the devil wrote the sinner's prayer...

…and accepting jesus into your heart as your personal lord and savior? that was the devil’s idea too. and i have to say, those two inventions of his were pretty darn clever. what better way to keep million and millions of people from actually and sincerely seeking god and truth, when you can trick them into thinking that all they really need to do is to avoid hell and get their one-way ticket to heaven by saying a simple 10 second prayer? ‘Lord Jesus, I confess that I am a sinner. I believe Jesus died on a cross and shed his blood for me. Come into my heart and save me, I pray. In Jesus's name, Amen.’ BAM! guaranteed a spot in heaven! now you can freely go back to your business of ravaging this earth (since it’s going to hell in a handbasket anyways and will be replaced by a New and Better Earth, of which you will be a Mighty Ruler because you said a 10 second prayer). and the poor and the homeless? who cares about them! didn’t the apostle paul say if you don’t work, you shouldn’t eat? let ‘em starve then! and the sick? you just need faith the size of a mustard seed and you’d be healed no problemo. and if you’re not healed and you die? well, you’ll be in a better place anyways. that is, if you say the sinner’s prayer before you’re dead. otherwise, you’re going to hell.

let me tell you something. i spent years—YEARS!!!—feeling like a total fake because i had never said the sinner’s prayer. i had never accepted jesus as my personal lord and savior. i thought for sure, i’d go to hell if i died. and i worried about hell a lot. i mean, i could barely stand taking a shower in rotten-egg-stinkin’-well-water on retreats in wisconsin…how the hell was i gonna stand roasting in a fiery lake of burning sulfur for all of eternity?

so why am i bringing all this up? well, i just got through reading a heretic’s guide to eternity by spencer burke, founder of the emergent community theOOZE.com, and not too long before that i read the last word and the word after that by brian mclaren. i wish i’d read these books years ago (although they weren’t around back then). i could’ve saved myself a lot of guilt and fear and shame.

i was given a prerelease copy of a heretic's guide to eternity by someone over at theOOZE, as were other bloggers, to encourage us to read and review the book. i don’t like doing book reviews, so i’m not going to go into details. there’s plenty out in the blogosphere by now, i’m sure. and i know spencer will get a lot of flack for this book. it wasn’t an easy book for me to read, and i’m not even a card-carrying member of the christian folk. i don’t know that i agree with EVERYTHING he wrote, but the part about GRACE…that part resonated with what’s in my heart. here’s an excerpt:

“Grace is a miracle because it is not controlled, structured, shaped, or handed out by human beings or their religions. Grace is not the result of what we could ever plan or calculate. Grace belongs to no one but God, and because of that, it belongs to us all. Grace says that nothing is sacred and everything is sacred. Grace shakes the world, catches us by surprise, and knocks us off our feet. It is the miracle of miracles.

I believe that Jesus was full of grace and truth, and he is greater than the Christian religion that claims him. When the Bible tells us we will be his witnesses to the ‘ends of the earth’ after the Spirit has come upon us, it does not mean that we force Western religion on others. It means that we are invited to bear witness to how Jesus would nurture and affirm the expressions of God’s grace in our world today. Grace is the gift we get to share and celebrate with each other. Grace is the key that unlocks the kingdom. Grace is life. Grace is hope. Grace is the future.

This is mystical responsibility: questioning, listening, and living in grace.” A Heretic's Guide to Eternity by Spencer Burke and Barry Taylor, p. 215

that’s all i feel like saying about the book right now.

you know, there are a lot of books written on the subject of theology, and there is a whole lot of dialogue going on on the internet and at various conferences. the emergent movement has been pushing the boundaries of the church and pushing a lot of people’s buttons who are outside (and some inside) the emergent community. i’ve read some of the arguments on both sides, and they sometimes use these big words that i don’t understand and can’t even remember let alone even spell. i don’t know what all the fuss is about. i’m not big into theological debates. jesus never said you needed a sound theological background to be one of his crew. in fact, he always seemed to indicate that it was gonna be little kids who got it right before the grownups did.

so the way i see it, the whole gist of what jesus was getting at, and has been getting at, is so simple that little kids will get it no problem. no need to debate. no need to deconstruct. no need to delineate. it’s we grownups who make it all complicated and convoluted, and for the same reason most grownups can’t see the world of magic that little kids so often can, we miss the whole point altogether.

...it’s hard to become like a child, to admit that you don’t know the answers or even the question, to trust someone else to take care of you, to see the good and beauty all around, to hope and dream big, to allow someone to lift you on their shoulders, to cry freely when you skin your knee, to love lavishly without fear of rejection, to be filled with awe by simple things, to believe in magic...and maybe only a kid can be innocent enough to receive so freely a gift as mindbogglingly extravagant as god's love and grace, to just receive without feeling the need to do something to EARN it, to just receive without being afraid of LOSING it...