Itchy Ears - Reworked

 Hey folks - this is an old post that I've reworked to post to my church blog here in Vegas. I hope you enjoy the edits. Love ya.

I read a book about a year ago by Rob Bell called Love Wins: A Book About Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived. Boy, oh, boy is this book controversial. Thoughts of this read, combined with Sunday’s sermon (stressing how scary hell is to a baby Christian) and my own winding path to the cross I wanted us to take a moment to tackle one of the scarier issues of the faith: heaven and hell. And I wanted to show a glimpse of my journey so far to hopefully give you the courage to share yours.

As you may or may not be aware, folks in the evangelical community are all up in arms because the perception was that Bell was taking a pluralist position on the afterlife. For those unaware, the church has been fighting back and forth for centuries about the nature of the afterlife (i.e., who goes to heaven, who goes to hell; what exactly is heaven, what exactly is hell). For at least the recent past, three positions have been articulated clearly: exclusivism (i.e. only Christians get in to heaven, everybody else goes to hell), inclusivism (i.e., Christians and some other people get in to heaven) and pluralism (i.e., everybody gets into heaven). Now, I am totally uneducated about who has held the majority position over the course of church history, but I do know two things: (1) the loudest group of Christians presently endorse an exclusivist perspective (I was gonna say majority of Christians, but I am not sure if that is true) and (2) there are amazing, committed, Godly people in all three camps.

Now I am not sure what the predominant belief is here is at the Gathering, but my sense is that, as a group, exclusivists have taken a lot of heat from the world. I think the basic assumption is that exclusivists are callous hearted and superior, while inclusivists and pluralists are more warm and relatable. I tend to get a little bent about this perspective, as I am confident that most folks who hold an exclusivist perspective do so not because they really like the idea of lots of people going to hell, but because they authentically believe that is what the Bible teaches. From an exclusivist’s view, inclusivism and pluralism are attempts to compromise the gospel to make it more palatable to the world. They take very seriously the warnings across the New Testament about false prophets and manipulation of gospel. Warnings like 2 Timothy 4:3

For the time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear.

And I will tell you something true, Mr. Bell's book did scratch my itchy ear. You see for a very, very long time I could not stomach Christianity. I could not stomach it because it seemed very much like a country club with ridiculous entrance standards and outrageous consequences for declining membership; specifically, like what we like, dress how we dress, think how we think or burn in hell for all eternity. Of course this invitation was wrapped in words about love and acceptance but I saw through that to the purple kool-aid. And let me tell you what, I was not about to drink it.

So from that place, the place where I saw hell as a tool to make me afraid and manipulate me into agreeing to doctrines that made no sense, I needed a path to get to God, to get to the cross, around it. And from my perspective, God used pluralism and authors like Mr. Bell to create it.

But coming to God via a path that may or may not be sound doctrine begs the question: Am I actually drawing closer to the real God? The Creator of the Universe? Or am I drawing closer to a god that I am fashioning from concepts I already like? Can I "put up with sound doctrine" or am I "gathering teachers" to scratch my itchy ears?

And here is my take (as it presently stands). At the center of the Bible is a tension - a tension between who God is and what He wants and the apparent outcome. Specifically, on the one hand you have an omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient God, Creator of the Universe, who is love and wants every person who ever lived to return to Him. On the other hand, you have mention of hell, judgement, wheat and chaff, and weeping and gnashing of teeth. These two things are very, very difficult to reconcile. If you reconcile them by saying - "Oh well, God is all powerful, his love is unending, he will pursue people until he gets them even into the afterlife" you are over looking some very explicit warnings about how you live this life, the image of judgment and the clear picture that not all will come to the party. If you reconcile them by saying - "Clearly, I can tell you that ‘those people’ who didn't do or say this or that thing, in this or that way are lost and going to burn" you are over looking who God is and minimizing Him into a genie or mechanism that delivers certain things when rubbed the right way. I think we ought to realize that if God says He wants something, there is a good chance He is going to get it.
  
So what I think is that the itch we all have, or at least the itch that I have, is for the resolution of that tension. I don't want to sit with the dissonance - I want some preacher or some book or some philosophy or some approach to resolve it.

So I am trying, very hard, to make space in my psyche for this dissonance. I am trying to live within the tension – let it build and challenge me. I want to be unsettled for the lost. I want to be disturbed that there are some real and lasting consequences for the choice of not knowing and/or rejecting Jesus. I want to move and reach and speak and pull and love… But I flat out refuse to script what God means when he talks about salvation and the exact intricacies of who is in, and who is out. 

And when I am stuck… when I am scared that someone I love is lost (which happens often)… or feel the need to resolve the tension for my own satisfaction or to be right in an argument… I find great comfort in a passage from Exodus. Moses has asked God to reveal His glory to him, as a reassurance of His presence with the Israelites. And He says this:

I will cause my goodness to pass in front of you, and I will proclaim my name, the LORD in your presence. I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion.
 
You see God does make one thing very clear – He has it covered. He is not interested in our determinations about who is in and who is out; He will have compassion on whom He will have compassion. And I so trust Him to get it right.

Dearest Abba,

Thank you for being so full of love and wisdom and grace that I do not ever need to worry about anything. That I can relax in your perfect will. May this will also compel me, may my own compassion push me to share just how great You are with each and every person I encounter. Please let my life draw people ever toward You.

I love you too. Amen.

So Ladies here’s your assignment:

(1)   Own it. So I confessed my itchy ear – I really, really don’t want there to be a hell… Ooo.. and I want everything to be tied up in a nice, neat package…. Where do your ears itch? How are you tempted to fashion your own god?

(2)   Wrestle it. Where are you at about heaven, hell and salvation? Why? Now ladies, there are likely going to be people in this group who see things quite differently from you. And you may feel tempted to ‘set them straight.’ I want this to be a safe place for them to express their unedited thoughts… so that means you are free to express differences of opinion (i.e., I hear what you are saying, here are my thoughts…) but it is not ok to squash one another. Let’s practice extending respect and grace toward one another.

(3)   Live it. Regardless of your position on heaven, hell and salvation it is clear that we are called into action. That we are called to spread the good news to all people (i.e., the Great Commission). In what way do you see your position hindering and/or helping you to move forward toward this aim?

Stand Your Ground

Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes you may be able to stand your ground, and when you have done everything, to stand. –Ephesians 6: 13

I often think that God has placed a simple call on my life… “Go first.” This simply means, being willing to say the first vulnerable thing, take the first leap, sometimes shed the first tear. And it’s really “Go second,” because we all know who really went first, right?   

This post – well this post is about when it gets really, really hard to do just that. And I know all about that because, you see, I know about spiritual warfare. I know how it looks. I know what it smells like, because I am in one of the most intense spiritual battles of my life. Let me tell you a bit about it…

In January of 2012 things fell apart.

Ok... let’s back up a step… In August of 2011 I had moved across the country with my husband and daughter to live with our best friends in a beautiful farm house out in Eaton. It was a the realization of a call on my life, a call on all of our lives (or so I thought), to live out the principles of community laid out in Acts and gradually start feeding, into our little corner of the world, lives steeped in the gospel. It was a magical time. Things falling in place. Dreams coming true.

It wasn’t long, though, until things soured. My husband was not happy. There was conflict. Darkness crept at the edges of our lives… it lingered and yanked…pulled and tugged… it seduced. And then things fell apart.

Things fell apart after a phone call on Dec 30, 2011 when the first betrayal was revealed and continued to unravel as I realized my marriage was not what I thought. In the last year, I have felt the icy sting of betrayal. The crippling fear of mistrust. The grief of shattered dreams. The loneliness of uncovering the truth. It has been a very long and dramatic year and I have needed Ephesians 6:10-18.

For our battle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. – Ephesians 6: 12

Let me tell you some things I have learned from the trenches over the last year. It is very tempting in the middle of a spiritual war to start blaming people. In my case, it is very tempting to start blaming David (my husband). It is tempting to think that I am fighting him, because it is his face that lied to me and his body that betrayed me. And when I am not blaming him, it is very tempting to blame myself. It is tempting because it is my flesh and blood that opens me to feel betrayal and my own human limitations that made it so I was deceived. But this passage of Scripture calls that out. It says to me – “No Paula! Your battle is not against flesh and blood. Neither David’s nor your own.”

Instead it tells me to be concerned about the rulers, authorities, powers and spiritual forces of evil. For me these forces come seducing with my desire for approval and my pride. They are calling me to be busy, to fill my time with obligations and dates instead of conversations and connections. They whisper doubt to me, about my standing with the Lord and His character and my place. They fill me with fears for my life and my future. They undermine my trust in others, suggesting that I cope by using silence (if no one knows they won’t ask) and masks (sure, I had great week).

It is them, against whom I am asked to stand firm.

Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground and after you have done everything, to stand. Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled at your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place, and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace. In addition to this, take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.

I am to stand firm in the waves of temptation to blame, to run, to hide and to fear by remembering the truth, by taking on Christ’s righteousness, by walking in peace, by defending with faith and by speaking the very Word of God over my life. And let me tell you what… this is the hardest thing I have ever had to do.

Do you know how BADLY I want to lie? How much I wish the truth of my marriage wasn’t true? How terrifying it is, to let other people see what is real and vulnerable and raw?

Or how much I want to be unrighteous! When someone has smashed your heart to smithereens you want to key their car! To say the things you KNOW will hurt! Not mention there are lines of other people who deeply care about you, who want very much to help you along this path or see you as weak when you won’t.

Do you know how tempting it is to just give in to hopelessness? To quit fighting the good fight of faith? How vulnerable it feels to say, “I believe God will work this together into something beautiful for me” when what I have right now is suffering? Is pain?

But what I also know, from walking this thing out for an entire year, is that God is faithful. And this armor thing – it’s right and it’s good and it’s perfect and it’s holy.

It looks like sitting across from Lisa Horst and telling her the whole truth. Even when I was scared I would be rejected.

It looks like calling Joshua in tears to ask for his honest feedback, his strength and his courage.

It looks like singing out Mumford and Sons “I Will Wait” to God in the car so loud my chest aches.

It looks like swallowing my pride and repeatedly making space for my husband in my daughter’s life. And the fruit of watching Sydney (my daughter) spend her birthday with her father and be really happy. Never having to wonder if I want her to love him or not.

It looks like receiving grace and encouragement from the beautiful friends God has placed in my life.

It looks like God showing up to confirm that this is the very post that is supposed to start this season of my life.

You see - I also know that God was with me and in me and for this because of the timing of this very post. Because on February 4, 2012 I was crying out to him in despair and anger in my office. I remember I lay on the floor and dug my fingers into the pile of the rug and said to Him “I am not getting up without a word from you! I know there might be a client out there soon. I do not care. It’s You and me right now.” (FYI: Please do not read this as an endorsement to make demands on God. This worked out in this situation probably because: (1) I was just authentically broken and (2) God is incredibly gracious.) Fortunately, for me (and my clients), God did have something to say. He said “Ephesians 6.”

Now I am no Bible scholar, so the address didn’t mean anything to me. When I looked it up though, my heart started racing when I came to versus 10-18. So much so that I wrote in my prayer journal:

Answer: Ephesians 6:10-18.

I believed that answer so much I have written out those verses in every journal entry since that day.
That means that I have unintentionally been writing and meditating on the very Scriptures that would form the basis of this first blog post for 1 year. I did not pick this date. I did not pick this sermon. But God did. He did it for me – so that I would know He is here. He did it for you too.  

Dearest Abba,

I am humbling myself before you. May these women know that they find in me a battered and torn soldier; someone who does not perfectly or completely wear her armor either. May they know that any wisdom I have, is simply because You were gracious to give it. Give them space to really embrace Your Word.

I love you too. Amen.

So Ladies it’s your turn:

(1)   Own it. In what ways are you now or have you in the past struggled with spiritual warfare? Which flesh and blood are you battling? What rulers, authorities, powers and spiritual forces of evil are you overlooking? Many of you may not want to do this publicly… so please feel free to do it in a journal or with a friend.

(2)   Wrestle it. What does it really mean to buckle the belt of truth? What about adorn the breastplate of righteousness or take up the shield of faith? Which piece of armor is the easiest for you to identify with? Which is the most difficult?

(3)   Live it. In addition to understanding where we are and what Scripture has to say about handling it, we are going to need some tools for carrying it out. So let’s share ways we’ve been successful at donning our armor. What are your tools for taking up your shield of faith? What about putting on your boots of peace or securing the helmet of salvation?