Grace is Messy

This past Sunday, Rob Bell was featured on Oprah’s Super Soul Sunday series alongside Anne Lamott and Dr. Eben Alexander. At this point in Rob Bell-dom I’m pretty sure most of us have made up our minds, so in this article I run the risk of either preaching to the choir or as more accurately throwing meat into the lions den.

The ideas either hum or they don’t. We watch Oprah or write it off as false teaching.

I remember when Love Wins came out, my friend (and curator of this blog) Nate, bought me a copy of it and we both ate it up within the week. And that put us in the top 10% of those who reviewed, blogged, and talked about him. I remember teaching on some of his ideas on the biblical finding and eternal nature of hell and as soon as I mentioned hell, some of my friends were worried about my salvation. 

To this day even bringing up the name requires a great deal of vulnerability in church circles.

Nooma and Velvet Elvis are two of the means that God used to save me. I remember watching the Bullhorn Nooma video about how awful some preachers can be and how the method of communication is just as important as the what.

Fast forward to 2013. I think the majority of Christian Evangelical needs to re-watch it and realize their place in Gods world. Truth without grace is called being a Pharisee.

But ultimately, we all need God’s grace.

And I get it, we all have Pharisee tendencies. Especially if we’ve grown up in this 24 hour a day Fox News, Conservative, Mark Driscoll world, where the Rachel Held Evans and the Peter Rollin’s get plastered with the title Heretic. Or right now, even worse: Emergent.

It’s hard to be the peacemakers in a world where both sides attack each other to no end in the name of unity or orthodoxy.

We can keep blogging about justice. We can keep writing about what orthodoxy really is. We can keep writing about the dangers of Emergent theology and there certainly is a place to do so.

There has to be a way to have rational discourse about theological issues without being pigeonholed as a heretic or a Pharisee.

To think that God’s law, God’s grace, God’s redemption, or God’s truth needs defending is limiting His infinite power. He doesn’t need defending.

You are not the shepherd. Jesus is. You are still at the end of the day, a sheep in need of the love of Christ.

If God is true. His Word is true. And if those things are true, we mustn’t be concerned with clearing the world of heretics, but focus more on what God is speaking to us. We should be about allowing God’s truth to soak us to the core.

I’m not saying that Emergence is 100% right. There will never be a religious movement that is 100% right, the first century church couldn’t even get it right all the time. This is why Paul wrote so many letters trying t correct their errors, but the idea that a movement must be 100% right to be considered true is scary.

Very scary.

To think that Rob Bell, RHE or Mark Driscoll’s thoughts or beliefs have the power to save or to condemn gives them way too much credit, there is a large amount of arrogance in OUR preferred teachers to think that our thoughts about God are always 100% correct.

Jesus’ command is not to love God, love your neighbor, and to convert your neighbor to your line of reasoning. Loving is messy. If you’re married or in a loving relationship, you learn quickly that, loving is less about being right and more about the status of your heart.

God is true. The Lord is almighty.

And if what we sing about, that Jesus is all we need. Then we must realize that Jesus died for our constant sinful need to be right.

Grace is messy. Grace takes time.

Grace isn’t emergent, Grace isn’t traditional.

Grace is eternal. Grace is worth it.

As Zach Van Dyke ended his sermon with this past week, “I’m so glad it’s all about grace.”

So am I.

---

Ben Langevin

Is a student intern, speaker, published writer and worship leader from Oviedo, FL. As a creative writing major at UCF (Go Knights!), he enjoys creating, discovering, and cultivating life giving environments wherever God leads him. Ben is an avid culture fanatic. His favorite things include Netflix marathons with his girlfriend Erika, dodgeball with students at youth group, and of course Starbucks. He attends Summit Church and works at University Carillon United Methodist Church. 

Connect with him on twitter: Follow @BenLangevin