Rob Bell Goes for Marriage Equality

http://christiannews.net/2013/03/18/no-hell-bell-comes-out-in-support-of-homosexuality-tells-narrow-christians-to-repent/

San Francisco, California – Rob Bell, author of the best-selling and controversial book Love Wins, which challenges the Christian teaching of Hell, came out in support of homosexual marriage on Sunday and called “narrow” Christians to repentance.

According to reports, Bell was speaking at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco and delivered a message based on his new book What We Talk About When We Talk About God.

During the question and answer period, Bell was asked about his beliefs regarding same-sex “marriage.”

“I am for marriage. I am for fidelity. I am for love, whether it’s a man and woman, a woman and a woman, a man and a man,” he said. “I think the ship has sailed and I think the church needs — I think this is the world we are living in and we need to affirm people wherever they are.”

  

Bell opined that many evangelicals can no longer be classified as conservatives because their beliefs have changed with the times.

“I think we are witnessing the death of a particular subculture that doesn’t work,” he asserted. “I think there is a very narrow, politically intertwined, culturally ghettoized, evangelical subculture that was told ‘we’re gonna change the thing’ and they haven’t. And they actually have turned away lots of people.”

“And I think that when you’re in a part of a subculture that is dying, you make a lot more noise because it’s very painful. You sort of die or you adapt,” Bell continued.

“And if you adapt, it means you have to come face to face with some of the ways we’ve talked about God, which don’t actually shape people into more loving, compassionate people. And we have supported policies and ways of viewing the world that are actually destructive. And we’ve done it in the name of God and we need to repent.”

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What is Chrislam?

There is a new fear term – fear word - circulating along the born again fear blog networks and that is the word Chrislam.

What is Chrislam?

Actually there is a Christian sect in Nigeria that started the term “Chrislam” in the 1980s in an attempt to build bridges of understanding in a 50/50 Muslim/Christian nation.  In that sect, both the Bible and Koran get respected as valid religious text.

In the context of born again blogs, whenever a megachurch pastor such as Rick Warren sits down and talks to a Muslim or has an interfaith conference or prayer service, or a Sunday school teacher outlines the basic facts of Mohammed or his religion, all hell has broken lose!

(An army of negro muslims has been spotted and rumored to be on the road to Smalleville USA at this very minute? What’s Jeff Davis’ cell phone number!)  Sad.

The ranks of Christian soldiers have broken ranks.  What next? Hispanics in the local Christian town square in the white heartland demanding jobs and socialism?  Secularism! Whatever.

Most of these fear blogs mention two things – Rick Warren – and the Koran/Quran - Korans are being put in the pews of these liberal, progressive, godless churches next to the bible. Yeah right. 

If there are two things the far right GOP Church Party types do not have to fear – that is Rick Warren or the Koran.  Boring stuff.

The same way Rob Bell got labeled as satanic simply because he choose to spell Hell with a small “h” as in hell, Warren can take the heat from these borderline lunatic fringe Christians and their paranoid blogs. And the Koran is simply the Koran.


Get a life people, won't you.

Have a nice day, free of fools and fear.

Hitler in Heaven, Gandhi in Hell?

I am seeing a lot of white, for profit Christian ministers, money changers at the temples of fundamentalist bullshit, who think they are somehow the gatekeepers of God and his evolutionarily perfect child/son/creation Jesus of Nazareth.  A lot of Prot preachers and “theologians” like Russell D. Moore are out there on the blogosphere doing mandatory articles condemning a hip preacher from Michigan over the mythical place called Hell.

Like the many good people and (some) perverts who taught me in the ROMAN FAITH, the one true faith, this air of absolutism about authority over what in their hands seems more and more like a mythology of God, make it up as you go along with their imagined market share of that product.

One sometimes wonders who in who or what is what in Christendom.  Has the Reformation returned?  The only thing missing in some of these fundy ministers closets and their so called difference with the RC church hierarchy are the black, purple and red dresses. 

As for theology, the gospels are far from a perfect and exact detailed life of the preacher man Jesus.  The Prots have done little since the invention of the printing press.  They obsess over the print type and the ink of the bible rather than the spirit of it all.  In some really mean stingy climates they even came up with predestination.  Which means only if you are in the club, you get into heaven.  All others go to hell, whatever that is.  How do you get into the club?  Have to be born into it?  Sounds like a pretense to royalty to me.

Oh I know there is a description of a fiery lake in the book of Revelations for non-believers.  But get a life.  Revelations draws a picture in black and white of a mean and nasty thug deity in some cheap pulp quality comic book.  In the gospels you have the hint of love and redemption from Jesus, the supposed equal of God.  In Revelation, it is pay your dues in cash or get out of the exclusive club of the saved. 

Revelations is the last book of Constantine’s authorized bible. A year after he forces the bishops to hammer out his Nicene Creed and orders the first copies of his newly authorized bibles, he murders his co-emperor and son and then his wife over rumors of a love affair.  Talk about the mean nasty old testament style God in Revelation and the mad murderer in charge of it all (the church) in its official beginnings.  Well let’s not judge Saint Constantine the Great; he must have had his reasons.  And anyway, he was saved by Jesus. Right? Full of the grace of God. Etc. You know. In the club. Wink. Nod.

While on the subject of sick perverted catholic dictators, Hitler is in heaven.  The Irish nuns who taught us reassured us that all Hitler had to do before he offed himself was say an act of contrition.  Hitler was saved by Jesus.  He was a baptized catholic.  Educated in some catholic schools and never publicly challenged the church.  Though there is a mix of sometimes contradictory statements public and private, he was most assuredly a catholic when he died and went to heaven.  Of that, I heard and was taught.  I won’t repeat the stuff the good Irish nuns used to say about the Jews.  The Irish in America are very anti-Semitic I think – or were so in my little Irish American ghetto.

Which brings us to brown skinned Mahatma Gandhi.  Mohandas, according to most fundamentalist Christians, was not saved by Jesus.  You have to be a card carrying member of the exclusive right to heaven for all Christians only. Heaven I think is visualized in modern terms as some sort of exclusive whites only country club by most American fundamentalist “Christians”.

Gandhi could not have possibly had the grace of God to be saved.  He was Hindu and did not pay his poll tax to heaven.  End of story.

Only good acts by Christians are good acts.  The other things like feeding the poor, raising human dignity out of economic and political slavery just don’t count unless they have the Christ seal of approval.  There is no point in some devils trying to be good.  It is a waste of time if they are not predestined by God to be saved.  And God does not consider anybody who does not recognize his son as God’s gift to humanity. Period.

So it is all right to hate Muslims according to Franklin Graham.  They are not white and they are not full of Christian grace, the poll tax thing to heaven.

When somebody comes along and challenges the absoluteness of a real estate deal down south called Hell, well count him out.  I don’t know who this Prot pope/godfather John Piper is.  But his tweet dissing an honest young preacher keeps getting mentioned over and over again by men kissing and licking his sacred ass in their recent writings directed against Rob Bell. 


Well F*ck em.  Excuse my Latin. They can go to hell too whatever that really is.  In fact I think they are already in hell on this earth if you consider their mullah like worldview.

Christianity is love.  Jesus died and redeemed all humanity or he did not.  The far right fundamentalist Neanderthal politics and voodoo religion of exclusivity for the white race is over in the new global reality.  Get a life.

Have a nice day.  

Word Worship, Kevin Shrum, Rob Bell

I just read an article against Rob Bell by a Pastor Kevin Shrum regarding Bell's upcoming book - Love Wins: Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived. I have a few things to say and comment on.

Universalism: For Whom the Bell Tolls? – It Tolls for Thee

I think Shrum unfairly mislabels Pastor Bell as a Universalist and then tries to morph him into this supposed Universalist monster as the basis for his argument to shun him and his ideas. This, as well as to cut off all dialogue and understanding, to build a wall against his sharing with us all the message of Jesus and God's love towards creation.

Worship of a book can be idolatry. Indeed from a distance my perception of Islam is that it worships the words of the Koran. It is to me an idol. I have met few Muslims and have never gotten into a discussion with them about their religion. So in a way if I assume their worship of the words of Mohammed alledged to be the words of God/Allah is idolatry, that is a really big assumption on my part?

I read parts of the Koran and couldn't make heads or tails of it. After I gave the book away, I found out that it was supposed to be read out loud. I also have recently read that the King James Version of the bible was also written with the intent that it be read aloud. That modern translations of the bible block richness of language as well as meaning and connotations of verbal and oral history. If the literature that is the bible is now meant only to be read and not spoken, it is a great cultural loss to us all I fear.

Indeed the Reformation was formed out of the magic creativity of the human mind but more importantly out of machinery, the printing press. The signifigance of that invention and blood spilled in those days about over who understood the words of the bible better than your own translation or perception of such, the energy of anger, of that blood spilling and fire burning enthusiam still exists in the fundamamentalist quarters of Christiandom to this day IMHO.

In my youth and before the ultimate failure of Vatican II, my personal life was peppered with the left over resentment and hatred of that printing press revolution and the wars over words, that centuries old religion power struggle. Yes, words can kill and generations later the collateral damage of mere words, or the worship of such, can still be felt in some quarters.

In my search for spirituality and tainted by the Roman paganism of my youth and that name brand of Christianity, I have found many things and many words and many thoughts that suggest to me that the Jewish holy man Jesus is believable in some of his alledged teachings. I say alledged because scholars over at the Jesus Seminar have among other groups analysed the imperfections of the man made document called the NT – New Testament. Science, linguistics, historic research can shed new light on what I think some think is a perfect object worthy of worship – an idol so to speak - aka the bible.

Anyway, I ran into this article condemning a fellow Christian Rob Bell to some sort of shunned place though in fact I think some wish him a place in hell. My dear fellow Christians, hell is upon this earth and the fundamentalist business of saving souls by cracking men over their heads for not conforming to an imperfect book is like so medieval and archaic. The truth will make you free. Seek and you shall find etc.

I only just became aware of this Rob Bell fellow through the blogosphere and his unique approach to reaching out to humanity beyond his immediate circle at Mars Hill. I found Rob's You Tube on Resurrection and I loved the energy. For the first time in years I could connect with the concepts of the NT and that guy Jesus, and fully imagine that anything he said or did was, or could be, relevant in this modern age.

These rants in the fundamentalist blogosphere about Rob Bell are spilling over to people like me. I want to buy his book now. Free publicity like that some people have to pay for.

I did some research and came to the conclusion that Bell has a brilliant gift to take the rawness of Christianity and commmunicate it to others. His style is modern which is why I think some are jealous of him. He is no rock star but his style is definitely M-TV.

As far as I know Pastor Rob Bell is still a literalist fundamentalist Christian. While some of it works for me in some of his video ministry, it is still just at some level a hook to bring people into his mega-temple. Business is business. Consumers have to be made to want to consume. Etc. Competition is tough these days.

While most atheists are purported to be anti-God, they are in fact in my opinion just anti-religion and based on past and bad experiences of such. The Christian faith is fighting for market share in a dwindling or dying market. I think Pastor Bell is reaching out to some lost sheep. Pastor Shrum seems to be cutting off his own nose to try and smite Rob Bell's success. Pastor Shrum is, to paraphase the famous Ronald Reagan adage, breaking the eleventh commandment of Christian fundamentalism and speaking ill of a fellow fundamamentalist. Naughty. Naughty. He should know better.

Getting back to Pastor Bell:

Don’t you realize that the beach of universalism on which you’re stepping has been tried before and that, just as before, a tidal-wave of biblical truth and historical/theological consensus will sweep you away? You will become a footnote in the history of the church as just another well-intentioned ‘theologian’ who tried to spit into God’s powerful whirlwind of truth. Rob, I’ve never met you, but please, get off the beach before your stellar career is swept away.”

I have read of many so-called heretical beliefs in the past of Christianity. They have been killed off, murdered off literally, and swept into the dust of history. But seemingly they, the logic of these questioning beliefs, from reading the bible, they keep resurrecting themselves. Shrum starts his critique of Rob Bell accusing him of Universalism, which I don't honestly completely understand, as if that is enough to throw the first rock so to speak at a dissenter, a “heretic”, amidst their own fundamentalist ranks.

I have watched the hypocrisy of religion parasiting itself onto our government in my lifetime with its limited world views and cash grabs for “charity”. I have also seen the decline of morality in this nation and in particular the government at a rate to equal the march backward in time toward a Christian theocracy which I think is what fundamentalists want.

Looking at the fundamentalism of the Iranians and the Taliban in Pakistan and Afghanistan, I fear a rule by people who worship words in books and claim to be the same as God almighty which is blasphemy in my point of view.

Did “family values” make honest men of Wall Street bankers? I don't think so. Quite the opposite I think. There is something wrong with any fundamentalism . It lacks heart and soul too. It is do as I say and not as I do little sheeple.

Well anyway the thing in this article against Rob Bell that inspired me to write this is below:

But, Rob, I have more questions. If universalism is true, I’m going for the best of what both worlds have to offer – eat, drink, and be merry in this life for tomorrow I will die, and when I do die I get heaven no matter what happened this side of eternity. And what’s my reward? I get away with it! Fantastic! Again, please don’t tell me that I should still follow Jesus in this life because it will make my life better. Are you kidding! I’m a ‘stinkin’ sinner’ who is already uninterested in and struggling with changing my ways, so if I don’t have to and I can still get heaven and if thumbing my self-important finger in God’s face has no eternal consequences, this is awesome and I for one am all about it...

I am reminded of Jesus' parable about the workers in the vineyard and the same wages paid to those who toil all day or for just one hour. When confronted by dissatisfaction from the day long workers, the owner of the vineyard invokes the golden rule of buisness – he who has the gold makes the rules.

Where do these self-hating, word worshipping fundamentalists get off telling people what God can dole out in terms of salvation? Who are they to say that they are the only 100% kosher Christians on the block?

“God rules the world!” Not you. God saves whomever he wants to. No matter what your so-called rule book says.

Bell in an interview denies being so-called Emergent. What I have learned from e-mails and internet articles about the Emergent church movement, is that it is in theory trying to get above the heavy gravity of the poorly translated inspired word of God. That if a congregation is to remain a vital part of any community in this secular godless global world, it needs to reach beyond those poorly man translated words to the heart of matter, to the heart of Jesus and his message of universal love of creator to its creation – all of his, her creation, not just a chosen few in the bible belt.

Let me be prophetic here too Kevin. Christianity must change or die. The global reality is indeed secular and godless and it is a drug that destroys humanity and men's souls. That if you cannot get to the heart of Jesus' message of love, understand and plant its seeds, then all is truly lost in this world and the next.

Rob Bell, Resurrection, Emerging Church

It took a long time and many e-mails from a friend to recognize the qualities of this "emerging church" movement thing. It is more than just touchy feely.

It is an awakening to, perhaps reawakening of Jesus' message.

In any case this guy Bell is the first fundamentalist I've heard that doesn't put me to sleep.

It is good to have a Christian in a pulpit with an I.Q., above zero, to communicate something to me on a personal and spiritual level.

You are going to hear his name mentioned a lot in the future. The next Billy Graham? Hardly.

The Pharisees are out and attacking him already. Watch your back Rob.

Let's just wait and see.