. Others were not so sure. The Galatians were caught in the crossfire of it all and extremely confused.

When Paul wrote to Galatia, it’s clear that the discussion had moved far past a robust theological debate. Straight out of the gate, his tone was sharp — and it made plain what his burden was.

I marvel that you are turning away so soon from Him who called you in the grace of Christ, to a different gospel, which is not another; but there are some who trouble you and want to pervert the gospel of Christ. (Gal 1:6-7)

Paul is not employing colorful rhetoric to try and out-argue his opponents. He did not villify the teachers because they were people other than himself. Note the usage of the same term as in 2 Corinthians, “a different gospel”. Paul does not see circumcision as a painful inconvenience that he would prefer the Galatians not to bother with. He sees it as a compromise of the very foundations of their faith. To embrace circumcision and the law would be to say that Jesus was not enough. They would be basing their righteousness and salvation on their own works, not on the free gift of grace.

Again, Paul is not splitting theological hairs. He is fighting for people’s lives. In 1:8-9, Paul calls for a curse on anyone who would preach a false gospel — be it any other minster, an angel from heaven, or even Paul and his ministry team themselves. Clearly the issue is not Paul defending his own ministry (otherwise he would never threaten himself with a curse). The issue is the true gospel, which would be welcomed from any voice that declared it.

Paul’s detailed autobiographical testimony in Galatians 1-2 could be interpreted as defending his own name — except that he already said what his core concerns were. He was burning up about that “different gospel” which sought to claim the hearts of these new believers. Instead of viewing this passage as his train of thought jumping the tracks, might we understand it instead as Paul demonstrating that his gospel was, in fact, the true one? It is not about Paul, but about Paul’s gospel which preached liberty in Christ for all who are saved by Him.

To expect Paul to approach this subject nicely is to expect him to be ambivalent about the eternal destiny of an entire province of churches. It is precisely because he was not wrapped up in self-preservation that he was able to speak with the boldness he does in this letter (see 1:10; 5:11; 6:12). Similar to 1 Corinthians 10-12, Paul admits that he does not like the tone he has to take with the churches he loves so tenderly (Gal 4:19-20). But the stakes were simply too high. The love of Christ compelled him to persuade the people away from the false teachers and to bring them back, not for the sake of his mailing list, but for the sake of their souls. They had lost hold of the truth of the gospel, and Paul was urgently calling them to heed it again.

If we read these passages and see more about the growth of Paul’s ministry than about the real human souls hanging in the balance, or about the real glory and honor due to Christ, then that says a lot more about our priorities than it does Paul’s.

Just sayin’.

Go back and re-read that if you like. Agnostic. Reverend. Yes. Seriously. As in an agnostic who is a preacher. As in, a man who runs a church but does not believe that we can know that God is real. He also doesn’t believe in any kind of afterlife.

According to this article, 1 in 6 Dutch ministers in the Protestant Church of the Netherlands self-identify as either agnostic or atheist.

One of these ministers, a lady named Kirsten Slettenaar, does not believe in the divinity of Jesus. Yet she defends this stance by claiming that, while she may be going against what the church has historically said, this position is not not changing the “real meaning of Christianity” [source].

I was flummoxed. I mean, surely it doesn’t take a doctorate-level theologian to realize that changing our understanding of Christ changes the real meaning of Christianity. But here it was, by two separate people in one article — the claim that Christianity is only tangentially related to Jesus Himself. There is even a third person interviewed whose two cents are that “The Church has to be alert to what is going on in society[...] it has to change to stay Christian.”

I couldn’t help but gawp at the article. People are seriously trying to practice Christianity while denying Christ — and not in the subtle sense of confessing one thing while secretly believing another, but in the outright, explicit denial that He was the Son of God, or that He ever existed at all, while claiming to adhere to His religion anyway.

Have we really become so dull that we don’t see the non-sequiturs we’re spouting in order to try to stay relevant?

About this time, morbid curiosity kicked in and I navigated over to Google, wondering what the general tone of the interwebs was about this subject. I typed in “Christianity is all about”, and let autocomplete suggest the rest of the sentence for me, just to see. The first three suggestions were: “love // relationship // forgiveness”.

So according to Professor Google, Christianity is all about love. Christianity is all about relationship. Christianity is all about forgiveness.

Except it isn’t, because it’s not called Lovianity, Relationshipianity, or Forgivnianity.

I’m glad Professor Google does not teach at seminaries. But at the same time, I feel worried that his intellectual buddies might be.

Christianity doesn’t mean anything without Christ as its beginning and end. Yes, He loves us and empowers us to love Him and one another. Yes, He wants to be in real relationship with us. Yes, He forgives us of our sins. But those things are all conditional on Him being who He is. If He’s not God, He has no authority to forgive us for our iniquities committed against God. If He never rose from the dead, or if He never really existed, it doesn’t matter if we think He loved us or not. If He failed to live up to the shocking and exclusive things He said about Himself, then He is not a teacher to be followed.

Without Christ, Christianity becomes meaningless. There’s literally nothing left. You can’t redefine or dismiss Jesus without cutting yourself off from the Head from whom the whole body of Christ grows (Eph 4:15-16).

In an age where “common ground” is sought at all costs, where absolute truth is frowned upon, and where popular moral relativity trumps religious conviction, we have got to be sure of not just what we believe, but whom we believe. Christianity is not about living a good life and being nice to people. It’s about Jesus the Messiah — the Anointed One — the Christ — fully God and fully Man, who really was born, really lived, was crucified, buried and resurrected. And there can be no compromise about that.

I’m also finding that a lot of people have a wrong first impression of Paul. Over years of modern proof-texting, Paul has accrued the reputation of being a lofty spiritualist. While he certainly is godly, and has intelligence and spiritual insight to spare, he is not lofty. He’s very down to earth, and he knows how to grapple with the nitty-gritty of everyday life. His pastoral heart shines through in his epistles. He’s not just writing theory — he’s dealing with the real lives of real people. To him, Christianity doesn’t need to be reconciled with “real life” — he expects it to transform and dictate the way that life takes place.

Perhaps nowhere is this more obvious than in the book of 1 Corinthians. A huge portion of this epistle directly addresses concerns which had been reported to Paul by the church in Corinth. Corinth, to put it bluntly, was a mess. It was disjointed, with people arguing over their favorite preachers (1:10-13); it tolerated disgusting immorality that put the pagan neighbors to shame (5:1-2); its members were suing one another (6:1-10); and its gatherings were a chaotic contest of who got to speak when (all of chapter 14). The whole epistle is Paul explaining what Christianity should look like in the everyday lives of this church.

As I was reading through 1 Corinthians, I was struck with chapters 8-10, which talk about the issue of food that had been sacrificed to idols. That sounds like a quaint, ancient practice that would only be relevant to the original culture. Yet I am convinced that it is profoundly applicable to us today.

To the Corinthian believers, this was a daunting and very practical issue. Idolatry was part and parcel with the Roman culture, and there was very little a Christian could do to entirely escape its influence. Vendors in the markets sold meat that had been involved in idolatrous rituals. Many cities, including Corinth, had major meeting halls in a Roman temple, so attending a normal social function with one’s neighbors and family — say, a wedding — meant coming face to face with blatant cultic practice. And the accompanying dinner wouldn’t be catered in by the local Kosher deli, either (let the reader understand).

For believers with unsaved Gentile friends and family, this was beyond socially awkward. What was a God-fearing person to do? How could they fulfill the social duties of their day without compromising their religion?

Some of the Corinthians had reasoned their way right out of the conundrum. There’s only one true God, they figured. Idols are nothing. We know that idols are nothing. They have no spiritual authority over us, and we can prove it on paper. In conclusion, idol-meat is just meat, and we can eat it without the least bit of guilt before God.

Aware of their attitude, Paul writes to them concerning the matter. He doesn’t fault anything in their logic. He actually agrees with them. Even so, Paul didn’t take issue with their theory, but their demeanor: “Knowledge puffs up, but love edifies.” Going on to affirm that “We know that an idol is nothing…” he agrees with the logical case they made — while already hinting that all of their knowledge must defer to the principles of love.

He cuts to the chase in 8:9: “…beware lest somehow this liberty of yours become a stumbling block to those who are weak.” He goes on to explain his basic point: If a “weak” Christian is convinced that eating meat sacrificed to idols is just another form of idolatry, but that person sees you eating idol meat without a care in the world, then maybe that person will be emboldened to eat from it, too.

But since eating idol meat was morally justifiable, shouldn’t that be just fine? It’s not like it’s a sin or anything.

Not according to Paul. If a person thinks it’s sin — even if it’s not — and they go ahead with it anyway, it is sin. An innocuous activity done against a guilty conscience is still sin before God.

This is what stuck with me as poignantly relevant to our day. Only for us, I wasn’t thinking so much about cultic practices, but of entertainment.

Entertainment is as pervasive in our society as pagan temple practices were in Corinth (and possibly just as idolatrous, if we were to press the issue). And it certainly is an area in which believers have all manner of different opinions on what is and isn’t okay to consume. Certainly there is a line that sincere Christians can agree not to cross — say, with pornography. But short of that, people believe they can watch and read and listen to all kinds of different things. You can find Christians who think that Barney is evil incarnate and other Christians who think the Saw series is just good gory fun. You can find those who think that Mario Bros. is dark magic and those who think that Grand Theft Auto is “just a game”. The more conservative and cautious ones may think that the others are lukewarm backsliders, and the more liberal ones may think that the others are mean religious dweebs.

Now, I’ve addressed this issue before, and I am a staunch believer in the fact that entertainment is simply not worth getting defiled over. When in doubt, throw it out. I think it would be difficult to be “too safe” regarding the matter. However, I understand that there are plenty of Christians who are willing to enjoy a much broader range of entertainment than I do, and I’m quite willing to believe that many of them are sincere believers.

But it is in this very context that I think that the principles Paul sets forth can apply. For instance, I ran across a blog post the other day, and one of the commenters stated that he had written a 90-page thesis to highlight and elaborate upon the Christian themes he found present — not in a Biblical passage, not in a sermon, and not even in The Chronicles of Narnia – but Harry Potter.

Ninety pages. Over a series of secular fiction.

Now, I have never and will never participate in the Harry Potter franchise. It skeezes me out and I am plenty happy to stay far away from it. But I know a lot of people — a number of whom are my friends — who unreservedly enjoy the books and movies. I’m not about to evaluate their spiritual condition based on that fact. I’m willing to believe that they do what they do with a clean conscience, and their consumption of fictional wizardry is between them and the Lord.

HOWEVER.

I take issue with Ninety-Page Thesis Guy — not because he liked Harry Potter, and only secondarily because he considered it to have Christian themes (as opposed to “moral themes”, which I’d be much more willing to affirm). What I take issue with is his 90-page thesis. If he wants to read and watch Harry Potter, that’s one thing. But the fact that he is now on a mission to not just defend his own participation, but to encourage others to jump in with him, really, really bothers me.

Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that Ninety-Page Thesis Guy is one of those “strong” Christians Paul was talking about, and I, as a squeamish and too serious person, am one of the “weak”. Now let’s suppose I got in a big internet debate with Ninety-Page Thesis Guy over the moral ramifications of Christians patronizing openly witchcraft-driven movies. Suppose he ran logical circles around me and talked me into reading every single one of those ninety pages of arguments. Suppose then that I snuck off to a showing of the movie at the furthest theater I could reasonably drive to, so I knew none of my friends would run into me. What now?

Maybe I would stagger out of the auditorium within ten minutes, feeling ill under the weight of my wounded conscience. Maybe I would watch with growing interest and fascination, drawn into the story, minute by minute drowning out that little persistent voice that kept piping up, “You really shouldn’t be here…” Maybe I would leave fully satisfied with the experience, feeling the tiny adrenaline thrill of finding out that what I thought was forbidden really wasn’t so bad after all.

However the situation ended up playing out, I sinned.

I let Ninety-Page Thesis Guy talk me into doing something that, until previously, I had thought God disapproved of (Genesis 3, much?). Or, if we don’t want to sound that severe, I let him talk me into breaking a commitment that I had made to the Lord as a demonstration of my love for Him and His ways. Just like a weak believer in Corinth might be made to stumble over a piece of steak, I was just made to stumble over a movie.

Was it worth it?

Paul’s answer would be a resounding and sharp “No.” In his day, he didn’t just say that the weak Christian sinned. He said that the strong Christian sinned, not just against the weaker brother, but against Christ (1 Cor 8:12). That’s serious. And no cut of meat, no movie, no music artist, no video game, no book, is worth that. Paul felt so strongly about it that he was willing to not just avoid idol-related food, but to “never again eat meat” (8:13) if it would prevent a fellow believer from stumbling.

I don’t think that the practical application of that today is to never, ever, ever look at anything that might possibly offend some Christian that you might meet someday. But I firmly believe that it does mean we don’t try to talk each other out of personal convictions — even if we think the other guy is a bit off his rocker.  Notice that Paul never once told the “weak” believers to toughen up and stop being so unreasonably religious. He told the “strong” believers to guard the hearts of the weak and to give them no cause for offense.

If my friend is unwilling to touch any kind of video game because he’s worried about what it will do to his time and compulsions, then I do not get to beg him to play this one really cool one with me because there’s nothing bad in it at all, honest. Even if there really is nothing bad in it. It’s off-limits for our hangouts and our conversations. I might play it later on my own time, but I won’t then go tell him about my high score and how much fun I had.

If my friend will not watch any kind of TV because she feels like it is compromising her covenant with her eyes, I do not get to tell her, “Well, there’s this one show that I think you will actually really like. It’s educational! It’s edifying! It made me want to go pray!” Even if all those things are true. I can’t invite her over to watch. I can’t tell her about this amazing episode that was the best thing I’ve seen all year. I have to leave it alone — her conscience demands it, and the One to whom she is accountable is zealous for her heart.

I have seen Christians try to talk each other out of their “religiosity” related to all sorts of things: Movies, books, music, apparel, coarse language, tobacco, alcohol, and more. If that’s you, I implore you: Please, please, please stop.

That doesn’t mean you can’t answer honestly if your friends ask you about something (e.g. “Interesting question; I don’t think it is a sin issue, actually”), but it means that you don’t offer your opinion unsolicited, and you sure don’t try and convince your friends that they just need to loosen up. If it really, truly is a “gray area” issue, just let it be.

Their conscience is your problem. And your conscience is my problem. Missing out on permissible things is far less detrimental than sin — let’s help people avoid the latter by being gentle about the former. It’s not about being right. It’s not about enjoying life’s temporary pleasures. It’s about loving one another, and ultimately — according to Paul — it’s about the glory of God.

“Conscience,” I say, not your own, but that of the other. For why is my liberty judged by another man’s conscience? But if I partake with thanks, why am I evil spoken of for the food over which I give thanks? Therefore, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.  (1 Corinthians 10:29-31)

So, naturally, I proceeded to watch the whole thing.

Score one for the marketing team.

At first, I wasn’t clear on what the commercial was for. There was a very pleasant, homey feel about the opening scenes. There was an interview of a pleasant, laid-back farmer, a man who seemed to emanate the down-to-earth simple wisdom of someone who’s spent a lot of time behind a plow making an honest living. “I’m John,” he says. “I have lived here my whole life.”

Aww, that’s nice. At this point, I’m anticipating an ad for either butter, sausage, biscuits, organic foods, or a documentary about organic food.

John proceeds to tell us that he and the neighbors weren’t exactly too sure what to think of Lady Gaga when she first came to town.

Hang on, what?

Now I haven’t the slightest clue what to do with what I’m seeing and hearing. Maybe Lady Gaga is releasing a new album. Like, a country album. Maybe she’s trying to prove she’s not just for the young, crazy teens. Maybe she’s doing a concert tour of rural America. Maybe farm folk are trying to prove that they really can run with the hip young kids. Maybe Lady Gaga did some kind of community outreach thing in a small town where she helped pick soy beans and milk cows and pose with a tractor or something to support local growers.

Oh, how wrong I was. How very, very wrong. Nothing could have prepared me for the fact that what I was watching was an ad for…

…GagaVille.

If you’re confused — well, let me rephrase that, because I can’t think of who would NOT be confused by such a mind-bendingly bizarre piece of digital trippiness. If you don’t know who Lady Gaga is, or why it should matter that her name is mashed up with “Ville”, allow me to briefly explain.

The Ville part is due to Zynga, a social network gaming company responsible for all kinds of personal-info-leeching time-wasters on Facebook. The most famous of these apps is FarmVille. FarmVille is a game where, unsurprisingly, you have a farm. On your digital farm, you plant some digital crops, go tootle around the internet for a while, and then come back some time later to harvest those digital crops and make some digital money off of them. Of course, if that sounds too tedious, you are welcomed and encouraged to spend NON-digital money to hurry things up a bit.

Lady Gaga is… hard to explain. She’s a rock star (as if that kind of stage name didn’t give it away). She is a rather strange rock star (as if that kind of stage name didn’t give THAT away, too). She is probably more famous for her various “unique” fashion statements that she is for her music — fashion statements that ring along the lines of, “Why let Halloween come only once a year when you can dress like it everyday?” or, “I don’t mind scaring small children,” or, “If you’re worried my dress/hairdo/accessories will poke your eye out, then just sit further away,” or, “Who says meat is only meant for eating?“

No, I’m not kidding about that last one. She has worn a dress made entirely out of raw meat. Her next-most famous stunt was being carried into an awards ceremony inside a giant plastic egg. She dramatically emerged from it wearing some kind of skimpy, shiny, yellow yolk-inspired outfit. I’m sure it must have meant something.

Anyway, unless you have been living under some kind of wonderful rock which has prevented you from hearing about these and similar shenanigans, I expect you knew this much already. What is more important to the purpose of this commercial, however, is that Lady Gaga is also making a name for herself as a humanitarian. As far as I know, this is not due to her actually having done anything helfpul, per se, but due to her having written positive and uplifting lyrics. We’ll get to those in a minute.

So returning to the narrative, there I was, with a commercial for “GagaVille” on my computer screen and my jaw in my lap. These simple farm folk started gushing about how Lady Gaga had been spreading “love” and “acceptance” and “freedom” all through their small, simple farm town (Ville). As a result, giant rhinestones began growing in place of normal crops. Which apparently was wonderful. Because I guess oversized, tacky fake bling is way more profitable than, you know, actual food.

It’s a good thing that these folks liked fake bling, because it didn’t just grow on their trees. It started appearing on the animals. The buildings. The people. It’s not entirely clear to me if the townsfolk did the decorating themselves, or if this was some kind of parasitic Bling of Doom that ate an entire Midwest farming community, or if Lady Gaga went postal on everybody with a Bedazzler. In any case, the commercial seemed to think it was a good thing.

Things continued to escalate in even more confusing, sparkly, love-acceptance-and-pixie-dust ways. Finally, at the end of the commercial, we find a bunch of people dressed like freaks and partying in the barn.

That’s just the background.

In the foreground is that kind, simple farmer John from the beginning of the commercial. His face is now adorned with rhinestones and eye pencil, he is sporting some kind of disturbingly cross-dressy lycra thing that would make your average clubber look at him a bit askance, utterly happy about all the “love” and “acceptance” Lady Gaga brought to the town. In conclusion, he smiles a little bashfully, shrugs at the camera, and says, “We’ve become quite the little monsters, haven’t we?”

It took a long time for any thought more intelligent than “Buh?!?” to form in my mind. It took even longer for my jaw to finally come off my lap. This commercial might have actually broken something in my brain.

As you would expect, those two and a half minutes disturbed me. I was so busy scrambling for something — anything — to start making sense again, that it took me a little while to put my finger on what felt so terribly wrong about it. I mean, ASIDE from the fact that somebody thought FarmVille + Lady Gaga was a good idea.

It wasn’t really about Lady Gaga herself. I mean, don’t get me wrong. The gal is weird. She is certainly not being subtle about her attempts to shock and befuddle her audience. She may not be fully sane, or she just may be making every effort to act like she’s not. She may have a demon or two (or 10,000) hanging around. I’m not about to go buy her CD and I will not deny that there’s something inherently skeezy about her act.

But let’s face it: Lady Gaga is certainly not the first performer to have (or pretend like they have) one or more screws loose. Freaky and unsettling performing artists have been around as long as the performing arts have existed. She is conveying a new and unusual brand of crazy, sure, but I think you’d have to do some work to prove that she is conveying a deeper level of crazy than anyone before her ever has. So as disturbing as Lady Gaga is in her own right, that’s not what was bugging me about the commercial.

I was also not primarily cringing about the reason “love and acceptance” came up so much, although that is certainly cringe-worthy in and of itself. See, the thing that has catapulted Lady Gaga from the status of “crazy lady in the meat dress” to the status of “Love! Acceptance! Glam! Ponies!” is a song she’s written called “Born This Way.”

If you couldn’t guess from the title, this has been eagerly taken up as the new anthem for the gay rights movement. Lest the line “God don’t make no mistakes” throw you off, let me clarify that this is not a general “Everybody’s beautiful in their own way” buying-the-world-a-Coke kind of song. It’s very explicitly about validating unbiblical sexual orientations, although people of different races and physical abilities get a brief nod towards the end, too. So it’s kind of “Yay! Perversion perversion perversion… Oh, I guess people who don’t look like me are okay too.”

And this is what gets read as “love and acceptance”.

That’s horrifying, don’t get me wrong. But that’s also not what was bugging me most profoundly about that commercial. Because as much as that sentiment grieves me and makes me all the more desperate for revival in our nation, I knew this kind of filth was out there. Where sleeping with however many people of whatever gender at whatever kind of commitment level you like is seen as an issue of social justice, of course it is going to be glorified in virtuous language. I was saddened, but not shocked by this.

After another moment or two of sorting things out, I finally figured out the thing that was eating at me the most. It was not the definition itself of “love and acceptance” — however problematic that is — it was the juxtaposition of “love and acceptance” with “little monsters.”

Now, I’m going to take a guess that “little monsters” is a song lyric, or a song title, or something, and if only I was more in the loop of pop culture it would make perfect sense to me. (Have I mentioned lately how glad I am not to be in the loop of pop culture?) What actually caught me off guard was this idea of the end justifying the means, even when the means is obviously and intentionally aberrant. It was not that “We learned love and acceptance by, you know, loving and accepting people”; it was that “We learned love and acceptance from a kooky singer who wears meat and now we are all little monsters and ISN’T THAT AWESOME?”

I don’t know if “monster” has a positive connotation in Zynga’s universe, but it sure doesn’t in mine. I can’t come up with any possible defense of the concept that learning to be more monstrous somehow increases love in a community. I can’t fathom how turning what looks like a nice, happy little farm town into a freak show discotheque is supposed to be indicative of moral progress. Yes, I know it’s just a commercial, and I know that those are just actors making a buck by reciting a script. Yes, I know that the people and places represented are purely fictional. Yes, I know it’s just trying to be funny to make me want to play the game, and in some ways, it kind of is funny.

But still.

Smart advertisers do not create ad campaigns in a vacuum. They don’t ask themselves, “Do I relate to this?”, but rather, “Will my audience relate to this?” Really smart ones do test groups and surveys to make sure they can accurately answer that question. They want their commercials to evoke a reaction of, “Haha! YEAH!”, not, “Umm… huh?” Gauging by how unbelievably popular Lady Gaga is at the moment, I’d hazard a guess that Zynga’s marketers were not too far off. They expect their viewers to be on board with their message. If they’re much good at their job, then they know that their viewers are on board.

The end justifies the means. Love and acceptance. Little monsters.

Suddenly I wasn’t thinking about the weirdest and least excusable cross-promotion to ever hit social networking. Suddenly I was thinking about the Antichrist.

At first I thought I must have really gone off the deep end this time. But I couldn’t shake it. The end justifies the means. The supreme end is love and acceptance (which translates to bald-faced immorality). Any means that gets us love and acceptance is subsequently great — even if the “means” looks like us turning into little monsters, emulating our hero who led the way in that regard.

Of course I don’t believe that Lady Gaga is the Antichrist, or even the false prophet, or the harlot Babylon, or anything else you’ll read about in Revelation. But I’m getting the same kind of feeling I had surrounding the messianic language that permeated our most recent presidential campaigns — while we are not yet looking at the biblical event itself, we can see that our culture is getting more and more ready for it. If we are expected to rally behind an openly and intentionally creepy person, because somehow doing so promotes love and acceptance, is it really that big of a stretch to see that happening on a larger, more political scale? If we’re supposed to turn a blind eye in our entertainment to things that should strike us as wrong, because of the happiness and sparkles and all that, is it really such a great leap to ignore things like, “Oh, yeah, I guess that leader kind of came out of nowhere through political intrigue, but who cares! Love! Acceptance! Rhinestones!”

Honestly, it made me wonder: if the Antichrist were to actually crawl out of the ocean with seven literal heads and ten literal horns (Rev 13), would people actually up and follow him anyway? A week ago I would have thought that not to be possible. Now I’m not so confident.

I really don’t intend to be alarmist with this. The end would be coming no sooner nor later if Lady Gaga weren’t prancing around being as weird as possible. The Antichrist will not look like any more or less of a monster just because people enjoy saying ridiculous things about love and acceptance. But I am troubled to see how willing and eager our culture is to be blind to the obvious, just so long as happy lingo is involved. It’s like the devil doesn’t even have to try to be subtle anymore.

I think it behooves us, the church, to notice these trends. Yet a mere shake of the head or a cluck of the tongue is no more profitable towards loosing revival than an inane digital farming game is towards creating utopia. We need to stay alert. We need to speak boldly and kindly about the true source of love and joy. And above all, we need to keep praying, crying out for the God of mercy to send revival to our nation.

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* See what I did there? I said, “Going Gaga for False Justice”, and her name is… oh, okay.

(As if I’m not the trillionth blogger to “cleverly” try and rip a pun off of a stage name that was clearly designed for puns.)

However, I do want to briefly share what’s been on my heart since I heard the announcement.

It can hardly be argued but that bin Laden committed crimes deserving of death. Stopping Al Qaeda is important for national security — surely all Americans can affirm this. I’d strongly suspect that, if pushed, everyone quoting Proverbs 24:17-18 (“Do not rejoice when your enemy falls”) would nonetheless agree it is a good thing for bin Laden to be taken out of commission. Many would even say this is the judgment of God on the man. I myself would agree with all of those statements.

What concerns me, though, is the wave of national pride sweeping across the U.S. in response to his death. At one level, this is understandable. But on a much more serious level, bin Laden finally reaping the consequences of his wickedness does not make this country any more righteous. Even though our enemy was evil, it does not therefore follow that we are good. I love my nation, and pray for it often, but as we’re riotously celebrating the death of this terrorist, I can’t help but think of Romans 2:1:

“Therefore you are inexcusable, O man, whoever you are who judge, for in whatever you judge another you condemn yourself; for you who judge practice the same things.”

We judge bin Laden for killing three thousand people in one day. We, as a nation, kill four thousand per day, innocent babies who die with the full sanction of our government. We judge bin Laden for stirring up Islamic youth to throw their lives away in violence. We think nothing of throwing away our own youth to fantasies of violence in video games, movies, and music (though we still manage to be surprised when they act on it). We may even judge bin Laden for his worship of demons. Strange, then, that our own country should be so obsessed with the occult and nearly completely uninvolved with the true God.

With the measure we judge, it will be measured back to us (Matt 7:2). I’m not saying we can’t rightly call bin Laden wicked, or truthfully say he got what he deserved in the end. What I am saying is that we don’t have the moral leverage to crow about it. Osama bin Laden got what all of us deserve apart from the grace of God. Before we rejoice in a sinful man getting his comeuppance, we need to tremble at the mercy of the God who has not yet given us ours.

We can be relieved the manhunt is over. We can thank God for removing bin Laden from power. But we don’t dare start gloating about how superior our nation is to him — because when push comes to shove, it isn’t. A nation whose hands are bloodstained cannot rightly judge a murderer. A nation who rebels against God cannot judge a terrorist who does the same.

As believers, we are not personally under God’s wrath. We can evaluate rightly and speak truth from a kingdom perspective. But that means we can’t be blind to the condition of our own nation. The cries coming from our lips should sound less like “USA! USA!” and more like “God, have mercy on us.” If God did not withhold His judgment from Al Qaeda forever, He will not withhold it from America forever, either. Pride — national or otherwise — is the exact opposite of what we need in this hour. We have all the more reason to ask God to send an awakening and turn the hearts of this country to Himself, to remember mercy in the time of wrath (Hab 3:2).

We need revival. We need deliverance. We need to be saved. And none of that changed with one less madman in the world. May we remain sober and watchful in this day, trusting in and glorifying God alone, earnestly interceding for the nation that we love.

In reality, there is an inherently offensive dimension to the Gospel. Self-righteous, independent humans don’t like being told they’re lost sinners who must cast themselves on the mercy of a God they’ve never seen, and thereafter obey Him. People overly concerned with being nice and inclusive chafe at the idea that there is only one Way to the Father. Naturalistic intellectuals will scoff at the idea that some God-Man will come in the sky and set up a thousand-year kingdom. God Himself, speaking of the first coming of His Son, said, “Behold, I lay in Zion a stumbling stone and rock of offense…” (Rom 9:33). He knew that many pride-blinded sinners would not be willing to receive Him.

Thus, it is more than fair to say that the Gospel — undiluted and straightforward — is offensive to the unredeemed human heart. It may even be fair to say that a presentation of the Gospel that does not strike that chord of, “Wait… what?!” very well may have missed the way Scripture speaks of it.

Truth is often offensive. Messengers and leaders in the Body of Christ ought not to shrink back from being truthful for fear of bothering someone.

However, and equally importantly, not all that offends is truth. Messengers and leaders in the Body of Christ (especially the younger ones) do well to take this seriously.

One of the things that got me thinking about this was a big internet kerfuffle I recently stumbled into, revolving around the lyrics of a particular modern worship song.* A lot of people love it, and a lot of people are made to squirm because of it. I don’t care for the song much myself, but that has a lot more to do with my particular poetic bent than with making any kind of theological case out of it.

The short version of the argument was that a lot of worship leaders will refuse to play the song, or else edit out the bothersome lyrics, to avoid outcry in their congregation. The blog I was reading thought that to be a great tragedy, and was very energetically defending the song’s lyrics.

I didn’t mind that so much. Although I disagreed, I could appreciate where the writer was coming from. Everyone is different, and there’s no reason that lyrics which made me cringe would be just fine — and even deeply stirring and beautiful — to someone with a different poetic sensibility. Whatever floats your boat (as long as it’s not heretical).

What began to trouble me, though, was to see the language shift from defending the lyrics to questioning the faith, maturity, and integrity of people who didn’t like the song. The blog post moved from the subtle, and arguably correct statement, “If you have problems with a certain aspect of Jesus’ personality, you’re probably going to have problems with these lyrics” [statement paraphrased to avoid disclosing specifics], to the overt and harsh statement that, if a person was uncomfortable with the lyrics, they were “probably uncomfortable with the real Jesus” [direct quote].

The blog’s comments echoed similar sentiments. Assertions were made about whether these religious critics would also disdain certain classic hymns. People were reveling in the “discomfort” and “tension” that was so transformative to their lives. One commenter chimed in, “I love controversial [sic].” Another declared that the post was not just a brilliant defense of these lyrics specifically, but of genuine worship as a whole.

To the majority of the people in the discussion, the lyrics were not being evaluated for their scriptural basis, the glory they brought to Jesus, their ability to usher a corporate gathering into worship, or even for their aesthetic quality and nuance. When push came to shove, the plumb line was how shocking and uncomfortable they were. The fact that they made whole congregations shift uncomfortably in their pews meant that this was a great song. And the fact that other people couldn’t appreciate that offense signified not just artistic differences, but spiritual dullness, immaturity, or even hypocrisy. Some went as far as to say that a worship service that didn’t offend people must not be real worship.

All this over one person’s poetry.

I was stunned. Of all the arguments I was expecting to hear put forth, “offense = good, truthful and justified” was not one I was prepared for. But as I thought about it, I began to see how this happens quite a lot in Christian circles, especially among young people who are eager to be on the cutting edge of radical Christianity.

Lots of things are done and said under the banner of “the offense of the Gospel” that have nothing whatever to do with what that term actually means. It’s right to say that preaching truth is apt to offend people; it is not therefore also right to conclude that anything which makes people squirm is therefore preaching truth. It is right to present the truth despite the fact it might offend; it is not therefore right to present it in such a way that is designed to offend.

From preachers using swear words in their sermons for emphasis (with a halfhearted apology and an “I’m just being honest”), to songwriters using intentionally confusing and disturbing lyrics; from Christian artists making grotesquely graphic pieces to prove that they aren’t religious, to theological debaters on internet forums snarkily telling their opponents exactly where to stick their circular reasoning, offensiveness cannot become the goal. Making other people fume may or may not have any lasting fruit once the dust settles. Inciting offense is not something you’ll find listed in the Sermon on the Mount.

Though people will often appeal to biblical authors as precedence for offensive messages, one can no more build a case for being brash from them than one can build a case for being seeker-friendly. The apostle Paul said some decidedly undiplomatic things in his letters (See Rom 2:1; 1Cor 4:7-14; Gal 5:12, to name a few); but he also said that he would become all things to all people (1Cor 9:22), would never eat meat again if it would prevent a brother’s offense (1Cor 8:13) and stressed the importance of speaking the truth in love (Eph 4:12). The apostle John recorded some of Jesus’ most controversial sermons (John 5, 6, 8), but also penned the much-beloved epistle on how we ought to love one another (1 John). Jesus Himself often clashed with the Pharisees and had harsh words of rebuke for them (Matt 23:1-36), but in the same chapter mourned brokenheartedly for the soon coming destruction of Jerusalem (Matt 23:37-39). Jesus’ words sometimes offended multitudes (John 6), but people also marveled at His gracious speech (Luke 4:22).

None of these men shrunk back from speaking the truth that would cause people to recoil in offense. But none of them valued being offensive. They valued truth.

We can’t judge truth by whether or not people walk away offended. The same Gospel that saved more than three thousand people in Acts 2 got the preacher killed in Acts 7. A singular miracle and message convinced half of Jesus’ audience that He was demon-possessed, and the other half that He was from God (John 10:20-21). People left in droves when Jesus claimed to be the bread of life (John 6), but they marveled at His gracious words when He made the shocking claim of fulfilling Isaiah 61 (Luke 4). Paul’s messages infuriated the Jews of Thessalonica (Acts 17:1-9), but you’d never know it from the thoughtful reception he received in Berea (Acts 17:11).

The truth of the message did not change with how well or badly it was received. Offense is no gauge of a faithful representation of the Gospel. It is not as simple as an “if A, then B” equation.

This is challenging because it undermines our attempts to solidify concrete methodologies and/or definitions of success. A message is not necessarily a successful one if we make everyone happy. It is not necessarily a successful one if we make everyone upset. We can’t rely on being either shocking or upbeat to get the truth across. Just as Ezekiel was to speak whether the people heard him or refused him (Eze 2:7), we are to be truthful in love whether people are glad to hear it or gnash their teeth at it (Acts 2,7).

This is also good news because it means our success as a messenger of truth doesn’t hinge on the reaction of fickle hearers. God isn’t evaluating whether people walked away smiling or stinging (…well, He is, but that’s between Him and them, not Him and the preacher/author/artist). He’s simply asking if we are reaching for being a faithful witness, emulating His Son in that way. Our job is not to make sure people feel uncomfortable. Our job is to have the Word of the Lord and speak faithfully (Jer 23:28).

Offense isn’t the point. Truth is the point. If we stay anchored in that, seeking our success as defined by God’s pleasure in us as we seek to be true to Him, we will be able to be strong, clear messengers of what is on His heart in this hour.

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*I am choosing not to identify the song, partially to respect the author, and mostly to avoid having a debate about it in the comments here. The song itself is not at all the point. So if you don’t know which song I’m talking about, don’t worry about it. If you do know the song I’m talking about, please feel free to know it and have an opinion on it between yourself and the Lord, rather than in the comment box.

I haven’t written much about the topic lately, but having done some study on the Bible’s view on women, I was paying particular attention to this. It endeared me to Paul to see that he was repulsed by the ways that these false teachers would prey on women. It also made me curious to learn more about these end-time “gullible women”, and how much relation that might have to what was already happening among the the women in Ephesus (the city where Timothy was currently stationed).

These women would be gullible. They would be loaded down with sins. They would be led astray by various lusts. (This is sounding awfully familiar to the idle widows of 1 Timothy 5…)

What really hit me, though, was verse 7: “…always learning“.

Hang on, what?

“Always learning” seems like it should be a good thing, right? Surely growing in knowledge isn’t bad. Wasn’t Paul himself the one who said “Let a woman learn” in 1 Timothy 2? Wasn’t he the one who gave a useful outlet for if a woman wanted to learn something in 1 Corinthians 14? These women were learning. They were learning a lot. That’s what Paul said to do. So what’s the problem?

The problem is explained by the next phrase: “…never able to come to the knowledge of the truth.”

Suddenly I was no longer thinking of “those women back then,” or even “those women in the end times”. I was thinking about the Western culture today.

The problem Paul is highlighting is not a matter of having a teachable spirit. It is failing to know the truth. So in other words, imagine this scenario: Paul and Timothy worked in Ephesus, preaching Christ and Him crucified. These “gullible women” said, “Okay, cool,” and learned from them.

Now suppose another teacher blew through town, saying, “Oh, that Jesus thing is a good start, but to be really spiritual you need to keep the Kosher laws.”

The women’s reply? “Oh, really? Okay, cool. Throw out the pork.”

Another preacher comes by, preaching the need for communing with universal spiritual powers, and oh, by the way, your body isn’t spiritual, so sexual immorality is totally fine.

The gullible women: “Oh, wow, who knew? Okay, cool. Party at my place!”

Because they are always learning. They have no idea what is true. They only know what the latest, most dazzling self-proclaimed teacher has to say. Their hearts are continual open books, ready to receive input from anybody and everybody who claims to have something spiritual to say to them. Like a sponge indiscriminately soaks up whatever it happens to be sitting in — whether that’s water or poison — these undiscerning believers are ready to absorb whatever new ideas were thrown at them.

This is the same behavior Paul describes elsewhere as being “tossed to and fro and carried about by every wind of doctrine” (Eph 4:14). It is an utter lack of grounding in what is true. It easily masquerades as humility (Surely I don’t know everything!), but leaves a believer in a constant state of theological flux, never sure of anything, willing to question everything, and refusing to stand on any given doctrine as truth.

As much as we want to remain teachable, and as much as we know that we don’t have all the answers, there are some issues that can be settled. There are some issues that must be settled.

Now, in our uber-enlightened society, this is an unforgivably simplistic position to take. A surefire way to get laughed out of any perfectly “reasonable,” civil, thoughtful religious discussion is to claim to know the truth about the issue at hand. You can be sure to be instantly be accused of arrogance, narrow-mindedness, and/or stupidity. Pshaw! You, little random dude(tte) who has written no books, has no TV show, and has not debated with Larry King, claim to know the truth about the divinity of Jesus? The way of salvation? That God exists? That you can even know that God exists? You are simply scared of having a real intellectual discussion. You are simply a blind devotee who fears your whole religious system will crumble at the first objective question. I mean, you’re welcome to be into that whole Jesus thing if it works for you, but seriously. You don’t have to be so flipping dogmatic about it.

Such accusations are perhaps easier to recognize as baseless when it’s in an inter-faith setting. But I feel I have been seeing it more and more in professing Christian debates — meaning, they’re professing Christianity, but having “nice”, “open”, “reasonable” discussions about important things of the faith. Things like… well, Jesus’ deity. The way of salvation. The existence of the Trinity. The doctrine of the resurrection.

…Yeah, basically the same things the atheists debate about.

Now, it’s true that we don’t want to become unteachable, so sure of ourselves being right in even the finest points of theological tradition that anyone who disagrees with us must consequentially be a wretched heretic (I actually talked about that briefly in my last post). It’s also true that there’s a place in the body of Christ for Christian apologetics, where people grapple with hard questions of the faith in order to defend Scripture with sound, reasonable arguments. Even beyond that, it is good and healthy to maintain an open mind, willing to receive correction in areas where we may have had unperceived blind spots. We want to be able to do that.

But here’s the thing: We don’t approach core theological discussions as a blank slate. We stopped having the option of a blank slate when we confessed Jesus as Lord.

Being a Christian means there are certain things that we don’t learn anymore. Things like, “Is Jesus really divine?”, “Is there really a God?”, “Is there really such a thing as sin?”, “Is there life after death?”, and “Is there really only one way to God”? Those are real questions — significant questions. They shouldn’t be ignored. But they should, and must, be settled. While struggling with doubt in those issues by no means automatically condemns a person to Hell, there is a big difference between struggling with uncertainty, and being willing to blithely learn from any yahoo who has a platform and something new and exciting to say.

There’s an old, somewhat curmudgeonly saying that goes, “Don’t be so open-minded that your brains fall out.” If we were to state it a bit more accurately to this post, we could say, “Don’t be so open-minded that your salvation falls out.” That sounds funny, but it’s real. The women Paul was talking about would be made “captive” by false teachers who were “men of corrupt minds, disapproved concerning the faith” (2Tim 3:6-9). There’s more at stake here than being wrong in an argument. It really can be a matter of spiritual life or death.

The author of Hebrews issued a similar warning to a group of nearly-backslidden believers:

For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the first principles of the oracles of God; and you have come to need milk and not solid food. For everyone who partakes only of milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, for he is a babe. But solid food belongs to those who are of full age, that is, those who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil. (Hebrews 5:12-14)

The Hebrew Christians were expected to know the first principles. In fact, they were old enough in the faith to be reasonably expected to teach those principles. The problem is they didn’t cling to the knowledge they had. They should have been able to tell the difference between good and evil doctrines, but they had refused to exercise that kind of discernment. The author exhorts them to move on from “the elementary principles of Christ”, and urges them to “go on to perfection” (6:1), without needing to yet again lay the foundation for the basic things (things which, funnily enough, include “eternal judgment”… let the reader understand).

It is very highly valued in this society to never be too sure of anything, to question everything, and to throw one’s lot in with whatever is currently considered progressive. So many people are all too happy to ask along with Pilate, “What is truth?” (John 18:38), yet are never willing to hear an answer to it, and will scorn you for saying that you know what the answer is. In a world that is running to and fro, hungering to always learn, though it is a vain chasing of the wind (Dan 12:4, Ecc. 1:17), I want to heed the advice of Paul, a man who had finished the race in a way to receive a great reward:

Hold fast the pattern of sound words which you have heard from me, in faith and love which are in Christ Jesus. That good thing which was committed to you, keep by the Holy Spirit who dwells in us. (2 Tim 1:13-14)

What I have been increasingly troubled by, though, is the backlash I’ve seen against anyone coming against Bell’s position. I expected there to be some squabbling, but I also expected it mostly to arise from loyal fans who have watched every NOOMA video ten times, memorized half of them, own every book, and go to every conference available. But I’ve been surprised by the vast kickback from people who have no particular allegiance to either Bell or universalism, but nonetheless can’t stomach the idea that major evangelical leaders are criticizing him — or in other words, saying, “He’s written universalistic things. Universalism is bad.” Which, to me, seems like a pretty far cry from a public tar and feathering, but you wouldn’t know it from the reactionary comments.

This has started me thinking of a teaching Mike Bickle did a couple of years ago about establishing a “culture of honor”. Basically, this means that our default is to speak in an honoring way of other believers, even if they come from different “streams” than us — that can mean anything from different ministry styles to different lingo to different theology in secondary issues (sprinkling vs. dunking, for instance). All Christians, even our favorite ministries and ministers, are goofy in one way or another. We all see part of the picture and all have our foibles and quirks. Understanding this, we ought to refrain from slandering one another, and instead pray for, bless, and serve one another in humility.

Now, the message doesn’t stop there — there is also something to be said for discerning the difference between quirks (e.g. platform ministry style), errors (significant theological mistakes that do not cost someone their salvation), and heresies (serious theological untruths that break from orthodox Christianity). We should have loving grace with one another’s quirks, we should speak truthfully about the errors (without throwing a conniption fit), but we must directly and clearly confront the heresies. It’s a great teaching, and I would recommend giving it a listen at Mike Bickle’s resource library here.

However, sorting that out is not really my goal in writing this blog post. Neither am I trying to prove how we ought to respond to Rob Bell specifically. But what I have seen in the clashing of the interwebs over this is how crucially important it is for us, the Church, to embrace that culture of honor as a rule.

Some of the accusations I have seen raised are, “Oh, there go those evangelicals, devouring one of their own again.” “Geez, you people can’t handle it when someone disagrees with you in any way, can you?” “You’re just unwilling to have dialogue about this.”

Whether those accusations are justified or not is not my point, but they do illustrate something very important: if we neglect having a culture of honor, we lose the ability to effectively rebuke when a real problem does arise.

Suppose we daily spend our energy, ink, and bandwidth trashing other ministries. That church up the road are the frozen chosen and quench the Spirit. That guy on TV is a charismaniac who does nothing but showboat and ask for money. That preacher is diluting the gospel by arriving at a different application of that parable than I did. That outreach is tunnel-visioned and missing the big picture. Etc., etc., etc. Perhaps our writing is skillful and our logic is bulletproof. Perhaps (however grossly unlikely!) we are actually right in every single area where we have a bone to pick with some other ministry somewhere on planet earth. Perhaps every single thing we publish against another believer is true — the church up the road needs to invite the Holy Spirit in, the guy on TV needs to tone it down, that preacher misunderstood that parable, and that outreach is not addressing the real problem it wants to fix. Suppose we have perfect discernment and effective rhetoric.

What do we do when someone pops up who, say, denies the doctrine of eternal punishment? Someone who questions the deity of Jesus? One who laughs off reality of the Resurrection? What do we do when people have identified us as “that person who’s mad at everyone else in the Church”, and think this is just more of that? What do we do when we have already slung the full force of our outrage at the televangelist’s wardrobe? How do we even say, “No, seriously, this is actually a really big deal” if everything to date has been a “really big deal”?

In other words, we don’t want to be like the little boy who cried wolf(-in-sheep’s-clothing).

I don’t have any particular author or organization in mind as I’m writing this, except for me and my own little soap box in this corner of the internet. Undoubtedly many leaders have been unjustly accused of being this kind of judgmental scrooge when it comes to dissimilar ministries. Undoubtedly some have been justly accused of it. Surely those internet commenters have been both right and wrong in calling such behavior out. It’s not my job to sort out all those people, and not in my power to do much about it.  But what I can do is cry out for God to set a guard over my own mouth. I can ask Him to give me more compassion and more discernment. I can commit again to honoring my brothers and sisters in Christ, so that when I do speak out about something, it actually has weight to it. I want it not just to be another indignant diatribe in a droning string of sour notes, but a clear trumpet call from someone who loves the Body of Christ well. By the grace of God, that’s something I want to set my heart towards.

Rob Bell is a popular teacher, most famous for his NOOMA videos where he gives short, poignant teachings, usually framed with lots of probing questions. Young adults especially are attracted to his tendency towards unconventional methods of teaching and his very vocal belief that we should be living like Jesus lived, being kind and compassionate to all sorts of people. However, he has also been viewed with concern by many church leaders for quite some time, who have felt that he has been worryingly silent on some major theological issues (such as the need for conversion) and carelessly dismissive of others (such as the virgin birth) [source]. Judging from the promotional material for his recently-announced book, it appears to many people that this book is going to clarify Bell’s position as a universalist. Universalism claims that there is no such thing as eternal punishment, and that all people eventually are saved and spend eternity in heaven. This is a serious enough break with the Bible to qualify as heresy.

While the book has not yet been released, and it is thus too early to say for sure if that’s Bell’s position, current indicators are not looking good. The promo video has him asking incredulously if we can know for sure that Gandhi (a Buddhist) is in Hell. He asks how a God who sends people to Hell could possibly be good. From that line of thought, he directly transitions into stating that people are often repelled by Christianity because “they see it as an endless list of absurdities and inconsistencies”. He wraps up with saying that “…whatever we have been told and been taught, the good news is actually better than that, better than we could ever imagine. The good news is that love wins” [YouTube source]. While a shadow of reasonable doubt concerning his theological stance can be upheld, it’s awfully hard not to worry.

Though I will firmly reject Bell’s theology if he turns out to deny eternal punishment — and will be profoundly unimpressed with his misleading marketing if he doesn’t — he is certainly right about one thing: Love does win. Of course love wins.

We just need to know what that looks like.

At its core, love looks like a bleeding, broken Man nailed to a Cross — and oh, by the way, this Man just so happens to be God. You know, God — the same One we had been sinning against and grieving for millennia. The same One we accuse of being too harsh for allowing anyone to end up in Hell. The One we, as the human race, had resoundingly hated and reviled. Yes, that God. The fact that He hung there on that tree is how we know what love even is (1 John 3:16). No one on earth has ever had a love greater than this (John 15:13).

Backtracking a bit, we must see that God created humans because He wanted to have fellowship with them. He had no practical or sentimental need for us. He is just so overwhelmingly loving that He wanted to create a people with whom He would dwell and to whom He would reveal His glory. The Father desired to have children on the earth, and to raise up a people who would willingly love and be a worthy bride for His Son. And since He actually desired love, and not mere service, He allowed those people the dignity to choose Him or to turn Him away.

Yet with no other provocation than the words of a serpent, we rejected Him. He spent thousands of years then making Himself known, moving in and through His chosen nation on the earth, determined to bring forth a Seed who would redeem fallen humanity. All the while, we raged and kicked against His leadership, insisting on pursuing false gods and toxic, temporary pleasures. We had basically no interest in being right with God, and for any of us who did, we weren’t able to do it through our own works.

Anyone of lesser patience, grace, and wisdom, would have thrown in the towel on that mess in very short order. He had given us everything, and in return, we hated Him. He didn’t even owe our existence to us, much less salvation from our self-made condemnation. But nonetheless, He took an impossible situation with obstinate people, and gave a new and living way — He gave Himself, in the person of His Son. He humbled Himself across a dizzingly wide chasm to be the Mediator, the peacemaker, that fallen humanity could never produce. He took on human flesh and shed sinless human blood that we could actually be reconciled. Humanity was now no longer hopelessly cut off from the Holy God. The irresistible pattern of sin and death on earth had been definitively interrupted, and there was now hope for the kingdom of God to actually come to the earth without eradicating all the people on it. People could commune with God. God could actually live inside of people. Satan couldn’t stop it. Humans were being won over by it. It seemed like it couldn’t be done… but God did it (Luke 18:26-27).

Love won.

Clearly, though, the whole of humanity did not respond to the God (who is love) showing us what love really looks like. A number of us did respond, to be sure. But others dug in their heels yet harder, refusing to love the One who is altogether lovely. Though He gave absolutely everything possible to give, this too was scorned and rejected by many. They preferred living in futility and darkness to submitting to the light and love of God. They preferred raging against God to being humbled and broken by His unfathomable sacrifice for them. They would rather cultivate a heart given over to vile and worldly lusts than one that is alive in love for God and for people.

So now, in this context, what does God’s love look like? It is easy to recognize it in things that we approve of, that give us good feelings, and that materially benefit us — things like financial blessing, physical health, and peace and prosperity in our nation. It’s true that God can, and does show us love through those means. But if we think God’s love only means He did the Cross thing, and now is nice to us, we miss a significant aspect of what the Bible says His love is like.

Song of Solomon describes it this way: “…love is as strong as death, jealousy as cruel as the grave; its flames are flames of fire, a most vehement flame” (SoS 8:6). We have to remember that, in God’s love, He is as a bridegroom in love with a bride. The love of a husband for his wife includes, and even necessitates, jealousy. One would have to wonder what kind of husband would smile politely and welcome illicit lovers of his betrothed wife into his house. One would have wonder even more what kind of husband would treat an abuser of his wife in such a casual way. The book of Proverbs doesn’t imagine the possibility of that scenario, but rather says, “Jealousy is a husband’s fury; therefore he will not spare in the day of vengeance” (Prov 6:5).

Keeping that in mind, let’s look forward a couple of thousand years from the Cross. Here, we come to Revelation 19, describing the end of this present evil age. Jesus is returning to earth, He is rescuing His people from oppression and persecution, and He is going to make the wrong things right once and for all. Anyone will readily agree that this is a good thing. No more pain? No more suffering? No more injustice? Yes! Do it, Lord! All of heaven and all of the saints rejoice in this, and specifically in two things: 1) The marriage of the Lamb (19:6-9), and 2) the destruction of a corrupt worldly system, whose smoke of burning torment will rise forever (19:1-5).

Wait, what? Rejoicing over the Lake of Fire? Whatever happened to love? Isn’t this scene a bit harsh?

Not when it means that wickedness is definitively answered once and for all, it doesn’t. Revelation describes this city, this Babylon system, that is being tortured with fire forever: it is a great harlot (17:1), the kings commit fornication with her (17:1), the inhabitants of the earth are made drunk with her immorality (17:1), she has a cup full of abominations and filthiness (17:4), she is gleefully killing believers (17:6), she oppresses multitudes (17:15), her sins reach to heaven (18:5), she is haughty (18:7), and she trades in human trafficking as casually as she does in livestock (18:13). There is nothing remotely virtuous or misunderstood about this system. Although many people will mourn the loss of its great wealth — Such a contribution to the world’s economy! Such splendor! Such artistry! — the entire system is wicked, through and through, with nothing remotely redemptive about it.

In Revelation, we also see the condition of humanity as a whole — people are killing one another (6:3), worshiping idols (9:20), unrepentantly engaging in murder, sorcery,* sexual immorality, and theft (9:21), raucously rejoicing over the death of anointed prophets (11:9-10), worshiping Satan and the Antichrist (13:8), openly blaspheming God (16:11,21), and gathering with malicious and fully cognizant intention to fight against Jesus — the very One who gave them every opportunity and means to be saved in the first place (16:14,16).

Despite what is sometimes heard in well-meaning sermons, God is not throwing people into the Lake of Fire over that one stick of gum they stole from the drugstore when they were six. Although He would hypothetically be justified in doing so, it is never, ever as simple as that. No one ever lives a life that would be holy if it were not for that one stick of gum. The person who rejects Christ’s sacrifice is committing the greatest injustice of all time — looking at the full extent of God’s love and claiming they don’t need it, don’t want it, don’t agree with it, or outright hate the idea of it. And with such a complete disagreement with the Holy One, it is just a matter of time, opportunity, and pressure before all manner of unrighteous thoughts and actions begin to emerge. People do not end up in Hell because they were pretty good, but not quite good enough for Heaven. People end up in Hell because they reject righteousness, truth, and holiness — and it is not possible for them to do otherwise because they have rejected the One who defines and embodies those things.

How could a good God look at raging injustice, with people killing and plundering one another, running wild in every sin they ever desired, allying themselves with the father of lies himself, and shrug it off? How could a good God say, “Well, it just seems so harsh to do anything too severe. I mean, come on, they made some mistakes. I’m willing to look the other way, because I just hate seeing people suffer. I am nice, so I refuse to intervene.”

In other words, how can a good God be seriously unopposed to evil? How can a good God be willing to tolerate suffering, injustice, and hatred on the earth forever? How could a good God allow His saints to eternally be persecuted and killed under the reign of sin, in order to avoid making utterly unrepentant people suffer in divine punishment?

Jealousy is a husband’s fury; therefore He will not spare in the day of vengeance. It is because God is love that He must deal with wickedness once and for all. It’s because He is love that there is a Lake of Fire to begin with. It’s because He is love that He even allows people to say no to Him. And at the end of the day, it is His love that will completely and finally deal with injustice and sin. When there is no more sorrow or sighing, when death is defeated, when God dwells on the earth with us and we are forever dwelling in the fullness of joy in His presence — when all the wicked have been cast into the lake of fire — it will all be fulfilled. Sickness will be no more. Pain will be no more. The devil will be destroyed forever. The world will truly be right.

Love wins.

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*Some people have argued that “sorcery” does not necessarily mean magical arts, but drug use (the Greek word is pharmakeia, the word from which we derive “pharmacy”). I say it’s not especially worth arguing; either way you look at it, it’s a pretty bleak picture, and either way you look at it, we see it increasing even today.