Comments on: Daddy, why don’t you go to church with us?

By: Zac

Zac — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 22:11:10 +0000

Thanks Mark! I’ll message you on Facebook. I’m definitely trending more towards universalism. I just can’t be sure that the “others” are wrong, especially if the “others” feel the same way about me.

By: Mark

Mark — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 16:03:03 +0000

Hi Zac, Mark here from Facebook. If you think about hell, salvation, Jesus, etc. (i.e. the big eternal issues) long enough and follow everything to its conclusion, I’m convinced you either end up at unitarian/universalism or full-on trinitarian/predestination/Calvinism. There’s no middle ground and these destinations are, of course, mutually exclusive. I applaud your willingness to think thoroughly and not settle for a half-baked theology. However, your trajectory is universalism, which I’m convinced is wrong. Email me or message me on FB, if you’re interested, and I can send you a few things that helped me come to the opposite conclusion.
By the way, nice site design – I love the layout.
-Mark

By: Zac

Zac — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 19:37:38 +0000

Joy. You’ve set me up for some reading and blog browsing this weekend. I’m looking forward to it.

I’m not sure when the next trip back to AZ will be, but I’m going to make a trip to EmDes a part of it for sure. Thanks again for sharing this.

By: Joy

Joy — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 23:54:48 +0000

Zac…I couldn’t remember how to get back to your blog sorry for the delayed reply…..Here are a couple of blogs I read and people I have connected with that help me keep my head above water.
http://kathyescobar.com/2010/01/04/rethinking-the-word-pastor/
http://jonathanbrink.com/2010/01/19/missional-community-formation-part-1/
http://communitascollective.com/fiction-and-truth/
also blogs by Brian McLaren, Frank Viola, Tony Jones, Emergent Village
of course almost everyone in EmDes blogs and I blog too at http://giveandtake67.blogspot.com/
The Emerging Church Conference in NM is absolutely worth the investment…we are going.
Reading these people and their struggles…helps me feel I’m not CRAZY…(sure…going to hell maybe)…but not Crazy (o:
I hope that if you guys come back to AZ for a visit you’ll stop over and talk etc.!

By: Ryan

Ryan — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 17:21:09 +0000

If I move to Evansville we can start one. I’m probably a deist at this point anyway.

By: Zac

Zac — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 15:35:54 +0000

Thanks for the comment Ry Guy. For the record, I agree with you about the ambiguity of hell in scripture. That was probably my first real struggle in Bible college when I started taking classes on individual books in the Bible. Something just didn’t jive with God’s love and God’s wrath. Over the years, I’ve begun to see how much I read the bible, hear a sermon, read a book, etc. with my own beliefs informing all new information coming in. I believe that this is called eisegesis, as opposed to the more objective exegesis. Now, I’m at the point that I’m not sure that an objective view of any truth really exists. I know, I know. How very postmodern of me!

Really, as hard as it is for me to believe in hell, it’s just as hard for me to believe in a world where people seek God, but are unable to find Him outside of Jesus. If the Christian life experiencing the Kingdom of God here on earth, then those “outside” are experiencing a type of hell on earth. I just don’t see that from the non-Christians that I have met. If I’m not a Christian, then I am probably a panentheist. Unfortunately, they don’t have a church in my neighborhood.

By: Ryan

Ryan — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 00:22:07 +0000

Wow Zaccy. You freakin pagan. Just kidding. You, like the venerable prophet David Bazan, have let the idea and concept of hell creep in and reprioritize your personal beliefs. The concept of a loving God sending people to eternal torment does not sit well with people of our generation for sure. How can people who were created as sinners be held accountable for how they were created when they had nothing to do with it? It seems either people are following away all together over the issue (Bazan) or restructuring their beliefs to allow for a hell that better fits our definitions of justice (annihilationism, universalism). I think both these alternatives are biblically viable they’re pretty much where I ended up landing. I kinda think that hell is far too ambiguous in scripture to leave the Church over.

By: Zac

Zac — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 01:06:54 +0000

Joy,

Thank you for your kind and encouraging words. If we lived back in AZ, we would surely be apart of the EmDes conversations. Thank you for inviting us, all the same.

Where is your online community where you ask, wrestle, doubt, vent, seek, and experiment? Perhaps that would be an appropriate next step for me.

By: Joy

Joy — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 23:56:30 +0000

Zac,
First…thanks for having the guts to write this piece. It totally resonated with me( as cliche as that sounds) Your thoughts, subsequent questions and further wrestling with them and god…is refreshing to someone like me…who has in the last 2-3 years anyhow…found themselves in a sort of ambiguous “religious no man’s land” too .I never felt the freedom to be honest about my spiritual struggles and misgivings until recently.
While I know we ran in similar circles in the past…thru lc.tv…we never really got to know eachother. Seems we have lots of mutual friends in common…Bamfords, Newsomes etc…so many of these people have been invaluable sages as I navigate a new journey…@43 years old!
I am not sure if you still live in the valley or not…but…I want to extend a WARM invitation for you ( and your family) to visit us @ the Emerging Desert Cohort anytime you feel so inclined. Your questions and spiritual sturggles echo so many of not only my own but those of our entire group as well. It’s the only non ‘virtual’ place I have found that I feel safe to ask, wrestle, doubt, vent, seek, experiment etc.
You are not alone.