You want full body? I'll give you full body.
My father-in-law was at Olive Garden and asked what they had on tap. He was told: Bud, Bud Light, Coors, Miller, and Corona. He shook his head and said "No thanks. I wanted a beer."
When you're done drinking cheap watery American lagers that are only good for getting drunk on, and are ready to drink the real thing, you come talk to me.
(I'd love some critique on this one. Sung to the tune of the traditional folksong "I Once Had A Sweetheart," heard here and here and here.)
My Beloved
My beloved pursues me,
He whispers my name
in starlight and blossom,
in waterfall and flame.
When shadows run fleeing
in morning's sunshine:
I am my beloved's,
and he is mine.
He is mine.
My beloved beside me
walks along the way
on dark alley pavement
or empty mountain brae.
Fearless I tread with him
on street or on shoreline,
for I am my beloved's,
and he is mine.
He is mine.
He calls me a beauty,
for my lover's eyes
in me see no tarnish
nor blemish to disguise.
He carved me on his hands,
a scarlet lifeline.
I am my beloved's
and he is mine.
He is mine.
Like smoke from the desert
my lover will come,
his bride he will name me
and bring me to his home.
We'll dance on the golden streets,
His scarred hand in mine,
for I am my beloved's
and he is mine.
He is mine.
Turned Heart
Father mine, I heard you oft at court
with tenor voice that made the rafters ring
sing psalm of praise unto the LORD your God,
so sweet it made the palace maidens cry.
With harp stroked by your rough and calloused hand,
you sang in praise of the Almighty's love.
I never saw your face so full of love
for any maid or concubine of court;
although you took my mother by the hand,
and favored her with golden chains and rings,
you never sang with such impassioned cry
for any save your high and lofty God.
You told me once that God—and only God—
was worthy of my unreservéd love,
but me, I cannot help but hear the cries
and calls of lovers fair I come to court.
Their touches, kisses, make my senses ring,
their silken soft caresses graze my hand.
No woman, when I come to claim her hand,
needs fear I will neglect her for my God.
No son of mine, who bears my royal ring,
will ever lack for loyal father's love.
And when the foreign powers come to court,
They'll see my people have no call to cry.
You were the same. I heard my mother cried
when brave Uriah died—died by your hand—
that with her beauty you might cheer your court.
Where then was your whole-hearted search for God?
It drowned—as mine—beneath a woman's love.
But you returned, slave shackled to your ring.
I cannot. By the seal upon my ring,
I will not stifle my heart's restless cry.
They call me wise: I'd spurn all that for love
of those adored I walk with, hand in hand,
to shrines and groves of their Sidonian gods,
to watch the wreathing smoke as they pay court.
This is my court, my crown, my throne, my ring,
not yours. Not to my Father's God I cry,
if his stern hand will hinder me from love.
(Criteria #10, #11, #43, for thirteen points, giving me twenty-two total.)
These culinary efforts are
Not taxing to my mind,
And as the saucepan simmers or
The oven heats, I find
I have the chance to sit unwinding,
Infused within a thick book's binding.
And when the timer summons back
Or boiling froths a'frolic,
Still I hear murmured voices there
Of authors apostolic,
Their leaves and pages steeping long
Through ladle's stir and kettle's song.
This chicken brushed with Keller's wit
Or Richard Foster's phrase;
Jack Lewis laughs at Joy's surprise
As roast fumes in the braise,
And Thursday's chili bubbles still
With Chesterton my Emeril.
And underneath their words of You
A Culinarian lies,
Whose Fish-And-Bread-Crumb Casserole
Five thousand satisfies;
Whose Eucharistic feast unfurled
Served shed and broken, serves the world.
These culinary efforts are
Not taxing to my mind,
And as the saucepan simmers or
The oven heats, I find
A momentary breath's retreat,
Set down my spoon, sit at Your feet.
(Is it cheating to use a poem from last April? Criteria #45, if it counts, for nine points so far)
Black-furred shepherd, chase
the dinosaur's descendants
honking from the lake.
(Criteria #1 and #5, for six points)
Is it scary that I almost understood this?
Is it scarier that I think I just almost learned something about sin and cos that I didn't ever get when I was failing precalc and calc in high school? (I'm sitting here going, wait, sin and cos had to do with going around a circle?! [I think the trouble is that I'm very much a visual learner, which is why I aced geometry and even algebra and did okay at trig, but when we left diagrams behind for graphs and it all became formulae and derivations, I just got really lost. (Anyone else feel like they were cheated out of knowing things in high school because they were explained badly?)])
"Si hoc legere scis nimium eruditionis habes." --Cicero
For all the literary criticism surrounding Vogon poetry, few critics have sufficiently explored the complex ways it deconstructs the social relationship of power in the bourgeoisie/proletariat binary. In the nuances of this deconstruction of the social Other, Vogon poets such as Jeltz and Kraltz are in fact redefining the social contract in which society exists at all. For an example of this complex implied commentary, I submit to you an excerpt from the famous poem "Oh Freddled Gruntbuggly," by Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz.
Oh freddled gruntbuggly thy micturations are to me
As plurdled gabbleblotchits on a lurgid bee.
Groop I implore thee my foonting turlingdromes
And hooptiously drangle me with crinkly bindlewurdles,
Or I will rend thee in the gobberwarts with my
blurglecrucheon, see if I don’t!
A few decades ago, when New Criticism was regrettably popular among the less-educated faculty of American universities, one would have analyzed this poem (and others in its genre, such as those penned by Trawl Azgoth of Kria or Paula Nancy Milstone Jennings of Sussez) in a textual manner, pointing out the ways in which the words of the poem adhered (or failed to adhere) to the laws and stipulations of the lexical form, vis a vi the internal laws and regularities of language. The linguistic character of language was in fact quite an important discovery for New Critics, who had not yet considered the ramifications of said character.
The community of literary critics have recently come to better understand, however, the complex strategical situation in a certain society which we give the name Power, and the ramifications of Power in the lexical proletariat; whereas a poem is thought to be required to follow the internal laws and regularities of language, the language lawmakers take on the role of the bourgeoisie. Thus the act of defining poetry becomes an exercise of Power, and the poet becomes a laborer toiling in the service of those who have that Power. Speaking of poetry, still in The Gay Science, Nietzsche declares that there are those who look for the origin, the Ursprung, of poetry, when in fact there is no Ursprung of poetry, there is only an invention of poetry. Somebody had the rather curious idea of using a certain number of rhythmic or musical properties of language to speak, to impose his words, to establish by means of those words a certain relation of power over others. Poetry, too, was invented or made, and thus imposed. It is this imposition of poetry upon the "un-poemed" that separates the Self from the Other, the unknown, the unformed.
If the Other defined by the "un-poemed" is unknown, then what is poetical is therefore what is known, what is seen--that which is fixed by the inescapable gaze of the panopticon, the all-seeing eye of the reader. Knowledge was invented, then. To say that it was invented is to say that it has no origin. More precisely, it is to say, however paradoxical this may be, that knowledge is absolutely not inscribed in human nature. Knowledge doesn't constitute man's oldest instinct; and, conversely, in human behavior, the human appetite, the human instinct, there is no such thing as the seed of knowledge. As a matter of fact, Nietzsche says, knowledge does have a connection with the instincts, but it cannot be present in them, and cannot even be one instinct among the others. Knowledge is simply the outcome of the interplay, the encounter, the junction, the struggle, and the compromise between the instincts. Something is produced because the instincts meet, fight one another, and at the end of their battles finally reach a compromise. That something is knowledge. And this knowledge forms the core of the "poemed," if you will, that which forms the lexical law which the exercise of Power inflicts upon both the Other and the Self. It was by obscure power relations that poetry was invented. It was also by pure and obscure power relations that religion was invented. We see the meanness, then, of all these small beginnings as compared with the solemnity of their origin as conceived by philosophers. The historian should not be afraid of the meanness of things, for it was out of the sequence of mean and little things that, finally, great things were formed. Good historical method requires us to counterpose the meticulous and unavowable meanness of these fabrications and inventions, to the solemnity of origins.
Here we can see, however, the poet crying out against those impositions of poetry's origins, those lexical laws which are enforced upon him. His bee is "lurgid," he drangles "hooptiously," rejecting both the role of the proletariat and the norms of the bourgeoisie. He implores us "groop," rather than the "blethorp" that society would have him say, and thus identifies himself with the Other, the unknown. This is an insurrection of subjugated knowledge, or rather un-knowledge, the un-knowledge of the poet deconstructing the imposition placed upon the un-poemed.
The poet, of course, is aware of the political ramifications of his defiant statement. The poet is a function of discourse, and as a function of discourse, we must consider the characteristics of a discourse that support this use and determine its differences from other discourses. If we limit our remarks only to those books or texts with poets, we can isolate the poet's Self. Jeltz rejects the binary of the poemed and un-poemed, and in doing so, struggles against his own Self, in time coming to see his Self as yet another imposition of Power ("rend thee in the gobblewarts..."). And thus the deconstruction of that which separates out the Other is in the end the deconstruction of the Self, an act of lexical suicide.
Indeed, the depth of the relationships of Power within Vogon poetry have hardly been examined in current academic literature. I can point to many other such examples as compelling as this.
In the end, this critic--and, I believe, Jeltz himself--would have us cry along with the Preacher: "υἱέ μου φύλαξαι ποιῆσαι βιβλία πολλά οὐκ ἔστιν περασμός καὶ μελέτη πολλὴ κόπωσις σαρκός!"
"Ther nas no man nowher so vertuous." --Chaucer, The Friar's Tale. Uses a double negative.
"For this was gret unkyndenesse, to this manere treten there brother." --John Wycliff. Splits an infinitive.
"And God saw that it was good." --The King James Bible. Starts a sentence with a conjunction.
"[Let] nothing [be done] through strife or vainglory; but in lowliness of mind let each esteem other better than themselves." --The King James Bible. Uses "themselves" as a singular pronoun.
"The smallest worm will turn being trodden on." --William Shakespeare, Henry VI. Ends in a preposition.
"There's not a man I meet but doth salute me / As if I were their well-acquainted friend" --William Shakespeare, A Comedy of Errors. Uses "their" as a singular pronoun.
"Who wouldst thou serve?" -- William Shakespeare, King Lear Doesn't use "whom."
"Nor never none Shall mistress of it be, save I alone." --William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night. Uses a double negative.
"To boldly go where no man has gone before." --opening sequence to Star Trek. Splits an infinitive.
"The President was shot." --A reporter in Dallas on November 22, 1963. Uses passive voice.
"...if a peace officer has reasonable grounds to believe that, because of their physical condition, a person may be incapable of providing a breath sample..." --from a 2008 amendment to the Canadian Criminal Code. Uses "they" as a gender-neutral singular pronoun.
"The adjective hasn't been built that can pull a weak or inaccurate noun out of a tight place." --Strunk and White, The Elements of Style. Uses passive voice, does not group related words together, and contains a relative clause.
In the books The Best American Essays of 2001 and The Best American Essays of 2003, all but four of fifty essayists used at least once sentence fragment, with the average being ten per essay.
Is this the downfall of The English language? Hardly.
First off, let's get something straight. There is no The English Language. There is English language. There is English language as spoken by an uneducated native of Minnesota, and English language as spoken by a doctor from Australia. There is English language as spoken by a East-End Londoner, and English language as spoken by an upper-class Bostonian. English is living, and because it is living, it changes, has different pronunciations, different spellings, and... different grammars.
A "grammar" is that part of language which allows its users to make sense of it. Don't get me wrong, grammar is important. But it's important in terms of meaning and in terms of ethos (credibility), not in terms of some set of "rules" that seperate The English Language from imposters.
There's a difference between "Let's eat, Grandpa!" and "Let's eat Grandpa!" But that difference is in terms of meaning. There's a difference between "I went to the store" and "a wnet 2 te stor." But that difference is in terms of credibility, of getting your audience to take you seriously. When you break a grammatical "rule" for dramatic effect, or to enhance meaning, why should the "rule" take precedence over the original purpose of writing--communication?
"When making choices between formally grammatical sentences and rhetorically effective sentences, good writers often chose the latter." --Edgar H. Schuster, "Beyond Grammar: The Richness of English Language, or the Zero-Tolerance Approach to Rigid Rules." English Journal 100.4 (2011): 71-76.
Many of our grammar "rules" are quite artificial, made up sometimes out of whole cloth by English teachers or by ministers concerned that "bad English" leads to moral decay. A particularly infamous case is Robert Lowth, a clergyman who in 1762 wrote a grammar guide that told us for the first time that it was wrong to end a sentence with a preposition. (It was a rule he borrowed from Latin; it has no basis in English.) His guide caught on among the upper classes, and soon "good grammar" became a marker of class distinction.
It was entirely artificial. He didn't make rules based on how people already spoke: he made rules based on how he thought people should speak, and people began to socially enforce them.
(The Grammar Nazi Flag.)
"...in America, these rules of grammar underlie what has been termed "standard American English," but as in other countries, this is really just the speech of those who wield the most power, in this case, those who are white, educated, professional, middle- and upper-class. What I hope you see is that there is nothing "natural" about these rules of grammar or our feelings about them: they are every bit as much a cultural construct as a building, a painting, a computer, or a sonnet." --Karl Tamburr, "Why Shakespeare Didn't Know Grammar."
In the end, English is a living language--the language of government and commerce, of conversation and communication, for millions of people. And because it is living, it will change. And all the dictionaries and grammar rulebooks in the world cannot hold back the tide. Only dead languages stay the same.
If English didn't change, wé wolde bespricen Englisc angelícan þes.
Some "errors," such as the gender-neutral singular they or the definition of "nauseous" as meaning one feels like one will vomit, are already in widespread popular use. Because they are in widespread popular use, they eventually must be recognized in dictionaries and grammar rulebooks, or else those books will cease to be useful to the population. (Already, look at the entry for "nauseous": its backwards-formation meaning is its first definition, while the original meaning is now its second definition.) Countless "wrong" words have already been added to our language this way, and are now considered correct, such as "diagnose."
Learning to write effectively is not necessarily synonymous with learning to write according to the "rules" of standardized English. The Dalai Lama once said, "Know the rules well, so you can break them effectively." That is the approach I think English users should have towards "good" grammar. It's not a bad thing to know how to speak and write in standardized English. (I'm building a career around that premise, in fact.) It's the sad fact that in certain rhetorical situations, people will not give you a hearing if you do not have a mastery of standardized English. However, do not mistake this for meaning that standardized English is the "right" English. It may be the wrong thing to use in another rhetorical situation. (You wouldn't ask a biker in a rough bar, "Pardon me, but would you be so kind as to pass me that napkin," would you?) Effective writers size up their rhetorical situation, and choose the form of English that will best accomplish their purpose in writing (to persuade, to inform, to entertain).
So learn the "rules," by all means. But know when it's time to toss some of them out the window.
I do hope that this is a case of me preaching to the choir. I'm almost afraid I'll discover that half of you actually feel this way, though.
There are several websites out there that have been collecting all the insensitive things people are saying about the recent earthquake and tsunami in Japan. Karma Japan and Ignorant and Online are two of the best. By far the most commonly-expressed view in those collections is the idea that Japan "deserved" what happened to it, for one of various reasons, usually due to some sort of "karma."
I've been playing around on OpenBook.org, a website that lets you search unprotected Tweets and Facebook status posts to find out what people are saying. I am rather relieved to see that by far the majority of people posting do NOT think this way, that those angry about such statements vastly outnumber those making such statements. All the same, it's concerning that anyone, even an ignorant few, are making such statements at all.
I thought I would look at some of what people are saying and see if I can't tease apart the underpinnings that are such cause for concern.
1) "Japan Deserves Its Earthquake/Tsunami Because Of Pearl Harbor."
Underlying Problem: Ethnic bigotry, Hyperpatriotism
Examples of:
"karma: well japan did attack pearl harbor...."
"ya know japan, the earthquake is gods way of getting you back for pearl harbor... 'buy american.'"
I'm not certain, but I think athlete Cappie Pondexter may have been the first to say this, stating on her Twitter account,
"What if God was tired of the way they treated their own people in there own country! Idk guys he makes no mistakes." and "u just never knw! They did pearl harbor so u can't expect anything less."
Around the same time, Family Guy writer Alec Sulkin had Tweeted: "If you wanna feel better about this earthquake in Japan, Google 'Pearl Harbor Death Toll'."
There are so many ways of countering the underlying assumptions here that I'm not quite sure where to begin. I think I'll start by taking Sulkin's advice.
Pearl Harbor Death Toll: 2,402 military, 57 civilian.
Earthquake/Tsunami Death Toll: The total isn't known yet. Estimated up to 10,000, with a current official count of 1,897 dead, 3,000 missing (and in this situation, "missing" is close to "likely dead." Those numbers will probably have risen by the time you read this blog.
Pearl Harbor is dwarfed in comparison.
Not to mention that the pilots of the Pearl Harbor attack are mostly long since dead, and wanting "payback" from other people over half a century later who just happen to share their ethnicity makes about as much sense as me wanting payback from the modern British for the Boston Massacre.
Not to mention that it makes little sense to still want "payback" for the opening shots of a war that we won, and won through bombing (Death Tolls: 90,000-160,000 and 60,000-80,000, respectively). If we still need "payback," what was that?
Not to mention that the former was an attack on an armed military base, with limited civilian casualties, while the tsunami is undiscriminating.
As a subset of this category, I see people posting things like "Why should we send them aid? Did they send us any aid after Hurricane Katrina?"
2) "Japan Deserves Its Earthquake/Tsunami Because They Kill Whales and Dolphins"
Underlying problem: Hyperenvironmentalism
Examples of:
"I feel so sorry for the Japo's but I have a feeling it might be karma for all the slaughtered dolphins each year."
"'Karma is a bitch' -- whales and dolphins"
Look, I'm an environmentalist. I'm more than half a tree-hugger: I'm working on reducing my carbon footprint, would go solar if I could afford it, and love nature. I haven't seen "The Cove" yet, but I do watch "Whale Wars" when I can catch it, and I think the Japanese hunting industry's disregard for the need to stop hunting endangered species is really rather appalling.
But.
But environmentalism can never be furthered through the death of humans. Even the crew of the Steve Irwin, extreme though they may be, always stick to nonlethal actions.
But, no matter how their culture may further the eating of endangered intelligent animals, the Japanese are human. And human lives are precious.
But tsunamis and quakes do not discriminate between those in support of whaling and those against it. It's a tsunami, not Aquaman.
Simply put, I don't care how many times you've watched The Cove, I don't care if you have personally rescued fifty dolphins: wishing a natural disaster upon an entire nation is just not acceptable.
And honestly. If damage to the ocean environment is enough to earn a natural disaster's worth of bad karma, how much is America in for with last year's oil spill?
3) "Japan Deserved Its Earthquake/Tsunami Because It's Full of Atheists."
Underlying problem: Religion-based bigotry
Examples of:
[Edit: They took it down, looks like she was just a troll. It was a convincing performance; Poe's Law strikes again. Well, I'll leave my refutation up anyway, just in case Fred Phelps starts saying something similar.]
As a Christian, this one is easy--and necessary--to refute.
The Bible speaks of many natural disasters. Some, it claims that God caused (Exodus 8, for example). Some, it claims that the devil caused (Job 1, for example). And some it just records without there being a reason why.
Jesus addressed this specifically, when talking about a political murder and a tower that had collapsed.
'There were some present at that very time who told him about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. And [Jesus] answered them, "Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans, because they suffered in this way? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish. Or those eighteen on whom the tower in Siloam fell and killed them: do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others who lived in Jerusalem? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.' (Luke 13:1-5)
Sometimes crap just happens. And it's not necessarily because the person the crap happened to was any worse a sinner than I am. To say otherwise is to put words in God's mouth.
This earthquake is not your personal sign from God, in response to some prayer you prayed last week. This earthquake is not God shaking Japan saying "Look at me!" You know why? It's not God's job to get people to look at him.
It's yours. Remember "Go ye into all the world and make disciples of all nations?"
And if you're sitting there praying for people to die in earthquakes, don't be surprised when people look skeptical when you say you serve a loving God. The way to prove that you serve a loving God is to act loving toward others, to show them God's love through your words and actions.
In other words, Christianity FAIL.
Here is a much better reaction, from one who, while still acknowledging that Japanese culture has a large atheist component, and while still desiring nonChristian Japanese people to become Christians, especially in the midst of such a horrible disaster, nevertheless expresses those desires with compassion and with love (not disdain) for the Japanese people.
Also, as relates the claims of Japan's "bad karma," from a Christian perspective this is Recommended Reading: The Karma of Jesus
For crying out loud, people, stop trying to assign blame for a natural disaster. Stop trying to come up with reasons why we shouldn't send them aid, why we shouldn't lend our support. Stop trying to justify your lack of compassion, of basic human sympathy.
And if you post anything approaching the above claims, don't be surprised if I unfriend or unsub you.
(This is one of those posts I didn't intend to write, but I looked at a comment and said, "Dang, I went and wrote them a book," and since I don't post as much as I used to, I then recycled the comment as a post. Hope you don't mind.)
Apparently there's some controversy bubbling up in the evangelical Christian community regarding Rob Bell's new book.
Rob Bell, from what I understand, is one of the pastors of Mars Hill church, and has been characterized as being on the more liberal side of mainstream evangelicalism. But the thing that has some people in a froth is that he released a YouTube video, actually a trailer for his latest book, which seems to question the doctrine of Hell.
It's an old question, "How can a loving God send people to Hell?" "Is Ghandi in Hell?" "How is Hell fair?" I guess people aren't used to hearing such questions from a pastor, though.
Here's the video, if you want to see for yourself:
If that video is what people are reacting to, this really is disheartening. In my opinion, unless there's more evidence that is as of yet forthcoming, this video is not worth the level of reaction some have witnessed.
First: he starts out, bouncing off the story of the note pinned to the art exhibit, by asking a series of very good questions. Questions that everyone should have asked at one point or another. And he makes several very good connections (such as that our view on Hell will be influenced by who we think God is). A friend of mine pointed out that he "answers no questions in this video, only raises them," and that since his book isn't out yet, we can't know what his answers are. I'm with her-- we know little from this video as to what *answers* he will proffer to these questions.
So, is evangelical Christianity going to write off one of its own because of the questions he's asking, before it even knows what conclusions he has come to? Yikes.
Second: One of the things he does question--and in questioning, seems to criticize--is that the Gospel is that you're going to Hell unless you believe in Jesus, and thus that Jesus saves us from Hell (and therefore from God).
This idea is worth questioning and criticizing even from an entirely orthodox platform. The Gospel is that God and humanity have been reconciled, that humans can now once again be part of the already-and-not-yet Kingdom of Heaven, and (as a side note) that when you die you can enter God's presence, commonly known as heaven.
That is very different from "The Gospel means we are saved from Hell." The idea that Gospel = saved from Hell has already been criticized extensively by (for example) Dallas Willard, in his book "The Divine Conspiracy," among other books by other theologians. Quite simply, it's the wrong focus, and takes all the emphasis off of our lives here on this earth--quite the opposite of what Jesus preached. Jesus promised them not just life eternal but life more abundant. The Gospel is about so much more than simply dodging Hell, so much more even than attaining heaven.
Third: if we are going to criticize Rob Bell for saying that God doesn't send people to Hell, we must also criticize various other theologians who have been embraced by mainstream evangelical Christianity, such as C.S. Lewis and Timothy Keller. Both of those writers wrote that we send ourselves to Hell, that ultimately we seperate ourselves from God, and that God is desperately trying to rescue us from ourselves through his own loving sacrifice.
First Lewis:
"Finally, it is objected that the ultimate loss of a single soul means the defeat of omnipotence. And so it does. In creating beings with free will, omnipotence from the outset submits to the possibility of such defeat. What you call defeat, I call miracle: for to make things which are not Itself, and thus to become, in a sense, capable of being resisted by its own handiwork, is the most astonishing and unimaginable of all the feats we attribute to the Deity. I willingly believe that the damned are, in one sense, successful, rebels to the end; that the doors of hell are locked on the inside." -- The Problem of Pain
"Hell begins with a grumbling mood, always complaining, always blaming others... but you are still distinct from it. You may even criticize it in yourself and wish you could stop it. But there may come a day when you can no longer. Then there will be no you left to criticize the mood or even to enjoy it, but just the grumble itself, going on forever like a machine. It is not a question of God 'sending us' to hell. In each of us there is something growing, which will BE Hell unless it is nipped in the bud." --The Great Divorce
"All that are in Hell choose it. Without that choice it wouldn't be Hell. No soul that seriously and constantly desires joy will ever miss it." --The Problem of Pain.
And then Keller:
"In short, hell is simply one's freely chosen identity apart from God on a trajectory into infinity... That is why it is a travesty to picture God casting people into a pit who are crying, 'I'm sorry! Let me out!' ...All God does in the end with people is give them what they most want, including freedom from himself." --The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism
So saying that God doesn't send people to Hell doesn't mean that Hell doesn't exist, or that people don't go there--it only clarifies God's role in damnation. (I highly recommend the chapter on Hell in Keller's "The Reason for God," or Lewis's parable "The Great Divorce," if you want to better understand this idea.)
I don't know if Rob Bell holds to a "The Great Divorce" -style view of Hell, in which Hell is ultimately ourselves left alone in the absence of God's presence, an emphasis on the "Depart from me, I never knew you" and a de-emphasis on flames and whips and pitchforks and many things not found in scripture but only in Dante. If Bell does hold such a view, however, this book-trailer would make perfect sense: the "Love Wins" statement and the questioning of Christian subcultural belief. And yet he would not be a Universalist by any stretch.
I can't say more without more information to go on. Perhaps I will buy the book, when it comes out on Kindle, and report back. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe Bell is, in fact, becoming a universalist, who believes that all people go to heaven--a believe sadly incompatible with Christianity. We won't know until we read his book, though.
And until that time, I am concerned by how freely Christians feel they can blast this pastor for assumed theology.
Recent Comments