Being Balaam

My good friend Elisabeth (see her blog under my favorite links section) is having me read a book called Velvet Elvis. It's by Rob Bell, the pastor of a mega-church called Mars Hill in Michigan. Strike one against him. It's written to be “super-accessible-easy-to-read-eye-catching-and-different,” for all us supposedly too-hip Gen X-ers. Strike two. His theology often raises my heresy hackles and brings forward all my recessed Calvinist genes. Strike three. He's also got an annoying habit of being right.
I have no problem seeing the sermons in stones, learning my lessons from literature, and having points proven on me by pagans. It's part and parcel of God being unavoidable. But learn from a Christian man whose very context I abhor, whose culturally-relevant message grates on me, and whose point of view is the most successfully post-modern-and-still-true I've ever found? Please no!
But God (isn't that always the way it is?) forges ahead using the messenger I would hate. I have rearranged the order of these quotations, but they all come from chapter three. Or, as Rob calls it, Movement Three:

“In the same way that something can be labeled “Christian” and not be true, something can be true and not be labeled Christian. Paul quotes Cretan prophets and Greek poets. He is interested in whether or not what they said is true. Now to be able to quote those prophets and poets, Paul obviously had to read them. And study them. And analyze them. And I'm sure he came across all kinds of things in their writings that he didn't agree with. So he sifts and sorts and separates the light from the dark and then claims and quotes the parts that are true...
Have you ever heard missionaries say they were going to “take Jesus” to a certain place? What they meant, I assume, was that they had Jesus and they were going to take him to a place like China or India or Chicago where people apparently didn't have him.
I would ask them if people in China and India and Chicago are eating and laughing and enjoying things and generally being held together? Because if they are, then Jesus, in a way that is difficult to fully articulate, is already present there.
So the issue isn't so much taking Jesus to people who don't have Him, but going to a place and pointing out to the people there the creative, life-giving God who is already present in their midst.
It is searching for the things they have already affirmed as real and beautiful and true and then telling them who you believe is the source of all that....
...Muslim culture doesn't allow for financial debt, so people only build with cash. They work for a while, run out of money, save up, keep working, and eventually get the house done, which they own, debt-free. I was struck with how different Western culture would be if we had a similar aversion to debt. How many people do we know who are crippled with financial debt? Having less debt is a better way to live. I affirm the value of the Muslim people of Turkey because it is true, it is good, and it is a better way to live. It doesn't matter where I find it, who speaks it or lives it, or what they believe. I claim and affirm truth wherever I find it...
...Missions then is less about the transportation of God from one place to another and more about the identification of a God already there. It is almost as if being a good missionary means having really good eyesight. Or maybe it means teaching people to use their eyes to see things that have always been there; they just didn't realize it. You see God where others don't. And then you point Him out.
Perhaps we ought to replace the word missionary with tour guide, because we cannot show people something we haven't seen.”

This is why when I hear that bit from The Matrix that goes, “This is your last chance. After this, there is no turning back. You take the blue pill - the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill - you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit-hole goes,” I think of leaving my nets by the Sea of Galilee and following Jesus. That's why I'll occasionally read Plato— because I think he was scratching the tip of an iceberg with his theory of forms. It's why I can see the parallels between Hosea/Gomer and U2's With or Without You.
This is no argument, of course, for pursuing all sorts of depravity just to find the pearls in the mud. Paul says, "I am free to do all things; but not all things are wise. I am free to do all things; but I will not let myself come under the power of any." (1Co 6:12) I'm not advocating watching The Matrix, especially if the Holy Spirit has made it clear to you that you shouldn't. But living in this world, ministering in this world, there will be a lot of mud slung our direction, a lot of it we'll have to wade through to reach higher ground. We need to recognize the truth in mud, i.e., it's bad for hiking though, but good for your face. See? Pearls.
Which means that if Balaam was better off listening to his donkey, the least I must do is give Velvet Elvis a chance.