Can there be a loving God and a hell of eternal torment? This is crucial question because it is about the nature and character of God.
How could a loving God inflict eternal suffering and torment on people in hell and on their loved ones in heaven who know where they are? How could God inflict eternal suffering as punishment for a few decades of sin?
I have received lots of help and guidance from a teaching by Richard Fredericks of Damascus Road Community Church in Damascus, Maryland.
Charles Templeton, a Billy Graham associate and became an agnostic, is quoted in Lee Stobel’s book A Case for Faith: “I could not hold someone’s hand in a fire for a moment. How could God put people who don’t do what he wants into a fire for eternity?”
Many of us learned about hell in church. We may not have read the Bible much, but we heard about it in Sunday School or VBS.
When I was a college student, I heard a missionary to an African nation. He described a grass fire on an African plain. He went into great detail to describe the heat and horror of a prairie fire. Then he waned us that hell would be much hotter. What I came to see was that preachers use hell to try to scare people into heaven. The goal is to have people get so scared that they will come down the church aisle and say, “I don’t want to go to hell. Sign me up as a Christian.”
I don’t believe that approach to introducing people to God is in keeping with the Bible’s image of God. When we know God, 1st John says, we get rid of fear. Listen to 1 John 4:16-19.
“God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them. This is how love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment: In this world we are like Jesus. There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love. We love because he first loved us.”
Mark Twain, author of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn, and other great American classics was friends with Harriet and Calvin Stowe. Harriet Beecher Stowe, was the author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Mark Twain had three daughters. Two died young without making a decision to accept Christ. When he asked the Stowes where his daughters were, they told him they were burning in hell. He would not accept that a loving God would do that to his beloved children.
What does the Bible say about hell? What can we build our faith on from the Bible.
I want to look briefly at three words used in the Bible that get translated by the word “hell.”
Sheol means the grave or the realm of the dead. It is uniformly depicted in the OT as the place for both the righteous and the unrighteous. David, Job, the Psalms speak of sheol as the place where the dead are. It was not thought of as a place of torment. For instance Psalm 139:8 says, “If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.” Depths is the New International Version’s translation of the Hebrew word sheol.
Hades was the common Greek term for the underworld. This is used in the NT. For instance, Jesus’ parable of the rich man and Lazarus puts the rich man in Hades, looking up and seeing Lazarus resting beside father Abraham. Some try to use this parable as proof that hell is a place of eternal torment, because Jesus does say that the rich man was in torment. The problem with that argument is that the word is not hell; it is Hades, the place where the dead are in Hebrew thought. In Revelation 1:18 the resurrected, triumphant Christ says, “I am the Living One; I was dead, and now look, I am alive for ever and ever! And I hold the keys of death and Hades.” Hades cannot hold the dead because of Christ’s victory over it.
Gehenna was the name of the valley below Jerusalem on the SW side into which animal carcasses and garbage was thrown. It was full of maggots and smoldering fire all the time. It was a place of stench and revulsion. It was also known as cursed place because some corrupt kings in ancient times had sacrificed children there. It was an image of constant burning, smoldering fire and of endlessly rising smoke. Fires were burning up the trash in Gehenna. It was an image of where anything that was to be incinerated would be thrown, but it was never thought of as a place of endless torment.
None of the three words that get translated “hell” in the Bible mean a place of endless torment. So where did that idea come from?
The roots of the idea of hell as eternal torment is the idea that the Bible teaches that we all have an immortal soul that can never cease to exist. Some have believed that we all are immortal. We have it in ourselves to live forever. Every soul that has been in a human body is immortal and cannot cease to be. Is that what the Bible teaches.
Not one statement anywhere in the Bible says that human beings have immortal souls. The word immortal doesn’t appear at all in the OT. It is used 6 times in the NT. But not one time does the Bible say a human is immortal. Twice in 1 Timothy God is referred to as “immortal.” In fact the benediction in 1 Timothy 6:16 refers to God “who alone is immortal….”
What is a soul? The Hebrew word is nephesh. Gen. 2:7 says, “God formed man from the dust of the earth and breathed into him the breath of life and man became a living nephesh, a living soul.” In Genesis 2:19 the animals are brought to Adam to name and in the Hebrew they are called nephesh. It is translated “living creatures” but it is he same word, nephesh, that is translated soul when it is applied to Adam.
A nephesh is any living, breathing creature. It does not have eternal life.
God says to Adam, "You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will certainly die” (Genesis 2:6-7). God did not say, “You have an immortal soul that will be punished.” God said, “You will certainly die.”
Ezekiel 18:4 says, “Behold, all souls are Mine; The soul of the father as well as the soul of the son is Mine; The soul who sins shall die.”
In the New Testament the Greek word for soul is psyche. From it we get our word “psychology.”
Not once does New Testament say that humans have a soul that is immortal. It teaches that there is only one being who has immortality in his being, and that is God.
Does God extend this immortality to the wicked so that they can live and suffer in hell forever? No. Instead, God warns us that we can lose our souls, that our souls can be destroyed.
In Matthew 10:28 Jesus says, “Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell.” The word translated “hell” is Gehenna. The issue in the NT is not how can God deal with all the immortal souls that have to go on forever. The issue is how can a living soul, which does not naturally have eternal life, gain eternal life and not die eternally?
Listen to Jesus in Matthew 16: 26-27. “What good will it be for you to gain the whole world, yet forfeit your soul? Or what can you give in exchange for your soul? For the Son of Man is going to come in his Father's glory with his angels, and then he will reward everyone according to what they have done.” Jesus is very clear. You can do things that can cause you to lose your soul.
The real issue in the New Testament is seen in John 3:14-16. “. . . the Son of Man must be lifted up, that everyone who believes may have eternal life in him. For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish (not die) but have eternal life.” Or John 6:40 “For my Father's will is that everyone who looks to the Son and believes in him shall have eternal life, and I will raise them up at the last day."
Just a few verses later, Jesus says, "Very truly I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. . . . Just as the living Father sent me and I live because of the Father, so the one who feeds on me will live because of me.”
1 John 5:11-13 is states clearly that God is the giver of eternal life and that without having the Son you don’t have life. “And this is the testimony: God has given us eternal life, and this life is in (your immortal soul? No.), this life is in his Son. Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life. I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God so that you may know that you have eternal life.”
Eternal life does not come when you are born into the world because you are an immortal soul. Eternal life is the gift of God that comes because you believe in the Son of God.
The Bible does not teach that eternal life is in us because we have immortal souls.
Does the Bible say anywhere that we can be immortal? Yes.
When will we be immortal? Listen to 1 Cor. 15: 50-54. "I declare to you, brothers and sisters, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. Listen, I tell you a mystery: We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed— in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. For the perishable must clothe itself with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality. When the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come true: "Death has been swallowed up in victory."
When do we put on immortality? At the last trumpet, because of Jesus Christ. This is the gospel, the good news. We are limited, frail creatures destined to die. But God has come to us in Jesus in order to give us the gift of eternal life. I love 2 Timothy 1:10 the New Century translation: He destroyed death, and through the Good News he showed us the way to have life that cannot be destroyed.
As we embrace the good news of Jesus, we are given life that is eternal.
What does the Bible teach about what will happen to the wicked?
They will perish – John 3:16. The Bible says they will experience death. Romans 6:23. “The wages of sin is death.”
2 Thessalonians 1:8-9 He will punish those who do not know God and do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. They will be punished with everlasting destruction and shut out from the presence of the Lord and from the majesty of his power.
John the Baptist said of Jesus, (Matthew 3:12) His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor, gathering his wheat into the barn and burning up the chaff with unquenchable fire. My theology professor Dale Moody used to say, “it is unquenchable fire, not unquenchable chaff.” What is in the fire is consumed. It is destroyed.
2Peter 2:6 says, God condemned the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah by burning them to ashes, and made them an example of what is going to happen to the ungodly. . . .
John Stott, the Evangelical Anglican says, “The fire itself is termed eternal or unquenchable. But it would be very odd if what is thrown into the fire were to be indestructible. The purpose of the fire is to consume. Which is testified to by all of our incinerators.”
God does not send anyone to hell. God gives us freedom to choose to live our lives for him or for ourselves. Someone has said that the essence of sin is the statement, “This is my life and I will live it the way I dang well please.”
Some believe that hell is going on and on forever separated from God. If you say to God with your own free will, “God, I don’t care what you want me to do, I am going to live my life my way. I am not interested in having a relationship with you. I just want to do what I feel like doing.” If that is what you say to God he will let you have your way forever. C. S. Lewis said, “In the end there will be only two kinds of people: Those who say to God, ‘Thy will be done.’ And those to whom God says, ‘Thy will be done.’”
The image of spending eternity in some state of consciousness knowing that you are forever separated from God would be hell. Or as someone has said, “Hell might be having to stay in a small space forever listening to Frank Sinatra singing, “I Did It My Way.”
Romans 6: (The Message)20-21 As long as you did what you felt like doing, ignoring God, you didn't have to bother with right thinking or right living, or right anything for that matter. But do you call that a free life? What did you get out of it? Nothing you're proud of now. Where did it get you? A dead end. But now that you've found you don't have to listen to sin tell you what to do, and have discovered the delight of listening to God telling you, what a surprise! A whole, healed, put-together life right now, with more and more of life on the way! Work hard for sin your whole life and your pension is death. But God's gift is real life, eternal life, delivered by Jesus, our Master.
The cross of Jesus is the Bible’s ultimate revelation of hell. At the cross, God gave us the ultimate revelation of what hell is and of what heaven is. The cross is the final revelation of God who loves you so much that he will not let you die unless you choose it.
Christ took our place on the cross. The righteous for the unrighteous. He accepted God’s just punishment for our sins. (Isaiah 53)
He experienced the punishment of hell. Hell is absolute separation from God. As Jesus hung on the cross, darkness descended and Jesus cried out, “My God, my God why have you forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46)
If Jesus is our substitute, then in order to take our place he needed not to go into hell and stay there forever. He died for us once for all. And God raised Jesus from the dead. He defeated death for us. “He destroyed death, and through the Good News he showed us the way to have life that cannot be destroyed” (2Timothy 1:10 NCV).
We are either headed into eternal life because we have accepted the gift of God or we have refused it and have decided to go our own way.
As I look out at your faces, what I want for you is that you choose to live for God instead of for yourself. I want you to live listening to God telling you what to do, because to serve God is perfect freedom. I want you to give your life away serving God out of love for God, because to love God is perfect joy and the path to life everlasting.
“For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 6:23).
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
Human Hurt and Compassion
As I look out the window of the A-frame building at New Hope, I am deeply aware of how fortunate I am. My car sits waiting for me. I can drive home on roads that I expect to be open, and they always are. Dinner will be waiting for me when I get there. In the morning, coffee and breakfast will await me. I think of how people in Haiti are living in makeshift tent communities. Their roads are barely passable.
The earthquake in Haiti has caused us to think deeply about turning loose of our money in order to help people in a crisis. We are thankful to know that there are people who have the skills to help there. We want to be a part of what is being done to help people who are injured, grieving, hungry, thirsty, and homeless. Thank God for the opportunity to give and join God in what he is doing.
God loves all the people of the world. We cannot fully understand why so much suffering happens to His creatures. Much more important than explaining why bad things happen to innocent people is finding a way to respond in compassion and do something to help.
Jesus gave us a powerful image of what the final judgment will be when he said in Matthew 25, “What you have done for one of the least of my children you have done for me.” Jesus is present among the hurting people of Haiti. He is saying to us, “Don’t miss out on this opportunity to respond in compassion to this gigantic human crisis.”
I am happy to report that our offering for Haitian Relief totaled $769.
The earthquake in Haiti has caused us to think deeply about turning loose of our money in order to help people in a crisis. We are thankful to know that there are people who have the skills to help there. We want to be a part of what is being done to help people who are injured, grieving, hungry, thirsty, and homeless. Thank God for the opportunity to give and join God in what he is doing.
God loves all the people of the world. We cannot fully understand why so much suffering happens to His creatures. Much more important than explaining why bad things happen to innocent people is finding a way to respond in compassion and do something to help.
Jesus gave us a powerful image of what the final judgment will be when he said in Matthew 25, “What you have done for one of the least of my children you have done for me.” Jesus is present among the hurting people of Haiti. He is saying to us, “Don’t miss out on this opportunity to respond in compassion to this gigantic human crisis.”
I am happy to report that our offering for Haitian Relief totaled $769.
Saturday, January 16, 2010
The Suffering in Haiti and Channels of God’s Love
Haiti has been on our minds and in our prayers since the earthquake devastated the capital city Port-au-Prince. The scenes of people suffering on television tear at our hearts. Knowing that so many have died and so many are hurt calls to us to try to be of help. I would like for us to take up a special offering and send it to our denominational resource: The Cooperative Baptist Fellowship. The Fellowship has launched its response, which will be largely coordinated through CBF field personnel Nancy and Steve James, who serve in the country and are in Port-au-Prince to assess how CBF can respond. Both medical professionals, the Jameses are bringing emergency medical supplies with them and plan to establish a staging area from which the Fellowship’s response will be channeled.
On the web, go to www.thefellowship.info/CBF. The link is on our New Hope web site: www.nhbcpo.org. Executive Coordinator Daniel Vestal offered a message to the Fellowship that included four things you can do:
• First you can pray: Prayer requests will be updated regularly on CBF’s web site.
• Second you can give: Your gift will go to earthquake relief.
• Third, you can get involved: If you want to help directly with response efforts, please let us know your skills and experience.
• Fourth, you can stay connected: Read the latest news release, updates on the CBF blog, and connect through CBF's Haiti ministry network's Ning site.
Our prayers are with the people of Haiti and all who are working there to be channels of God’s love by doing work that brings comfort and healing.
On the web, go to www.thefellowship.info/CBF. The link is on our New Hope web site: www.nhbcpo.org. Executive Coordinator Daniel Vestal offered a message to the Fellowship that included four things you can do:
• First you can pray: Prayer requests will be updated regularly on CBF’s web site.
• Second you can give: Your gift will go to earthquake relief.
• Third, you can get involved: If you want to help directly with response efforts, please let us know your skills and experience.
• Fourth, you can stay connected: Read the latest news release, updates on the CBF blog, and connect through CBF's Haiti ministry network's Ning site.
Our prayers are with the people of Haiti and all who are working there to be channels of God’s love by doing work that brings comfort and healing.
Monday, January 11, 2010
Listen to the Voice of God
When Jesus was baptized by John in the Jordan River, he heard the voice of God speak to him. The voice said, “You are my son, my son whom I love very much. I am delighted with you.”
The thought I have had most often as I have looked at the scene of Jesus coming up out of the water dripping wet, John standing beside him, wet from the waist down is this: I need to hear God as my Father tell me He is delighted with me, you need to hear God as your Father tell you He is delighted with you.
Jesus has introduced me to God as my heavenly Father.
Jesus has taught me to address God as “our Father” when I pray.
So I can hear the Father – need to hear the Father – say, “You, Bob, are my son. You are my son whom I love very much. I am delighted that you are my son.”
Last Tuesday at Joy Luck Restaurant, my fortune cookie message read, “Encourage me, and I will not forget you.” I liked that. Those who have encouraged me, I have not forgotten. I even remember Dr. Theron Price, who taught me at Furman University in 1964 and 65, saying to me one day, “I didn’t know that you were a ministerial student. I am delighted to know it.” I don’t remember anything he said after that, because Dr. Price – 6 feet 7 inches tall – intelligent, gentle, and an excellent teacher told me he was “delighted to know” that I was studying for the ministry. Wow! That was encouragement, and I never forgot it.
You are listening for a word of encouragement aren’t you? Listen for it diligently and let it soak in when it comes.
God’s light, encouragement, blessing flows through many human channels. I never forgot hearing Father John Powell, Jesuit priest and author of a number of books on relationship and self-image, say, “Whenever anybody gives me a compliment, I ask, ‘Is there anything else you would like to tell me?” Then he said, “I write it down, adding it to a list of encouraging things people have said to me and I keep the list in my desk drawer.”
Can you hear that encouragement from God? Can you hear the voice of God saying, “You are my child, my beloved child! I am delighted with you.”? I am asking you to make Jesus’ story your own in your prayers. Expect the fresh energy of the Spirit to flow into you. Expect to hear the quiet voice which reminds you of God’s affirming love. Expect God’s voice to tell you of the path of vocation which lies ahead for you.
Henri Nouwen believed that the words said to Jesus from heaven at his baptism are words said to all of us if we will listen and believe: “You are my beloved child. I am well pleased with you.” He wrote a book about it called The Life of the Beloved.
What we all need, what you need, Nouwen teaches, is a deep awareness that you are always God’s Beloved. How does anyone ever get the joy and peace we all want? You get it from knowing yourself as God’s Beloved.
Those who don’t know that they are Beloved run here and there looking for the imitation love of praise from others, power over others, and safety within the crowd. When you don’t know yourself as the Father’s beloved, you run after pleasure looking for something to, at least for a little while, take away the pain of not feeling loved: the worst pain in the world. This is a compulsiveness that leads to death.
The truth you need to claim for yourself is that you are “loved long before your parents, teachers, spouses, children and friends loved or wounded you.”
Here is what Nouwen says it means to be the beloved: It means you are Chosen, Blessed, Broken, and Given.
You are chosen, not in the sense that you deserve to be first on the team while other lesser talents are left out. The One who loves you with an everlasting love chooses you. That means you are more than a speck of humanity among millions. “Long before any human being saw you, you were seen by God’s loving eyes.”
Being chosen means, first, that you can reject the lies the world tells you that may demean you. You can know that you are the chosen child of God, even though you may not feel it right now.
Second, being chosen also means that you will seek out the people and the places that remind you of the truth of your chosenness.
Being blessed means that you are open to being encouraged and strengthened by those who will say good things to you. To give a blessing to someone is more than giving them a word of praise or pointing out their talents. It is not, “I love you because you are so beautiful or talented or successful.” It is, “I love you because God loves you.”
“To give a blessing is to affirm, to say “yes” to a person’s belovedness.” A blessing is not telling a person how much you admire them. “A blessing touches the original goodness of the other and calls forth his or her Belovedness.”
Here is an example of the kind of blessing Nouwen gave to people at L’Arche, the community of handicapped people and their caregivers. This blessing went to an assistant in the community, a 24 year old student. “John, it is so good that you are here. You are God’s Beloved Son. Your presence is a joy for all of us. When things are hard and life is burdensome, always remember hat you are loved with an everlasting love.”
“Broken” is Nouwen’s word about our sinfulness and our suffering. His example of his brokenness is his addiction to one person’s attentions and support. While he doesn’t go into any detail, he makes it clear that this one person was too important to him. He seems to have been trying to get all of his feelings of being beloved from one human being. The insight is this: God’s love flows through many human channels, and we make a huge mistake when we rely on one person for all of our security and feeling of being loved.
Nouwen’s guidance: “put your brokenness under the blessing,” has helped me to hear the Father speaking to me about how delighted He is that I am alive.
There is a brokenness in you. How do I know that? Are you a human being? Here is what the Bible says in Romans 3:23&24, “For everyone has sinned; we all fall short of God’s glorious standard. Yet God, with undeserved kindness, declares that we are righteous. He did this through Christ Jesus when he freed us from the penalty for our sins.”
What you tend to say to yourself is this: “The suffering I am going through is proof that the deep feeling I have of being no good is accurate. My brokenness proves it that I am no account.”
But when you put your brokenness under the light of blessing you move toward full acceptance of yourself as the Beloved. You begin to, as the First Letter of John says, “to walk in the light as God is in the light.” I take that to mean, you begin to tell the truth about yourself, about your sinfulness and your brokenness. You don’t try to hide and run and lie.
Putting your brokenness under the blessing means you recognize that God will use what has happened to you because of your own or other people’s sinfulness. God will use your brokenness to enable you to serve others.
Jesus gave his life to allow you to put your brokenness under God’s blessing.
This story gets at the meaning of putting your brokenness under the blessing. Tony Campolo said he was in seminary studying to become a minister when one day a professor called on him to lead the class in an opening prayer. He was praying along and said, “God be merciful to us worthless sinners.”
The professor, he said, “Stopped me right in the middle of my prayer, and I’ve never forgotten what he said to me. “Mr. Campolo, we are not worthless.
We are unworthy sinners. Unworthy, but not worthless.”
Everyday I receive a brief meditation written by Henri Nouwen as an email. This is what appeared in my email when I opened it this morning at 6:15 .
Growing Beyond Self-Rejection One of the greatest dangers in the spiritual life is self-rejection. When we say, "If people really knew me, they wouldn't love me," we choose the road toward darkness. Often we are made to believe that self-deprecation is a virtue, called humility. But humility is in reality the opposite of self-deprecation. It is the grateful recognition that we are precious in God's eyes and that all we are is pure gift. To grow beyond self-rejection we must have the courage to listen to the voice calling us God's beloved sons and daughters, and the determination always to live our lives according to this truth.
You are chosen, blessed, and broken not for your own sake, but in order that we can be given. In the end, what brings you the greatest joy in life is to being able to do something for another person. God’s blessing flows into you in order to flow on to others. All that you receive from being the beloved is to be passed on.
In his book Craddock Stories, celebrated preacher Fred Craddock tells of an evening when he and his wife were on vacation in Tennessee. They were eating dinner in a restaurant called The Black Bear Inn in the Smokey Mountains. A white haired, elderly man who was the owner came over to their table.
“Where are you from?”
“Oklahoma.”
“What do you do there?”
Fred said, “I thought now that’s none of his business, but he told him: ‘I teach preaching.’”
“Oh, you teach preachers! I’ve got a story about a preacher,” and he pulled out a chair.
Fred Craddock is one of the best preachers in the country and, at the same time, is a shy introvert if there ever was one. I heard him speak at a Stetson Pastor’s School one February several years ago. I went up and introduced myself to him. I could tell that meeting new people is not an easy thing for him.
So Fred thought sarcastically, “Sure, sit at our table while you tell it! I’ve heard all the preacher stories. Most of them came off of Noah’s Ark on crutches.”
"I am from around these parts," the old man said. "My mother was not married, and the shame the community directed toward her also fell on me. Whenever I went to town with my mother, I could see people staring at us, making guesses about who my daddy was. At school, I ate lunch alone. In my early teens, I began attending a little church but always left before church was over, because I was afraid somebody would ask me what a boy like me was doing in church. One day, before I could escape, I felt a hand on my shoulder. It was the minister. He looked closely at my face. I knew that he too was trying to guess who my father was. 'Well, boy, you are a child of. . .' and then he paused. When he spoke again he said, 'Boy, you are a child of God. I see a striking resemblance.' Then he swatted me on the bottom and said, 'Now, you go on and claim your heritage, boy.'
“I left church that day a different person," the now elderly man said. "In fact, that was the beginning of my life."
"What did you say your name is?" Dr. Craddock asked.
He answered, "Ben Hooper. My name is Ben Hooper." Fred Craddock thought, “Ben Hooper, Ben Hooper? I remember when I was a kid hearing my father talk about how the people of Tennessee twice electing as governor of their state a fellow who was the illegitimate son of a mountain woman. His name was Ben Hooper.”
When you know that you are God’s beloved child and you help someone else to see themselves as the Father’s beloved child, too, you never know what may come of it.
You never know what may happen in the life of one person who claims his or her heritage as a child of God!
The thought I have had most often as I have looked at the scene of Jesus coming up out of the water dripping wet, John standing beside him, wet from the waist down is this: I need to hear God as my Father tell me He is delighted with me, you need to hear God as your Father tell you He is delighted with you.
Jesus has introduced me to God as my heavenly Father.
Jesus has taught me to address God as “our Father” when I pray.
So I can hear the Father – need to hear the Father – say, “You, Bob, are my son. You are my son whom I love very much. I am delighted that you are my son.”
Last Tuesday at Joy Luck Restaurant, my fortune cookie message read, “Encourage me, and I will not forget you.” I liked that. Those who have encouraged me, I have not forgotten. I even remember Dr. Theron Price, who taught me at Furman University in 1964 and 65, saying to me one day, “I didn’t know that you were a ministerial student. I am delighted to know it.” I don’t remember anything he said after that, because Dr. Price – 6 feet 7 inches tall – intelligent, gentle, and an excellent teacher told me he was “delighted to know” that I was studying for the ministry. Wow! That was encouragement, and I never forgot it.
You are listening for a word of encouragement aren’t you? Listen for it diligently and let it soak in when it comes.
God’s light, encouragement, blessing flows through many human channels. I never forgot hearing Father John Powell, Jesuit priest and author of a number of books on relationship and self-image, say, “Whenever anybody gives me a compliment, I ask, ‘Is there anything else you would like to tell me?” Then he said, “I write it down, adding it to a list of encouraging things people have said to me and I keep the list in my desk drawer.”
Can you hear that encouragement from God? Can you hear the voice of God saying, “You are my child, my beloved child! I am delighted with you.”? I am asking you to make Jesus’ story your own in your prayers. Expect the fresh energy of the Spirit to flow into you. Expect to hear the quiet voice which reminds you of God’s affirming love. Expect God’s voice to tell you of the path of vocation which lies ahead for you.
Henri Nouwen believed that the words said to Jesus from heaven at his baptism are words said to all of us if we will listen and believe: “You are my beloved child. I am well pleased with you.” He wrote a book about it called The Life of the Beloved.
What we all need, what you need, Nouwen teaches, is a deep awareness that you are always God’s Beloved. How does anyone ever get the joy and peace we all want? You get it from knowing yourself as God’s Beloved.
Those who don’t know that they are Beloved run here and there looking for the imitation love of praise from others, power over others, and safety within the crowd. When you don’t know yourself as the Father’s beloved, you run after pleasure looking for something to, at least for a little while, take away the pain of not feeling loved: the worst pain in the world. This is a compulsiveness that leads to death.
The truth you need to claim for yourself is that you are “loved long before your parents, teachers, spouses, children and friends loved or wounded you.”
Here is what Nouwen says it means to be the beloved: It means you are Chosen, Blessed, Broken, and Given.
You are chosen, not in the sense that you deserve to be first on the team while other lesser talents are left out. The One who loves you with an everlasting love chooses you. That means you are more than a speck of humanity among millions. “Long before any human being saw you, you were seen by God’s loving eyes.”
Being chosen means, first, that you can reject the lies the world tells you that may demean you. You can know that you are the chosen child of God, even though you may not feel it right now.
Second, being chosen also means that you will seek out the people and the places that remind you of the truth of your chosenness.
Being blessed means that you are open to being encouraged and strengthened by those who will say good things to you. To give a blessing to someone is more than giving them a word of praise or pointing out their talents. It is not, “I love you because you are so beautiful or talented or successful.” It is, “I love you because God loves you.”
“To give a blessing is to affirm, to say “yes” to a person’s belovedness.” A blessing is not telling a person how much you admire them. “A blessing touches the original goodness of the other and calls forth his or her Belovedness.”
Here is an example of the kind of blessing Nouwen gave to people at L’Arche, the community of handicapped people and their caregivers. This blessing went to an assistant in the community, a 24 year old student. “John, it is so good that you are here. You are God’s Beloved Son. Your presence is a joy for all of us. When things are hard and life is burdensome, always remember hat you are loved with an everlasting love.”
“Broken” is Nouwen’s word about our sinfulness and our suffering. His example of his brokenness is his addiction to one person’s attentions and support. While he doesn’t go into any detail, he makes it clear that this one person was too important to him. He seems to have been trying to get all of his feelings of being beloved from one human being. The insight is this: God’s love flows through many human channels, and we make a huge mistake when we rely on one person for all of our security and feeling of being loved.
Nouwen’s guidance: “put your brokenness under the blessing,” has helped me to hear the Father speaking to me about how delighted He is that I am alive.
There is a brokenness in you. How do I know that? Are you a human being? Here is what the Bible says in Romans 3:23&24, “For everyone has sinned; we all fall short of God’s glorious standard. Yet God, with undeserved kindness, declares that we are righteous. He did this through Christ Jesus when he freed us from the penalty for our sins.”
What you tend to say to yourself is this: “The suffering I am going through is proof that the deep feeling I have of being no good is accurate. My brokenness proves it that I am no account.”
But when you put your brokenness under the light of blessing you move toward full acceptance of yourself as the Beloved. You begin to, as the First Letter of John says, “to walk in the light as God is in the light.” I take that to mean, you begin to tell the truth about yourself, about your sinfulness and your brokenness. You don’t try to hide and run and lie.
Putting your brokenness under the blessing means you recognize that God will use what has happened to you because of your own or other people’s sinfulness. God will use your brokenness to enable you to serve others.
Jesus gave his life to allow you to put your brokenness under God’s blessing.
This story gets at the meaning of putting your brokenness under the blessing. Tony Campolo said he was in seminary studying to become a minister when one day a professor called on him to lead the class in an opening prayer. He was praying along and said, “God be merciful to us worthless sinners.”
The professor, he said, “Stopped me right in the middle of my prayer, and I’ve never forgotten what he said to me. “Mr. Campolo, we are not worthless.
We are unworthy sinners. Unworthy, but not worthless.”
Everyday I receive a brief meditation written by Henri Nouwen as an email. This is what appeared in my email when I opened it this morning at 6:15 .
Growing Beyond Self-Rejection One of the greatest dangers in the spiritual life is self-rejection. When we say, "If people really knew me, they wouldn't love me," we choose the road toward darkness. Often we are made to believe that self-deprecation is a virtue, called humility. But humility is in reality the opposite of self-deprecation. It is the grateful recognition that we are precious in God's eyes and that all we are is pure gift. To grow beyond self-rejection we must have the courage to listen to the voice calling us God's beloved sons and daughters, and the determination always to live our lives according to this truth.
You are chosen, blessed, and broken not for your own sake, but in order that we can be given. In the end, what brings you the greatest joy in life is to being able to do something for another person. God’s blessing flows into you in order to flow on to others. All that you receive from being the beloved is to be passed on.
In his book Craddock Stories, celebrated preacher Fred Craddock tells of an evening when he and his wife were on vacation in Tennessee. They were eating dinner in a restaurant called The Black Bear Inn in the Smokey Mountains. A white haired, elderly man who was the owner came over to their table.
“Where are you from?”
“Oklahoma.”
“What do you do there?”
Fred said, “I thought now that’s none of his business, but he told him: ‘I teach preaching.’”
“Oh, you teach preachers! I’ve got a story about a preacher,” and he pulled out a chair.
Fred Craddock is one of the best preachers in the country and, at the same time, is a shy introvert if there ever was one. I heard him speak at a Stetson Pastor’s School one February several years ago. I went up and introduced myself to him. I could tell that meeting new people is not an easy thing for him.
So Fred thought sarcastically, “Sure, sit at our table while you tell it! I’ve heard all the preacher stories. Most of them came off of Noah’s Ark on crutches.”
"I am from around these parts," the old man said. "My mother was not married, and the shame the community directed toward her also fell on me. Whenever I went to town with my mother, I could see people staring at us, making guesses about who my daddy was. At school, I ate lunch alone. In my early teens, I began attending a little church but always left before church was over, because I was afraid somebody would ask me what a boy like me was doing in church. One day, before I could escape, I felt a hand on my shoulder. It was the minister. He looked closely at my face. I knew that he too was trying to guess who my father was. 'Well, boy, you are a child of. . .' and then he paused. When he spoke again he said, 'Boy, you are a child of God. I see a striking resemblance.' Then he swatted me on the bottom and said, 'Now, you go on and claim your heritage, boy.'
“I left church that day a different person," the now elderly man said. "In fact, that was the beginning of my life."
"What did you say your name is?" Dr. Craddock asked.
He answered, "Ben Hooper. My name is Ben Hooper." Fred Craddock thought, “Ben Hooper, Ben Hooper? I remember when I was a kid hearing my father talk about how the people of Tennessee twice electing as governor of their state a fellow who was the illegitimate son of a mountain woman. His name was Ben Hooper.”
When you know that you are God’s beloved child and you help someone else to see themselves as the Father’s beloved child, too, you never know what may come of it.
You never know what may happen in the life of one person who claims his or her heritage as a child of God!
Thursday, January 7, 2010
Who Gets the Applause?
Brett Younger is professor of preaching at McAfee School of Theology in Atlanta. He recently wrote about the people he sees in the park where he walks. “My crowd,” he says, “wears knee braces and warm-up pants. We include lots of moms with strollers.” One of the regulars “must be in his 80s. The way he runs makes me think at least one hip and one knee are recent additions.”
One day a group of “young people in $200 Nikes” showed up at the park and “were dashing around at a startling pace. The high school cross-county team had invaded our family-friendly track. A thundering herd of 16-year-olds with 2 percent body fat.” Their parents and coaches were cheering them.
Younger began to think about whether the wrong people are getting the applause. Then he wrote, “The runners we should admire the most may not be the young fast ones, but the grandparents who drag themselves out of bed when they are feeling sore all over.
“The real heroes and heroines may not get the loudest ovations. The quickest, smartest and best looking should not get all of the praise. The best Sunday school teacher may not be the one with the biggest class, but the gracious friend who has been caring for the same good people for decades. The best pastor may not be the one with the biggest church, but the minister who faithfully serves a congregation that struggles to survive. God’s finest are the ones – young and old, large and small – who are not running for applause.”
I like Brett Younger’s way of looking at what deserves the most praise. When I think of our church and our members, I think of these words from the Bible: “The Lord does not see as mortals see; they look on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart” (1Samuel 16:7). Being a long-time gracious friend may not attract a lot of applause. Serving faithfully when things are tough may not win awards, but God sees the hearts of those who aren’t seeking praise, just running the race with patience and looking only to Jesus. (See Hebrews 12:1-2.)
One day a group of “young people in $200 Nikes” showed up at the park and “were dashing around at a startling pace. The high school cross-county team had invaded our family-friendly track. A thundering herd of 16-year-olds with 2 percent body fat.” Their parents and coaches were cheering them.
Younger began to think about whether the wrong people are getting the applause. Then he wrote, “The runners we should admire the most may not be the young fast ones, but the grandparents who drag themselves out of bed when they are feeling sore all over.
“The real heroes and heroines may not get the loudest ovations. The quickest, smartest and best looking should not get all of the praise. The best Sunday school teacher may not be the one with the biggest class, but the gracious friend who has been caring for the same good people for decades. The best pastor may not be the one with the biggest church, but the minister who faithfully serves a congregation that struggles to survive. God’s finest are the ones – young and old, large and small – who are not running for applause.”
I like Brett Younger’s way of looking at what deserves the most praise. When I think of our church and our members, I think of these words from the Bible: “The Lord does not see as mortals see; they look on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart” (1Samuel 16:7). Being a long-time gracious friend may not attract a lot of applause. Serving faithfully when things are tough may not win awards, but God sees the hearts of those who aren’t seeking praise, just running the race with patience and looking only to Jesus. (See Hebrews 12:1-2.)
Miracle at New Hope
A few New Hope members have pointed me to the fact that Pastor Rick Warren asked Saddleback Church to help make up the $90,000 deficit in offerings for 2009. Then he announced that in the last 48 hours of the year $2.4 million came in. They said to me with a smile, “Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could do that?” Yes, of course, it would. Rick Warren is calling what his congregation did a miracle. He sent out letters to more than 20,000 church members, and they gave.
Members of New Hope don’t despair. We finished 2009 with our own deficit of $20,700. You will have your chance to be a part of another miracle. We are launching a new initiative to increase our giving. We will vote on approving our 2010 budget on Wednesday, January 20. Then we will give you Pledge Cards that you can turn in on Sunday, January 24 or Sunday, January 31.
We can start fresh and give at a higher level to support the ministries of New Hope. Look at the children reached, the youth served, the families strengthened, the senior community brightened by our birthday celebrations, our Bible teaching, our music, and our financial help to people in need in Port Orange and Daytona. Look at our growth in worship, our second worship service.
By your giving be a part of a miracle: a new decade of ministry at New Hope Baptist Church.
Members of New Hope don’t despair. We finished 2009 with our own deficit of $20,700. You will have your chance to be a part of another miracle. We are launching a new initiative to increase our giving. We will vote on approving our 2010 budget on Wednesday, January 20. Then we will give you Pledge Cards that you can turn in on Sunday, January 24 or Sunday, January 31.
We can start fresh and give at a higher level to support the ministries of New Hope. Look at the children reached, the youth served, the families strengthened, the senior community brightened by our birthday celebrations, our Bible teaching, our music, and our financial help to people in need in Port Orange and Daytona. Look at our growth in worship, our second worship service.
By your giving be a part of a miracle: a new decade of ministry at New Hope Baptist Church.
Sunday, January 3, 2010
The Goal of Following Jesus
Many of us who have been involved in church a long time have seen some foolish arguments take place between Christians. What I want to say in this piece is simply this: Here at New Hope Baptist Church we are going to avoid foolish arguments by keeping our eyes on what really matters. We are going to think about our potential disagreements this way. “In essentials unity, in non-essentials liberty, in all things charity.” I think John Wesley the founder of Methodism said this, but he got it from someone else. It simply means lets agree to be together on the things that really matter and to allow each other freedom to disagree on things that don’t matter. In all things let’s agree that the most important thing is love.
I have it in my new member material, and I always ask those who are attending to think about what things are essential and what are non-essentials.
Paul looked at the arguing that was going on between Christians in Rome and asked them to think about the things that are essential and the things that are not essential. He spends eleven chapters talking about what God has done. God has given great grace to both Jews and Gentiles. Beginning at chapter 12 he begins to say, “Since God has been so merciful toward you, here is how you ought to live – in loving harmony, loving each other, welcoming and accepting those who don’t agree with you.” In Romans 14 he says there ought to be unfailing tolerance of others when they differ over food laws and Sabbath keeping.
So in the time our text was written, the issues were not our issues. We don’t argue with each other about whether we ought to be concerned about what food ought or ought not to be eaten. In our church we don’t divide up over what day we should take as a Sabbath.
What do we argue about? What are the non-essentials about which we might tend to get exercised, but about which we ought to allow ourselves freedom to differ.
· Social drinking
· Types of music to be sung in worship
· Political and social issues
What are the essentials?
To find the answer to that question all we need to do is to look at how Paul came to recognize that the kingdom of God is not about keeping rules and rituals about food or about worship days. Why does he say these are not what the kingdom is about?
In his own life, Paul had tried to earn his right to be called a godly person by keeping rules. He had been a Pharisee. He was good at keeping the Jewish law. That is what Pharisees did. That is how he was keeping his place in line. He was proving that he was right and those who didn’t keep the law the way he did were wrong. The people who were followers of the Jesus Way were so wrong in his eyes that he was doing all he could to wipe them out. He felt very right about having people who followed Jesus thrown into prison and stoned to death. They were messing up Jewish society. They were the enemies, of that he was certain, until he met the living Jesus on that famous Road to Damascus.
Somehow after that encounter with Jesus, Paul saw it all differently. This is the way he put it in his letter to the church at Philippi. You know my pedigree: a legitimate birth, circumcised on the eighth day; an Israelite from the elite tribe of Benjamin; a strict and devout adherent to God's law; a fiery defender of the purity of my religion, even to the point of persecuting the church; a meticulous observer of everything set down in God's law Book.
The very credentials these people are waving around as something special, I'm tearing up and throwing out with the trash—along with everything else I used to take credit for. And why? Because of Christ. Yes, all the things I once thought were so important are gone from my life. Compared to the high privilege of knowing Christ Jesus as my Master, firsthand, everything I once thought I had going for me is insignificant—dog dung. I've dumped it all in the trash so that I could embrace Christ and be embraced by him. I didn't want some petty, inferior brand of righteousness that comes from keeping a list of rules when I could get the robust kind that comes from trusting Christ—God's righteousness.
Do you know the word “magnanimity?” It comes from a Latin word meaning “greatness of soul.” Here in Romans 14, the Bible is asking us to live out the magnanimity of grace. Grace is unselfish. We are being called to something that is not easy. It is easy for us to fall into rule keeping, criticism of the way others do things, getting legalistic with others. It is not easy to welcome and accept as members of our family those who disagree with us.
Philip Yancey says that he grew up in a legalistic church in which he got the impression that God was waiting to catch him doing something wrong and kick him out. Why do we so often become caught up in trying to tell others what they should, ought, and must do? Is it because we believe that love is a reward for being good, rather than a gift for just being who we are?
There is something in all of us that loves to be right. There is something in us that feels good when we have one up on someone else. There is a great need we tend to have: The need to be right. To want to be right makes sense in many settings. When you are in school you need to have the right answers in order to make the grades. When you are doing something that affects the lives of others you really need to be right. I want my pilot to be right when he makes decisions about flying the airplane I am in. I want my doctor to be right in his or her diagnosis about what is wrong with me. There are plenty of times when being right is critical.
The problem with being right comes to the fore when we need to be one up over another person. Divisiveness develops when people need to be right over other people. If my need to be right becomes so important that I put it ahead of being loving and joyful, I get into the position of being a divider of the fellowship of the church.
“For the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking, but of righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit, because anyone who serves Christ in this way is pleasing to God and receives human approval” (Vv.17-18). What does he mean when he says, “Anyone who serves Christ in this way is pleasing to God and receives human approval?” What is “this way?”
“This way” is serving Christ by keeping your eyes focused on the goal of life. If you are a follower of Christ, the goal of your life is what? To be right about what people ought to eat and what day people ought to worship on? Is the goal of your life always being right? No! The goal of your life is to love others and to be happy in our Lord.
I am convinced that this is about the question that I have tried to learn to ask myself: “Do you want to be right, or do you want to be happy?” That is what Paul is saying to church people who are arguing over what kind of food ought to be eaten and church people who think they are right and don’t care what other Christians think. Apparently some people are not concerned like their friends in the church about meat eating. Since it is not a concern for them, they are not wiling to give up any times of meat eating for the sake of protecting the feelings of others. Even if their eating meat causes someone to stumble, Paul is saying, they should give it up at the time for the sake of not putting any kind of stumbling block in front of another person. He would say, “You and I agree that eating meat is not wrong. We see eye to eye on that. But there are times when it is best not to eat meat because it will cause someone who sees it differently than you do to get off the track of his or her spiritual growth.” I think Paul would ask, “Do you want to be right about the issues your church is arguing about, or do you want to live in the kingdom of God which is not about what is right to eat and what is right to drink. It is about treating each other right and having peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.”
Whenever we are about to get into it with someone in our church we need to stop and ask ourselves this question: “Do I want to be right or do I want to treat others right and have peace and joy?”
I said that is a good question to ask yourself when you are about to get into it with another member of the church. It is also a great question to ask yourself when you are about to angrily argue with your wife or husband or child or anybody. “Do I want to be right, or do I want to be happy?”
Looking Back and Trusting God
At the end of the year (I’m writing on New Year’s Eve.) I want to look back over 2009. Here are some things that happened last year. They remind me that we members of New Hope Baptist Church are in this thing called “life” together and that God is with us.
- I met most weeks of the year with long-time friends and some new ones. - Most weeks, Dennis Bucher and I met for lunch and for worship planning. - Our church studied the parables of Jesus together in February and March. - Dennis and I went to Atlanta to church music conference. - Fleda and I spent a few days seeing the Grand Canyon. - Sonny Gallman (Pastor of Central Baptist Church in Daytona) and I started a new Cooperative Baptist Fellowship Pastor’s Learning Group with the help of Doran McCarty. - I went on our Youth Retreat, which Cheryl Secunda organized. - We ordained Joan Wood and Lou Herouart as new deacons of New Hope. - We baptized Marilyn Schneider, Ruth Nearons, Maddison Snow, Jaren and Toren Ford-Jones, and Tom and Barbara Trozzi. - Betty Myers, Guy Wells, Kiyoko Bundens, Harvey Bundens, and Al Bittel died and entered into God’s presence. We thank God for the memories and blessings. - I went through surgery in October and felt the strength of God flow to me through many human channels.
These are some of my memories of 2009. It feels good to review them. God is faithful and can be trusted.
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