Book Review: The Wounded Healer

★★★★★

Henri Nouwen is one of those people you will often see quoted. For a while, it seemed like I saw a Nouwen quote every day. I knew I wanted to read one of his books, so I finally went for this one. The Wounded Healer is easy to read, easy to follow, and easy to finish (only 100 pages long). It is a simple book. But it is absolutely brilliant, and beautifully written. A profound look at modern humanity and a wonderful book for ministry. Indeed, it is properly titled The Wounded Healer: Ministry in Contemporary Society. It emphasizes every person's shared humanity and shows how the key to ministry is in that shared humanity. The quote on the front of the book says, "In our woundedness, we can become a source of life for others."

Nouwen describes the problem of the modern mind and then offers a path to liberation. He then describes the problem of the minds of the future, and likewise offers a path to their liberation. He then provides an example of a human in need and describes Christian leadership as diving into the personal humanity of the one in need and partnering with him in his need. Finally, he describes the wounded healer, his heart for others and his actions toward them.

These pages read like poetry and resonate like music. Nouwen's book is essential for every minister's library. In general, it is essential for those who desire to transform lives with the love of Christ in our time and place. The modern mind and the consequential minds of the future are described perfectly, as is the path to liberation through the wounded healer.

Bane and Hell: Tortured with Hope

“But my people did not listen to my voice,
And Israel did not obey me.

So I gave them over to the stubbornness of their hearts,
To walk in their own devices."
                                         - Psalm 81:12

"Professing to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the form of corruptible man and of birds and four-footed animals and crawling creatures. Therefore, God gave them over in the lusts of their hearts to impurity . . . God gave them over to degrading passions . . . God gave them over to a depraved mind."
                                                                                                - Romans 1:22-24, 26, 28

The Power of Choice

There is something horrible that happens to humans when they become so full of sin that they reject God completely and insist on going their own way--God lets them go. I am speaking of Hell.

With our beliefs and actions, we either say 'Yes' to God or we reject him. Or to speak eschatalogically, we either choose Heaven or Hell. As Oscar Wilde's Dorian said, "Each of us has heaven and hell in him."

One cannot go to Heaven if he has rejected God.

No matter how much God wants everyone to go to Heaven (Ez. 33:11; 18:31-32; Matt. 18:14; Tim 2:4; 2 Pet. 3:4), if people reject God and choose Hell then that is their decision and God cannot override that. He cannot violate someone's free will by bringing them up to Heaven when they have chosen Hell with their thoughts and actions.

As Rob Bell wrote in Love Wins, "God gives us what we want, and if that's hell, we can have it. We have that kind of freedom, that kind of choice. . . . We can have all the hell we want."(1)

And as C. S. Lewis wrote in The Great Divorce, "All that are in Hell, choose it. Without that self-choice there could be no Hell."(2) 

HELL

But what is Hell? Is it a place to which God sends people? Is it a place where people are tortured for their sins? Will it be like in the movies where the hero finally gets to the villain and beats him saying something like, "This is for what you said about my wife, and this is for what you did to my car!" I don't think so.

I think it will be a place where people "walk in their own devices," where people pursue impurity "in the lusts of their hearts," where people are full of "degrading passions" and live in a "depraved mind." 

Requiem for a Dream is a movie about people who get addicted to drugs and, as a result, their lives spiral into shocking, tragic hells of horror and despair. The Lost Weekend is a movie about a guy who is addicted to alcohol and this addiction ruins every part of his life and leaves him in a hell where there is no comfort, only sadness and even terror. Shame is a movie about a guy who hates himself so much because of an addiction to sex. He finds himself in a hell where "sex is his cross to bear"(3) because he finds no pleasure in it, but always feels the need for it.

"People choose to live in their own hells all the time," says Bell.(4) I think Hell will look like this. As Martin Luther said, "sin is the punishment of sin."(5)

About a week ago, I went to watch my fiancee perform in the play Eurydice. In it, the main character, Eurydice, dies and goes to "the Underworld"--Hades (the play is a modernization of a Greek myth). At one point it is referred to as Hell but that's not an accurate title given what our culture understands Hell to be.

Anyway, the "Lord of the Underworld" said something I found very interesting. He said, "We make it real nice here, so people want to stick around."

Though the Underworld in this play (and in the Greek myth) is simply the place where people go when they die rather than the alternative to Heaven, this statement is very telling of what I think Hell really is.

I am not trying to say that people are comfortable in Hell. I just think people will pursue pleasure in Hell the same way they do in life. Except, like the character in Shame, there is no real pleasure in it.

What else does this craving, and this helplessness, proclaim but that there was once in man a true happiness, of which all that now remains is the empty print and trace?
This he tries in vain to fill with everything around him, seeking in things that are not there the help he cannot find in those that are, though none can help, since this infinite abyss can be filled only with an infinite and immutable object; in other words by God himself.
                                                                                                              - Blaise Pascal

People on earth try in vain to fill the infinite abyss inside them with everything they can find, "seeking in things that are not there the help [they] cannot find in those that are, though none can help." We can see this all of the time. A perfect example is from Woody Allen, who said in a recent interview,

When I look back on my life, I’ve been very lucky that I lived out all these childhood dreams. I wanted to be a movie actor, and I became one. I wanted to be a movie director, and a comedian, and I became one. I wanted to play jazz in New Orleans, and I played in street parades and joints in New Orleans and opera houses and concerts all over the world. There was nothing in my life that I aspired toward that hasn’t come through for me. But, despite all these lucky breaks, why do I still feel like I got screwed somehow?(6)

As I said in a past blog, all people have fires in their hearts and they are constantly trying to find water to put out their fires. What they use, however, is oil labeled "Water" that only makes the fire worse. This is exactly what I think people will be doing in Hell. And this, I think, is much more terrifying.

BANE AND HELL

In The Dark Knight Rises, Bane describes a prison in which he spent most of his life. The prison is underground and there is a well-like structure that reveals the world above (see the picture at the top). Prisoners frequently try to climb out, but it is much too tall and treacherous for them to make it.  

Bane says, "There's a reason why this prison is the worst hell on earth: hope. Every man who has ventured here over the centuries has looked up to the light and imagined climbing to freedom. So easy, so simple. And like shipwrecked men turning to sea water from uncontrollable thirst, many have died trying. I learned here that there can be no true despair without hope."

Bane might as well be describing Hell itself. Hell's inhabitants will be tormented with the need and desire to put out their fires, to fill their infinite abyss. The impurity they pursue in their lusts and degrading passions will be their hope. Indeed, like Bane, it will claim "I am necessary evil." It will promise fulfillment, but will not deliver. "You think the darkness is your ally?" It is just oil labeled 'Water.' It will just make them worse, as more drugs, more alcohol, and more sex make the drug addict, the alcoholic, and the sex addict worse. "The shadows betray you, because they belong to me." All the while, they will be tortured with the hope that the next dose will satisfy them. "Hope is really the key to torture." They will be slaves to this disposition; it will overcome them and control them. "Do you feel in charge?" This is what it means to be led by a "depraved mind." Nothing will satisfy them, because the "infinite abyss can be filled only . . . by God himself."

HEAVEN

Heaven is exactly the opposite. For one to be in Heaven, one would have to completely die to the passions and desires of one's self--that is, one's focus on fulfilling the self. One would have to lose his life. In this dying is life. In this losing is the finding of truth.

"Now those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires."  (Gal. 5:24)

"Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit." (Jn. 12:24)

"He who has found his life will lose it, and he who has lost his life for My sake will find it." (Matt. 10:39)

In The Great Divorce, a ghost from Hell talks to a "solid spirit" in Heaven whom he knew as a human on earth. The solid spirit had murdered a man on earth. The ghost was baffled that the murderer went to Heaven and, when the solid spirit told him there was no need to bother about it, the ghost asked him, "Aren't you ashamed of yourself?" "No," said the solid spirit, "I do not look at myself. I have given up myself."(7)

Christ is our image of God, and he gave himself up for us. The Trinity is a union of self-sacrificing, self-emptying love. To be in Heaven would mean to be transformed into a state of this love. In this, we give up ourselves. We give up seeking to fulfill our infinite abyss. But, paradoxically, in dying to the passions and desires of our flesh, in giving up our focus on self-fulfillment, in losing our lives, we experience the fullness of the truth and we find life. "For if we have become united with [Christ] in the likeness of His death, certainly we shall also be in the likeness of His resurrection . . . for he who has died is freed from sin." (Romans 6:5,7)

In this, there will be no fire to put out, for we will be engulfed in an Ocean of transforming love. Rather than seeking to fill up our emptiness, we will be whole vessels of God's self-sacrificial, self-emptying, other-focused love!

I will conclude with a reminder:

Our job as disciples of Christ is to make people aware of the Ocean of God's love that can put out their fires. We are to dive into that Ocean and invite everyone to dive in with us.

Our job is to introduce them to the universal salvific love of Christ. The love that transforms. The love that fulfills. The love that satisfies.

Everything I've been describing about Hell is an absolute tragedy. It should inspire nothing but sadness in our hearts as Christians, because it inspires nothing but sadness in the heart of God.

Let us join the trinity in holding out our arms toward the lost. Let us be extensions of Trinity love--self-emptying, other-focused, compassionate, peacemaking, life-transforming. Let us lay down our lives for the lost, for no greater love is there (Jn 15:13).

Notes:

(1) Rob Bell, Love Wins (New York: HarperCollins, 2011), 72 and 113.

(2) C. S. Lewis, The Great Divorce, (New York: Macmillan, 1946), 72.

(3) This was the title of Roger Ebert's review of the film.

(4) Bell, 114.
(5) Martin Luther, quoted in Anthony Tyrrell hanson, The Wrath of the Lamb (Eugene: Wipf & Stock, 1957), 17. 

(6) Woody Allen: A Documentary, directed by Robert B. Weide, Whyaduck Productions, 2012.

(7) Lewis, 27. 

To Lead and Yield

I was driving to the airport with my future father-in-law about a week ago. He asked me, "so you think you're ready for this marriage stuff, huh?" I, of course, told him I most certainly am. I then proceeded to share with him what I have found to be the weirdest thing about transitioning from being single to being married. It's that I am so used to focusing solely on my own thoughts and feelings and desires, and marrying someone is all about entering into a life in which I am not at all the chief concern. It's a life of us.

I've always thought that the worst sinful mindset is that of selfishness. The Trinity is a union of self-emptying love. There is no focus on the self. Thus, selfishness is the very opposite of Trinity-like love. It's the worst sinful mindset and it's also the most common. We are all selfish. Because it's so easy to be selfish. We think our thoughts, feel our feelings, need our needs, want our desires. I wake up in my mind, stare into myself in the mirror, and live my life. Thus, it's very hard to not focus on myself. And thus, the hardest/weirdest part about the single-to-married transition is that, in marriage, I will no longer only live my life. I will live our life. I cannot only consider my thoughts, feelings, and desires. Though I live in my mind, I have to consider her thoughts, feelings, and desires. Not only do I have to consider them, I have to consider them more than my own, above my own, and before my own.

My future father-in-love then said, "You have to lead and yield at the same time. It's an interesting combination."

Marriage is a union. As a husband, I will have the responsibility to lead the union to what's best for the family unit (to borrow a phrase from Raising Arizona). At the same time, however, I must yield to my wife's needs. I must bring them into the equation--to all of the equations--and make them priority.

This is similar to the way we must lead and yield in our spiritual lives.
I've read some people who say that humans had free will until the fall, and that's when they lost it. They further say that when one becomes saved, he regains his free will.
I think it's almost the other way around.

I believe all of humanity has always had free will. And I think an essential part of being a disciple of Christ is surrendering one's self to God--surrendering one's will to God. It is yielding to his will for our lives. Not that we lose our free will in this, but we give up trying to make our own way and we submit to him.

At the same time, however, we must--in a sense--lead. We have to use our free will to say 'Yes' to God. We have to respond to God's initiative. We have to surrender. We have to submit. We have to engage. We have to take God's hand.

But once we take his hand, we must yield to him and let him lead us to where He wants us to go.
As Christian artist Jason Upton sings, "I don't know where I'm going. I've been blinded by the truth."
Choosing to follow God is a daily decision. Each day, we have the choice to go our own way or yield to God's way.

Christianity is about yielding to God, but we have to take the lead in order to give God the lead.
We have to lead ourselves each day into God's leadership.

To conclude:

Love is self-emptying.

"Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others." (Phil. 2:3-4)

"For where you have envy and selfish ambition, there you find disorder and every evil practice. But the wisdom that comes from heaven is first of all pure; then peace-loving, considerate, submissive, full of mercy and good fruit, impartial and sincere." (Jas. 3:16-17)

In marriage, I must lead my family but yield to my family's needs. I cannot solely consider my own. Love is not self-seeking (1 Cor. 13:5)
In our spiritual lives, we must lead in choosing to surrender to God, and we must yield and submit to his will.
We should not live for ourselves and only adhere to our wills. 
Our lives should be led with a mindset that is supremely other-focused. First and foremost, God-focused. In marriage, spouse-focused. And in every-day life, neighbor-focused.
We as Christians are called to lead our lives--in true Christ-like fashion--yielding to God and yielding to the needs of others. 

Book Review: Is God Really in Control?

My last review was of Greg Boyd's book Is God to Blame? Beyond Pat Answers to the Problem of Suffering. This book--asking what amounts to the same question--provides perfect examples of the "pat answers" Boyd talks about. I purposefully read these books together because 1) they are asking the same question, and 2) they are on completely opposite sides of the spectrum. Greg Boyd is an open theist and Jerry Bridges is a Calvinist.

I bought this book to use as a source for my book against Calvinism. I found everything I expected. Bridges attempts to answer the problem of evil and suffering by saying that God is in control and is ultimately working out everything for good.

As far as Scripture is concerned, he does provide a considerable amount of verses that support his views. Unfortunately, these verses are taken out of context and merely at face value and are used in a way that the authors could not have meant when studied properly. (Ironically, most of the verses he refers to are discussed by Boyd in a chapter in Is God to Blame? entitled "Providence and Control.")

This book is full of contradictions and absurdities. His response to the problem of evil just raises more questions that he cannot answer reasonably.

For example, he affirms that all things are caused by God. He even provides a list of examples, including: "Did another driver go through a red light, strike your car, and send you to the hospital with multiple fractures?" He states at the end of the list that "All of these circumstances are under the controlling hand of our sovereign God, who is working them out in our lives for our good." Yet, later, he states that "A driver can cause an auto accident and, in his own mind, evade his carelessness by attributing the accident to the sovereignty of God. Obviously . . . [this attitude is] unbiblical and foolish." This is a logical fallacy.

God causes driver A to go through a red light, hit a car, and send driver B to the hospital, but driver A can't attribute his accident to God's sovereignty? This is an obvious contradiction.

At a couple points, he scratches the surface of reason. At one point he says, “Granted we live in a sin-cursed world, and all [catastrophes in life] could simply be attributed to the sinfulness of mankind. But if we accept that God is sovereign . . . then we must conclude that God is in control of even these terrible circumstances and is guiding them with His infinite wisdom to their appointed purpose.” Yes, the evil and suffering in life can simply be attributed to the sin-cursedness of the world. Why is it that the cause of evil and suffering is either God or the devil? It seems like it should be quite clear what comes from God and what comes from Satan--but it isn't so clear with Calvinists like Bridges.

At another point, he states that "Such a concept of God’s sovereignty appears to destroy the free will of humans and make them mere puppets on God’s stage," and further states that we must use the Bible as our source, and the Bible--he believes--provides that God is in control of all things. He then supports this point with Bible verses. He makes no attempt, however, to refute his own claim that this destroys the free will of humans and makes them mere puppets on God’s stage. So, then, in his own words, we are mere puppets on God's stage.

I will conclude with a quote from Greg Boyd: “We create impossible problems for ourselves . . . when we go beyond what Scripture teaches.” This book creates so many impossible problems with its pat answers, contradictions, and absurdities. I do not recommend this book to anyone searching for a good answer to the problem of suffering or to anyone seeking to know more about God.

Book Review: Is God to Blame?

★★★★★

 This is the fourth book of Greg Boyd's that I have purchased this summer, and I have 3 more in my cart. There is a good reason for this. Is God to Blame? - Beyond Pat Answers to the Problem of Suffering is--I think--the layman's version of his book Satan & the Problem of Evil. In it, we find that Dr. Boyd is very good at answering the toughest theological questions. I hear next year he will be coming out with a book about the violent portraits of God in the Old Testament, to be called The Crucifixion of the Warrior God, for which I am extremely excited. He is dedicated to the tough questions--something I greatly admire. In my own life, I aspire to be that kind of theologian and Boyd has become an inspiration to me.

In Is God to Blame?, Boyd refutes the "blueprint theology" in which all things are considered to be part of God's divine predestined plan. I have found it to be a great source for the book I'm writing against Calvinism.

However, the book is mainly focused on answering hard questions. Why is this happening to me? Why is there suffering? Why does God seem so arbitrary? Why are my prayers unanswered while others' are answered? Why do I suffer while others are blessed? Why do my prayers fail when the prayers of others come true? Does prayer even make a difference?

You may think these questions cannot be answered--after all, they have been asked and pondered for thousands of years--but Boyd does an incredible job answering them. His answers are about as good as it gets. One thing I really respect about Boyd is how close he stays to Scripture. All of his points are backed by considerable Scriptural support. Another thing I respect about him is that he never settles for cliches or "pat answers" but always faces the problems head on, considers their reality, and provides a solution that--though could never take away the pain--can satisfy the doubt and the intellectual frustration with God and life in general. I wish people like Woody Allen would read this book.

The only problem I had with the book of which I can think was with chapter 8. In this chapter, he analyzes the blueprint interpretation of Romans 9 and explains why the interpretation is flawed. Then he provides his own interpretation. I do not feel that it was a very strong chapter. In fact, it's the shortest chapter in the book. Not that short means weak, it just wasn't very thorough. If I were an educated Calvinist, I don't think I would be convinced. As someone who has studied Romans 9 quite a bit, I felt that there was a lot more he could have fleshed out. That being said, it doesn't seem like this is an academic book geared toward a biblical-theological studies audience and, thus, he cannot be faulted for not diving in real deep.

Also, I don't think I agree with his solution for the question "Why does God harden hearts in the Bible?" although I won't bore you explaining why--maybe in a future post.

To conclude, the problems Boyd confronts in this book are relevant to all people, and his answers are incredibly sufficient and helpful. Reading this book has been a great encouragement to my walk with God and has been great fuel for my faith. I highly recommend it.