No Googling! And remember, thinking through the ideas expressed in the quote is more important than guessing the source.
The church has been preoccupied with the question, “What happens to your soul after you die?” As if the reason for Jesus coming can be summed up in, “Jesus is trying to help get more souls into heaven, as opposed to hell, after they die.” I just think a fair reading of the Gospels blows that out of the water. I don’t think that the entire message and life of Jesus can be boiled down to that bottom line.
Brian McLaren
Update 8/4 2:00: The answer is Brian McLaren.
This quote gets at one of the things that makes dealing with the “emerging church” movement so difficult: American Evangelicalism has plenty of faults, so it’s easy to make valid criticisms of it. Sometimes those criticisms are rooted in concern for orthodoxy. On the other hand, sometimes they come from an effort to change what “orthodoxy” means.
As a Reformed thinker, I see the Gospel message as being primarily about God’s glory — as John Piper has said, God Is The Gospel. In that sense, I agree with Mr. McLaren inasmuch as the Gospel is not just about “getting more people into heaven”. But in saying that, is Mr. McLaren implying that we need not worry about the question of heaven or hell? So Vicki, I’m with you — “what do you mean by that” is the question we ought to be asking.
In the end, this is one of those times when you really do need to consider the source. Eric said it well when he characterized this as a “classic overreaction.” Brian McLaren has demonstrated a tendency to focus on the here-and-now aspects of the Gospel to the exclusion of the eternal consequences addressed by the life, death, resurrection, and teachings of Jesus Christ.
I fear that at the end of all things many will find themselves to have been deceived by Mr. McLaren (and those like him). They invite would-be followers of Christ to leave the straight and narrow path and play on the thin ice of seduction and novelty.
Derek Webb
This person seems to be saying that Christianity is not just about how we die but how we live and I think there’s definitely validity to that.
Gary DeMar? It sounds like something someone with a postmillenial outlook would say (though I don’t think the sentiment would necessarily be confined to that camp)
I would say I agree with this person. While the Gospel does redeem souls, The ultimate is to bring glory to God. We were made in his image for a reason. All creation is a reflection of how great He is.
The term, “Blows that out of the water” sounds very modern to me. I’m going to guess Matt Redman.
Sounds like Donald Miller to me. But maybe that’s just because I’m not familiar enough with old books…
“Jesus is trying to help get more souls into heaven, as opposed to hell, after they die.”
I hope this isn’t any part of why Jesus came — not the bottom line, a summary, or even just a small tangent.
The red flags are the words “trying” and “Jesus/God” in the same sentence. And also the phrase “help get more.”
This view portrays a powerless God doing the best He can to get people into heaven while also ignoring that without Jesus, there would be NO human souls in heaven — not just less.
It’s probably a straw-man representation of a man-centered theology that is much more insidious and much more dangerous…
I just wanted to clarify. When I said I agree with this person, I meant that I agree with this point, “I just think a fair reading of the Gospels blows that out of the water”. It seems to me that this person sees the Gospel being maligned. He or she does not agree with the first part of what they said.
I hope I’m not reading this wrong.
I understand Vicki.
I’m not sure they disagree with the statement entirely. They may be saying that while what happens to your soul is part of it, there is more to the life and message of Jesus than just that.
Wow, what a statement. I agree that (much of) the church treats Jesus as a begging, impotent Savior who longs to be with us and only wants to be with us forever. It just turns my stomach that I once thought this way. Thank you, God, for Your grace!
Because of the wording and the almost political overtone of the statement (grrr), I’m leaning toward Derek Webb, also.
Oh, I think I know what your saying David. So, you think this person believes that Jesus is “trying” to do that, keep people out of hell? I just read it so differently. It sounded to me like he was slamming the church.
Boy oh boy! There is a beauty in context! I’d like to ask this person a “Columbo” question. What do you mean by that?
Tracy, I do think it sounds like a songwriter. Yikes! What if it’s David Koresh? I think he wrote songs too?
I’m frantically trying to think of all the fuzzy authors out there. Howz about Rob Bell.
I’m guessing it’s one of the Emergent Church guys. It sounds like he could be going towards the route of focusing on each of us having our own personal experience and story with God, rather than focusing on the gospel that Jesus died on the cross to atone for sins and reconcile us to God.
This sounds to me like a classic overreaction. I think the speaker is caricaturing the Billy Graham-style, “decision-oriented” approach to the Christian enterprise, then offering an alternative that goes too far.
I don’t think that “Jesus is trying to help get more souls into heaven, as opposed to hell, after they die.”
However, Christianity is fundamentally an eschatological religion and a “fair reading of the Gospels” makes this clear.
Jesus’ message was the arrival of the Kingdom of God and our relation to it (in or out). That Kingdom has an ‘already’ component, but its fullness will not be realized until one of two things happens: 1) we die, or 2) Jesus returns. That Kingdom and our place in it is as close to a bottom line of the gospel message as we can get.
Here are just a few of the hundreds of references to “bottom line” of where we will spend an eternity. I found these in just a few minutes with my Bible software. Of course, there is a here-and-now component to most of these, but the real reward for the believer is not in this life but the next.
The answer is posted on the main entry.
Thanks for playing! I don’t have another quote in the queue, but keep an eye out… Lord willing, “Who Said It” will return (and it doesn’t necessarily have to be me doing it)!