Warning - this blog may cause constipation.

Welcome to another blog that hopes to stretch thinking and cause rethinking.

Will we poop in heaven?

Let’s start with heaven.
Let’s start with asking will Osama Bin Laden be in heaven?

Bin Laden believed so …….. being met at the gate by 72 vegans!
(Sadly there was a screw up in the paperwork and the virgins he’d hoped for didn’t show up.)

But could he be in heaven?
Some of you might think that he’s the poop.

Now in case I am misunderstood, I am not in any way minimizing the violent and hate-filled atrocities Bin Laden perpetrated over the past 15 years including the bombing in Nairobi, Kenya where 224 died and over 5000 injured; and the tragic events of 9/11 and the over 3000 killed and countless victims injured.
Bin Laden lived a life of violence and murderous hate.

But could he be in heaven?

Is he beyond God’s grace?

The difficulty with celebrating anyone death is the sense that we are celebrating someone receiving God’s punishment of hell …..as if they deserve it and we (those celebrating) don’t deserve such.
If Bin Laden had been captured and as a war criminal now faced justice being done to him that might be a more celebratory outcome. But, celebrating his death - and by all accounts people celebrating are assuming he is now in hell receiving due justice – seems to suggest he is getting what he deserves ….and we will also get what we deserve but we will get heaven.

Really?

The core of Christian teaching is that no-one deserves heaven. Heaven is an act of God’s free gift of grace. No one deserves it but all can receive it.

Now I’m not suggesting that I know Bin Laden accepted God’s grace (but he might have); and if he had he would be in heaven!

This for some is the scandal of the Gospel.

The scandal says - no one is beyond God’s grace, and God’s grace is all you need to enter heaven.

The scandal, or perhaps the surprise of heaven, is that it will be full of the unexpected, none more than who is there and who isn’t!

Will there be poop in heaven …that could be unexpected.

Sitting in an airport Chili’s last week I shared the question I was pondering and one person quickly retorted – “Of course we all know there will be, we all say it ‘holy ****!’”

But the original questioner was reflecting on a theological point. If poop is the body’s way of removing impurities, if heaven is void of impurities will we still poop!

Heaven.

Oftentimes we think of heaven as ethereal, intangible, esoteric and immaterial.
To say that an easier way – floaty, dreamy, hazy.

I grew up with the idea that it was a place above earth where we would sing hymns and worship all day long, every day, for ever and ever …like one everlasting church service.
For me that sounded more like hell!

Scriptures teaches that there is a place, a space, a realm beyond the one we currently inhabit.
Scripture teaches that just now we have a body that gets old, weary and eventually will give out on us – but there is a second kind of body one that is ‘imperishable’.
Scripture also teaches that not being here will be better.

In this new place, with a new body, in a better place will we still poop?
I truly don’t know.

BUT, Scripture doesn’t only talk of heaven as being somewhere else, sometime else.
Jesus taught, lived, that heaven had come to earth.
For Jesus heaven was not ‘someday’ but was a present reality.
Scriptures teaches that it is both here, now and yet fully to come.
Eternal life does not start when we die; it starts now.
Jesus’ prayer, our prayer was and is “thy kingdom come”.
Christians are about bringing heaven to earth ….. today.

The original questioner was wondering if in the other reality our bodies will be perfect, sinless and therefore poopless.
But the better way to look at heaven is to see it not as somewhere else, sometime else - but the focus of our attention and purpose now.

If as a Christian you pooped today, if today you have been about what God wants you to be about - bringing heaven to earth, then theologically you pooped in heaven!

Sorry if this blog causes constipation.

Rob Bell - poet, prophet or pest?

There’s something about poetic language that draws me in.

Take this poetry:
“Many have these questions.
Christians,
people who aren’t Christians,
people who were Christians,
but can’t do it anymore because of questions about these very topics,
people who think Christians are delusional and profoundly misguided,
pastors,
leaders,
preachers – these questions are everywhere.”

There’s something about the way the poetic weaves together groups of people who would not normally go together.
The poetic finds way through a phrase even a word that pulls the unusual into community.

Take this poetic phrase:

“Honest business,
redemptive art,
honorable law,
sustainable living,
medicine,
education,
making a home,
tending a garden – they’re all sacred tasks to be done in partnership with God now, because they will all go on in the age to come.
In heaven,
on earth."

Poetry.

Putting together words that on earth don’t go together.
Merging what’s normally unmerged.

There’s something about poetic language that draws me in.
For some the movement of poetry appeals, for others it raises questions.
For me the rhythm evolves poetic license; for other its vagueness confuses or denies.
For me it draws me to think and consider possibilities; for others it causes them to think that the poet is considerably wrong.

Chesterton once wrote: “it’s the mathematician that goes mad not the poet”.

The mathematician is trying to get heaven, God, faith, truth into his head, the poet is just trying to get his head into heaven.

The poet can hold vagueness; the mathematician can’t.
The poet can write something unconcluded; the mathematician must see the conclusion. The poet in this case is the pastor and author Rob Bell.
The mathematicians in this case are the pastors and Christian leaders lining up to shoot the poet.
The topic is Rob Bell’s latest book Love Wins: A Book About Heaven, Hell, And The Fate Of Every Person Who Ever Lived.

The poetry written above comes from this book.

I loved the book, in all it inconclusiveness, vagueness and poetry!
Excellent.

Like everything else Rob Bell has written he weaves new thought alongside orthodox thought and invites you to be shocked and stirred and intrigued and scratched, question and disagree and agree and applaud, and want more and want less all at the same time.
As a poet he lets you swim in the sea not curtailing its vastness ignoring the ‘don’t swim here’ signs.

It’s the work of a poet not the work of a mathematician or a scholar or a theologian.

Is he really preaching universalism as some charge him with?
Is he really presenting a false God as others charge him with?
Is he really denying the atonement?
Should he really be burned at the stake for heresy?

He’s a poet.

Another poet Eugene Peterson endorsed the book indicating that while he doesn’t agree with all that Rob’s written, he’s my brother in Christ writing nothing new but continuing a worthwhile discussion.

To some extent it’s a classic modernity/postmodernity clash.
The clash of formulaic, propositional truth with narrative.

I live in the borderland between two cultures.

I can be the poet, but I can also be the mathematician.

There are times when the ‘modern’ in me wants better supporting evidence for the new definitions Rob gives.
There are times when the ‘postmodern’ in me wants him to pull back from wording that seem to be too deconstructive.

But I enjoy Rob Bell and his poetic exegesis.

For me, God is as much a poet as He is a mathematician.

The intricacy and preciseness of creation; the clarity and formulae of The Law He gave enable the mathematician to claim God as his friend.

But the mysteries left hanging; Jesus’ answers that were more questions; the both/and of His Being (three but one; fully God but fully human); the Psalms, the Revelation, the Book of Songs ……reveal a Divine Poet.

There’s room for both; and both should allow room for the other.

To a degree I need there to be a box – call it Orthodoxy.
I need there to be lines drawn and conclusions reached and The Faith handed down.
I need the Didache, the Creeds, the Confessions of Faith, the completed Canon.

But I’m nervous of a box with the lid fully closed. (In fact the only box I know of where the lid is fully closed is a coffin!)

I’m wary of theology that has systematized God into concluded theories.
I’m skeptical of faith built upon conclusions.

Does faith not require lines to sometimes bend or be dotted?
Does God not stand bigger than even the biggest box we can find?

I need perhaps not vagueness – what if we call it largeness.

I need space for more – more redefined, or more to be defined.

I need the poet.

“And to that,
that impulse,
craving,
yearning,
longing,
desire – God says yes.
Yes, there is water for that thirst,
food for that hunger,
light for that darkness.
If we want hell,
if we want heaven,
they are ours.
That’s how love works.
It can’t be forced,
manipulated,
or coerced.
It always leaves room for the other to decide.
God says yes,
we can have what we want,
because love wins.”

Poetry.

“Is the cross about the end of the sacrificial system
or a broken relationship that’s been reconciled
or a guilty defendant who’s been set free
or a battle that’s been won
or the redeeming of something that was lost?

Which perspective is the right one?
Which metaphor is correct?
Which explanation is true?

The answer, of course, is yes.”

To some it’s misleading, indecisive, confusing, heresy.
To me its poetic thought invites thinking, engagement, discussion.

For some, including a good friend of mine, the debate is irrelevant – God’s sovereignty answers it all.
For some, Rob Bell has struck his final nail in his own coffin.

But for others, myself included, Rob Bell has enabled us to keep largeness a big part of God; a largeness that allows us down here to discuss and disagree, but do so respecting our brothers and sisters rather than displaying both the arrogance of claiming to be right and the arrogance of stating the other is wrong.
It allows largeness in thought and worship that quickness my heartbeat, thrilled by the vastness of God and The Faith I’m a part of.

The poet never sets out to complete the box; the poet sets out to express their emotion and in that expression wonder if they’ve latched on to something divine.
If they have – the poem will deliver, it’s an outward journey.
If they haven’t - the poem is but an inward restlessness revealed.

For the poet while the former is best, the latter still holds meaning.
For the reader if they seek to critique it they will deduce one of either of the endings.
Or, if they can, they become the poet and the circle continues.
And continues.
And continues.
And continues.

Freaks some people out!
Helps some of us to breath.

Crikey, I Didn't Choose the Fish Tacos!

Something strange happened to me tonight.
You may not think it very striking or of any importance.
Here it is - I didn't choose fish tacos!!

Pow! Bam! Wham! Yikes!

Everyone knows that I always, always, always choose Daniel's fish tacos. Always.
Comment away, but I do.
Tonight I didn't.
I made another choice.

Listen to this line from a stretching book I am working through:

"The burden of choice is a peculiarly modern phenomenon."

You could argue that the freedom to choose is one of the great signs of progress in modern life.
Those who live in abject poverty worry very little about which kind of food to eat precisely because there are no choices before them.

They would not see choice as a burden, but as a blessing.

My argument is, it is never a blessing, it is always a burden.

Its is our contemporary nihilism (as Hubert Dreyfus and Sean Dorrance Kelly term it in All Things Shining: Reading the Western Classics to Find Meaning in a Secular Age.)
Choice, even in the most basic case, amounts to profound questions, questions that revolve around how possible it is to live a meaningful life.

To live a meaningful life always returns to the ultimate question - 'on what basis do I make a choice ....even the most basic of choices, even choosing Hearty Omelette over my regular, loved, favorite Fish Tacos?'

For Ancients and Middle Agers life was already defined. Circumstances defined it. Things were unchangeable. Additionally, there was a belief system that whether or not you believed in God or gods, there was one framework, one system, one defining reality.

For the modern world ........ nothing is defined.
Everything then is a choice.
Every choice therefore defines.
Every definition makes up the fullness of who we are.

That makes choice a burden.
Even the choice of food.

Sitting tomorrow at Daniel's restaurant choosing from the menu is an existential life defining moment.

Every choice counts.
Every choice has a basis.

Remember Hamlet's famous soliloquy "To be or not to be, that is the question."

This is your choice.

Week 8 - A Saturday dialogue.

Week 8 brings me to start by quoting a passage some of the guys in our church dialogued about on Saturday morning:

Christian faith is about Christ, not about experiencing Christ. There's a difference and it matters. We put our faith in a person, not an experience........
We do experience Christ in our faith and that's a very good thing, but it's not the really important thing in Christian faith or even in Christian experience. The person in whom we have faith is the really important thing in Christian experience.

Its a great quote. Its a thinking quote.

I grew up in a tradition that seemed to worship doctrine over Jesus.
You could be a hard, difficult, angry man .... but if you were solid in your doctrine everything was good! I came across many men like that. Full of truth, but no grace.
Doctrine was everything.

For years I've been puzzled by this reality.
It's like churches called "Bible Church" or "Baptist Church"!!
Why are they not called "Jesus Church"?
Do we worship the Bible, or worship a sacrament? No. We worship Jesus Christ.

But recently I've been rethinking my attitude towards the elevation of doctrine.

Listen again to our Saturday book:

More than any other religion Christianity makes a big deal of doctrine.
Most religions are fundamentally a way of life, but Christianity is fundamentally a faith, because it's centered not on how we live but on what we believe about how Christ lives (and died, and rose again).

So today at church a girl walks up to me and thanks me for the past 2 years. She has been a part of our church while attending a nearby two year YWAM mission project. Specifically she wanted to thank me for every week teaching from the Scriptures and not trying to just be topical or relevant.

Interesting that it came a day after discussing this topic.
Interesting that most of our critics see us as anything but doctrinal!

Here's the kind of church we have worked hard at being for the past 7 years - a church that elevates orthodox doctrine heard in fresh and creative ways, leading people to Christ, and from that knowledge of Christ come to a vibrant, life changing experience with Christ .... from the outside in.

Maybe our presentation of doctrine has not been wrapped in the same wineskins as a previous generation or other churches, but we are a solid doctrine teaching church.

Final quote from our book [Good News For Anxious Christians @ Phillip Cary]:

The work of the church is accomplished by the power of the Holy Spirit, which forms hearts by the word of God, so that Christ may dwell there and make a lasting change in people's lives. This has been the work of the church from the beginning, since our Lord poured out his Spirit upon his Body at Pentecost. We need not worry that the Holy Spirit will cease to accomplish the work for which he has been sent, no matter how many falsehoods and failures we see in the life of the church.

I got robbed in Nairobi!

Week 6 and I've just returned from a quick trip to Nairobi, Kenya.
Again I return because too easily I forget how the majority of our world brothers and sisters live.

Seems rather ironic that we have to spend nearly $2K on trip costs to remember that over 70% of the world live on less than $2 a day.
Ask the four young guys who lead the Furaha Community Foundation that we partner with in the Huruma slum or any of their 23 employees and they will tell you that for "mzungus" (white people) to care enough about them to visit them ...... is better than sending more money to them. In a culture where relationships are more precious than money somethings truly are priceless.

As I return from another trip it is too easy for me to ignore how far away we were.
Eerily we flew over Cairo, Egypt as the country below us was sitting on the edge of a revolution. Just hours earlier we had flown at 36,000ft over Darfur seeing its sprawling sand hills - unable to see the pain on a people who had and are experiencing modern day genocide ..... sadly the world flies over it too with politicians ignoring the reality. We watched as Vienna lit up in the early evening and its huge cartwheel shaped road pattern distinguished it from the other European cities we passed. With nightfall on us we landed in the cosmopolitan capital of the world - London with its 9 million people representing over 270 nationalities.

The sad thing is I'd seen it all before and the awe of how far we were from home and what we were seeing no longer gave me chills.

Some say familiarity breeds contempt. For me, it just breeds ordinariness.
Maybe that's sadder.
When the sense of wonder, awe and excitement get diluted, life shrinks down to your size.
When life becomes your size - ordinary is too grand a word to describe the pettiness of your existence.

Of course, where ordinariness is the norm, faith is extinct.
Faith only exists in the world of extraordinary. Ordinary has no need of faith - it is content to remain where it is.

That is always the challenge of Kenya.
How do you prevent the regularity of visiting robbing you of the faith needed to visit?

Same is true in your life, in your context.

The challenge is to prevent the theft.
The need is to be wise to the thief.
The technique is to protect your soul.

Where the Gospel is lived.

Week 4 brings new perspective.

Sunday's preach was on the topic of immigration. Speaking into a very real issue, at a very real time for a very real reason - the Gospel.
The Gospel is about real life, not really about heaven in the future.
The Gospel is about transformation and God's rule and reign now.
His rule and reign in a world that rejects it.

The Gospel is all about real issues in real time.

So, the Scripture's teach that Christ followers are "strangers in a strange land" (1 Peter 1 & 2).
To understand this brings new perspective on how Christians engage with the issue of immigration - both documented and undocumented.

Scripture is teaching that because of the distinct and different lifestyles of Christ followers, a lifestyle that is different that the majority of people - the society in which they live will view them as strangers.

Now here's the twist. In our country, if Christians lived as Christ expects us to we would be living at the margins of our society .......and who would we meet there - the immigrant!!

This is the charge, or should I say the opportunity.
If Christians lived as Christ expects us to live, a mass of people who politicians have turned to to help win the past three elections and bring them to the White House, would have to engage justly and fairly with the immigration issue.

As long as Christians - who should be the loudest voice standing with the migrant - stay silent; politicians can ignore it.

Ours is the Christian generation that can accomplish historic things.
This is the generation that could abolish world famine; this is the generation that could eradicate malaria as a killing disease; and ours is the generation that could create an equitable and fair immigration policy for the US.

What an opportunity!
It comes with the challenge for Christians to live on the margins as Christ expects us to.
To live the Gospel!

Week 2 or 3 ...spirituality is living more than lessons.

Week 2 or is it week 3?

Begun running some bigger distances than I have for a couple of years. Wondering/testing if this is the year I try for another marathon.
So I pulled out a new type of marathon training plan - the Hansen plan.
In my 14 weeks training plan I will cover a total distance of 622 miles.

The last time I did a marathon I ran 3 days a week and covered a total of 380 miles.
The short of the Hansen - kill you before the race date so you'll never actually run a marathon!

Or .....run 622 miles so that when you run a 26.2 mile marathon it will feel a mere walk in the park.

So I've begun.
I'll give it a few weeks trial and see how my body holds out. Then decide.

But interesting methodology.
Run double what I've run in training before - and yet - while my other training plans had four runs that were either 18 miles or 20 miles in total the Hansen plan only sees me reach 16 miles (still 10.2 short of marathon distance)!

The philosophy includes you may not do a big 20 miler, but when you do your 16 miler, the runs you've put in the days before and the days after will make the 16 miler feel like a 26 miler without the actual pounding of the concrete and the wear and tear on your body.

So now, as a church pastor, I have to now try and link this methodology and my attempt to train with it, to something to do with Jesus!!!

Here's the best I can come up with:

......nope, got nothing.

But then maybe that's a good thing.
Maybe this constant need to try to spiritualize everything, misses it.
Maybe its the doing itself that is spiritual not a lesson you can learn from it.
Maybe its not about finding a spiritual parallel but living spiritual in whatever parallel you are in.

Maybe my marathon training can be spiritual.

What I won't now do is list a whole number of ways it can be. That misses it as well.
What I will do is take on the challenge of this training wanting to know God in the midst of it.

Spirituality is living more than lessons.