You shouldn’t. You should check what I say, and either verify it, or learn that I may be wrong. I am not intentionally misrepresenting them, but if I am, I want to know, and I want you to know as well.

–What they are doing isn’t right. They are full of love but not speaking the truth.
On the other hand, for every “faith village” there are individuals, churches, and organizations who are speaking the truth with no love at all.–

I agree with you, at least in the abstract. I am careful of labelling many of the ‘truth’ ministries as being ‘unloving’, because very often (not all the time, of course) those who speak ‘truth’ are called unloving because what they say is not PC, or is against something that they are for.

Concerning the connection, I would point out again that Emergent Village is cited as one of the supporters of the Faith House ministry, and that it seems fair to think that to some degree EV supports their aims and what they do.

My goal was to show an example of a ministry where ‘love’ is taken to an extreme. Their statement is “Love is the way”, but in doing so, they have discarded truth.

–But I’m still having trouble seeing that the statement “love wins” means that we don’t speak the truth.–

It doesn’t. I think that other things being said are being taken into account, whether they are being mentioned in that particular article or not.

–Confrontation can be one of the most loving acts of all; sharing the gospel is the ultimate act of victory and must be rooted in love if it is to be succesful.–

Well said, I can only agree.

This post began as an apparent attack on a slogan endorsed by Rob Bell’s church. It seems worthwhile to wonder about the connection you cite. I get it that Brian McLaren is something of the father of the whole emergent movement. Bell is quite open about the impact McLaren has had.
But I still think it’s a pretty tenuous connection. To say that a certain organization seems to endorse the slogan “love wins”, and say that this group is connected to a thinker who has impacted the person who originated “love wins” It’s about three generations removed.
With enough research, assumptions, and indirect connections, we could probably connect Mother Theresa’s influences to Charles Manson or Billy Graham’s thoughts to Saddam Hussien.
“Love Wins” is clearly not an exhaustive theological statement. The people who espouse it might be mistaken, ill-intentioned, or whatever. But I’m still having trouble seeing that the statement “love wins” means that we don’t speak the truth. Confrontation can be one of the most loving acts of all; sharing the gospel is the ultimate act of victory and must be rooted in love if it is to be succesful.

Maybe not necessarily, but it can.

Take a look at this place called Faith House, and what it says.

http://samirselmanovic.typepad.com/faith_house/what.html

–Faith House will seek to bring progressive Jews, Christians, Muslims, and spiritual seekers of no faith to become an interfaith community for the good of the world. We have one world and one God. Nothing is impossible. Who can stop God from teaching us how to live together in community?

Love is the way. There is no other way. And there are not enough people who really believe this. Let’s support each other any way we can as we learn to live the kind of life that can make this dream a reality.–

If you look further into that site, you’ll find it has connections with EC, being endorsed by McLaren and with support from the Emergent Village network.

So, this place, isn’t trying to make people followers and believers in Christ alone, but to make them feel ok in their non-Christian faiths? That’s what I’m seeing on it, and if that’s what they mean by ‘love’ and ‘love is the way’, then it’s seriously, even heretically, misguided.

Acts 7
55. But Stephen, full of the Holy Spirit, looked up to heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God.
56. “Look,” he said, “I see heaven open and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God.”

Rev. 20
11. Then I saw a great white throne and him who was seated on it. Earth and sky fled from his presence, and there was no place for them.
12. And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. Another book was opened, which is the book of life. The dead were judged according to what they had done as recorded in the books.
13. The sea gave up the dead that were in it, and death and Hades gave up the dead that were in them, and each person was judged according to what he had done.
14. Then death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. The lake of fire is the second death.
15. If anyone’s name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire.

Is the church LITERALLY his bride?

Revelation 19:7 NAS
[Marriage of the Lamb] “Let us rejoice and be glad and give the glory to Him, for the marriage of the Lamb has come and His bride has made herself ready .”

–The stories are myths, but the man is real. The stories convey truth about the man, but they were never meant to be “impeccably reliable historical records”.–\

So (to follow the example of Rob Bell) let’s say that somehow it is factually proven that, as L. Ron Hubbard said, Jesus was a pedophile. Will that effect your faith in Him? Is your faith in Christ, or in the mythical ’stories’ about him which may or may not be true?

…things that make you go, “hmmmmmm…”

I stick to my assertion these myths were a vehicle to preserve all Jesus’ wonderful truths about life and about God.

Again: Says you. Though your basis for doing so is… because you want to.

Not because the Text itself actually demands it.

Therefore, you hold to neither sola scriptura or sola ecclesia, but (along with most of the ECM, I’m noticing more and more) solo mio.

I’m using the word to mean a story which reveals a truth, but is told through grand symbolic language rather than simply transmitting historical facts. Myth is not a synonym for false. All myths have some history and/or truth behind them and their symbolism brings that truth to life.

I stick to my assertion these myths were a vehicle to preserve all Jesus’ wonderful truths about life and about God.

It is one thing to disagree with me, but to pretend you can’t comprehend this simple concept would be proving your own charges of “iggnit’ nukkle-dragyn konsurvuhtv”. I’m confident you are more inteligunt dan dat.

All of us that love and follow Jesus care! Thank God for these myths or I might never have known about

him.

Sense makes that does not. Myth not real known not be can thus.

A myth about me does not reveal truth about me – it reveals (and this is so self-evident it’s really mind-boggling I even have to type it)… myth about me.

Same thing about myth about Abraham Lincoln, Saint Francis of Assisi, Perseus, Ba’al, or the Teletubbies. Myth reveals nothing but… myth. Stories. Stories that aren’t true – they’re myths.

Kapish?

You don’t know him, whoever “he” is. You know myths. To say you know “him” because of myths, is like saying you know Thor because of the myths about “him.”

Does Jesus LITERALLY sit on a throne? Is the church LITERALLY his bride? It is interesting that even Biblical literalists are extremely non-literal. Why use that symbolic language if symbolism is so horrible?

…huh?

I think you’re falling for the trap that ECMmers insist us iggnit’ nukkle-dragyn konsurvuhtvs fall for – not actually reading, and therefore not actually interacting with what we write/say. So convinced that we’re too daft to formulate a complete, internally consistent argument, the a priori assumption is that we’re automatically idiots, so let’s ignore what’s said and answer what we wish they’d said.

Knock down that straw man.

Bad straw man! Bad! No donut for you… come back, one year…

…ah, yeah. ’bout that.

Where did I – or any theological conservative – ever say that there was anything wrong with symbolism? That it’s (to quote you) “horrible”?

Also, dude, you’re confusing literalism with wooden literalism.

Literalism in interpretation means that we take it… literally. That direclty implies a necessity of taking into account context.

Thus, though I might say “he kicked the bucket,” a literal interpretation understands that I’m using a colloquialism, and that I’m not literally striking a tool for carrying a volume of some substance with the primary motile appendage of my leg; I’m using colloquial language, but I’m referring to something that literally happened – in this case, that the subject of my statement done did get himself deadified.

Likewise, Jesus is the True Vine – but a literal interpretation does not infer that therefore He is a clump of vegetation. He’s referring to something literal, using metaphoric language.

…kapish?

But again, literal interpretation demands that I don’t get to decide when something’s literal or metaphoric.

The context itself defines that.

So, do I believe Jesus is sitting on a literal throne? Well… why not? Where do you get the impression that that’s impossible? Wasn’t He raised bodily from the dead? He’s physically in heaven, bearing the marks of suffering… so why not? The onus is on you to prove otherwise – and by “prove,” I mean, give me something more than a hand-waving, these-are-not-the-droids-you-are-looking-for pat über-liberal non-answer answer.

Same with the Church being His Bride. Ephesians explains that for us – that God set up the institution of marriage – among other reasons – as a four-dimensional metaphor of His relationship with us… so yes, in the sense that the Church’s relationship with Jesus is the antitype which the type points to.

Darn that theologically conservative consistency…

The stories are myths, but the man is real.

The crow flies through the mud in peppermint over fifty yielding doves on photonic discharge.

Your assertion made even less sense than my previous sentence above.

The stories convey truth about the man, but they were never meant to be “impeccably reliable historical records”.

Says you.

Where’s your proof?

Is it so because… darn it all, you say so?

Or do you have real, credible reason for stating it beyond your prejudice?