Thieves Among Us

I get it. Some people don't like what Christianity teaches, so they don't want to be part of Christianity. I mean, that makes sense. What I don't get is that other category of people who don't like what Christianity teaches ... so they try to subvert it.

Since the beginning of Christendom there have been those who are false, those who are "from us" but "not of us", wolves in sheep's clothing, tares among the wheat. It's not new. Nor is the concept baffling. Satan will try to corrupt God's truth at every possible turn. Got it. But I just don't get this idea of "I don't like it, but I want it."

For the past month or so Rob Bell and his non-Hell and apparently Universalist views have made the news from the Internet to Time. Rob Bell and his compatriots have made an attempt to redefine Christianity while continuing to call themselves "Christians". The Time article refers to him multiple times as an "Evangelical", where the capitalized "E" denotes not that he is "giving out the good news", but that he is part of the component of Christendom known as "Evangelicalism", a part of Christianity that has aimed to more closely ally itself with the Bible and with conservative rather than progressive views of Christianity. So we read from the Time account things like this:

Bell ... suggests that the redemptive work of Jesus may be universal — meaning that, as his book's subtitle puts it, "every person who ever lived" could have a place in heaven, whatever that turns out to be.

Bell's arguments about heaven and hell raise doubts about the core of the Evangelical worldview, changing the common understanding of salvation so much that Christianity becomes more of an ethical habit of mind than a faith based on divine revelation.

Particularly galling to conservative Christian critics is that Love Wins is not an attack from outside the walls of the Evangelical city but a mutiny from within ... "I have long wondered if there is a massive shift coming in what it means to be a Christian," Bell says.

Now, I'm not arguing about the veracity of Bell's view. I'm not going to defend the doctrine of Hell. I've done that already, and others have as well far more capably than I have. But if Rob Bell believes that "there is a massive shift coming in what it means to be a Christian" -- if his views knowingly defy the standard view of Christianity in general and the Evangelical worldview in particular -- then I cannot fathom why he feels the need to remain within "the walls of the Evangelical city", as Time puts it. I mean, I get that he doesn't agree with historic biblical Christianity in the area of the fundamental belief in the reality of eternal punishment, but why does he feel the need to stay in the arena? Why not go his own way? Why not step out and say, "I'm no longer able to believe what the group with which I've been associated believes and I'm starting my own group"? Why steal from the Church?

Time goes on to say, "Like the Bible — a document that often contradicts itself and from which one can construct sharply different arguments — theology is the product of human hands and hearts." And there you have it. If this rightly represents Rob Bell's view, then there is no reason in the world to try to remain in the Church. Theology is the product of humans. Do what you want with it.

I don't want you to lose focus here. Rob Bell is not the issue. He's an example. New Jersey Presbyterians founded Princeton University in 1746 in order to train ministers dedicated to their views. Princeton no longer retains their views. Harvard was founded in 1636 based on Puritan philosophies. Harvard has long since lost those philosophies. Fuller Theological Seminary was founded in 1947 for the purpose of tying fundamentalism and evangelicalism to intellectual pursuits. By the 1970's it had abandoned biblical inerrancy and succumbed to "the realities of American cultural and intellectual life", issuing in the "new evangelicalism". Fuller no longer stands for what it stood for. Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, was listing badly to the left until Dr. Albert Mohler became president and righted it again. In his book, Evangelicalism Divided: A Record of Crucial Change in the Years 1950 to 2000, Iain H. Murray shows how Evangelicalism has been reshaped from integrity to the Gospel to an allegiance to "unity" and "results". As I said at the outset, the Church has endured a history of attempts at subversion from within. It still continues today.

Here's all I'm trying to figure out. If you don't like what the Church teaches, why stay in the Church? Why attempt to alter the Church? If you don't like the fact that the Church has historically, from the beginning, held that homosexual behavior is a sin, then don't be part of the Church. Do what you want. If you find the biblical claim that Christ is the only way to salvation is offensive, go whatever way you wish to whatever salvation you want, but don't try to undermine the Church. If you don't like that the Bible clearly holds to a patriarchal hierarchy, don't try to change the Church. Go ahead and form your own organization if you wish, but don't try to change the Church. It's not the same as the Reformation, where the goal was to return the Church to its earlier beliefs. Things like Hell, the sin of homosexual behavior, the respect for Scripture, the dedication to God's truth, even a patriarchy (consider the standard reference to God as "Father"), have always been part of the Church. And it's not like the racism in America fostered by some in the Church. It was not part of the Church teachings, not biblical Christianity, and by no means a fundamental, historical perspective. Sure, where the Church errs, as in those cases, it should be reformed. But when people come to Christianity with views counter to basic, biblical, historical Christianity, I cannot fathom why they think their job is to steal it from under orthodoxy. It is theft, pure and simple. I say, "Go out from among us; it will make your position clearer."