If you haven’t seen Martin Bashir’s interview with “Love Wins” author, Rob Bell yet, please watch this first:
This interview has been getting a lot of air-time on Evangelical Christian blogs. And since it has aired (and been uploaded to YouTube) it has caused a lot of speculation and conversation. As far as video-interviews go it is the current cut-and-dry interview that asks the questions many of us would like the opportunity to ask ourselves of Rob Bell. Sadly, the answers we’ve been wanting in this situation are once-again re-routed.
After this interview, Martin Bashir was invited to an interview with Paul Edwards. Paul is the Teaching Pastor at Oakbrooke Bible Church in Waterford, Michigan and the host of The Paul Edwards Program heard weekday afternoons in Detroit on Salem Communications’ affiliate FaithTalk 1500.
His interview with Bashir is absolutely fantastic and opens the conversation up to a new level when we realize that a journalist, not a theologian, is able to ask some hard-hitting questions regarding the theology involved in “Love Wins”.
Here is the interview audio between Bashir and Edwards:
[audio:http://www.godandculture.com/ra/bashir_edwards.mp3]
You can download the interview mp3 here.
Just listened, and Dad did too, thanks for posting it!
bummer, with such a platform i’m praying that He see the fullness of the Word of God.
Um….great interview!!! From the host’s standpoint at least! Oh dear….
ROFL, listen to Bashir…
“I read a tweet, by somebody named Joel Osteen.”
I LOVED THAT!
I think there is a case of missing the point on why many younger-generation Christians are frustrated with contemporary Christianity. Rob Bell is not trying to make Christianity more palatable in such a way that the Christian message is diminished, though it may appears to be this way. What I feel is happening is, many young people intuitively sense something wrong with Reformed/Neo-Reformed Protestant interpretation of scripture, but because they’re sensing it primarily intuitively, they aren’t always expressing it well intellectually.
But they ARE right to intuit a fault with this Reformed/Neo-Reformed Protestant interpretation of Christianity.
The problem with contemporary Christianity is that it’s difficult to accept for the wrong reasons, not the right reasons. It’s a stumbling block primarily because of contemporary man’s interpretations of the Bible, not because the cross itself is a stumbling block.
It’s difficult to accept Christianity (or any religion) when it makes you intellectually assent to certain statements about truth with the threat that if you don’t, you could die tonight and spend an afterlife in everlasting conscious torment and no hope for rescue. We usually only accept this kind of thing on the basis of fear; further, such a view of hell can be a powerful weapon in securing power and control over our circumstances and other people, and such a thing is incredibly pride-driven, i.e., not of God’s Spirit.
This notion of hell turns Christianity into a religion of works, and many young Christians intuit this, and this is why this particular notion is being questioned. The work is that we must intellectually assent to certain things before we can receive God’s ‘free’ grace and participate in his salvation. In other words, you can’t participate in God’s salvation UNLESS YOU FIRST INTELLECTUALLY ASSENT TO CERTAIN CHRISTIAN STATEMENTS TO BE TRUE.
How is that grace?
Christianity is supposed to be difficult because it requires you to have faith that in this present moment, God is actively working for your favor and is presently providing for you everything you need, the end result being that we embody him in his creation, our creation. This requires us to love ALL people, including our enemies, which in this sinful world means to act mercifully and forgive when we suffer ANY wrong.
It must be stressed that we can only honestly do this if we are first and foremost honest with ourselves, choose to remain open and vulnerable in love to all human beings and the nourishing, informing Spirit, refuse to be something we’re not or hide behind a mask, refuse to hide in the shadows. In a word, we must repent.
Repentance is not an exchange of these wrong beliefs for those right ones; it’s a turn away from seeking to ground the meaning of our existence on anything other than God’s will, which for human beings is human nature. Repentance is a refusal to continue violating human nature, to instead be fully human, and this is the only way to follow God’s will, because…HE MADE US HUMAN. And what is a human being’s purpose? To incarnate God in God’s creation.
We can only do this by faith, faith in God’s plan for human nature. Only by faith can we open ourselves up to God’s Spirit and let him fill us and shape us. Consider that Peter only knew Jesus to be the Christ because his Father in heaven revealed it to him, not because anyone of flesh and blood told him it was so. His belief came AFTER faith, not before.
And right there is the crux of the issue: we’re being told that we must assent to certain statements of belief before we can have the faith that produces salvation.