Ed Cyzewski's Blog, page 33

Will American Christians Fail the Good Samaritan Test?

He was traveling to the big city when the thing he dreaded most happened—robbers descended, beat him viciously, stole his money, and left him along the road for dead. He was miles from friends and family with no one to help him.

The religious leaders passing by were too busy to help him. It wasn’t their fault and it wasn’t their problem. He probably took risks that put his life in jeopardy any way. Who would take time out of his busy day and assume the financial risk to care for this vulnerable man by the side of the road?

We all know how this story ends: The Good Samaritan stepped up to care for the wounded man, but do we know WHY Jesus shared this story? Here’s a look at the questions that led to this parable:

“On one occasion an expert in the law stood up to test Jesus. “Teacher,” he asked, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?”

“What is written in the Law?” he replied. “How do you read it?”

He answered, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’; and, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’”

“You have answered correctly,” Jesus replied. “Do this and you will live.” 

But he wanted to justify himself, so he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?”

Luke 10:25-29, NIV BibleGateway

With that, Jesus launched into this well-known story where the least likely person had mercy on a stranger in need. It’s implied that the Levite and Priest in the story should have had every reason to help their countryman and fellow believer. However, it was the foreigner and, according to the Jews, heretic, who stepped in.

Even with his “flawed” beliefs about where to worship God and his different priorities as a resident of Samaria, he saw the human need in front of him and took care of it, no matter how inconvenient or unfair it was.

 

Today, Americans face a different sort of crisis, but the connections to the Good Samaritan story are still relevant. Tens of thousands of children are fleeing violence in the Central American nations of Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvadore. They face beatings, rape, and murder at the hands of these gangs. It’s so bad that thousands of parents have calculated that their children face better odds at the hands of coyotes who lead their children across the U.S. border, even though children may well be raped or beaten along the way by drug smugglers.

Do you think any parents would want to be separated from their children?

Can you imagine a child who would want to leave his or her parents?

What were you interested in when you were eight, nine, ten, or eleven years old? I was interested in baseball and model ships. I went to movies with my family and planted tomato plants in the yard with my grandfather.

We lived across from a schoolyard where teenagers sometimes drank and did drugs in the evening, but I could look down at them from my bedroom window knowing that I was safe. We had locked doors and attentive police who would come and care for us if we called for them.

These thousands of children crossing our borders are fleeing violence that is far worse than anything the U.S. Army faced in Iraq during the violence of 2007. Their only hope is the mercy of America.

While there are fears that these children could be deported, some government officials have suggested that the U.S. will determine ways to provide asylum. Most children have been placed with relatives, but their long-term status remains uncertain.

I’m encouraged to learn that these children are temporarily safe and that few have been returned to their countries where near certain death or exploitation awaits them. I’m also encouraged to hear that the U.S. government is stepping up aid initiatives in Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras.

However, in the interim, it’s our role as people of faith to advocate for these children and, when necessary, to provide sanctuary to those fleeing violence until a safe place can be provided. This is caring for neighbors 101. I don’t see this as a negotiable if you want to follow Jesus. When children are in danger, followers of Jesus, the one who said “Let the little children come to me” and told us to care for “the least of these,” must take the side of the children.

 

Jesus told us that the two most important commandments are to love God and to love our neighbors.

Who is your neighbor?

How can you become a good neighbor to others?

Helping children seeking asylum is as good a place to start as any other.

What if being a good neighbor who loves others means having compassion for these children in our detention centers and offering them sanctuary? Many of them already have contact information for their relatives and can become productive members of society if given a chance.

Americans can hide behind legal arguments… “They broke the law. Deport them now. No exceptions!”

That would be correct under American law. I won’t argue the point. That just wouldn’t be a viable Christian perspective. It’s OK to be an American. However, at a certain point you have to decide on your primary loyalties—you know, that whole “no servant can serve two masters” business that somebody mentioned in the Bible once.

Being an American does not relieve us of our Christian responsibility to love our neighbors.

The Good Samaritan didn’t send the wounded man back into the wilderness where the robbers could finish him off because it wasn’t his problem. He didn’t apply a bandage and then chase him away because he didn’t have the resources to care for him.

He bandaged the man and then set him up at a local inn to recover, paying for all of his expenses. It’s costly. It’s not convenient. It’s not even fair. It’s just necessary.

For all of the time Christians spend talking about mercy and grace, perhaps we forget that both are rarely fair or convenient. For all of the Christians making noise about employers challenging contraception laws, what of laws that prevent us from loving our neighbors?

Loving our neighbors isn’t a matter of picking and choosing which people get to be our neighbors. Isn’t that the whole point of the Good Samaritan parable? Vulnerable people cross our paths unexpectedly without announcing themselves, and sometimes they simply need our help. Loving our neighbors involves stepping in to help when the chance to show love presents itself, not when neighbors meet a government-specified checklist.

Jesus doesn’t give legal loopholes for “illegal immigrants” when loving our neighbors.

We aren’t supposed to check the documents of our neighbors before offering to help them, especially when they are terrified children seeking shelter from violence.

Those who don’t want to help children fleeing for their lives because they’re illegal immigrants are free to turn them away.

They’re Americans after all. That’s their right. They can uphold the law to the letter.

However, those Americans who also want to call themselves Christians, as in those who are committed to obeying the actual teachings of Christ, will need to chop Jesus’ most important teachings about caring for neighbors out of the Bible if they want to ignore the cries of thousands of children risking their lives in order to flee rape and violence in their homelands.

If Jesus is Lord, and if children are indeed in danger, then he’s going to take their side. If the Christians in America side with immigration laws that call for deporting these vulnerable (often abused) children back to the danger they are fleeing, then it’s likely that these Americans know very little of the Christ they claim to follow.

Free Books to Read This Summer

Paying for books is so last century. This week you have a chance to pick up several of my books for completely free or to enter a giveaway to win a print copy.

For starters, my publisher is giving away 15 copies of A Christian Survival Guide in a Goodreads giveaway.

Just hop over to Goodreads to enter.

A Christian Survival Guide takes on some the most challenging questions in the Christian faith:

How do we interpret the Bible 2,000 years after it was written?
Is Hell really a place of eternal conscious torment?
Is God actually able to deliver us from evil?
Do we need someone to deliver us from God’s violence?
Are we unworthy of Jesus if we’re “ashamed” to share the Gospel?

These questions and many more are addressed in A Christian Survival Guide. It’s not a book that will give you all of the answers. Rather, you’ll be given a place to think through the options presented from scripture so you can take your next step.

Of course if you don’t want to take any chances, you can pre-order A Christian Survival Guide today so that it will arrive on its July 27th release.

Pre-order on Amazon or from the publisher. 

 

Over at NoiseTrade Books I’m currently giving away two eBooks:

The Coffeehouse Theology Bible Study Guide

If you’re tired of only reading theology from white North American males, this is the book that will introduce you to the conversational approach I take in Coffeehouse Theology and walk you through a series of Bible studies with insights from historic and global Christian perspectives.

Download the Bible Study Guide Today.

 

A Path to Publishing: What I Learned by Publishing a Nonfiction Book

A Path to Publishing is my big picture introduction to book publishing that walks new authors through the basics of book publishing from developing an idea, to writing a book, to marketing a finished book. It’s ideal for commercial and self-publishing, and I’ll answer every question that new writers ask because I wrote it right after I asked all of those same questions.

Download A Path to Publishing Today.

 

If you need some personal interactions, encouragement, and feedback in order to take the leap into publishing, but you can’t afford a writing conference that costs hundreds of dollars, you can also sign up for my Journey into Publishing online community. We start on August 14th and will meet for six online sessions. The cost is only $60

Learn more about my Journey into Publishing community.

Why Christians Should Not Make Safe Art

Last week I learned about a former Christian hard rock musician who became an atheist at the height of his career, but he kept making music for the Christian market since the money was good. Presumably Christian parents encouraged their children to buy this band’s albums because they were expecting a particular message that would be safe and positive. Perhaps Christian youth believed they were protecting their faith.

They didn’t suspect that this band’s message was simply a sham for making money. According to this band’s front man, the majority of Christian musicians he knows are quiet atheists, cashing in on the demand for Christian music. That matches what I’ve heard from other friends.

How did we end up with a huge community of “Christian” music “artists” who aren’t really Christian and who, according to most experts I know, don’t usually make good art?

The problem from my perspective is that artists face ostracizing if they don’t arrive at a set list of answers at the end of the creative process. The subtext is clear: don’t wrestle with big questions in your art unless you’re ready to follow the evangelical script.

This represents the problem when faith becomes a barrier to art. Faith deteremines the answers and the final product without allowing time and space to ask the questions. The final product is vapid, unhelpful, and can hardly distinguish itself from art by a sell out.

In our quest to create safe art without swear words, sex, or violence (unless you count Christians who bow down to Brave Heart and MMA), we’ve stunted out ability to create honest art that fully engages our faith. The answer HAS to be Jesus died on the cross for your sins. That’s why the cross is all over Christian art, so many of our songs mention the cross, and so many books proclaim they’re offering a fresh take on the cross/Gospel—provided the Gospel is defined as Jesus dying on the cross for your sins.

While musicians who have left the faith mimick what a good Christian “should” say, Christian artists have to play games to make their work marketable. Writers have to clean up their novels, artists have to insert “Jesus saves” into their lyrics, and artists have to paint subtle (or not so subtle) salvation messages. Meanwhile, our world has big tough questions that our artists aren’t allowed to ask.

Christians should be the ones diving into the jaws of the beast, confronting the worst of this world’s demons, and making ourselves as “unsafe” as possible as we face the worst the world has to offer. Either Jesus is Lord or he’s just a clever fabrication of his followers who needs to be protected from our big bad world.

Are we doing anyone any favors when the most influential art is coming from people who don’t have any faith that can guide them?

Rather than encouraging Christian artists to speak to today’s issues, we’ve created a sub-genre that isn’t compelling to anyone other than Christians who want to play it safe and fear the loss of their faith. This is catastrophic. When the artists within that subgenre start asking questions they aren’t prepared to answer, they just keep plugging in the answers that they know activates record sales while their faith quietly dies.

This is how we ended up with the religious broadcasting group ostracizing Waterbrook Multnomah publishing because it published a book in its progressive imprint by a Christian man who believes the Bible supports same sex relationships. The message is clear: feel free to wrestle with the Bible, provided you arrive at our conclusions.

Honest reflection on difficult topics always brings up anxiety among Christian artists because we know that we could lose friends, struggle to make a living, and experience alienation from family and friends. As I started working on my Christian Survival Guide project, I felt a tremendous amount of pressure to settle for the answers I’d been given, even if I didn’t find them satisfying.

I had to force myself to look at scripture without the evangelical community looking over my shoulder with heresy stamps at the ready. I had to dig into my tough questions about the violence of God, the place of God in a world with evil, and the ways we interpret the Bible 2,000 years removed from the New Testament writers.

I didn’t always arrive at the answers I expected. I found that hell isn’t what I thought it was, the end times described in Revelation were actually good news to their original readers, and that the Bible can be easily abused. As I considered God’s place in a world that has evil, I arrived at a conclusion that I didn’t see coming.

I didn’t reinforce everything I beleived, but I also found that facing the tough and mysterious questions of today isn’t the end of my faith, especially if I arrived at a different conclusion than expected. I found that my faith is far more sturdy and capable than I expected.

Perhaps that is our problem in the Christian subculture. We’re so afraid of our faith cracking if we place too many burdens on it. On the contrary, I found that my faith can handle far more than I would have expected. If anything, I had been placing my faith in the wrong things.

When I started asking the questions I wasn’t supposed to ask and opened myself up to conclusions I wasn’t supposed to arrive at, I found that Jesus didn’t need me to protect him. Scripture is far more reliable than we realize. The Holy Spirit settles among us to give us wisdom.

Creating art as a Christian isn’t safe or simple. The way of Jesus requires taking up one’s cross. The presence of the Spirit brings tongues of fire. We may have to endure death and fire, but the art that comes out of the process has been pruned and refined. We will find that our best work comes out of the times we face what we’ve feared the most.

Learn more about my Christian Survival Guide project.


A note for bloggers, I wrote this post on a beta version of Blogo for Mac. It’s a new blog editor that is for WordPress only (for now). It still has some bugs and kinks to work out, and it’s still missing some key features (like centering text and adding headings), but I’ve been happy with it so far and encourage you to check it out and to send feedback to help their design team.

Hell Is a Made-Up Place

What are we talking about when we talk about hell? I’m convinced that many of us don’t know.

Is hell an actual place?

Can we know anything about what happens in hell if it is a place?

Where exactly do our details about hell come from?

I’ve heard from a number of pastors and scholars that we can’t deny the reality of hell as a literal place because Jesus talked about hell a lot. Since I was resolved to let the Bible determine what I believe about hell and eternal punishment, I hardly gave it another thought, even when Rob Bell told us that Love Wins and the collective evangelical church lost its mind over what exactly that means.

When I started exploring every topic that has ever shaken my faith or the faith of someone else for my Christian Survival Guide project, I had to face the fact that I’d been avoiding hell. I didn’t want to think about it.

And so I finally let myself ask the question I’d been avoiding, Does God punish humans eternally for a decision made during 80 years (give or take) of life?

I’ve heard the arguments that God’s gift of eternal life is so wonderful that denying it requires eternal punishment since God’s infinite holiness demands infinite torment for those who oppose him. That represents a line of thinking I simply can’t follow, and I don’t think scripture warrants it either. I’d like to offer a brief overview of the chapter on hell from the Christian Survival Guide that delves into the details about hell.

As an evangelical, I can’t help but begin in the most obvious place…

 

What Does the Bible Say about Hell?

Beginning with the question, “What does the Bible say?” hardly settles things for us. The Bible doesn’t even have a single word for hell.

If you’re reading the Old Testament, the Hebrew word Sheol tends to refer to the place of the dead. Jewish scholars later translated Sheol as “Hades” in their Greek translation.

While Hades tended to be viewed in a negative light, that was primarily rooted in the fact that those in Hades were no longer alive. While they weren’t able to enjoy the pleasures of the living, they weren’t necessarily suffering eternal conscious torment.

In fact, the idea of judgment and suffering in the afterlife took on a far richer form in the intertestamental writings. As the Jews suffered at the hands of foreign invaders, they looked ahead to a day when God would vanquish their enemies and punish them. By the time the writers of the New Testament came around, the concept of punishment after death had been evolving. It was far from a single concept that was passed down from one generation to another.

In the New Testament we find two words for “hell,” and neither necessarily demand an eternity of conscious torment. While you can certainly make a case for that based on several passages that mention “eternal fire,” it’s not as cut and dry as many believe.

For instance, Jesus spoke frequently of the Jewish leaders being cast into Gehenna, an alleged garbage dump outside the city of Jerusalem that had once been used for child sacrifices by the Judean kings. The word carried a clear implication of being outside of God’s Kingdom and separated from God’s people in some way, but it’s a theological leap to say that Gehenna equals eternal conscious torment in hell.

When Jesus speaks of God’s judgment, he speaks of eternal fire, but that’s not the same thing as saying the people “in” the fire are eternal. While one could argue for eternal torment based on those passages, they don’t demand hell as a place of eternal punishment. And it’s especially problematic to connect the eternal torment passages with the Gehenna passages since those are two different images given to two different people.

(Check out Scot McKnight’s series on hell for a bit more about the relevant passages, especially his overview of Jesus’ statements about eternal fire.)

As the early church fathers parsed the words of Jesus and the Apostles, they engaged in some of their sharpest arguments over the eternal nature of the soul. If your soul has suffered a “second death” and has been consumed by fire, can your soul exist forever?

In fact, the Acts of the Apostles and the epistles fail to clarify things. Rather, they focus primarily on God’s judgment. Mind you, that judgment is a frightening prospect, but we are also far removed from the literary and mythological world of the New Testament.

Even when the book of Revelation touches on judgment, the beast the devil are the only ones who are explicitly tormented forever (Rev. 20:10, NIV via BibleGateway). And let’s not forget that the ENTIRE book of Revelation is chock full of symbols, imagery, and metaphors. Even if we read about people being tossed into the Lake of Fire (Rev. 20:15), should we really expect a literal lake of fire?

(For more about interpreting Revelation, see my book The Good News of Revelation).

Based on the symbols and imagery connected to God’s judgment, there is no denying that disobedience is serious. Rejecting God’s ways in order to follow our own brings about disastrous consequences. I’m not making an argument for a “There, there,” grandfather-type of God who chuckles about “those kids” down there who are killing, violating, polluting, oppressing, and abusing each other.

Those who reject the mercy of God found in the life, death, and resurrection of Christ run the risk of being “left out.” God is just and sin must be eradicated. Evil and death will be defeated.

Does the New Testament give us cause to speak in great detail about the afterlife, let alone speak of a literal place of eternal torment called hell?

Can we precisely understand how the New Testament writers re-appropriated the Greek word Hades?

Can we dive into the first century Jewish psyche and grasp the meaning of Gehenna, with its burning fire and dark history?

Can we pinpoint what “eternal” or “everlasting” fire is or what its intended to accomplish?

Evangelicals committed to scripture are all over the place on hell:

The universalists argue that the fire of God’s judgment is purifying and restorative (I understand that traditionalists argue one cannot be universalist and evangelical).
The annihiliationists argue that it consumes the soul, rendering eternal life impossible.
The traditionalists argue that this fire means everyone outside of God’s Kingdom suffers eternal conscious torment.

Can you see how big this mess is?

Christians, at least American evangelicals, have become dogmatic about a theological concept rooted in terms we most likely fail to understand.

 

Can We Blame Dante for Our Concept of Hell?

This is something I’ve heard from a few people. While I have yet to see a truly compelling argument that traces the history of hell form the New Testament to the present day and makes the necessary literary connections to back up such a claim, Jon M. Sweeney has taken a strong step in that direction.

Sweeney’s book, Inventing Hell, argues that Dante’s version of hell has done more to influence the way we read the Bible than we suspect. While I felt that he fell short of proving that assertion, he did a masterful job of reconstructing the various ancient views of the afterlife and offers some thought-provoking reconstructions of the New Testament world.

Inventing Hell reminds us that the literary symbols and mythological stories of the past can’t be ruled out when we interpret the Bible. The writers of scripture were reacting against or recycling the ideas and stories of their day. Paul had no issue preaching about the resurrection to unwilling listeners, but he also used mythological figures such as the “Unknown God” and popular poetry to introduce the story of Jesus.

It’s quite likely that interpreters of scripture have allowed Dante’s epic poem to reshape how they read scripture. The Bible says very little about the actual details of hell, so if we think we know what hell is like, we may have to blame Dante.

 

Where Does This Leave Us with Hell?

If anything, I want to remind us that the traditional concept of hell as eternal conscious torment isn’t a done deal based on a “plain reading” of scripture.

I especially want Christians to take another look at scripture without assuming they already understand what words like Sheol, Gehenna and Hades precisely mean.

The truth is that Gehenna and Hades touched on both a mythological and religious way of thinking—a way of thinking that often blended myth with religion in ways that we find hard to grasp today. There were historical places, events, and stories that shaped what people made of these words when they heard Jesus and the early Christians use them.

Sincere followers of Jesus may believe that the fire of judgment is an eternal punishment, a final annihilation of those rebelling against God, or a purifying fire. We’re so far removed from the original languages and cultures, I don’t know how anyone today can claim to absolute certainty here.

Perhaps the most revealing question for us today is this: “Why do we need hell to be eternal conscious torment?”

If you’re convinced that the Bible teaches it, that’s fine. But Christians disagree on plenty of other issues related to biblical interpretation and translation. Why make more noise about this one in particular? Why excommunicate someone who believes God is more merciful?

Perhaps the fixation of American evangelicals with hell as eternal conscious torment has more to do with our desire to make heaven look better and to make ourselves into the ultimate “insiders” for all of eternity.

The afterlife has been evolving throughout the writing of scripture, and it’s fair to say that it has evolved as Christians continue to interpret scripture. God will judge sin and evil, but I have no idea what that will look like. Given that the Bible hardly has a uniform way of naming hell, let alone describing it consistently and explicitly with clear details, it’s far more likely that we’re the ones who have made up the notion that hell is a place of eternal conscious torment.

 

There’s a lot more I could write about this. In fact, I HAVE written more about this.

I’ve been intentionally light on biblical exposition in this post because I did a ton of that in my book. This post is more of a summary of that content. Check out the chapter in A Christian Survival Guide about hell for a more thorough exploration of the relevant passages and some other perspectives from theologians in the church. I spend quite a bit of time pulling together the relevant passages and offer up some points for further reflection, including a suggested reading list.

Mercy for Our Brokenness-A Guest Post by Melinda Viergever Inman

Today’s guest blogger, Melinda Viergever Inman is the author of the new novel Refuge. She serves in a prison ministry, and today she’s sharing how her own story of brokenness intersects with the women she meets in prison.  

The morning sun gleams on the razor wire. As we exit our cars near the prison yard, we hear the fourteen- to twenty-year-old inmates talking smack to a guard. Disciplinary action is brewing. They haven’t learned yet.

Inside we navigate the weekly routine of paperwork, newly changed rules, manifests, searches, pat-downs, safety devices, and cataloging of our personal effects. This process transports us through three locked-down security doors and multiple armed guards. And then we’re in, one with the prison population.

Every week our team enters the state penitentiary to shepherd imprisoned women through a Christian twelve-step program. We bring the best news in human history to women who long for good news: “No matter what you’ve done, Jesus wants you. His arms are open wide. Though everyone else forgets you, Jesus sees you in this place, and he loves you with a love that cost him his life.”

The harvest is plentiful.

We come to the prison because Jesus has a heart for broken people, and we have his heart beating in us. God forgives us, picks us up, and puts us back together over and over again. We know it, and we want them to know it, too.

Most of our team has traveled a road of tragedies and life experiences that we never would have chosen. Each endured unique circumstances that broke her heart and gave her compassion for other hurting people. For me, the path included sexual assault at age thirteen, the brokenness of handling it in silence, teen pregnancy, early marriage, a temper, parenting mistakes, and a bout of hardcore legalism as I tried to clean myself up.

Because God is merciful, he patiently and relentlessly works on my character, causing me to love him and to grow to be more like Jesus. Ridding me of my rigid and hypocritical religion has been his most persistent cleansing. I can’t live a godly life in my own strength by following bullet points and rules. No one can.

I am a redeemed prodigal, a lost girl who has been found. I still run from God in large and in subtle ways. I’m often angry at what he allows to touch my life. Of course, he always comes after me and woos me back. And I return. I yield. He’s irresistible.

God has planted within me a deep realization of my need for Christ alone. He continues to help me discover just how broken I am. If I weren’t so arrogant and hard-hearted, it wouldn’t take me so long to learn these lessons!

I am exactly like the women in prison. So are you.

We remind them of this every week. Everyone struggles. We have the same temptations. We could be the ones sitting in prison.

In prison, the facade has been stripped away. Incarcerated women have done something that has brought them to the end of themselves. And if the first time wasn’t enough, they’re back again. They’ve hit the bottom, and they know everything has to change.

When a woman voluntarily signs up for a Christian 12-step program in prison, she is wise enough to understand that she is powerless and her life is out of control (Step 1). She lays it all out there openly, and she means business.

In our program around 85% of the women have been sexually assaulted, usually as children or pre-teens. Most have difficult family histories. There’s a reason they ended up in prison. There are causative realities over which they had no control that we are prepared to walk through with them. They come with messy and wounded sexuality.

And where was God, they wonder? Can they trust him? And how can he possibly fix their mess? We comfort them with the same comfort God has given us in our messes.

All are welcome. All. No one is turned away. We tell them about Jesus. He finally has their attention. Over and over again, we hear the same story: God has brought them to prison to find him. They know it. It took this final breaking to see their need.

As we go through the 26-week program, the women bless us with their transparency, and we share our failings with them. I wish every believer in Christ could honestly address his or her broken places. The church would be more beautiful and less off-putting.

My brokenness, these women, and their prison experiences shaped my first novel.

Refuge is the story of Cain, his sister-wife Lilith (yes, that Lilith), and their brother Abel. Cain commits a crime. From firsthand experience I know what the tangled relationships and the remorse of a murderer look like.

How would Cain feel about killing his own brother? What would this look like? What would it do to his family? I’ve witnessed this as women share their stories.

Often the most heinous tragedy of our lives is the turning point, the breakthrough, the crux of God turning us toward himself. Just like our broken lives, because of God’s compassion, my novel doesn’t go the way you expect.

This is a story birthed from heartache, brokenness, and a deep personal awareness of God’s mercy and unmerited grace. His mercy in the prison, in my family, and to me—a seriously flawed sinner, was the catalyst.

Just how far does God’s mercy go in my tale? You’ll have to read Refuge to find out. What will our merciful God forgive? It’s always abundantly far above and beyond our expectations.

About Today’s Guest Blogger

Melinda Viergever Inman is a prodigal with a passion to write. She authors fiction illustrating God’s love for wounded people, including her new novel Refuge. She shepherds women in church and in prison ministry. She writes inspirational material and bible studies. With her family, she is involved in an Indian-founded church-planting ministry in Asia: RIMI at www.rimi.org

I’m Finally Doing Something Either Incredibly Sensible or Incredibly Stupid

I think I’ve finally done something that is kind of sensible in my life. Of course, I could be wrong, and I’ll merely expose myself as even more foolish than I even thought myself capable. We’ll see.

So here’s the thing, I often confuse people. Some people meet me, and they wonder why I’m not a pastor. Others meet me and they can’t fathom why I’m not a literary agent.

I can relate to their confusion.

I too thought for years that I was called to be a pastor because I like helping people figure out stuff, but I don’t really have the gentle touch or the extroversion many expect from pastors (aside from hundreds of other reasons). When I encourage fellow writers and they ask if I’m going to become a literary agent, I laugh at the thought of myself getting down to hardball negotiations with publishers and combing through book contracts line by line.

“Hi Mr. Editorial Director, if we can skip this contract confrontation, I’ll even convince my client to settle for less money.”

Being a pastoral person without a church and a supporter of authors without a literary agency, I didn’t really know what to do with myself until the fall of 2009 when I got the idea to write a book about everything I learned after publishing my first book. It’s called A Path to Publishing, and it takes on every question that new authors may ask from the perspective of an author who has just completed a first book.

I didn’t have years of publishing experience like the editors and agents who speak at conferences, but that was actually my greatest asset. I could walk newcomers through the basics of book publishing from their perspective. I’d just felt everything they were feeling, and I’d just asked all of the questions they would be asking. It’s a full-length book full of publishing tips.

I received great endorsements, reviews, and feedback, but I’ve always struggled to find a way to make the book widely available while still letting readers pay something for it if they wanted to. The solution has finally come through NoiseTrade.

Today you can download A Path to Publishing completely for free, provided you pass along your email address.

Download your copy of A Path to Publishing now.

This book is like a personal writing conference. In fact, a friend who read it and then attended a writing conference said he learned a lot more from my book.

So the book is completely free, and I plan to leave it that way. It feels incredibly stupid to make that much work a free giveaway, but my priority all along has been helping writers take their next steps. A free eBook strikes me as the easiest way to accomplish that goal.

However, my foolish optimism doesn’t stop with this free eBook.

I’m also launching a small publishing community on August 14th. Here’s why: I’ve met so many people who are frustrated, fearful, confused, and uncertain about what to do next. I’m creating groups of 15 people who will meet for six one-hour online video sessions in the evening to talk about all of that.

I’ll organize each session around a specific publishing topic and will customize our time around answering particular questions. Most importantly, if you need support for the publishing process, this can become a community where you can say what you’re really thinking and ask those questions that have been nagging you.

The group is called Journey into Publishing, and the early bird rate for all six sessions is $60 (plus a small Eventbrite fee). That’s only $10 per session.

The early bird rate ends July 5th, and spots are limited to 15 people. If we have enough interest, we’ll add another group so that we can keep our meetings small and personal. Need to learn more? Visit my information page.

So there you have it.

I’m giving away my eBook on publishing AND hosting an online book publishing community. Both of these moves strike me as completely sensible and helpful for others, but what do I know? I’m just a writer.

Don’t forget to pick up your free copy of A Path to Publishing today!

We Pray for Resurrection in Times of Darkness

When church leaders ignore the victims of abuse, it is a time of darkness.

When church leaders choose to defend one another rather than those who are most vulnerable, it is a time of darkness.

When the church rushes to defend an abusive leader before asking what has become of the victim, it is a time of darkness.

When an abusive church leader is given a forum recount all that he has lost without a moment’s reflection on what he took from everyone around him, it is a time of darkness.

When respectfully dissenting comments are removed from a leading evangelical Christian website, it is a time of darkness.

Last week I joined the many voices online who spoke out against the great darkness of sexual abuse in the church. In case you missed it, a former youth pastor, now sentenced sex offender, wrote a lengthy moralistic post essentially recounting his errors and pleading with readers that it could happen to them. However, the article misconstrued his relationship with an underage student as “an affair,” and the article failed to take into account the grave damage caused to the student, his family, and his church.

When dissenting voices spoke up early in the week, Leadership Journal failed to remove the post. All dissenting comments were deleted—even the respectful comments from former victims of sex abuse who had to suffer the indignity of knowing their voices were not welcome in yet another corner of the church. An editorial comment added later in the week acknowledged the strong push back to the post, but noted that the article was important because sex abuse was the primary cause of lawsuits in the church.

You know… because money and institutional preservation outweighs the value of people.

While the post was taken down either late Friday night or early Sunday morning, Leadership Journal did immense harm to the church, showed a significant lapse in awareness about sexual abuse victims, and handled a matter involving sexual abuse in the precisely wrong way.

Although I personally have no interest in reading a journal dedicated to leadership, I don’t want to see Leadership Journal go under. It’s my hope and prayer that this dramatic failure becomes an opportunity for renewal and resurrection in the church.

Whether they want to know about it or not, this situation has once again put pastoral sex abuse on the radar for evangelicals. We can’t really avoid it when the number publication for pastors dramatically fails to write about it. Here, then, is our moment to properly engage this topic.

Leadership Journal has an opportunity to lead the way.

Whereas a convicted felon was given a forum to speak about sex abuse, Leadership Journal can invite credentialed experts, victim advocacy leaders, and pastors who have led congregations through a sex abuse scandal without taking part in a cover up.

Whereas the comments of former sex abuse victims were silenced on the Leadership Journal website, their voices can be honored and protected by enforcing a strong comment policy that deletes any comments that question the integrity of victims or attempt to silence or shame them.

Whereas Leadership Journal’s editors passed the buck and offered vague contact information when confronted on Twitter, they can provide a simple, clear point person who is empowered to handle any immediate concerns with the content of their website.

Whereas Leadership Journal emphasized the legal implications of sex abuse, its leaders can develop books, articles, and white papers on the human cost of sex abuse. Leadership has a chance to become the leading advocate for victims, for healing congregations, for guiding pastors through this difficult season, and for restoring fallen pastors.

Churches are all over the map with how they handle the prevention of sex abuse and its aftermath. Leadership Journal can become the new standard bearer.

Leadership Journal can become part of the solution to the evangelical culture of sex abuse—providing an unequaled forum for healing, restoration, and wholeness in the church.

My prayer throughout Leadership Journal’s time of darkness has been for resurrection.

When church leaders drop everything to help the victims of abuse, it is a time of resurrection.

When church leaders choose to defend the vulnerable rather than one another, it is a time of resurrection.

When the church rushes to defend victims when a leader steps out of line, it is a time of resurrection.

When an abusive church leader submits to counseling so that he can understand the gravity of his failures and the path to healing, it is a time of resurrection.

When the church, despite our failings, disagreements, and frustrations, can come together to support victims, pastors, and congregations, we have a chance to become resurrection people.

We can mourn with those who mourn, pray for those who are discouraged, and provide safety for those who don’t know how to trust again. We can practice resurrection because resurrection will always beat darkness.

 

NOTE: There were many excellent responses, but I suggest beginning with Mary Demuth’s Dear Man in Prison. Check the Twitter hashtag #TakeDownThatPost for more perspectives.  

Only a Western Christian Would Say the Church Is Declining

The Christian Post’s Cross Map blog has pointed out yet another “gem” in the ever-disappointing prophecy book genre. From the article:

“The Church in Prophecy and History” is a detailed commentary on the Book of Revelation, Chapters 1 through 3. It illuminates Jesus’s own predictions about the future of His church, and explains how the major events of church history fulfilled His prophecies.

Oh, good! Another commentary that reads the book of Revelation like a choose your own prophetic adventure guide rather than a book of sacred scripture. Despite Revelation clearly fitting into the apocalyptic genre of literature and specifically addressing seven historic churches–seven churches that we actually quite a bit about–interpreters persist in turning these historic churches into church ages that just happen to culminate with today’s church.

I wouldn’t normally waste my time even mentioning a commentary like this, but the article notes something that I found quite revealing about the state of American Christianity and how we interpret scripture. The Christian Post added a telling note about this Revelation “Commentary”:

It focuses on the current state of Christianity–how it arrived at its present weakened condition just before the beginning of the end times, and why it still has a victorious future. It issues a call to return to the simple and powerful message of the Bible and envisions a fresh effort to reach those in the younger generations who have not experienced the life-changing power of the Gospel.

Did you see that? Christianity is weakened and in decline before the return of Christ.

If you’re an Anglican in the UK or Southern Baptist Convention Christian in America watching declining attendance, especially among younger generations, such an observation about the decline of the church would possibly make sense. If you used right wing political gains as the markers of God’s influence, perhaps you’re feeling a bit discouraged after two terms under a Democratic president.

Even if the church was in decline, that’s not necessarily a sign of the end times, especially since it’s preposterous to read Revelation 1-3 as a series of “church ages” throughout history. Play connect the dots with the historical record all you want. It’s just not there. John was writing to seven historic churches. However, most importantly, it’s even more preposterous to argue that the church is in decline or is weakened.

Christianity is plenty influential in America still, and its is exploding in Latin America, Africa, and Asia. If you want to find the largest church in the world, it’s not in America. It’s in South Korea. If you wanted to learn from experienced church planters, you’ll learn a lot more from Christians in India, Cambodia, and China.

If you dared to suggest that the church is in decline, you’d have to explain to this global south and eastern Christians that their ministries don’t really count. You’d have to explain that the church only matters in the west. You’d have to tell them that good news for all people is only “really good” if white people in the west aren’t believing it. You’ll have to explain why you’re praying for a rapture to save you from a world that’s clearly rejecting the Gospel while they see new converts joining their ranks.

Only a Western Christian, most likely an American, could be so short-sighted to suggest that the church is in decline.

The church is growing. Jesus is setting people free. The Spirit is descending and changing lives. The Gospel is restoring lives and communities.

As C.S. Lewis wrote, Aslan is on the move.

Let’s join him and rejoice over his work around the world and ask how we can join in.

 

Want to Learn More about Revelation’s Message?

My book the Good News of Revelation recaptures John’s original message to the seven churches of Asia Minor (modern day Turkey) and shows how that message continues to speak today about persevering through suffering, God’s triumph over evil, and the future restoration of earth. My co-author, Larry Helyer, is a life-long Bible scholar who specializes in New Testament background studies.

Church-Damaged Christians Need Time to Detox from Church

Yesterday I guest posted at the Convergent Books blog, sharing a small part of my journey through the disappointments and downfalls of church and how I rediscovered healthy community:

By the time I finished seminary, I had stopped trusting most middle-aged men who called themselves pastors. But something about Pastor Tom caused me to make an exception. Perhaps it was his offer to buy me breakfast.

He was a kind man and an excellent listener, but he also asked really tough questions. I felt safe enough with him. He reminded me of the psychologists I used to visit during the hard years of my parents’ divorce.

Tom wanted to know why I hadn’t become a member of a church over the past three years of seminary. Why would a future pastor avoid the church? I told him story after story of letdowns, disappointments, and years of volunteering at extremely high capacities without so much as a thank you, but still getting tons of criticism.

“Ah!” he said. “I know what your problem is!” The way he said it made me want to storm out of the diner without finishing my hash browns. I didn’t have time for know-it-alls. However, I was curious to hear his diagnosis.

“You’re church-damaged,” he said.

I wanted to say he was wrong, that I was strong. I had endured my parents’ divorce and the years of legal fall-out that kept my family returning to court. But rather than protest, I just scraped up the rest of my hash browns and mumbled that he may have a point.

In the years leading up to that meeting and the years that followed, I had a hard time visiting any church. There may have been deeply flawed aspects of these churches, and they may not have been the right churches for me. However, the bigger issue during seven years of church avoidance was the toxic baggage I brought with me.

Read the rest at the Convergent Blog.

A Deeper Church: What Is the Cure for Fundamentalism?

I’m writing for the Church channel today at Deeper Story: 

“So you’re telling me that I’m going to hell and everyone at this school is going to hell if we don’t believe the same thing as you?”

I nodded.

My friend Jon finally got the message. I’d succeeded in sharing the “bad news” about everyone in the world. We’re all sinners on the brink of eternally burning in the flames of hell. Now he just needed to ask how to be saved.

“You’re crazy. What’s wrong with you?” he shouted at me.  “Who told you all of this stuff?” His face grew red and he began to wave his arms around in frustration. A passing teacher tried to calm him down.

“I’m not going to calm down. My friend thinks we’re all going to hell. He’s in some kind of religious cult.”

My attempt at evangelizing my best friend in high school ended with him ranting and raving. It was hardly the earnest request for the good news about eternal life in heaven with Jesus Christ. Everything in the evangelism book and video fell to pieces in a matter of minutes.

Besides failing to “save the soul” of my best friend, I also lost his friendship forever. That was it. We still hung out in the same crowd, but no one really talked to me. I had nothing to talk about any way. They had television shows, movies, and music to discuss. I had sermons, Bible verses, and Adventures in Odyssey.

Virtually the same conversation played out with my family. Almost every relationship I had broke down because my fundamentalist church instructed me to share the Gospel with everyone I knew–that is, if I really cared about them.

Read the rest at A Deeper Story