America is Babylon--a brief review of Rob Bell and Don Golden's new book

This morning I finished an advanced copy of Rob Bell and Don Golden's new book, Jesus Wants to Save Christians: A Manifesto for the Church in Exile.

You can read it in a couple of ours. It's quick and simple. The cover is the box-game we played in elementary school. Based on the retro-hip cover, I had no idea what to expect inside.

Let me say up front that I know Bell has helped a lot of people. He has many, many fans, largely emergent culture folks and new believers. He inspires. His Nooma videos are ubiquitous. And while I see his bio lists him as founding pastor of Mars Hill (is that past tense? Or is he still a pastor?), he's well connected with the mega-church. For my own part, I've seen probably two Nooma videos, listened to three sermons and only now have read one book. He's a peer and I am not his target audience. So while the people we influence overlap, we don't spend much time influencing each other (yet).

I don't know Don Golden. Maybe one day.

I read this book because I know many I converse with will be asking me questions about it. Better get a head-start. I still need to read The Shack for the same reason (see my wife's review of The Shack).

The exile Christians are in, says the book, is an exile to an empire. And the authors are calling those who follow Jesus to find a way out. Jesus wants to save us from it. This empire is America and Western cultural and the ease by which we get our fundamental needs and oppress others. The authors take 2/3 of the book to lead us to the doorstep of this thesis.

I don't know how much of this book is Bell and how much is Golden. I've seen marketing where a lesser-known will get some input from a well-known and then the book gets made with the well-known, who contributed less, as the lead name. It happens all the time in publishing (just to give you an insider's heads-up). This book could be an exception where both contributed equally.

The book targets conservative evangelicals who equate America with the Kingdom of God and have never challenged the inconsistency of that. Though this topic has grown quite common, Bell and Golden give it a fresh spin.

Tracing through the Old Testament, the authors show how empire wrecks people. It oppresses the poor. It becomes, in a sense, it's own god. From the Fall to Babel to Egypt to Sinai to Jerusalem to Babylon to Jerusalem again to Roman occupation. And in every place, God is calling his people to help the poor and refuse to be an empire. An empire, in essence, is 'anti-kingdom.'

Much of this book I agree with: the reason humans are made, the Jewish story, the exiling of the Jewish people, the point of the commandments, the demise of proud kings, the coming of Jesus, the end of the whole story in a New Earth, the problem of oppression, human conquest, our ugly pathway toward deity. Speaking on the road, I've had folks from time to time approach me informing me that some of the things I share sound like Bell. It's usually a compliment... and the coincidence I chalk up to the Holy Spirit who shines the light of truth from multiple voices for such a time as this.

The authors make tough concepts simpler. There are phrases in this book all along the way that are helpful and good for the uninformed believer to jump in and see the story of Scripture, particularly the Hebrew Scriptures which are easily neglected in conservative evangelicalism. That's not to say evangelicals do not grab truth from the Hebrew Scriptures; rather, they do so usually only to fit it into a disconnected apostolic (New Testament) paradigm.

I appreciate how the authors draw in Jewish thought in the majority of this book and how they spotlight what it means to help the oppressed and repair the world.

Several aspects of this book were nagging and there's no good writing a review that is all clouds and halos.

The writing style is simple (I can't remember reading words over three syllables) and the paragraph style choppy. If you are looking to improve your writing, a book like this one does not help. It relies on rhetorical devices rather than classic structure. From early pages, I thought I was reading Gene Edwards, who makes regular paragraphs out of single sentences, phrases, and even fragmented words. This is all visual effect. It holds the readers hand to aid him in how to pause in the reading.

I tried this writing style once in creative writing class in college. My teacher wrote on my paper: "Tell the story; don't rely on devices." Ouch.

Considering the era we live in, these devices may say more about the modern reader than it does about these authors.

The authors sometimes make too much of symbolism and metaphor, on occasions stretching it potentially beyond the reach of Scripture. One thing that makes me cautious is how neat and tidy all these symbols and metaphors are. If you don't have a knowledge of Scripture and other point of view, you'll find their approach tight and leading you to think only way on some of these things.

The authors follow New Exodus theology. From the best I can make of it, it is the way God is always calling his people out from empire into his kingdom, showing the world what he's like all along the way. The authors demonstrate this well, but once we get to the Messianic Scriptures (the New Testament), the authors hold the view that the Jews no longer have a special place in God's redemptive history. They don't say this explicitly. They just say Jews and Gentiles now form a 'new humanity.' I wanted to see what happened to the Jews in this paradigm.

I also wanted to see what kind of self-rule the authors would set up if we did follow the principle. It's not enough to leave Egypt. You must also establish a new society.

They mention how gentiles were excluded from the Temple, but I'm guessing this is the second temple (and they exclude Jewish history that built the second temple and how God helped the Jews through that time). Jesus criticized the Jews for not allowing all the nations into the temple. So some of the new covenant and the new humanity that the authors speak of was already available in the Hebrew Scriptures. Items like these continues to fertilize the popular idea that the New Testament replaces the Old rather than continues the same story along the same trajectory. I have a hard time saying Jesus reach was broader than Jehovah's... I mean, salvation has come through the Jews, and Jesus, just like Jehovah, called everyone in to reconcile the world to himself. Jesus came as an unfolding part of that story, spilling Jewish blood to save the world. I don't see a changed message but a more complete one.

Also, the authors' view of Revelation is not an end-times view held by many conservative evangelicals. They interpret it as an event that has already happened to Christians under Roman persecution. This may bother some. Not me.

One chapter in the book, which is the real point of the book, is how America is empire not too distant from Babylon. The book turns polemic with Bell's statistical tidal wave about how much America has to the rest of the world and how little we do to alleviate suffering. None of this is new. People have been researching and informing us of this for years and years. I get weary of the statistics, in part, because they can pure rhetoric when removed from their context. American's make more money but American's also spend more money on daily needs. We can help AIDS in Africa, but what do we do to help our own communities? What is more, Americans outgive the rest of the world in relief efforts, something few if any empires have done unless they owned the property themselves. I knew people who make, in world's standards, quite a bit of money, but are constantly living on the edge of feeding their family and giving them a good education, paying insurances, taxes, and on and on. One day our leaders may discover that many are not motivated by statistical rhetoric as much as we are motivated by example, watching needs be met and being invited to help those needs. This is where Shane Claiborne outshines most evangelical spokespeople on this issue.

If you're looking for an evangelical motivation to help the oppressed and how it is done, read Shane. If you want a theology of Scripture about how God reaches the oppressed and how quickly we fall when we lose dependence on him (and if you haven't read the Bible yourself and found this to be true), then grab Bell and Golden's book and give it a good run through. Then, be excited to read your Bible with fresh eyes.

And if you want to see how the church has done this through the centuries, even in the American empire, step outside of modern evangelicalism a bit and look around. The Quakers are a good start. Let's not make the mistake that evangelicalism is THE church, though many evangelicals have risen to the occassion from time to time (we can thank our fundamentalist roots for segregating us from culture and from relief efforts that align us too closely with those preaching the 'social gospel'). Bell and Golden are trying to uproot, in a good way, some of those roots.

I'm troubled when the authors oversimplify problems, like saying the only reason we are in the middle-east is for oil. Sometimes they sound like a political sound-byte in these pages (well, a manifesto is supposed to be political, so maybe that's why it sounds political! :)). It feels more emotional and uninformed than a real education into what is really going on. No one will doubt that America has empire-like attributes in recent years, but it has been unlike most empires in world history. This isn't noted much, if at all. And they don't separate out the American people from poor leadership (just like we shouldn't curse all the Jews because a few rotten Jewish leaders crucified Jesus). We need less head-wagging and finger-pointing. There seems to be two sides among evangelicals today: those who fly the American flag as they wave their Bible and those who are suspicious of America because, as a country, we've done some damage. I'd like to see more tension between the two as builders of God's Kingdom but also citizenry with a voice in a democratic republic.

Oversimplifying issues may cause us to oversimplify solutions and leave many enthusiastic but unempowered.

The footnotes are the place the authors get casual. This kind of casualness in writing is growing more popular but it feels like another modern device. Do these authors really want to be that close of a friend to me as a reader? If so, why not give an email address so we can do that lunch? I would have liked to see the writing style here offer an invitation for real connection.

A final point is that Bell and Golden say you cannot market or make a trend out of an authentic kingdom life. But it seems that this is what's happening. This will be a trend and that's probably something that cannot be avoided. That these men have a vehicle of a mega-church to sell books furthers the illustration (and publishers like mega-pastors writing books because the first 10,000 sales are a given... and then word spreads).

So while I want to believe the church can't be marketed, I would rather hear it more from those who aren't in the larger evangelical system. It's too convenient. I want to hear grass-roots creatives who do things in quiet places among quiet conversations and away from the dazzling lights.

That's why I recommend reading grass-roots creatives than evangelical superstars. And, I have a hunch that these authors would be glad a book like this motivated you to do the same (they do quote Anne Lamott!).

Now that I've finished the book, I still don't understand the cover...

What is a "Christian"?

My friend, Rachel Wolf, a Jew with a storied history in the Messianic movement, wrote the following piece for the Messianic Times (reprinted here with her permission).

Read this, press into it, what does it do to your understanding of "Christian"?

What if God was calling the non-Jewish human world into some form of Jewishness?

What if we believed that Jesus was in fact a Jew and we're called to be like him?

How would you see things differently? Or does it matter?

Coffee and the Meaning of the Life
by Rachel Wolf

A few weeks ago, I bumped into an old friend at Starbucks. We had spent many memorable hours together in English Lit. She had moved out of the country shortly after college, and had recently come back to town. Never one to mince words, after some initial catch-ups, she said, “You’re an intelligent person. I understand that you had a religious experience, but how can you believe that goyishe nonsense?”

I was dumbfounded. Not because I was offended. (Hey, after various confrontations with professional anti-missionaries this was a raving compliment.) Nor because I was shocked by the question. (C’mon, I had asked myself the same question plenty of times over the years!)

I was speechless because I wanted to give her a meaningful answer. How could I even begin to compress 30+ years of painful, in fact, gut-wrenching, personal, spiritual and intellectual searching into a brief chat over latte with Stevie Wonder singing in the background?

For a moment I must have looked like I was about to be sick. “Are you okay?” was the next question.

I jolted headlong over my jumbled thoughts and tripped down a verbal staircase: “But it’s not goyishe. It’s really Jewish. Well, no, the nonsense isn’t Jewish. I mean it’s not nonsense. I mean there are some Gentile believers who really understand that it’s Jewish. And maybe I shouldn’t call Christianity nonsense. And I certainly don’t think of myself as a Christian, not that all Christians are bad or anything. But I can understand why you feel that way -- I mean about goyishe nonsense, not that all Christians are bad.”

She was now the one who looked pale. To make matters worse, I noticed that some of my coffee had managed to jump out of that little sipping hole onto my sweater as I was desperately gesturing, in hopes of whipping my airborne thoughts into some semblance of order.

“What?”

I took a breath, my eyes welling up with tears, as I searched again into the galaxies of my past.

“It’s like Alice Through the Looking Glass and I’m Alice.” My heart was bursting with the pain of the years as if it were all fresh. Please don’t cry, I pleaded with myself.

“It’s like, I know exactly how things look to you. I know how the world looks from your eyes. It’s me. You’re me. Look, I wear Jewish history like a mantle. The expulsions, the blood libels, the Protocols, the traditions, the ya ba by by bys, the Holocaust, all of it. It’s me, it’s where I come from; it’s who I am.

“But I’ve been through the looking glass, and now I see the same world, the same history, the same Bible, all the same stuff, but all turned around and inside out. And even when I want to, I can’t go back. The strange thing is, the looking glass world is the real thing, and we have all been trapped in the two-dimensional looking glass thinking it was real.”

“So, you mean you think Christianity is true and Judaism is backwards?”

My mouth opened, lips poised to speak, and closed again. Was the distance was too vast to span? How in the world do I communicate an alternate reality that is as different as that of another universe -- yet, at the same time, the very same thing I grew up believing and yearning for? Mere words seemed inadequate.

“No, no, not at all. (Nervous laugh.) We’ve all been trapped in the looking glass: the Jews, the Christians, even the Marxists and secularlists. I know it sounds ridiculous to say this, but all of Western religious thought has been skewed; it's been operating from an erroneous 'cosmology.'”

“I thought we were talking about religion?”

“Okay. As I see it, there are two basic aspects of this that seem like mishegas to us modern American Jews, or I guess to modern secularized Jews in general-- the goyishe nonsense you’re talking about. Tell me if this kind of summarizes what you mean:

"First, there’s the God idea: ‘How can you believe in a real personal God who can actually speak to you/communicate with you? Don’t you have to be either some sort of naive, uneducated Southern Christian, someone from the Middle Ages, or schizophrenic to believe that?’

"And. second, there’s the Christian/Jesus thing: ‘How can you believe that this one historical person is the key to salvation (whatever that is)?’”

“Yeehh...” said my friend thoughtfully. “There are lots of other issues, but I guess those two things summarize the main things pretty well.”

“Yeah. And, by the way, taking that step into ‘being a believer’ does not always make all the questions and wierdness go away. In some cases it temporarily enhances the wierdness. Does that make sense?

“Well, no, but go on.”

“Well, it’s taken me over thirty years of struggling and studying to find answers that satisfy me-- in science, history, Christian-Jewish relations, apparent anti-semitism in the New Testament, the ongoing importance of Jewish survival, etc. etc. But what I understand now is this:

“God is really real. God’s not a concept. Abraham didn’t invent monotheism. God is the author of reality. Life is a personal story, not a bizarre accident. The Bible is a story. As Heschel put it, it’s the story about God in search of man [humans]. God is the source of all life, and he desires for the life he created to be reconciled to him.

“And the central characters in this story are the Jews. We Jews -- even today -- we Jews have a particular, even a crucial, role to play in this story. We truly have an assignment, a job to do, and it’s about tikkun olam, but lasting eternally effective tikkun olam.”

“But hasn’t science proved that the universe is random?”

“There is no compelling reason why the universe has to be random and impersonal like we grew up being told it is. Nothing in science makes that a necessary conclusion. I’ve looked at it really hard. Materialism, the belief that matter is all there is and life is a random accident, is merely a philosophical choice.”

“Okay, okay so what about Jesus?”

“He’s the hope of Israel. He's called the ‘glory of my people Israel’ in the book of Luke.”

“You’ve got to be kidding. I thought he was the Christ-child in the manger and all that. The Bethlehem star and the wise men.”

"We speak of Tikkun Olam, our obligation to do whatever we can to repair the world. Yet with all of our amazing and important gifts to the world, we have failed to see that we cannot overcome the vast evil in the world solely by our natural gifts and generosity. We have to work in partnership with the one who destroyed the power of death itself -- Yeshua the Messiah. We have a real assignment to accomplish true tikkun olam through the power of the spirit of God.

"What did Yeshua tell his Jewish disciples? He told them, 'Tell them that the kingdom of heaven is near, heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse those with malignant diseases, drive out evil spirits.' Yeshua also explained his ministry like this (from Isa. 61): To preach good news to the poor, to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives, and release from darkness for the prisoners, to comfort all who mourn...

"So the Christians are caught in the glass thinking that the New Testament and Jesus and all that stuff is Christian. And we are stuck thinking the same thing -- ‘Christian’ having a different connotation in each case. But the reality is that you can’t really understand who Jesus -- Yeshua -- was/is unless you let go of the whole Christianity thing and understand that it is all Jewish -- but open to all who want to join in, Jew or not. This world is in terrible shape. It’s going to take more than human ingenuity and compassion to fix it. There’s really life -- reality -- in this thing -- in him. I don't know -- I can't explain it any better right now."

"Well," said my friend (who is a dear rebel in her own right) "maybe there are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreampt of in my philosophies." She laughed and retrieved a "Stain Stick" out of her purse.