Francis Chan 2009 Interview – The Start of Great Things

Given that Francis is out there again fighting a great fight, I thought I would post my full interview with him from 2009.  There is a lot left on the cutting room floor from this interview, but both during the interview and in spending some time with him since my book came out, I have found Francis to be present, focused, and compassionate beyond expectation.  Of all the “big” Christian leaders I have met, he is the one that surprised me the most because he was self involved the least.

Whether you like Francis or not it is good that he is out there.  And as far has hell goes, to quote myself as only a jerk can do – it either hangs in the balance or we should all go home.

Grace, Love & Murder?

May 20, 2011

Christian Buckley  

Some questions, or rather problems, are too big for my head to get around.  I try my hardest to work through and dissect them – but my mind just gives out.  It is like when you ask an old computer to do too many things at the same time and it just locks up and stares at you with indignation.  That’s what happens to me when I try to figure out something like how Grace, Love, and Murder  - a specific murder – fit together. Brain lock. 

A couple of preface notes to what follows are in order. 

--     This is a horrible post and will unsettle you – I hope – assuming you have a soul.

--      I, unlike I would venture to say 99.9999% of you, have first hand deep experience in this topic.  I go to death row in California every couple of months because I represent men there who have murdered people.  That work takes me through dark places, lives, and realities I didn’t know existed and still wish I didn’t.  That doesn’t make me special – it just gives you some background and probably gives me a different view of the topic.

This video is from YouTube and is a preview video of Chan's new book about hell.

It should be very interesting to see how he enters into the current discussion and debate.

One can't help but notice a similarity in how this is being released (with a vague intro video) to Rob Bell's recent book.  He seems to be addressing Bell in some of this, but only time will tell.  I am sure this will ignite a whole other round of discussion prior to the book in the same way as well.  

This is a must-see video for those following the discussion surounding the new book "Love Wins Out" by Rob Bell. The interviewer does a phenomenal job of holding Bell's feet to the fire and clarifying exactly what theological and personal assumptions drive his writings. I don't think Bell saw this coming.

This is a must-see video for those following the discussion surounding the new book "Love Wins Out" by Rob Bell. The interviewer does a phenomenal job of holding Bell's feet to the fire and clarifying exactly what theological and personal assumptions drive his writings. I don't think Bell saw this coming.

If I'm honest, I just don't know what it means to think well about hell. I've spent a great bulk of my life thinking about the doctrine of God, salvation, and figures like Jonathan Edwards, but I really don't spend an aweful lot of time meditating upon hell. To get some conversation going, let me try to draw out some thoughts about what it might mean to think well about hell.

1. Questioning hell because of God's love is absurd. 

Let me explain my brash statement. It is not surprising to find atheists taking a similiar line of logic to deny the existence of God - a loving God can't exist with the reality of this kind of world - or so the argument goes. But for Christians, we have no room to make these arguments. What we must never do is to start with a general idea - love - and then apply it to God. Rather, since God is love, we must see what God is like to know how to define love. If our God send people to hell, that has to somehow inform what a loving God is (even if we don't directly tie it to his love per se). In the same way, we must not talk about a loving God outside of talking about the cross. 

There's no hotter topic right now than hell, thanks to a firestorm ignited by a book that hasn't even been published yet. First came a video and some marketing copy produced by HarperCollins about Love Wins, a new book about "Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Every Lived," coming from Rob Bell at the end of the month.

Then came a blog by Justin Taylor about the video and the marketing copy. Taylor, who is VP of Editorial at Crossway Publishers, pretty much concluded that Rob Bell is a "universalist" when it comes to salvation (in other words, everybody's going to heaven).Well, that got a lot of people talking, some defending Rob Bell, and others decrying him. (There's a good recap of the activity swirling around this topic at ChristianityToday.com.)

If you're an American and you care about the World Cup at all, you know about the third goal in our game last Friday; the non-goal; the disallowed goal. The blown call has the whole soccer world up in arms because it was such an obvious breach of justice. The Wiki page of the referee who made the call was defaced within minutes of the blown call, and there has even been a revival of discussions about the use of video replay in soccer, because it's obvious to everyone that it's a better game if officials get the call right.

It seems like a lot of people are dying these days.  In fact, the death rate is pretty constant, about 150,000 people per day worldwide.  But it does seem like an unusual number of famous people are dying, including one whose televised memorial service attracted an audience of around a billion people.  

What do you think about when you think about the death of someone you know, whether a personal acquaintance or a public person?  Probably a variety of things.  You think about death itself, which usually brings out sorrow because the person you know or admire is no longer here.  But you also think about life and all of the good things the person did.  This is where sorrow gives way to joy.

If you're like most people, you also think about life after death, also known as immortality.  Even people with no formalized belief system have this nagging suspicion that there's something beyond this life.  Others are confident that immortality is a given.  But does anyone really know?  How can you possibly prove something that is immaterial and beyond our ability to measure?  To put it another way, is it possible to find evidence for immortality?  Actually, it is. Maybe not hard evidence, but evidence nonetheless.

Last week I wrote a blog about Christians supporting torture. If you peeled back my very thick skull, here’s what you would have seen inside my brain: Mark reading about the Bush Administration debating their torture program . . . Mark thinking about 78% of Evangelical Christians voting for Bush . . . Mark believing that they must feel so sorry now . . . Mark reading a new survey showing Evangelicals support torture . . . Mark writing my blog and intending to title it “Evangelicals Should Feel Free to Torture Bush”. . . Mark using his brain, thinking twice, and changing the title.

(DISCLAIMER: I am not a theologian, nor have I ever played one on TV. I am a curious person who would like to discuss the issue. I am not trying to offend you and I do not want to tarnish your sterling worldview.)

Heaven is a wonderful place to think about.  Hell, not so much.  Few people talk about hell these days.  Even fewer take it seriously.  But hell is real.  In his parables, Jesus uses various terms to describe what seems to be hell:  a place of outer darkness (Matt. 8:12); a fiery furnace where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth (Matt. 25:41); and eternal punishment (Matt. 25:46).

And then you have these graphic descriptions  by John in Revelation:  the bottomless pit (9:1); a huge furnace (9:2); fire and burning sulfur (14:10); no relief day or night (14:11); the fiery lake of burning sulfur (21:8); and the second death (21:8).

Sounds pretty grim.  Can you blame people for shying away from the topic of hell, especially people who struggle with a God who seems to allow suffering and evil in this life?  That's bad enough, but it pales in comparison to a God who is evidently (if we take this stuff literally) going to torture people in hell forever in the next life.