Discernment

A Ministry of Reconciliation

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For the love of Christ controls us, because we have concluded this: that one has died for all, therefore all have died; and he died for all, that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised. From now on, therefore, we regard no one according to the flesh. Even though we once regarded Christ according to the flesh, we regard him thus no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
—2 Corinthians 5:14-21

To me, this is one of the most powerful passages in the all of the Scriptures. The power. The hope. The love. The commissioning. The sense of purpose and meaning. This passage has it all.

And yet, I wonder how many of us take it to heart.

Do we truly look on our mission in life to be an ambassador for Christ? Are the words that spill over our lips daily revealing the great message of reconciliation?

If you were to ask me to describe the landscape upon which the Western Church rests, the image that comes to mind is one of battle lines criss-crossing the land, each line drawn boldly and fiercely into the ground by passionate people of well-meaning intent.

Yet one must ask whether it is the task of ambassadors to draw battle lines. Shouldn’t ambassadors be the ones who bring together the foes on either side of the lines? Isn’t that what is meant by reconciliation? That we were once separated by a battle line, but now that battle line is no more?

One battle line, the greatest of all, has already been removed:

And the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom.
—Mark 15:38

This was accomplished by the work of the Son of God, the Great Ambassador, who said:

“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.”
—Matthew 5:9

Peacemakers and ambassadors are not given many accolades in our culture. If anything, our perception of them is one of weak compromisers, people who are too mamby-pamby to pick up the sword and fight.

And yet the peacemakers are called sons of God and the ambassadors are entrusted with the beauty of the Gospel.

We don’t give such people much credit, do we? If anything, there is an art to negotiating peace. handshakeGreat wisdom is called for. And oftentimes ambassadors, as already noted, are ill thought of by people who would rather wage war. Yet it is by the ambassador’s adeptness with grace that warring factions might lay down their arms and be reconciled. Ambassadors must and always be the bigger person, even if it means they might appear diminished in the eyes of those who fail to see the greater reality. They understand that they must decrease so that the fruits of reconciliation increase.

Jesus prayed this for His ambassadors and peacemakers:

“As you sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world. And for their sake I consecrate myself, that they also may be sanctified in truth. I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me. Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory that you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world. O righteous Father, even though the world does not know you, I know you, and these know that you have sent me. I made known to them your name, and I will continue to make it known, that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.”
—John 17:18-26

If the ambassadors are not at peace within their own ranks, then the message of reconciliation can never be taken seriously by those who most need to hear its truth.

Notice, too, how often Jesus speaks of love within His prayer. For love is the language of the Kingdom, its ambassadors, and its peacemakers. Love is the lifeblood of reconciliation.

Some reading this have been burned by a church or by certain people in it. Some are still drawing battle lines in the sand. Some are still angry at God. Some hate people who are not like them.

Be reconciled.

Shedding the uniform of the rebel warrior to wear the suit of an ambassador feels unnatural, but it is all part of transitioning from darkness into light. It demands an adjustment. It means laying down our own agendas for the sake of the Kingdom’s. It means bringing together rather than dividing. It means being the bigger person, bearing the scorn of angry people who would rather fight. It means graciously overcoming the suspicions of those who are unsure of what or whom we represent. It means listening rather than talking. It means paying attention to the hidden language of others, including the Spirit of God, so that the message of reconciliation is shared at the right and proper time.

And [Jesus] said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”
—Matthew 22:37-40

Reconciliation means bringing God and Man together in love. It also means bringing Mankind together in love.

Ours is the ministry of reconciliation.

Let’s begin today and never look back.

The Question of Hell

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Hell signIf you’re a Christian who regularly peruses the Web, it’s impossible to have missed the recent brouhaha over a book that talks about hell. The author of the book says he wrote it to address the questions of people regarding hell and the afterlife. Most every review of the book mentions that the book raises more questions than it answers and that its few answers aren’t all that great.

And the battle rages…

A lot of Christians don’t want to talk about their questions about the Bible and their faith. To have the standard theology handed to us and to be left with questions afterward makes Christians uncomfortable. It makes people doubt their faith or question their church or denomination. So people clam up and bury their questions.

I’ve been a Christian for nearly 35 years. In that time, I’ve read countless books on various topics within the Christian faith. Honestly, I don’t think I’ve ever read a book that discussed the issue of hell in a way that didn’t leave me with more questions than answers. I don’t believe I’m alone.

That said, I do hew to the standard of belief that hell is a real place. People will go to hell, which is the worst place imaginable and reflects separation from God. Hell is meant for beings who rebel against God. Jesus Christ is the answer to the question of hell. He is the path that leads away from hell. His death and resurrection made it possible that people who are found in Him will not go to hell.

That may sound simplistic. If it does, I apologize in advance. But I think that when we look at the whole of Christian theology since the passing of the apostles, that brief paragraph adequately covers the majority of what scholars have gleaned from the Bible about hell. On many of the nuances, especially concerning what was left out of that paragraph, you will find considerable questions or disagreements.

One of the struggles I have with understanding hell is that that the two major streams of thought on salvation from hell have some articulation issues that only lead to further questions.

Most Christians believe that God created mankind for His own pleasure. Most believe that mankind sinned by rebelling against God. Questions of justice and love now lead us to ask what happens to the rebels.

Some Christians believe that God sends His Spirit to some people He has selected and that these people will become believers in Jesus and thus avoid hell. They have been chosen by God.

But there is the question of what to do with those God didn’t select. They didn’t ask to be born. They didn’t ask to be in the group that didn’t get chosen. They ended up there by default with no opportunity of getting out of that group. If you’ve ever been passed over by the “team captain” when sides are chosen in a sport, you know what it’s like to be left out because of your deficiencies. Only being left off the team destined for heaven is far, far worse.

Some Christians believe that God sends His Spirit to all people and that people choose to believe in Jesus and thus avoid hell. They choose God.

But there is the question of what kind of choice this is. If I am given the choice of an all-expenses paid trip to Hawaii for eternity or being doused with gasoline and set on fire (even for just a couple minutes), can it be said that I am making a real choice? And is it possible that a person can choose heaven just because it sounds like a great place but at the same time be indifferent to God?

Both positions leave open many, many questions. What about the person who lived in the jungles of South America in AD 500? What about the good person who acknowledges there is one God but doesn’t know about Jesus? Is the only opportunity to come to Jesus available in this life ? Jesus says a lot about people who call Him Lord but who do not do what He asks of them. What about those people?

Those who spend a great deal of time studying the Bible and are wise in interpreting it always caution us to be careful when we try to build entire theologies from a couple verses. Some of the questions in the previous paragraph are briefly addressed in the Bible, but those questions of the “good pagan” and “the spirits in prison” that Paul and Peter discuss respectively have been debated for generations.

I’ve been a Christian for a long time. I still have questions about these issues.

Some people would point to these questions and try to say something negative about the Bible and the Christian faith. That’s a foolish thing to do.

My question is this: What are you and I doing with the indisputable facts about Jesus, the rebellion of sin, and heaven and hell?

Anyone who has been a soldier in a war will tell you that the commands that come down from HQ will tell you all you need to know for the fight. Not every detail will be covered, and at times you’ll need another guide when events play out in battle in ways unanticipated or unique to the fight. Between the commands and the guide, the war is winnable.

Our faith works the same way.

The Bible tells us that hell is a real place. We know that sin exists. We know that Jesus is the answer to questions of both sin and hell.

Now what are we doing about those truths?

How Would Jesus Blog?

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I’ve been on the Internet since the time when it was the ARPANET defense network linking universities and the military.

I was emailing people in 1981.

I was at Carnegie Mellon University when the smiley was invented there.

I owned a 300 baud modem.

I watched USENET spring into being, with its rec dots and alt whatevers.

I played in a band with one of the guys who developed the Netscape browser.

I had my own domain name in 1997.

I beta-tested Google.

I was blogging in 2001.

In other words, my cyberspace geek cred is pretty high.

I say all that to say this: Online discourse is only getting worse.

One could say that this is because the intellectual elites have ceded the Web to the great unwashed. Cyberspace is now a commodity. And as with most commodities, anything now goes.

One could argue that the Second Law of Thermodynamics applies even to human conversations, and if the Internet is any reflection, no rebuttal would be forthcoming.

Let’s play a game.

Let’s pretend to be aliens from another dimension who happen to gain access to the Internet. And let’s say that we start reading about this thing called Christianity and the people who adhere to it.

What would our general impression be of Christian people?

If the Internet is the well of information from which we draw, then would it be unfair to characterize Christianity as a religion of anger and dissension?

I’m no alien, but I’ve been around long enough online to answer that question with a reluctant yes.

And it’s not just on the Internet. The general level of anger and dissension among Christians has reached a level that resembles nothing I can recall in my younger Christian days. Jesus weptIt’s like we’ve had our skin torn off and we think anyone and everyone is ready to throw salt on us.

I don’t understand the glee with which some Christians tear into others. I don’t understand respected pastors, who should know better, making smug tweets about this person or that. I don’t get it when people use online forums to gather wood for figuratively burning other Christians alive. I don’t get it that no one seems to ask if it’s wise to post that wicked barb before they hit the Enter key.

I don’t get the massive pride among some who feel they are always the best person to administer the corrective beat down. I don’t know where people get their imprimatur to verbally assault incomplete, imperfect brothers and sisters in the faith. And I don’t know why all this must occur online for the world to see.

The bent reed is broken. The smoldering ember snuffed.

Is anyone else grieved? God knows that I am. And if I am, I wonder what the average person who hasn’t been a Christian for almost 35 years thinks. That figurative “alien.”

I’m grieved that when I see Christianity represented on the Web by the ordinary adherents of that faith, so much of the discourse is angry. Angry at politicians. Angry at cultural leaders. Angry at Christian leaders. Angry at other Christians of extreme ordinariness. Angry at every perceived foe. Anger everywhere one turns, and especially on the Web.

Honestly, why would anyone want to be a part of that?

I’ve reached the point where I think we are doing the Lord a great disservice by all this anger. American Christians are now defined by what ticks us off. Or who ticks us off. And there’s not a lot of Jesus at the core of that.

The words of Jesus:

And he opened his mouth and taught them, saying:

“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

“Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.

“Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.

“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.

“Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.

“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.

“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.

“Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

“Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.

“You are the salt of the earth, but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled under people’s feet.

“You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden. Nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.”
—Matthew 5:2-16