Randy Greenwald

New music with ancient themes. Love these special gifts. Lyrics from each are so typical of each artist.

“Every silver lining
Always seems to have a cloud…”

— “Paper Airplane”, Paper Airplane, Alison Krauss and Union Station

“I’ve done a thousand things wrong
(Far too many for me to name)
But I’m not too far gone
To fall
Headlong
Into the arms that love me”

— “Undamned”, The Long Surrender, Over the Rhine

(And thanks to the special woman who gave them to me!)

The picture above is of one Limpid Lizard, one of the cast of a favorite comic strip of mine from many years ago. I post it from sheer nostalgia and was reminded of this alliterative character by a recent book on leadership.

A number of years ago my friend Bill Mills told me to trust no leader who does not limp. In his mind, of course, was the incident along the Jabbok where in wrestling with the Angel of God Jacob learned the meaning of grace, and carried with himself forever the reminder of his dependence upon God. He became a limping, and trustworthy, leader.

Coming highly recommended to me by a fellow pastor, I recently read Dan Allender’s similarly slanted book Leading with a Limp. Allender’s contention is that no one can authentically lead without being honest about his weaknesses and sins among those whom he leads. Leadership can, in some circles, be all about bluster and deception, about assumed strength and self-confidence, with the consequent fear that if one’s weaknesses became known, leadership capital would evaporate. Allender dismisses such illusions with an appeal for leaders to me more honest and transparent, believing that a certain authentic strength arises from such.

To articulate with any authority Allender’s counsel may take another reading. Or perhaps not. Perhaps my inability to articulate the prescriptive side of Allender’s thesis arises from the weakness of prescription in the book. He does not quite seem clear on what it is I am supposed to do with this knowledge. And yet, what he says in many ways rings true. It is good to be reminded with all that is expected of leaders that being someone they are not need not be one of them.

I was asked the other day about why I believe we should use leavened bread in the celebration of the Lord’s Supper. In response, I passed on something I wrote about that several years ago.

The Passover meal celebrated by Jesus and his disciples would have used a loaf of unleavened bread. Whatever it looked and felt like, my guess is that it was certainly NOT a wafer. And I would be surprised if it would have been mistaken for a Matzoh cracker. The wafer and the cracker have arisen as convenient forms for unleavened bread

But as they have, they have lost completely the picture of anything that would resemble food that sustains the hungry soul. There is no question that the bread used at the last supper was unleavened. There would have been no other bread available in a Jewish household on those occasions.

But if the Lord’s supper was to be celebrated more frequently than during the Passover, and in Acts it clearly seemed to be, then it would not be a perpetual diet of unleavened bread. That would not adequately convey our coming to Christ for regular sustenance. Rather, what should be used, and I suspect WAS used, was the regular leavened bread of everyday life.

The unleavened bread of Passover was symbolic of depravation… that in fleeing Egypt, there was not time to leaven the bread. But with the Lord’s supper we have quit fleeing, and we come regularly to eat with the one who sustains us… Jesus.

We should eat a big loaf of good, wholesome, leavened bread, and take a big chunk of it, acknowledging our hunger for and dependence upon him.

This reminded the woman who was asking of a little girl in her former church who would every week tear off about a third of the communion bread and shove it into her mouth saying,

“This is Jesus. I want a lot of it.”

Somehow I think that she was better at ‘discerning the body of Christ’ than many of the rest of us.

Every discussion of Rob Bell’s book Love Wins seems to include the idea that the position of historic Christianity is that heaven will be enjoyed by a select few. (My previous posts here and here include quotes containing that language.)

I am not scholarly enough to know what the majority opinion of Christianity has been. I do know that some infer from this passage that heaven is populated like Yellowstone and hell like Manhattan:

“Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few.” (Matthew 7:13-14)

That is a rather questionable inference from a passage not intended to address that subject at all.

I draw my heavenly census data from two related but distant passages of scripture. The first is the promise to Abraham:

And he brought him outside and said, “Look toward heaven, and number the stars, if you are able to number them.” Then he said to him, “So shall your offspring be.” (Genesis 15:5)

God saw fit to second that motion:

“I will surely bless you, and I will surely multiply your offspring as the stars of heaven and as the sand that is on the seashore.” (Genesis 22:17)

Of course, the New Testament (e.g. Romans 4) shows that these promises are intended to apply to those sharing Abraham’s faith, not his blood.

I’m of the distinct opinion that we will find heaven crowded. Very crowded. I think Abraham would have believed so. And John the apostle as well. His vision was so vast that it staggared his mind.

Then I looked, and I heard around the throne and the living creatures and the elders the voice of many angels, numbering myriads of myriads and thousands of thousands, 12 saying with a loud voice, “Worthy is the Lamb who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing!” (Revelation 5:11-12)

Against this backdrop, I think both John and Abraham would have scoffed at any who would have suggested that only “a select few Christians will spend forever in heaven”. Don’t you?

Of all the talk that Rob Bell’s book Love Wins has generated, the most curious to me is the charge that those of us committed to historic Christianity have had so little to do with the doctrine of hell that we have thrown the door wide open for erroneous and heretical views. A Facebook friend posted this position:

The hubbub about Rob Bell is our fault. If evangelicals were not embarrassed about hell, we would not have this problem.

And with wider distribution was this on the Justin Taylor blog, Between Two Worlds, where Mr. Taylor posted with approval a longer post by Tony Payne. In this post, after deserved praise for Jonathan Edwards’ “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” (which, sadly, many may think is the only topic Edwards ever addressed because of its ubiquity, a fault Mr. Taylor corrects), Mr. Payne seems to confirm that there is a dearth of Hell preaching. Taylor suggests we are made uncomfortable by it.

This disappearance of hell is noted as well by John Wilson in an op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal:

Something strange has happened in evangelical churches over the past generation. Not in every congregation, but in the main, sermons devoted to the grim prospect of hell have become rare, and even talk of heaven is muted.

I, for one, have no way to measure a) how much preaching on hell there is and b) how much is ‘just right’ in the broader culture. I do measure a) how much my sheep need to hear and b) how they can best hear and c) how any doctrine they hear is to be balanced against other aspects of gospel doctrine. And though an occasional reminder regarding my responsibility to preach the ‘whole counsel of God’ and what that looks like can be healthy, generally the appeals I hear are aimed at skewing my preaching in one direction or another depending upon the controversy du jour or the narrow focus of the complainant.

But the logic that an evangelical embarrassment and neglect has opened the door for a ‘heretical’ corrective makes no sense. Corrective to what?

IF the doctrine of hell has been systematically ignored in Christian churches, how does if follow that anyone would want to write a book dismantling a doctrine that has been ignored anyway? And how then could a book challenging a neglected subject capture a best selling audience? (It is now #3 at Amazon, ‘sandwiched’ between two diet books.)

I really think the opposite is probably true. It is an OVERemphasis and a misrepresentation of hell that has created the market and environment for Bell’s book and position to fly. Hell has been so gracelessly presented over the past generations that the preaching of conservative Christianity is equated with ‘hellfire and brimstone’. There is a discomfort regarding the doctrine not because it has been ignored, but because it has been mishandled. People are not turned off to hell because it has been silenced; they are turned off because we have allowed it to become severed from the full story of grace.

Richard Mouw, quoted in Geoff Henderson’s blog, reveals the unfortunate bent attached to so much teaching on hell when he asks

Why don’t folks who criticize Rob Bell for wanting to let too many people in also go after people…who want to keep too many people out? Why are we rougher on salvific generosity than on salvific stinginess?

Rob Bell is nothing if not a guide to sensing what a broad swath of American culture is feeling. And to this we should listen.

Some would have us respond by speaking more and more about hell. If we do it well, good could come. But I fear we will only perpetuate the caricature and harden, not soften, hearts. But we need not follow the lead of others like Rob Bell in recasting the doctrine in a way that makes it unrecognizable to the historic Christian soil it is such a rich part of.

The response should be for preachers to continue to preach carefully and faithfully a Christianity that is full of grace and truth, and for congregants to stick closely to faithful shepherds who evidence those twin passions. The shepherds should know what their sheep need to hear, and the sheep should trust their shepherds.