A Review, Part V: The Explicit Gospel and Church Authority

See Parts I, II, III, and IV.

Chandler’s brief discussion of church covenants is concerning: “I am in a covenant relationship with the other members of The Village Church…we’ve been given the covenant community because we need each other, and together we’ll be more mature, experience more life, and know more joy than we ever would apart from one another.” (143-144) (See The Village Church’s covenant and statement of faith here.)

While the idea of a covenant relationship between the members of a church sounds good and very spiritual, the churches who practice this extra-biblical doctrine by having their members sign a covenant (which is actually a legal document) also have a pattern of high degrees of control over their members, including harsh church discipline.

This also plays into the alarming statement Chandler makes in chapter ten: “If there isn’t in the end a need to be sanctified by the ongoing work of the Holy Spirit, there certainly isn’t a need to be under the authority of a Bible-holding governing body of elders or pastors who can exercise church discipline, watch carefully over your soul, and make sure you are growing in your relationship with God.” (198)

Equating being under the authority of pastors or elders as equivalent to being sanctified by the Holy Spirit is disturbing. Being under the authority of sinful humans is not remotely the same as being transformed from the inside out by the Holy Spirit. It is not the responsibility of pastors or elders to exercise authority in making sure Christians are growing in their faith or watching over their souls or monitoring their relationship with God. Pastors are shepherds, not hall monitors or police officers. This directly contradicts the Protestant doctrine of the priesthood of all believers (1 Peter 2:4-5), and contradicts Matthew 20:25-28, where Jesus tells his disciples that there shall be no authority among them.

The Village Church itself has a history of problematic church discipline and authoritarianism, encapsulated in the story that made headlines in 2015. A church member annulled her marriage after her husband confessed to viewing child pornography (more accurately known as child sexual abuse material).

The church then placed her under church discipline because she annulled her marriage without consulting church leadership and because she resigned her membership. Her former husband was never put under discipline, despite committing actual crimes, and church leadership declared him repentant, disregarding entirely how mentally disturbed a person must be in order to consume child sexual abuse material. It is absolutely inappropriate for church leadership to evaluate the psychological state of an individual with a long history of secrecy around his criminal actions and declare him “repentant.”

It was not until the entire situation was made public that Chandler and the church leadership backed down and apologized to the former member. This type of situation is often handled terribly when church covenants are in play: Chandler’s “covenant relationship” with the other members of his church led to this outcome as he and other church leaders assumed that the member’s marriage status was theirs to dictate.

It’s easy and convenient to say “we should not discount truth because of the existence of abuses” (201), and much more difficult to face the fact that some Christian “truths” are a matter of interpretation and opinion and actually produce great harm, let alone investigate how you yourself may have contributed to such abuses.

Conclusion

In 1 John, the Bible explicitly tells us that God is love. Not merely that God loves us or that love pleases God or that he is loving, but that God cannot be separated from love because love is his very identity. 1 Corinthians tells us what love is: patient, kind, protective, trusting, persevering, hopeful, and unfailing. This is who God is. Love is not self-seeking, easily angered, dishonoring to others, or proud. This is not who God is.

I cannot find patience, kindness, protection, trust, or hope in this book. That alone makes its portrayal of the gospel suspect, regardless of the many other problems I’ve described, and the ones I did not. I cannot emphasize enough the omnipresence of God’s wrath and the total depravity of humanity throughout this entire book. Without love, Paul says, we are nothing. Without love, the gospel is not the gospel at all.

The classic verse that simplifies the gospel into its essential components, the first verse many of us learned as kids, John 3:16, is not referenced once. I speculate that verse was left out because it is thematically focused on God’s love and the eternal life he offers to us, with nary a mention of wrath or hell.

The appalling reductionist theology featured in this book is far from unique; if you do find it meaningful, I recommend “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” by Jonathan Edwards as far more eloquent and concise.

If you find the theology in this book abhorrent, as I do, I recommend the Gospel of John, filled with the words and the love of Christ.

Find other (much shorter and sometimes much snarkier) book reviews I’ve written over on Goodreads!

A Review, Part IV: The Explicit Gospel and an Attitude in Opposition to Christ

See Parts I, II, III, and V.

Some might argue that my issues with this book can be chalked up to theological differences. So let’s delve into the concerning parts of the book that aren’t solely theological, that reflect a tone and attitude at odds with the way Jesus treated people.

On page 100, Chandler quotes his “good friend Mark Driscoll,” demonstrating an utter lack of discernment in citing as a theological authority a man who had a long history even in 2012 of abusive behavior as a pastor and of making other disgusting comments about both women and men, dating back to 2001 when he called women “penis homes.” The same Mark Driscoll who is even now terrorizing another congregation, to whom Christianity Today devoted an entire podcast detailing the destruction he caused.

The book is filled with unpleasant gendered analogies and anecdotes, with women on the losing end every time. From referring to those who studied Koine Greek together as a brotherhood (147) to crass jokes such as “Now, there isn’t any way to keep seven women happy, much less seven hundred” (124), Chandler treats half of his readership as inferior and outside the inner circle of theological knowledge. This book is not targeted toward men; it is addressed to both genders. What is the purpose of these demeaning jokes? When is it ever acceptable to treat women this way?

Page 200 has a long rambling section discussing people more theologically aligned with the gospel in the air versus people more theologically aligned with the gospel on the ground, except that every reference to people uses the words “brothers” and “guys.” This section leaves women out of the theological conversation entirely, with the implication that women do not have thoughts and opinions on the tension between the gospel in the air and the gospel on the ground, or if they do, that they are not worth addressing or considering.

Isaiah 6:8 is referred to as “gutsy, masculine. We can hear Braveheart’s guttural yawp in there.” (72) I have no idea what is masculine about saying to the Lord, “Here am I. Send me!”

Then there is this dreadful section: “Somehow Psalm 139 got hijacked by women’s ministries, and although I think it’s important for women to understand they are fearfully and wonderfully made and not get into the silly game of comparing themselves to everyone around them, I think this text is far weightier than that.” (178) Declaring that women’s ministries hijacked Psalm 139 implies that women’s ministries do not have the same full and equal right to Scripture that any other type of ministry or Bible study has.

He paraphrases Solomon in Ecclesiastes 1:16 as saying “In case you think I’m a liar, let me remind you of this. I’m smarter than you, more powerful than you, and have more women than you.” (119) Solomon makes no reference to having any women in this verse. That gross addition is all Chandler’s emphasis. Women are not possessions to have. They are people. Any reference to women as objects or possessions has no place in a book representing the gospel.

Is this how Jesus spoke to and about women?

Chandler’s atrocious attitude toward people is not limited to gendered remarks, however. He says, “The Psalms, one of my personal favorites, features some of the writings of the great schizophrenic king, David. (I think he’s schizophrenic, because in one line he will say, ‘How long, Oh Lord, will you forsake me?’ And then two lines later he will say something like, ‘How great you are to be so near to me.’)” (114)

Schizophrenia is a serious mental illness that severely impacts people’s experiences of reality. Casually assigning that label to David treats schizophrenia as a stereotype and an adjective rather than a devastating condition. This also twists David’s genuine expression of emotion into something abnormal, when it is perfectly normal to have conflicting experiences and emotions in close proximity to each other. This is not an accurate description of schizophrenia, let alone mental illness as a whole. Such things should not be treated so flippantly or used as humor. Imagine if someone battling schizophrenia read this passage!

On page 115, Chandler says, “People who have Job-like experiences may moan, ‘Well, if life wasn’t like this, if I had more money, if I had more power, if I had more friends, if I had better religion…’ or, ‘If my parents weren’t so mean, if I had grown up in a different place…’ What they begin to create in their minds is the idea that a better existence exists somewhere over the rainbow.”

Job lost everything he had – his home, his wealth, his health, his children – and then had to listen to lectures by his friends just like the one Chandler delivers here. God certainly is not impressed by his friends’ comments. Imagine saying to someone who just lost their entire home in a wildfire or their child to cancer that they are moaning and should not be dissatisfied with the suffering they’re experiencing. A Job-like experience is one where someone experiences absolute devastation, not one where they are unhappy and wishing for a different life.

“Keep reading, dummies; it goes poorly,” Chandler says at one point (50). Where is the respect for fellow image-bearers? Where is the humble kindness of a shepherd? It is not Christlike to condescend to your audience. Humor is not antithetical to the gospel. The sort of humor that is disrespectful and condescending, however, has no place in a book claiming to describe the explicit gospel.

And then there is this appalling paragraph: “At the end of the day our hope is not that all the poor on earth will be fed. That’s simply not going to happen. I’m not saying we shouldn’t feed and rescue the poor; I’m saying that salvation isn’t having a full belly or a college education or whatever. Making people comfortable on earth before an eternity in hell is wasteful.” (83)

Honestly, I wrote this review because of this passage. Nowhere in Scripture does Jesus teach this. No, salvation isn’t “having a full belly or college education or whatever,” but only people who have a full belly or a college education can so casually dismiss the importance of these things to the millions of people on this earth who are starving or desperately trying to lift their family out of poverty through gaining an education.

If making people comfortable on earth regardless of their eternal destination is wasteful, then why did Jesus spend so much time doing exactly that? He healed many people without asking them to confess him as Messiah. Why does the Bible tell us over and over to care for the poor, the widows, and the orphans? To stand up for those who cannot stand up for themselves? God condemned Israel and Judah because of their refusal to care for the poor and their rejection of Him (see the books of Amos, Isaiah, Ezekiel, Micah, etc.). He saw those two decisions as inextricably linked – to disregard the needs of the people who did not have full bellies was to reject God.

This attitude, that making life comfortable on earth is wasteful, is actually a Gnostic way of thinking. Gnosticism is a heresy from the early days of Christianity, rooted in the dualistic belief that the world is divided into physical and spiritual realms. Only the spiritual realm is good; the physical, material world is evil. Therefore only the spirit matters and the physical reality of a person’s body and life are not important, and are in fact a distraction from spiritual matters because we are trapped in our bodies.

Chandler cites Matthew 25:31-46, Jesus’ teaching that whatever we do for the least of our brothers and sisters we do for Him, saying, “What becomes of those committed to the belittlement of God’s name?” (46). He uses this passage to reinforce his emphasis on humanity deserving hell for seeking our own glory, which is frankly the strangest emphasis I’ve ever heard taught from this passage. Jesus’ emphasis is on feeding the hungry, visiting the prisoner, and caring for the sick, and does not reference his glory once. Instead, he identifies himself as the hungry, the prisoner, and the sick, as the least of these. Eternal punishment is reserved for those who do not care for the least of these.

The most condescending anecdote in the book is too long for me to quote in its entirety (107-109), so I will summarize. At the end of chapter five (Creation), Chandler tells the story of a time he was preaching from Ephesians 2 on the doctrine of total depravity, once again disregarding the nuance of normal childhood development and declaring that “children are horrifically selfish; they don’t have to be taught that…we are born, in essence, evil.” He notes that he is preaching in front of twelve hundred people, and that a young woman interrupts him to ask if he has any children, and when he says no, she responds, “Then don’t tell me my baby’s evil.”

Chandler questions her and leads her to the conclusion that because “her son consistently chose to inflict harm on others and disobey her rules… [he has] a rebellious spirit that’s intrinsic within him.” Babies literally do not have the ability to understand morality. So yes, while babies will inevitably sin, a baby hits or pinches or screams because they are learning to communicate with the world and are discovering cause and effect. As Kyle J. Howard says, “Total depravity does not mean babies are evil. The doctrine, better expressed as “total inability” teaches that all of humanity is impacted by [the] Fall to such a degree that they’re unable to come to God & live righteously [without] God converting & sanctifying.”

Christian teachings on children having naturally “rebellious spirits” have directly led to children being abused and sometimes killed. Is that the norm for most Christian parents? No, but a lack of understanding of child development combined with this theology can be very dangerous even in the hands of well-meaning parents.

After Chandler “lovingly” rebuts the young woman, he continues preaching until an older woman interrupts to say that she agrees with the young woman. Chandler “couldn’t believe it” and delivers this lecture: “If anyone can give me any verse in the Bible that supports the default innocence of human beings, let’s talk about it. But there is a way that seems right to you that in the end leads to death (Prov. 14:12; 16:25). So if you want to talk about what the Bible teaches, we can have that conversation all day. But if you’re saying, ‘I don’t care what the Bible teaches,’ then we can’t really have that conversation, because you and I see the world through completely different lenses. You’re arguing upon what you think, and I’m arguing on thousands upon thousands of years of theology and God’s self-revealed will. But if you want to talk Scripture, let’s talk Scripture.”

Once again, just because Chandler holds strongly to this one-dimensional view of humanity does not mean he has the only revealed interpretation, particularly since he is once more being intellectually dishonest. (The doctrine of total depravity, developed during the Protestant Reformation in the sixteenth century, stems from the concept of original sin, which was fully formulated by Augustine in the 300s A.D. It is a nuanced interpretation of Scripture, not a black-and-white fact.) Just because he is a pastor preaching to a crowd of over one thousand does not mean he speaks for God. Telling a woman in front of a crowd that “there is a way that seems right to you that in the end leads to death” because she disagrees with him is using Scripture as a weapon and is spiritually abusive. Disagreeing with Chandler is not saying “I don’t care what the Bible teaches.”

I do not care what Chandler has to say about theology and doctrine if this is the way he manipulates and hammers it into people. Jesus did not teach this way. If your pastor behaves this way when you disagree with him in public, be wary of private disagreements with him. Leaders who use spiritually abusive tactics in front of a crowd will not hesitate to use them in private to an even greater extent.

The story has a somewhat less horrific ending, although the bar is on the floor by this point. Chandler “start[s] to prepare [his] defenses” and the woman responds to his challenge, “That’s easy. Genesis 1 says God made it and it was good.” Chandler acknowledges that she is right, and then plays his trump card of Genesis 3, which changed everything. And he’s not wrong! But his road to that place, and the bodies he left on the side of that road, speak volumes about his attitude toward his flock.

Attitudes and behavior like this are absolutely unacceptable in any pastor.

A Review, Part III: The Explicit Gospel and the Role of Women

See Parts I, II, IV, and V.

I am not debating the role of women in the church, society, or the family in this review. But I take major issue with the way Chandler handles this entire topic.

He begins with, “Just consider the slide on this slope within mainline Protestantism in the West when it comes to the issue of women in church leadership. The issue has been viewed basically the same way for two thousand years of church history, a view that can summarize this way: Men and women have been created equal and yet distinct by God. Men are charged with leading in the home and the church and women have been given to men as helpmates. However, as the church began to engage a modern culture, we began to hear questions such as, ‘Aren’t women just as gifted as men? Surely those texts in the Bible can’t mean what they appear to say, because, I mean, look at our culture.’ The frame of reference shifts. The culture begins to define the Scriptures instead of the Scriptures defining the culture.” (194)

Contrary to what Chandler says, the issue of women in church leadership has not been viewed basically the same way for the past two thousand years of church history. This assertion is factually inaccurate. Prominent early church fathers viewed women as inferior to men rather than equal, a view that persisted for centuries of church history. Women were public ministry leaders and preachers in eras when women’s leadership and teaching in mixed-gender Western circles was countercultural. Baptist denominations themselves have a long history of female preachers, including female pastors, dating back to colonial America.

Chandler claims “that Paul never uses a cultural argument in declaring God’s design for gender roles; rather, he always points back to God’s creative work. Paul shows us how God’s design can be applied to cultural environs, but he doesn’t establish the distinct genders and their distinct roles by the cultural environs…So Paul doesn’t argue culture. He doesn’t think the role of women in the church is a cultural issue. He doesn’t think the problem is the result of some kind of patriarchal brokenness, a rigid system that, in the end, needs to be adhered to in order for men to hold on to power.” (195)

I will point out that Chandler does not reference any Scripture, Biblical scholars, belief statements from mainline Protestant denominations, or anything at all other than his own opinions, which are insufficient commentary on the complex topic he is delving into. Insisting that Paul is not using a cultural argument defies basic literary and Biblical analysis. The reader can either analyze or interpret the text with the author and their historical and cultural context as part of the frame of reference, or the reader can take the text standing alone and interpret it without any context whatsoever. There is nuance to both approaches, but no writer writes in a black void and no writer can separate themselves from the cultural context they write within, including Chandler himself.

This is true for divinely inspired Scripture as well as secular literature; basic Biblical exegesis and hermeneutics demand that the original context of the passage be considered in order to understand and interpret it properly. A particular passage of Scripture may very well transcend its original author and readers’ cultural and historical context and be applicable in a literal sense to Christians throughout time, such as Paul’s many exhortations for unity among the church. But this is not what Chandler argues. Additionally, any Scriptures he may be thinking of when making these assertions (1 Corinthians, Ephesians, and 1 Timothy, probably) are in fact letters Paul wrote to specific audiences in response to previous correspondence and communication. That is as far from writing in a black void as one could get.

None of us can escape our cultural context, either secular or Christian, and we must always be mindful of that when interpreting Scripture. Christianity is not defined by what it opposes in secular culture. We look to Jesus to define the truth we stand firm in, instead of doubling down on whatever viewpoint might be the opposite of current secular culture.

Gender roles are not part of the gospel. These roles are an integral part of many Christians’ faith and practice of Christianity, but Chandler attaches a specific set of gender beliefs to the gospel and insists that despite this being a secondary issue, if we disagree “our trust in Scripture gets rattled and we start to become our own authority—or worse, we let culture dictate to us what’s true—and in the end, we begin to slide away from what is clear in Scripture and justify how we read the Scriptures in order to say what we want it to say and make it more palatable to the world around us.” (195)

His logical progression is that if a Christian disagrees with his view on gender roles, then that Christian necessarily is letting their own cultural context dictate their interpretation and trust of Scripture, which leads directly to dilution of the gospel message, which has implications for one’s salvation.

This raises gender roles to, in fact, be part of the Gospel, rather than a secondary issue. The slippery slope argument is disrespectful to the many theologically conservative Bible scholars and theologians and faithful ordinary Christians who hold Scripture in high regard, yet have views on women’s roles in the church and the family that differ from what Chandler presents here, and it is intellectually lazy. Rather than proving his views with Scripture and sound exegesis, Chandler presents himself as a foremost authority on God’s design and equates disagreeing with him with disagreeing with God. This behavior is not Christlike and is unacceptable.

Pastors are not God and their interpretation of Scripture is not somehow more accurate or holier than other Christians’ interpretations merely because they are pastors. As believers, we must be like the Bereans and measure everything presented to us as Biblical and spiritually correct against Scripture and the Holy Spirit dwelling within us.

If someone who presents themselves as a spiritual authority fails to respect those they are teaching by presenting the information that led them to a particular interpretation, and instead insists that disagreement with them equals disagreement with God, they should likewise not be respected as a spiritual authority, because this behavior in any other context is rightfully seen as manipulative.

I welcome a thoughtful, researched discussion of women’s roles in the church, society, and the family in theological books, but you will not find that in The Explicit Gospel.

A Review, Part II: The Explicit Gospel? Not Likely.

See Parts I, III, IV, and V.

The Gospel in the Air

After wading through the first four chapters describing the gospel on the ground, I was surprised to find that the next four chapters, focused on the gospel in the air, were less appalling. All of the issues with the gospel on the ground are present in the gospel in the air, but since there are fewer references to God’s wrath, the reader can take a breath and hope for mercy. At least, until she runs into total depravity again.

In chapter five, Chandler examines creation. He spends four pages discussing science and six pages on a cursory examination of the various views Christians have of how God created the universe and why his view (historical creationism) makes the most sense. Is this a good discussion Christians ought to have? Of course. But does it belong in a book describing the gospel? Not when it tries to deride Christians who do not hold to young earth creationism as “naturalists” accommodating science. (100)

Ironically, Chandler dismisses science as “ever-changing” (96) and says that it’s “demand for trust requires at least as much faith as God’s demand” (95), then appeals to science using the first and second laws of thermodynamics as evidence that theistic evolution is impossible. (98) This is not an intellectually sound discussion of the various views of creation.

The manner in which God spun the universe into motion is not part of the gospel. If holding to a specific viewpoint of creation were integral to following Christ, it would be negligent of Jesus to simply not mention this important element during his time on earth.

This issue is very important to many Christians, but it is a secondary issue. Faithful Christians can disagree and still hold fast to the gospel. If we need to be certain of God’s method of creation in order to consider ourselves truly a Christian, then our faith is weaker than that of all the Christians throughout history who were not having these debates and yet believed.

Chapter five also contains the most condescending anecdote in the entire book, where Chandler tells a story about a time he lectured two women about total depravity, but we will get to that later.

Chapter six focuses on the Fall, primarily through the lens of Ecclesiastes – without God, our existence is meaningless, not merely on an individual level, but on a cosmic level. Chandler is not wrong that this world is broken, that we are searching for, in the words of Plumb, something to fill the God-shaped hole in all of us.

But once again, we come back to total depravity. Chandler asserts that from the beginning of our existence, we are demanding and selfish, saying that “from the second we are born, we seek our own happiness, don’t we? At 4:00 a.m., in the middle of the night, the middle of the afternoon, in a church service, or during Grandma’s funeral, it doesn’t matter: ‘Give me a bottle. Give me my thumb. Give me some food. Entertain me. Dance for me. Make those funny faces.’ We pop out snapping our fingers for satisfaction, and we never really stop.” (125-126)

The problems with this one-dimensional view of total depravity are legion (not to mention the problems with categorizing a baby’s need for food and affection and comfort as sinful). Yes, humanity is broken, fallen, and searching for purpose, and no one is without sin. But we are made in the image of God. He breathed life into us, knit us together before we were born, and delights in us as his creation. I only found three references to imago dei in the entire book: twice in one paragraph in chapter six (111) and once more in reference to the nation of Israel failing to walk with God (160). This focus on total depravity as humanity’s essence is inadequate, incomplete, and inaccurate.

Chapter seven discusses reconciliation: “From the ground we see the cross as our bridge to God. From the air, the cross is our bridge to the restoration of all things.” (142) At last Jesus’ full life and ministry is acknowledged (136-139) as Chandler describes the work of Christ in cosmic terms, that “when Jesus forgives sin and raises the dead, he is saying the gospel is about individuals being born again, but he’s also saying that the gospel is about his conquest of sin and death.” (138) Naturally the cosmic scale of the gospel has immense implications for the shape and mission of the church. I was happy to see that the hope and purpose for the church laid out in this chapter align much more closely to the gospel than anything previously described in the book.

In chapter eight, focused on consummation, Chandler talks about the new heaven and new earth that is yet to come, about the resurrected bodies Jesus’ followers will have, how everything will be made new. He touches the topic of end times analysis, but says that “the Bible would have us look forward to our destination and think about the wonders of that city to come” rather than obsess over the details (157), and I think he’s right. The details of the end times aren’t something that anyone can know with certainty, and are not part of the gospel that Chandler is trying to present.

I have to wonder why Chandler’s description of the gospel as it applies to individuals is so flawed and incomplete, yet his explanation of the gospel as God’s great plan of redemption and reconciliation for creation is less horrific. Is it because God reconciling creation to himself consists of mostly abstract ideas, things that will happen in the future and have not yet come to pass?

The Dangers of the Gospel on the Ground and in the Air

After thoroughly examining both the gospel on the ground and the gospel in the air, Chandler turns to the dangers on focusing too strongly on either. Ironically, when discussing too strong a focus on the gospel on the ground, he warns against doctrinal arrogance (185), an error he himself commits as he insists that his depiction is the only doctrinally correct gospel. If this book intends to present the gospel, it ought to present the entire gospel rather than a one-dimensional Calvinistic view of it.

This warped and limited understanding is made clear in the next chapter, where Chandler says, “Those who hate the true gospel and love themselves always insist that the atoning work of Christ is a secondary issue. This is how the doctrine of penal substitution has come to be considered a secondary issue” (193) and later claims that “where the substitutionary atoning work of Jesus Christ on the cross is preached and proclaimed, missions will not spin off to a liberal shell of a lifeless message but will stay true to what God has commanded the church to be in the Scriptures.” (198)

To be clear, penal substitutionary atonement is only one of many theories of the atonement, and it was not fully formulated until the Protestant Reformation. For fifteen hundred years, Christianity managed to survive without this particular piece of doctrine, and still does in many corners of the world. It is a valid doctrine, but to assert that the true church must believe it or become “a liberal shell,” that this exact doctrine is necessary for true salvation, is laughable. One can hardly accuse the Eastern Orthodox church of liberalism.

The gospel is far more than a set of doctrinal beliefs specific to a subset of Christianity.

A Review, Part I: The Explicit Gospel? Not Likely.

See Parts II, III, IV, and V.

Two years ago my small group attempted to read The Explicit Gospel by Matt Chandler. I say attempted, because we voted to abandon it halfway through. The book upset me on many levels: as a Christian, as a writer, as someone trained in literary analysis, and as a woman. Hence the existence of this thorough and lengthy book review. Does this book have good qualities? Perhaps, but the bad heavily outweighs the good. This book is not the explicit gospel and will do more harm than good to those who read it.

To begin, some facts about the book: it was published in 2012 by Crossway; endorsed by James MacDonald, Mark Dever, Ed Stetzer, and Rick Warren, among others; and is 240 pages. Matt Chandler is the lead pastor at The Village Church in Flower Mound, Texas (a Southern Baptist church), and president of the Acts 29 Network.

Chandler looks at the gospel from two vantage points, which he calls the gospel on the ground and the gospel in the air. The gospel on the ground “traces the Biblical narrative of God, Man, Christ, Response…we see clearly the work of the cross in our lives and the lives of those around us.” (16) The gospel in the air is the meta-narrative, “reveal[ing] to us the big picture of God’s plan of restoration from the beginning of time to the end of time and the redemption of his creation.” (16)

The Gospel on the Ground

Chapter one’s focus is God, who is depicted as a terrifying, narcissistic glory hound, the focus on his power and sovereignty. Chandler writes, “From beginning to end, the Scriptures reveal that the foremost desire of God’s heart is not our salvation but rather the glory of his own name.” (33-34) How does he define glory? He doesn’t. He tells us about God’s transcendent creativity, his sovereign knowing, his perfect self-sufficiency, and his glorious self-regard, but he does not define glory. God doesn’t need us; God reigns supreme, he says. “This world is not present…so that you and I might be saved or lost but so that God might be glorified in his infinite perfections.” (34)

But this depiction of God is incomplete and therefore terribly warped. God says of himself in Exodus 34 that he is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion, and sin while punishing the guilty, yet Chandler mentions none of these attributes.

After describing God’s power, creativity, and sovereignty, he provides a list of Bible verses to prove that God’s glory is his chief concern (34-35). Yet the Psalms tell us over and over that God is worthy of praise and glory because he is good, because he is love, because of his great deeds, and because he is sovereign. Describing only the omnipotence and glorious self-regard of God reduces our majestic loving Father to a monstrous deity who regards us as insignificant gnats next to his own glory.

How can this book explain the explicit gospel when it does not tell the whole truth of who God is?

Chapter two focuses on man – our belittlement of his name and turning away from him and God’s severity toward us as a result. Chandler introduces the idea of humanity’s total depravity, which colors every chapter in the rest of the book.

Rather than give equal emphasis to God’s kindness toward fallen humanity and his severity toward us, as Paul does in Romans 11:22, Chandler brushes by God’s kindness with a few quick words about how we “get that stuff somewhat readily” (40) and then spends page after page describing God’s severity and wrath and the horrors of hell (41-51).

Ironically, given the preceding pages, he says, “You cannot scare anyone into heaven. Heaven is not a place for those who are afraid of hell; it’s a place for those who love God.” (49) Yet two pages prior, he paraphrases Jesus as saying in Luke 12:4-5, “Seriously? You’re afraid of what people think of you more than you’re afraid of me? You’re afraid of what people can do to you rather than what I can do to you? You’re more afraid of how people might perceive you than how I perceive you? Are you serious? Listen, the worst they can do is kill you.” (47)

If that is not scaring people into heaven, I don’t know what is. Chapter two contains not a single reference to imago dei, that we are image-bearers of God, not a single mention that we are beloved by him. In Luke 12:6-7, Jesus tells his disciples not to be afraid, that they are more valuable to God than the sparrows that He cares for. Divorcing verses 4 and 5 from verses 6 and 7 paints a false picture of God’s love. Do we deserve that love? The answer is both yes and no: we are fallen sinners who have wandered far from God, and yet God has said we are precious and worth the sacrifice of his son, therefore by his decree we are worthy.

Christianity is full of paradoxes: humanity is broken and depraved and made in the image of God; God is holy and mighty and love; God knows every choice every human will make and humans are free to make those choices; we are distanced from God because of our brokenness and he bridged that distance with his great love.

How can this book explain the explicit gospel when it does not tell the whole truth of who humanity is?

Chapter three is centered on Christ the sacrificial lamb. After a brief discussion of the horror of the crucifixion, Chandler wades through the Old Testament and the sacrifices God required of Israel: “And in the tent of meetings and in Jerusalem, blood was always flowing. Blood constantly coursed out of slashed arteries and flowed from the temple. Can you imagine the stench in Jerusalem? Can you imagine hundreds and thousands of people regularly carrying a goat, a lamb, a chicken, or a dove into the place of sacrifice and cutting its throat and draining its blood? A river of blood is flowing out of the temple.” (60-61)

Jesus was the perfect sacrifice, the sacrifice to end all others, to appease God’s wrath. How odd that in a chapter titled “Jesus,” the only description of Jesus is as a bloody sacrifice, e.g., “The blade of God’s wrath penetrates the Son and bleeds him, and he absorbs the wrath of God toward mankind.” (62)

Jesus is a person, who lived and breathed and had an entire life and ministry before his death. Jesus is God, Jesus is Messiah, Jesus is active and present and real. He is not a bleating sheep helplessly sent off to be sacrificed to a vengeful God on behalf of mewling humanity. He walked among us and chose to give himself up. He is Lord. Jesus’ life and ministry are vital to his message; treating the cross as the only event in Jesus’ life relevant to the gospel is cherry picking.

Equally disturbing as the way Jesus is treated in this chapter is the way Chandler fixates on the cross as the entire gospel. “The cross now stands as the central tenet of all we believe about salvation,” he says. (58) But without the resurrection, without Jesus conquering death and rising again, the cross means nothing. As Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15, “And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith…And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins.”

A gospel without the resurrection is not the gospel at all. Jesus defeated sin and death by dying and rising again, not by sacrificing himself on the cross alone. The cross and the resurrection cannot be separated; to ignore the resurrection is to preach a false gospel. In this entire book, the resurrection is mentioned only eight times, always as a brief aside, and not once in this chapter.

This chapter is full of heavy-handed, twisted penal substitutionary atonement theology. Penal substitutionary atonement is defined as the atonement theory that Jesus died on the cross as a substitute for sinners. God directed his wrath at Jesus, who bore the guilt of our sins and the weight of our punishment on our behalf. God’s wrath was satisfied by Jesus’ sacrifice and God now forgives sinners freely without compromising his righteousness.

This doctrine as depicted in this book is horrifying. Kyle J. Howard points out that without the unity of the Trinity, the Godhead acting with one will, this doctrine is abusive. God pouring wrath onto Jesus as his hapless victim is not the same thing as “the Godhead working together to accomplish a goal.” He says, “When preachers & theologians discuss the Cross, & do so [through] personally punitive language [between] The Father & The Son; they are misrepresenting Trinitarian relations that lead to blasphemy & profound harm.”

Chandler pays lip service to this issue and cites John 10:18 (58), yet uses “personally punitive language” throughout the book, including mere paragraphs prior to his caveat: “The cross of Christ was God’s idea. The death of Jesus was God’s idea…the cross of Christ cast its shadow across all of eternity. It was the predetermined plan of God. The death of Jesus, the wrath-absorbing cross of Christ, was the plan of God before creation.” (57-58)

The Trinity is a minor detail in this depiction of the cross, mentioned in two sentences in this chapter, and not even listed in the book’s index. Nor is there any discussion of Jesus as our Savior and Messiah, also missing from the index.

How can this book explain the explicit gospel when it ignores the resurrection and reduces Jesus to a bloody sacrifice subject to divine punishment rather than one member of the Godhead choosing to give himself up for humanity?

Chapter four looks at humanity’s response to everything that Chandler has described so far: God, Man, and Christ. Our response, Chandler says, is far too often a works-based faith, “people who have been conformed to a pattern of religious behavior but not transformed by the Holy Spirit of God.” (72)

The response he chooses to focus on is based in Isaiah 6, where God instructs Isaiah to tell the people their hearts will be dull and unresponsive to the Lord, and backed up by Matthew 13, the parable of the sower, and Acts 2, Peter’s sermon on the day of Pentecost. He uses these texts to prove his point that the gospel is not seeker-sensitive, that “we are never, ever, ever going to make Christianity so cool that everybody wants it.” (80)

This leads directly to the idea that God hardens hearts (71), that “the hearer of the gospel is responsible for his response, but God is responsible for his ability to do so,” that “blessed are the eyes that see and the ears that hear because the Spirit of God has opened them to do so.” (77)

Let’s be clear: this is only one theological perspective among many that Christians throughout history and throughout the world have held to. The idea that God chooses who will be saved and who will not respond to the gospel is unconditional election, the U in the acronym TULIP, which sums up the basic doctrines of Calvinism. This flows directly into the L for limited atonement – Christ died only for the sins of the elect, or those chosen by God for saving.

These doctrines pop up throughout the entire book, despite Chandler mentioning nowhere that the gospel he is presenting is rooted in a twisted version of Calvinism. This chapter includes only a brief mention of irresistible grace (I): “It is all of grace that some do hear” (77) and of course always comes back to total depravity (T): “Because we are stained with sin from conception, we are rushing headlong into the fires of hell before we can even walk.” (64) This assertion leaves no room for the concept of the age of accountability.

The book does not even mention the extraordinary beauty of the gospel, the love and forgiveness and new life Christ offers us that draw us to the gospel. It instead implies that because the gospel is offensive and bloody, only through God choosing to soften hearts will anyone respond to it. Certainly no one would be drawn to respond to this version of the gospel of their own accord!

I am not debating Calvinism in this review. Many Christians hold fast to these doctrines and it is no reflection either positive or negative on their commitment to Jesus, particularly since the Calvinist theology within this book is so one-dimensional and limited. But I find Chandler to be intellectually dishonest because he fails entirely to acknowledge that he is presenting one specific theological tradition as the gospel and insisting that only this theological tradition in all its minutia is the real gospel.

Now, if your heart is not hardened to the gospel but is instead softened, this chapter does not allow you to rest in and be transformed by Christ’s magnificent love for you and completed work through his death and resurrection. Instead, “we must test ourselves to see if we are in the faith” (84) and “be very careful about going to church, reading [our] Bible[s], saying prayers, doing good deeds, and reading books like this through anything but faith in the living Lord.” (85)

How utterly exhausting. There is no joy, no life, no freedom in this response to the gospel. Did Jesus not say that he came so that we would have abundant life? Did Paul not say that it is for freedom that Christ has set us free? Focusing intently on your motivations for doing good works should not be your primary response to the Good News.

How can this book explain the explicit gospel when it describes a response to the gospel completely devoid of transformation and new life in Christ?

On Being an Introverted Christian

I’m an introvert.

I’m a fairly classic introvert, who is not outgoing or comfortable in large groups of people I don’t know, who requires lots of alone time to function, who could easily become a actual hermit if I lived alone and didn’t need to work for a living. Parties where I only know one person are very stressful. Fictional people are so much easier to deal with than real people.

Small talk is so hard. What do I say? What questions do I ask? Oh no, did I just come off as a crazy person?

Walking up and starting a conversation with someone I don’t know is enough to give me heart palpitations. I did that at church recently, with people I don’t know personally but who know who my family is, and my hands were shaking through the whole conversation, my heart was pounding, and I was praying I could get the words out without tripping over them and stuttering and saying strange things. Corners are the best place to be at events, because then people come to you if they want to talk to you.

If you see me at an event and I don’t talk to you, please know that I probably think you’re really cool but have no idea what to say to someone that awesome. If I speak to you I’ll end up saying strange things or just laughing a lot. It’s not you, it’s me. Seriously.

Phone calls are the bane of my existence. I’m extremely blessed to be in a job where I rarely have to talk on the phone. If I call you, I have probably given myself a script to start off the call, because there are only a few people on this earth I don’t get anxious about being on the phone with, and most of them live in the same house as me.

Making friends is like climbing a hill with no guarantee of ever reaching the top, complete with awkward conversations and heart palpitating moments along the way. This chart, found on tumblr, sums up most of my friendships:

Sometimes I feel like you have to be an extrovert to be a good Christian. (A horrifying notion.) Jesus loves people. He came to earth and spent so much time loving on people and meeting new people and being surrounded by crowds. He tells us to feed His sheep and go into the world and make disciples. So many people!

Being real here–people stress me out. A lot. 

So it seems like I’m not qualified for this being like Christ business. Especially when you need to show His love to people you don’t know. Believe me, I’ve stepped out of my comfort zone to do this and for someone who gets anxious about asking a worker at a store a question, it takes a lot of fear and trembling before God to do that.

Oh God, do I have to? Maybe someone else could do it? I’ll just show your love to the middle school girls I already know, and maybe another leader can talk to the new ones. I know, I know. I’ll go over and introduce myself in 3, 2, 1…

It has gotten easier, in some situations. Middle school kids don’t seem to care how awkward I feel when I talk to them. I actually hold short conversations with the moms who have babies in the church nursery where I volunteer.

But I am so much more comfortable in the background, with the people I already know. Church event coming up? Great! How can I help in the kitchen or with the kids? I’ll tell people what to do if there’s no one else to do it, but it makes me nervous. And please don’t make me a greeter…

So there are the two sides of the situation. On the one side, God made me who I am. I can’t force myself to be a people person, and I will never be someone who meets someone and bam! Instant friend. I have my strengths as an introvert–great with small groups, great listener, absolutely ready to pray or talk one-on-one, overwhelming love for my middle school girls–and I have learned (am learning) how to balance those with my weaknesses.

On the other side, God has called me to love people. Maybe not as a greeter at church events, or as the one who goes out into the lobby to find the moms new to the church and encourage them to bring their babies to the nursery. It’s so easy sometimes to avoid talking to people and tell myself it’s because I’m an introvert and it’s exhausting and anxiety inducing.

But when that middle school girl walks in to the student center and looks lost and uncertain, I can get over myself and my insecurities and go welcome her. When standing in a Jamaican nursing home with instructions to go into the residents’ rooms to pray with them, I can pray, Oh God, I don’t know how to do this and I’m really freaked out, and then do it anyway.

Jesus doesn’t ask us to be people we are not. He does ask us to trust Him to change us and grow us into Christians–little Christs. And to do that, we need to lift our eyes off our own insecurities and fears, turn to God, and say, Ok, God. What do I do next?

I will always be an introvert, and Jesus will use me just as I am. I don’t have to worry about being different. All I have to do is turn to Jesus.

The Ultimate Superhero

Superheroes have taken over the box office in the past few years and show no signs of slowing down. Most of us have seen at least one superhero movie, and some of us have seen all of them. From Captain America to Batman, Wolverine to Superman and every hero in between, superheroes capture our attention.

Anyone can enjoy the movies, not just comic book fans. From Christopher Nolan’s dark and gritty Batman trilogy to the much lighter Fantastic Four, there is a superhero movie for everyone. For the kids, there is the family friendly The Incredibles. Marvel’s The Avengers and the future Justice League film offer teams of superheroes fighting evil together.

Why are we so drawn to superheroes? What makes masses of people who have never picked up a comic book flock to the movie theater to see the latest superhero blockbuster?

Superheroes save people. They save New York City and Metropolis. They save the world from the forces of evil. Every superhero has superhuman abilities we can never match. None of us will ever experience a genetic mutation that enables us to fly or control fire. Although technology has made great advances, it has not yet given us the Iron Man suit or the Batmobile. With these powers and strong convictions, superheroes make the world a better place.

Superheroes fight on our behalf and do what we cannot, yet they struggle with their own problems at the same time. Each hero still has flaws and imperfections and they are not all powerful. But Batman and Iron Man and all the others represent the best of humanity. They are hope.

In recent years, the real world has seen a lot of difficult events. There is no Superman or Professor X fighting evil in the real world. So we look to fiction to provide those heroes, often never noticing the superheroes walking among us everyday. They have no superpowers or spandex. The real superheroes are those who do what is right every day and think of others before themselves. If you want to see a real superhero, look around. I think that Katie Davis, a young missionary to Uganda, is a real superhero. Check out her incredible story in her book, Kisses from Katie.

But the most incredible superhero does not come from a movie or a comic book. His costume is not colorful and he has no genetic mutations. His name is Jesus, and He wants to save each and every person on earth. He has the power to do so. Jesus has already suffered on our behalf, as superheroes do in every movie. No evil exists that He cannot defeat.

Superheroes are fascinating and entertaining. Why are we drawn to them? Because we are searching for a savior, but they will never measure up to the Savior.

Why Write?

I am a writer.

I’m not a published writer. I’m not always a very good writer.

But because I love to put words on a page that express something, whether that be a story, a message, an emotion, an idea–I’m a writer.

When I was younger, writing was all about the stories that are trapped in my head, banging away at my skull. You know that quote about writing and schizophrenia?

“Writing is a socially acceptable form of schizophrenia.”

-E.L. Doctorow

Well, I confess that the characters in my head are almost as real as the people around me. Believe me, I’ve gotten some strange looks when I’ve said that out loud, but just ask any fiction writer and they’ll tell you the same thing.

Now that I’m older, I still have stories that beg to be told, but I also write some nonfiction. I don’t count my academic papers in this category, but the creative essays or rambling thoughts I put down on paper. A lot of this ends up being focused around my horse, which is awesome. Poetry–well, as my friend Katie and I say, “We were not born under a rhyming planet.” Or any poetry planet, for that matter. It just doesn’t work for me.

I used to struggle a lot with using my writing for God. I still do, but I’ve realized that even if God Himself isn’t present in person in my writing, I work to use themes and ideas that reveal Him and His love for us. I like to start my characters out broken, and then try to heal them, and I hope that even if God isn’t in my story, people can see His hand in it. There are plenty of stories I come up with that don’t directly honor God, and I have to decide if I want to put that on paper. Sometimes the point is showing the brokenness of this world. Sometimes that story should not be written at all. It’s something that I continue to wrestle with.

I want to influence other people through my writing. I want to make them think, even for a moment, about seeing things differently or about something that is completely new. I’d say I want to change the world through my writing, but that sounds pretentious. I do want to change one person’s world. I don’t know who that person is or how it will happen, but if I influence even one person positively, I’ve done well.

Some of my favorite authors have had tremendous impacts on me at different points in my life. Francine Rivers’s Mark of the Lion trilogy. L.M. Montgomery’s Emily of New Moon trilogy. Frank Peretti’s This Present Darkness. I could go on and on, but the point is that writing can change people.

I want to write so that I can touch someone else the way those authors touched me. I want to make them feel the emotions of the characters, feel the beauty or ugliness of a description. I want to write so powerfully that it takes people’s breath away.

Can I do that? Not yet. Will I ever? By the grace of God, yes.

Why do I write?

I want to give other people the same pleasure reading my stories that I get from reading others.

I like to make the words represent the pictures and characters in my head.

Writing is how I make sense of the world around me.

I want to be God’s hands and feet in this world, and this is the talent He has given me.

Because sometimes I just want to tell a rockin’ good tale.

Because I always have a story.