Do What You Love

Why is Josh Ritter tweeting about Rob Bell? He tweeted this yesterday: “Just read a nytimes article on @realrobbell. Want to get him Thin Blue Flame. Anyone know how?” The New York Times article entitled, “Pastor Stirs Wrath With His Views on Old Questions,” discusses the uproar that erupted over a promotional video of Bell’s upcoming book, Love Wins, set for release later this month. On Twitter I dialogued with others about it, but hadn’t written anything of length so I thought I should in the very least steal and laud some views of others. This issue involves Rob Bell’s possible view of Hell. Man, we love Hell. Oddly enough, last year I wrote on my Blogger account this:

“In Protestantism, we fight like Hell for Hell (a literal one). We hold on to it like we do other sweet doctrines such as grace and the resurrection. I’m sure at the beginning, we meant well. We assumed that the Scriptures taught it. We also assumed that any watering down of this belief would in turn be a watering down of the gospel. However, along the way, we decided to become crazy about this terrible thing. Hell is the worst concept and/or reality ever, if it is literal. Yet, we actually desire it. We wouldn’t have it any other way. I remember getting so perturbed at those who would want to lessen the beautiful doctrine of eternal suffering at God’s hand. What a tragedy! We should hate Hell. We should wish that it were figurative, or even Stott’s view of annihilationism, or anything other than an eternal, never ceasing damnation. I’m not saying that I don’t believe in a literal, torturous Hell. What I am saying is that we shouldn’t be such braggarts about it. Our reward is Jesus. That is salvation. Hell should make us cringe with humility and gung-ho with the Gospel…but not proud.”

It’s seems to have had a predictive nature to it.

I remember being at the 55th annual Evangelical Theological Society in Atlanta, Georgia when Clark Pinnock was grilled over issues of open theism and inerrancy. He clearly loved the Society, but you could see the anguish in his face over the whole ordeal. I spoke with him afterwards (he appeared 8 feet tall and it seemed he had a glass bird’s eye) and he was a very sweet and genuine man. I thought to myself, while I disagree with his views at this time, I’m not a big fan of the trial-by-fire the Society gave him. Now it seems hipster Rob Bell is next on deck. Blogger Tim Ricchuiti submitted very good pieces on the matter. One in particular, What’s Wrong With Questions?, really struck me as one of the hearts of the matter. Despite that fact that advanced copies were given out, the general public hadn’t been given an opportunity to even read the book for themselves. I imagine now that after John Piper, Justin Taylor, Kevin DeYoung, and Albert Mohler provided their popular stinks about the book, a great many will not even consider reading it. This is a shame. This is conservative evangelical censorship. It’s not even “Warning, Read With Caution!” It’s “Do Not Read. This Book Is Bad.” Really? Is that the best approach? Will believers truly grow or be strengthened if they refuse to dialogue with seemingly “alternative” views? The book hasn’t even come out yet, and Rob Bell has already been black-balled by the high court of Protestantism. It’s really dangerous to think for yourself. You might change your view! Let us do the thinking for you, for in us lies safety. That’s the perk/purpose of orthodoxy right, to keep us in line with the traditional teachings of the church. Yet, this type of pre-release critique is surely to bring about the next generation of Ehrman’s when the standard setters like Piper are gone. Christians will have to think for themselves with untrained brains because they never grappled with the tough issues. That’s scary.

There are two things I think we should consider. One, I have a great distaste for this preemptive strike against Rob Bell. John Piper’s tweet, “Farewell Rob Bell,” disgusts me. It’s as if he said, “You’re out of the club.” Christians really shouldn’t be that dismissive of their own. We’re not supposed to eat our own, or kick them when they’re down, or not even let them speak, or to sway others to do so. The second thing deals with discernment. It’s O.K., no, it’s pertinent, to ask hard questions. It’s important to dialogue with issues that make us uncomfortable. Don’t go on what Piper or Taylor or DeYoung have said. Don’t let that put a bad taste in your mouth towards another writer. Read Bell’s book for yourself. Want to avoid heresy or unorthodoxy? Be able to think for yourself.

Last night we witnessed the conclusion of the greatest show and story ever told. I won’t bother giving a summation or synopsis (if either can be truly given to such a masterfully complex story). I will however tell you of when my journey with LOST began. Unfortunately, I didn’t begin watching when the show first came on. Like many other naive and ignorant people, I thought this was going to be some poppy shallow story loosely based on Survivor. What a fool was I. All that changed when my brother Tim Ricchuiti introduced it to me at his apartment off of Grand Avenue in Dallas. This was early Spring 2006, or in real time Season Two. I was hooked by the end of the first episode. I remember even going to his apartment to watch episodes as he took off to go hang out with our mutual friends…catching up with LOST was more important than friends. He eventually lent me his hard drive and big screen Dell so I could really go at it. I sat day in and day out in total darkness in my dorm room at Lincoln Hall. I was in love, confused, amazed, and haunted. After two weeks I was up to date and began watching LOST in real time. A group of us (me, Tim, Scotty, Doug, and Diggy Dog) began going to a house full of girls from PCPC to watch it (primarily; secondarily, for the girls). It was wonderful. That lasted for two seasons. I was in Huntington, WV for the Season Three finale. I remember feeling so lost in wonderment. Tim and I talked for hours about what it could all mean as soon as the show ended in Central Time for him. We were so sick and devastated that we’d have to wait so long for the next season. How I wish I could have that feeling now…the next season.

Season Four found all of us at Laura Coggin’s place, with some new people also. This was the most beautiful in my opinion. So many of us gathered for one purpose, and one purpose alone. Season Five found a handful of us at Austin’s house. We were the LOST boys (me, Tim, Doug, and Austin). Then life happened, and I moved. I watched the first half of Season Six on Main Street in Buckhannon, WV, and the second half at John Rodger’s place near Ritter Park in Huntington, WV. We (me, Whitney, John, and Cai…with Carl awaiting us) would run out of house church and mad dash it over just in time for it to start. Last night we gathered together to say goodbye to an old friend. Many didn’t get LOST. They weren’t ready for it. They couldn’t accept not having certain questions answered. A few of us were enraptured. 

LOST, thank you for four and a half years of wonder, and a lifetime of stories. I wish I could go back.

I’m proud to say that I lived in the time of LOST. Where were you on May 23, 2010? 

I struggle with ADHD. My eyes and mind are everywhere all at once. I have a passion for reading, and this condition makes it very difficult. I have to be intentional (to say the least) about it. However, I am coming to a better understanding of how I’m wired. Yes, I think it’s fair to partially blame ADHD for being highly interested and motivated in something for two weeks, and then moving on to the next kick. Kick, high, whatever you want to call it, my life has been a ongoing chain of them. Yet, as I’m finding out more and more about how my mind wonders and wanders, I find that I have another characteristic that that makes me tick the way I do. I want to be known, and known for something. There is an emptiness that drives me to do just about everything that I do. I can see that now. Just in the past year, I have entertained thoughts of becoming a chemist, physicist, echocardiographer, Hebrew scholar, scholar of New Testament textual criticism, author (fiction and non), photographer, teacher, architect, scientist, PhD, barista, Wall Street stock investor, business tycoon, owner of a bar/coffee shop, husband, computer programmer and engineer, graphic artist, electrical engineer, car mechanic, government official, CIA clandestine outfit, rock star, and many, many more. Ridiculous, right?

I’ve discovered that I’m not much for hobbies. I have them, but I don’t want to just do whatever it is on the side. I want it to be my occupation. I want to be the best at it. By “best,” I mean I want to be better than anyone at it…better than you. I don’t want to just play guitar on the side. I want to be the guy known for his guitar skills. I don’t just want to read books. I want to be the guy who writes the books that other people read. So needless to say I’ve had my hands and efforts in just about everything, at least for a time. What has this made me? A renaissance man? Jack of all trades? No. It’s made me a full-time loser.

This may have started earlier, but I trace the first extant occasion of me wanting to do something perhaps mainly driven by the approval of others. I preached a sermon in chapel for my high school, and I had several teachers applaud me, tell me how good I had done, and that it might be my “spiritual calling” since it seemed to flow so “naturally” from me. At the time it didn’t occur to me that perhaps this was a ploy to trick me into being a more obedient boy. Whatever the reason, it worked. I decided to go to a Christian college. Of course, my parents and their infinite wisdom (something I also grasped way too late in life) made me go to secular Marshall University for a year to see if I still had the desire to be “God’s man.” Somehow, a whole year later, I did. I hated my time at Marshall and didn’t really soak up the core basic classes that I should have. I wanted to really concentrate my time and energies on the things that “really mattered:” the things of God, namely, the Bible. Enter Tennessee Temple University. To shorten this too oft’ remembered path I chose, I eventually decided that pastoral work really wasn’t for me (some calling, right?). However, I did really take interest in the teaching/academic aspect of the minister. Perhaps I was geared to be a professor! Enter Dallas Theological Seminary. The rest is history I suppose, a history that I have come to grips with that will never be read nor remembered by any of my peers or those who come after me (except the few of you who actually read and make it through this entire blog posting). The point is, I’m not sure I’ve ever had an original thought or desire in my life. I can just about pinpoint a person or an event that has led me to whatever action or interest I’ve ever had. 

So let me trace just a “few” of those happenings. I took karate when I was younger because Adam Stiltner took it, and I and everyone else thought that was awesome. I learned guitar in high school because Charlie Davis played, and he was considered amazing at it. I wanted to be as good as Kirk Hammett and make the crowds lose their minds. I wanted to be superstar acoustic guitarist because Dave Matthews made it look so unreal. I ran around with the popular kids in school like Don Pennington and Andrew Donchatz because I liked/wanted the feeling of being one of the big shots. I got really interested in serious reading sometime in high school because my pastor handed me a devotional called “Come Before Winter,” and he was known for his reading prowess. I wanted to go into the ministry and be a pastor because I liked the attention (?) and company it gained me from that pastor and the church administrator from my church, as well as from others in the church. I wanted to do just about anything JD Lemming was into, then do it better and have him believe it was my idea and interest first. I want(ed) to be a teacher because of how my peers looked up to and hung on to every word that David Kemp and Dan Wallace said. I wanted to be a math wizard and physics monster because Tim Ricchuiti sees life in numbers and once said that applied mathematicians were the smartest people in the world. I played soccer in college because I wanted people to know me as the one of the “soccer guys.” I wanted to be the best at Greek because Travis Williams was so good and I believed I could surpass my peers at it. I wanted to be known for being a beer connoisseur because Mustache Burger introduced me to that world. I wanted to be known for my knowledge of cigars because Diggy Dog showed me the world sweet stogies and “finer things.” I wanted to be a pilot because of the obvious: Tom Cruise and Top Gun; and because one of my crazy exes said that was the hottest thing since sliced bread. I owned a Mac and worked for Apple because so many of my peers thought that it was the coolest company with the coolest products. Speaking of soccer, I wanted to pick up soccer and other sports when I was at my masters because of Scott Grace who is excellent at everything he does. It’s almost unbelievable. I wanted to be a blues guitar god because John Mayer and other blues guitarists introduced me to the cool swagger of it. I played in three bands because of feeling it gave me to be on stage in front of so many, and have my drinks bought for me. I was in the band! I strive to be extremely well read because Whitney Adkins scoffed at how few classic fictions I owned in my over 2,500 book library. Oh, and I bought so many of these books because my pastor had a huge library as well. I want to be a computer hacker because Eric Sowell is a programming master, and I want to have that job and design my own apps on my iPhone and Mac. I want to write books for a living because Jack Kerouac seemed so free and is considered such a mover. Trust me, this list could go on way further, but I’ll spare you.

So much for being original. Now I’m 27 with a masters and working as a shift supervisor at Starbucks and wondering what in the world I have done with my life, and what in the world am I going to do next. In all honesty, I’m not really sure what I like, which is really sad, especially since I’m at least a decade older than most who are entertaining these thoughts. Well, I’ve decided that I’m going to find out what I really desire in life and not so much of what identity I want to have. In the very least, that’s a start. As the new subtitle of this blog suggests, I am on a quest of learning how to be and accept being a nonentity. Hopefully this pursuit will last more than a month.