I'm just going to drive straight to the point here, I don't have all night and I have thought about this too much already. This new Rob Bell book is only a big deal because we as the church have not created a healthy environment for people to wrestle with the difficult questions that confront our faith. If people had been talking this out for years, this book would be old hat. Instead we suppress and censor people. Someone becomes a Christian and right away we get them all jumpy about being careful of this guy and that book and this doctrine. Now, nobody wants to look into things because we have put fear in them. Someone asks a question, we shut them down. We give them "The Answer" and usher them along. That in and of itself is censorship.
The truth is that when a question is asked such as, "Is there really a hell?" Nobody earnestly asking it is really seeking a yes or no answer. They are looking for God, they want to know who he is. We need to bring them into a discussion rather than force feeding them an answer. One needs to be able to undergo the mental and emotional process of coming to grips with the question that plagues them. They need to open it up and let God in. That takes time. An answer we take or leave, it's harder to walk a way from a conversation. I would that we could abandon answers and talk of the questions of our faith.
I'll leave you to think on this: is faith real if untested, how can we know we believe if we don't struggle and overcome doubt?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
.jpg)
1 Peter 1:3-9
ReplyDeletePraise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, 4 and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade — kept in heaven for you, 5 who through faith are shielded by God's power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time. 6 In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. 7 These have come so that your faith — of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire — may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed. 8 Though you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy, 9 for you are receiving the goal of your faith, the salvation of your souls. NIV
Our faith is proved genuine when we face all those contradictions, both large and small, that try to tell us that either Jesus is not Lord over all or that He doesn't love us. But he is and he does!