Whose Soul Will Be Condemned To Torment?

There has been a lively discussion going on over at Scot McKnight’s blog, Jesus Creed, about Brian McLaren’s view of the Soul-Sort Narrative in his new book, A New Kind Of Christianity.  Unfortunately, some of the theological talk went over my head but the last comment (at least it was the last one as of today) shared one of those real life illustrations that leaves a lot of the theological banter sounding cold and shallow.  Comment #107 by Lindsey, asked the question:  “Whose soul will be condemned to torment?”   Here’s part of what Lindsey had to say:

I attended a funeral of a man that I worked with. He was in his mid-forties and died of a rare form of cancer. He and his family were devoutly Jewish. The service was moving, spiritual, and had the raw feeling of the God of Abraham in Holy Spirit in the room. This man, Brooke, was an ophthalmologist, and had left his successful and lucrative practice to teach high school science to inner city kids. I taught with him. The kids were heartbreaking, helpless, and hopeless, and he built them up in every way. As he went through painful treatment, he refused to quit teaching, and taught up until a week before he died. The synagogue at his funeral was filled with his students: poor kids, minority kids, kids that had never set foot in a house of worship before. Through Brooke, these kids, and all who worked with him, saw God. Brooke, though he didn’t know it, was a true servant of Christ. Meanwhile, my very Christian neighbors across the street sport a confederate flag bumper sticker right next to their cross. Through this simple gesture, they have turned away many people in my neighborhood from even being willing to hear the name of Jesus. These people, have condemned countless people to eternity without Christ through their ignorance and selfishness.
So tell me, who’s soul will be condemned to torment?

In many ways this question is not relavant for me these days as I don’t embrace the theology that revolves around “who is going to heaven? who is going to hell?” but I believe the story that Lindsey surrounds the question with is important as it demonstrates the problem with the type of theology that I grew up with.

What do you think?

Three Things Tuesday

It’s Three Things Tuesday (well, it’s actually Wednesday and I’m running late but there’s no cute name to go along with Wednesday, so…it’s Three Things Tuesday) again.

Thing #1  The Real @DaliaLama

Believe it or not the Dalia Lama now has an official twitter account.

You can catch his tweets @DalaiLama.

Thing #2  Criticizing Church, Defending Church

Scott McKnight defends the church against her critics with arguments about the church being made up of a bunch of imperfect people therefore no one should expect her to be perfect…blah, blah, blah.

I think that is a poor defense…just because we (the body of Christ) are all imperfect and prone to make mistakes doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t be criticized when we do harm to others or that we should expect people to stick around while we do harm to them or those they care about.

But, in case I missed the point or read something out of context read his post at Jesus Creed (and the comments) for yourself and see what you think.

Thing #3  Billy Coffey

Maybe I’m out of the loop and everyone already knows about Billy Coffey, but I was pleasantly surprised to run across him in the blogosphere recently.  There is something raw and honest about his style – his writing really draws me in and I come away so glad to have read what he wrote.

For instance, check out a recent post he wrote called “What Happened To My Kindness”

Oh, and he has a book called Snow Day coming out later this year.