An old saying I've heard in 12-step recovery circles over the years goes something like this:
Religion is for people who are afraid of going to hell. Recovery is for those who have already been there.
Late last week, Christian pastor Rob Bell released a video:
The video spurred a firestorm on Twitter, led in large part by Evangelicals who felt that Bell was taking a "universalist" position on matters of salvation.
John Piper, pastor of Bethlehem Baptist Church, simply wrote: "Farewell, Rob Bell." I thought Bell had died.
Then, last night, Harvard theologian Peter Gomes passed away, months after suffering a debilitating stroke. Gomes, a Christian, and a gay black man, advocated as vigorously as anyone in favor of tolerance as a Christian virtue.
So, where is Gomes now?
Rob Bell's thought-provoking video raised some simple questions - questions raised by a note scrawled on a piece of art with a quote from Gandhi. The note said: "Reality Check: He's in hell."
Gandhi is in hell? He is? And someone knows this for sure? And felt the need to let the rest of us know? Will only a few select people make it to heaven? And will millions and millions of people burn forever in hell? And if that's the case, how do you become one of the few? Is it what you believe of what you say or what you do or who you know? Or something that happens in your heart? Or do you need to be initiated or baptized or take a class? Or converted or born again? How does one become one of these "few"? And then there's the question behind the question. The real question: What is God like?
Bell goes on to describe the Evangelical Christian story that people must believe in Jesus for salvation, or else God will send them to hell. He notes how troubling that message is - that we need to be rescued from an angry, wrathful God. "How can that be good news?" Bell asks.
The very willingness of Bell to ask these questions, apparently, was enough to prompt Crossway Books editor Justin Taylor to argue that Bell was "coming out" as a "universalist" - i.e., someone who believes that all people go to heaven because a good and loving God wouldn't possibly condemn human beings to an eternity of suffering. To date, Taylor's blog post about Bell has been recommended over 25,000 times on Facebook. Over 1,200 comments have been added to the blog post, ranging from affirmations to condemnations of Taylor and Bell.
It wasn't long after this post emerged that Rob Bell became a worldwide trending topic on Twitter, with pastors, armchair theologians, and just about everyone else weighing in with 140 characters of insight on the afterlife, the mysteries of faith, and the meaning of the Bible. It was soon noted by Taylor and others that almost no one has actually read Bell's book, which won't be released for another 4 weeks. Taylor and others claimed that Bell was making a dangerous claim - that hell might be empty and that this would make Jesus' sacrificial death unnecessary.
And the firestorm, of course, goes back to Rob Bell's original point. It's awfully hard to a world that questions the inspiration (or truth) of the Bible to take seriously an argument over whether it was necessary for a loving God to kill His only son. It's hard to get behind a religious movement that sees God as a jealous heavenly Father with something resembling Borderline Personality Disorder - a God who is so unable to accept or tolerate sin that He must damn His earthly children to an eternity of fiery torments. It's hard to take seriously a group of people who are unwilling to accept the clear scientific evidence of climate change, but who are willing to believe that, "You're all gonna burn in hell because the Bible tells me so."
"The good news is that love wins," Bell tells us. The core message of the Bible is not about condemnation or fear of God's wrath, but rather the hope for reconciliation with a God who is love personified, and who forgave us while we were still sinners. And because of God's great love for undeserving rebellious sinners, those who experience the redemption of God are compelled to show patient forebearance toward all other human beings.
Sin, then, is the great equalizer. John Piper is aware of this fact. He even apologized for his character defects before leaving for an 8-month sabbatical last March.
How do I apologize to you, not for a specific deed, but for ongoing character flaws, and their effects on everybody? I’ll say it now, and no doubt will say it again, I’m sorry.
And yet, Piper was willing to write off a fellow Christian pastor, bidding his brother "farewell" because of "bad theology" which, apparently, he felt so dangerous and so intolerable that was unable to continue in fellowship with Rob Bell and his kind.
Piper, for what it's worth, also upholds the traditional Christian teaching prohibiting women from positions of authority in the home or in the church. He also upholds the teaching that life begins at conception, and therefore, that abortion is an abhorrent evil. (Happy Women's History Month, by the way!)
"You can safely assume you've created God in your own image," Anne Lamott tells us, "when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do." The problem in American contemporary Christianity is that so many churches have excommunicated each other over the centuries that it's almost impossible to tell who has real authority. Jason Boyett, author of the book, The Pocket Guide to the Apocalypse, notes the following:
Reading and understanding the Bible involves lots and lots of interpretation. Not just in light of the world and culture around us, but in reference to other parts of the Bible. At best, there are things that are unclear and not easily harmonized from Genesis to Revelation. At worst, there are things that seem to be downright contradictory. That's why I have doubts. That's why theology can be so controversial.
And that was the fundamental point made by Peter Gomes, the Harvard theologian who passed away last night at age 68. The interpretation of Scripture is so dependent on the reader, and so hard to "get right", that it's possible to find arguments both in favor of enslaving black people and in favor of their emancipation.
The Boston Globe noted in its obituary: "Rev. Gomes also was the only gay, black, Republican, Baptist preacher most people would ever meet." Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Gomes' colleague at Harvard and a fellow African-American, wrote the following for a blog post at the New Yorker:
Gomes was a large, warm, and mischievous soul, who contained a multitude of identities, each worn with a certain roguish sense of irony.
And it was perhaps because of Gomes' complex personal identity that he became such a powerful advocate on behalf of the LGBT community, especially as an advocate who stood firmly and unabashedly in the Christian tradition:
John Piper would likely find Gomes' cavalier attitude toward the Bible to be deeply troubling and dangerous. And of course, Gomes would counter that the Gospel is itself dangerous because it lays claim to the idea that sins can be forgiven. Gomes once wrote a book called The Scandalous Gospel of Jesus, and seemed to revel (as Jesus did in his interactions with Pharisees) in the fact that the good news is full of mystery and complexity. (And, notably, he talked about the book with an incredulous Stephen Colbert.)
I have yet to discover any direct interaction between John Piper and Peter Gomes, though both are towering figures in Christian theology. Both are deeply respected for their preaching ability, their willingness to challenge the comfortable to go deeper, and their passion for considering the mysteries of faith.
Would John Piper say that Gomes - a celibate gay man - is in hell today?
Somehow, it doesn't seem to matter what Piper thinks.
Farewell, Dr. Gomes.