Scandalous Inclusion
I was mentioning in my earlier post touching on McLaren's book about a surreal conversation that I had some time ago with a good friend about whether God loves everyone, or whether he just loves the elect. (To be clear, I have nothing but the highest regard for this person; he's one of my closest friends in the world and loves God like few people I've ever met. I just don't buy this particular piece of his theology.) I mention this because one of the statements that I found most insightful about The Last Word was that we should be "universalist-sympathetic". In other words, we may not buy the universalist position that all will be reconciled to God in the end, but shouldn't we hope it could be true, somewhere deep down in our gut, in that part of us that whispers to us late at night when we can't sleep? Shouldn't we want it to be true?
Something tells me that not everyone would agree with this desire. And, frankly, that scares me. There was a particular piece of logic presented in the book that I've never heard. McLaren presented one of the characters advancing the viewpoint that, in heaven, the righteous will be rejoicing at the punishment of the wicked for their sins against a righteous God. I sincerely hope that this is an exaggeration, a caricature designed to make a point, but I somehow doubt it. I'm not sure what disturbs me more - the picture of God that I'm left with from this perspective, or the arrogance of assuming that a given person will be in one particular group.
Taking a step back, I want to put on the table my prevailing assumption about understanding God. The most clear revelation we have of who God is, of what God is like, is the view that we get in the person of Jesus. Part of what it means to be a Christian is that everything we know about God is viewed through a Jesus-shaped lens. And Jesus was scandalously inclusive. Jesus hung out with lepers, ate with prostitutes, brought tax collectors into his inner circle, touched dead people and seemed to get along just fine with Romans, Samaritans, and other folk. Jesus turned the religious establishment on its head, threw out all semblance of propriety, and routinely did things that by all rational thought should have made him unclean - only it never did, and instead the "unclean" was routinely transformed in his presence to something beautiful and holy. When this man talks about God loving "the whole world", I can't help but think that he means exactly what he says.
Let's take this Jesus talk a step farther. I'd argue that you can't really get a handle on what Jesus was about until you start to wrestle with what's going on in the Sermon on the Mount. A lot of people don't seem to know what to do with all this stuff that Jesus said - was it hyperbole? Was it to demonstrate that the true requirements of the law are so far above our heads as to make any pretensions of keeping them absurd? Or was it just Jesus talking about how he wanted his followers to act? I tend to think the latter - when he says, for example, love your enemy, I sort of believe that he wasn't being facetious, that he would look a Roman guard in the face and forgive him for the beating he had just given, for example. And here's where, I think, the picture of Jesus that I have pushes against the view of God that I grew up with so strongly that one or the other has to give. When Jesus says to love our enemy, I have to think that he doesn't mean we get to pick and choose which enemies we'll love. And so I have to think that to love an enemy is a God-shaped act, that there's something of Jesus in the embracing of one who deserves condemnation and judgment. And I read these words and think of this amazing love that has been poured out for us and I have to wonder how anyone can question whether this God actually loves everyone, or just a select few. And that question means that I have to start thinking about hell in a different way than perhaps I ever have before.
Your comment about whether or not we choose our "enemies" is a good one. THere are a lot of points in here that sometimes I find I just skirt around because I don't know, or don't want to know truth about them. It is more comfortable to sit in the place of accepting instead of questioning and really finding truth.
So thank you for stirring up some thinking today.
I wonder why it must be an either-or proposition. If God's heart breaks over the life we have chosen here in this world, yet he allows us to live it, might it not also be broken by the life we have chosen beyond this world? Might He not love - and be stricken with anguish - those whose souls are condemned by his holiness? Was not the cross itself such a demonstration of this duality in God's nature?
I want God to live love in the way I understand it. Trouble is, I'm clueless. I have no idea who God is - not really. I have a few ideas about God, the way I might about Quantum Physics, or semi-conductors, or women. But to really understand all that God is? I have no idea.
Posted by rhymes with kerouac on April 28, 2005 10:31 PMOh, I think you're right on with what you're saying about either-or. I was reading Jeremiah for a class last semester and I found these amazing passages where God was weeping over the destruction of the nations who were under His judgment. It was just amazing - I had always had this image of God being - what's the right word? sorrowful? regretful? I'm not sure - about judgment, but I never really had a clear biblical image to connect it with, so it was always more speculative than anything, but here it was in plain sight. To make things more interesting, He weeps over Moab, one of only two nations excluded from ever participating in the community of Israel - the picture is sort of like George Bush weeping over the death of bin Laden. It was stunning.
All that to say that I think you make some excellent points. I guess I'm trying to think of how to picture God as more than just wrath when it comes to hell - I think that no matter your understanding, and mine is really rather traditional, it needs to somehow be viewed through God's love, the radical enemy-love of Christ. I don't think I have a good answer for that, and I don't think I will on this side of eternity, but it's something I think I have to at least chip away at.
Great thoughts as always!
Posted by ScottB on April 28, 2005 11:08 PMI have been personally pondering the same issue. I am certainly not an universalist, but I am having a really hard time with individuals that appear to know almost nothing about universalism, yet they hurriedly put all kinds of vitriolic labels on not just universalists, but also on those who refuse to vilify universalism. It is quite baffling to me. I can understand one carrying out honest dialogue over this issue, but I cannot understand why would anyone be so adamant about wanting Got to NOT save all mankind.
Posted by Virgil Vaduva on April 29, 2005 11:20 AMVirgil - that's sort of the crux of a lot of the tensions in western Christianity today, isn't it? We want to reduce everything to labels and cut dialogue short. It's frustrating to no end.
Posted by ScottB on May 1, 2005 12:55 AMMmmm, good words Scott, lots of food for thought. Allow me to pick at something you've said though, more by way of me getting my own thoughts out than to actually take issue with your ideas, if you know what I mean.
You describe Jesus as being scandalously inclusive. I'm not altogether convinced that is true. Yes he was incredibly inclusive towards those subsets of society who were normally shunned, but in his parables he was at times exceedingly exclusive, generally of those doing the shunning.
There's this whole sequence in Matthew where Jesus is telling parable after parable about how those who had been entrusted with something had failed in their task to actually do what they were called to do, and so that something was being taken away from them and given to someone else (Matt 21:28-22:14). The message here is clear, at least I think so. The mantle, the privilege of being 'the people of God' was being taken away from those of Israel who refused to accept Jesus kingdom message - a kingdom message which did not involve taking up arms against the Romans, but rather involved loving them and praying for them. Israel had been called to be a light to the world, but that had failed in that task, and so Jesus was constituting a new Israel, a new people of God, which on the one hand was much broader than the old (through the inclusion of the gentiles). Yet there is a sense of exclusivity about it as well, not in the sense of people being not-elect and thus being left out (remembering my take that the context of these passages is the question of who is Israel, not who's going to heaven), but in the sense that those who have ignored the prophets and the law will ignore and reject the son and will find themselves cast out and rejected.
And this is causing 2 thoughts to stir in my mind. The first is that we need to remember that not only do we see inclusivity in Jesus' actions, but he also had many hard things to say, often directed at those who would sit there dividing people up into those who were going to heaven and those who weren't!! And secondly, that many of Jesus parables which we tend to assume are talking about people going to heaven or going to hell are actually grounded in the context of Jesus arguing with the scribes and pharisees about what it means to truly be Israel, and that their time was up, so to speak.
What do you think?
Posted by ross on May 2, 2005 05:21 AMExcellent thoughts. I've had to ponder them a bit before I sorted out what I think is a good initial approach - whether it will hold up under extended scrutiny bears some consideration. I'm going to jump from your statement, "Yes he was incredibly inclusive towards those subsets of society who were normally shunned, but in his parables he was at times exceedingly exclusive, generally of those doing the shunning." I think this is key to why I use the term "scandalous" as it relates to Jesus' way of inclusion, and perhaps inclusion isn't the right way to think of it, but I'm not quite ready to jettison the term just yet. The scandal is on two fronts, I think - those who are included, and those who are in danger of being excluded. The first, I think, we're comfortable with saying. The second is the thorny issue that you appropriately raise.
It seems to me that there is a purpose behind Jesus' talk of exclusion in this context, though, that we need to keep in mind. Jesus (in my opinion) is not announcing exclusion as a foregone consequence of their resistance to the Kingdom - in fact, quite the opposite. Jesus uses the language, somewhat ironically I think, in calling the people of Israel to repentance. He threatens the excluders with exclusion unless they turn and become includers - embrace the marginalized, enter the Kingdom, take up the Cross. And here, I think, is buried a hidden message of inclusion as well. Jesus does not come to proclaim a revolution, but a reconciliation. His is not a Kingdom that will result in an establishment of a new class of excluders, but rather an extension of an offer for repentance and reconciliation between the excluders and the excluded. The ones on the outside will not, in the Kingdom, become the new insiders, pushing the previous insiders to the margins; rather, all will be brought into the family who are willing.
So I think the threat of exclusion - a very real and present threat, not mere rhetorical device - is actually used by Jesus in the same way that the scribes and Pharisees used it. The irony is that they become the outsiders, rather than the gatekeepers - but the gate is left open for them to enter if they will. (I think this is in large part where McLaren is going with his thoughts as well.) And so I think the scandal runs deeper than just a simple reversal of power structures to call into question our very concepts of justice and mercy and how they operate in God's Kingdom. (As an aside, I think it's interesting to read Romans from this vantage point, rather than the way we've traditionally approached it. I think Paul is asking and answering very different questions than what we typically try to apply to Romans.)
Pick away!
Posted by ScottB on May 2, 2005 02:42 PMScott,
I completely agree with you, though that doesn't really express fully the sense of "yes" that I have as I read what you've written. Yes the threat of exclusion was very real, but Jesus didn't come to condemn the world but to save it through himself - we wasn't declaring judgement, so much as warning of it.
As for Romans, Wright's work in the New Interpreters' Bible is astounding, really takes my breath away. And you're right, the questions Paul is dealing with are not the ones we most often expect Romans to answer for us.
Cheers,
Ross
