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Wheaton's Prodigal THE PUB WHEATON’S INDEPENDENT ACADEMIC JOURNAL ENCOUNTER Wheaton’s Prodigal Son: Loving Rob Bell Again, essay by John Ingraham . p.2 The Fruit Had Been Forbidden, poem by Josh Christenson . p.6 Now Hold It, poem by Amanda Tillapaugh . p.7 The Classroom, series by Lucy Rose Till . p. 8 Edwards and Thoreau: Typologies of Lakes, essay by Sarah Boss . p.14 Man vs. Scrubjay, poem by Josepha Natzke . p.18 Visitor, poem by Jonathan Wright . p.19 The Waking Place, series by Thomas Wilder . p.20 Death and Darwinism: A Patristic Approach, essay by Christopher Iacovetti . p.29 Ascension, poem by Amanda Laky . p.36 FALL/WINTER 2015 VOLUME XII ISSUE I EDITORS JONATHAN GONZALEZ JONATHAN GROSS ALEX KIRCHNER NATHANIEL PERRIN JONATHAN WRIGHT COPY EDITOR SARAH BOSS MANAGING EDITOR CHRISTOPHER IACOVETTI SENIOR EDITOR MADELINE MULKEY EDITOR-IN-CHIEF ELLEN MISLOSKI FACULTY ADVISOR DR. ALISON GIBSON ADVISOR BOARD DR. RYAN KEMP DR. MIHO NONAKA BUSINESS MANAGERS CONNOR JENKINS JOSH JENNINGS CONTRIBUTING EDITORS CHRISTOPHER IACOVETTI JONATHAN WRIGHT Ellen Misloski Editor-in-Chief any case, from asking around our cam- WHEATON’S pus my impression is that most of us have no idea that Bell graduated from PRODIGAL Wheaton, received his pastoral calling as a student while preaching at Honeyrock, SON: LOVING and roomed on Traber 3 (glory be). The cause of this disconnect is that Whea- ton doesn’t really want to be associated ROB BELL with Bell—its only alumni to be on Time’s list of the world’s 100 most influential AGAIN people—primarily because Bell has ex- pressed doctrinal opinions which diverge JOHN INGRAHAM from mainline evangelicalism, most no- tably in the aforementioned Love Wins. his summer, while back in Califor- This move isn’t unwarranted—there nia, my friend Brian asked where are legitimate reasons to approach Bell TI was going to college. Now Brian with caution. That said, I believe that to is a twenty-something Los Angeles cre- discount rather than claim and welcome ative, exactly the kind of guy periodicals Bell goes against Wheaton’s deepest val- like Christianity Today have lament- ues and against the very purpose for ed over the years with articles about which it exists—precisely because Rob why millennials aren’t going to church, Bell is currently doing a better job than think-pieces on how churches can be- any of Wheaton’s other alumni at fulfill- come relevant again, and finally defeat- ing our school’s mission. A steep claim, ed and wound-licking headings like why but I’ll explain why it makes sense: first churches need to stop trying to be cool. by laying out what I see to be our school’s All this to say, I was pretty sure Brian values and purpose, and second by con- would have little contact with the Chris- tending that Rob is the man who’s doing tian world and no idea what Wheaton the most to further that purpose. College is. But lo and behold, I was pre- Everybody has things they value, paring to give him the spiel on our lit- even if they haven’t quite defined for tle midwest liberal arts haven when he themselves what those things are. Values immediately stopped me in my tracks— tend to arise from a personal experience “Wheaton? That’s Rob Bell’s college!” of something purposeful, good, or oth- Rob Bell had seemingly done the erwise life-giving. These values form the unthinkable: made Wheaton not only vast web of the human experience, and known to Brian but positively known and fall loosely into categories like intellectu- respected. I felt a surge of healthy scho- al, artistic, sexual, industrial, etc. Every lastic pride; I began to hum The Beach human being goes through the process Boys’ “Be True To Your School”. of gaining values through experience or The sad irony is that the man re- teaching, but initially they are discon- sponsible for creating this delightful nected from each other. As Emerson put connection between a twenty-something it, “To the young mind, every thing . and our community is likely unknown to stands by itself.” But things don’t stay you. Or, if you know of Bell, you proba- this way; we connect our experiences to bly know him negatively, through asso- form a worldview: “By and by, it finds ciation with his 2011 book Love Wins. In how to join two things” and “[The mind] 2 goes on tying things together, diminish- ness in aiding with human needs plum- ing anomalies, discovering roots running mets, resulting in a generation that sees under ground, whereby contrary and re- church as the last place they’d want to go mote things cohere, and flower out from on a Sunday morning. This makes sense: one stem.” Unless Jesus is shown to be intimately This “stem” is the center and sus- and crucially connected to the deepest tainer of one’s beliefs and values. The convictions and longings a person has, common view today is that whatever val- he’ll appear about as compelling as a ue or truth works best for you, go with bowl of lima beans. that. Or else, don’t think of any central Thankfully, there are Christians truth or purpose unifying your experi- and Christian institutions who don’t shy ences whatsoever. A Christian worldview, away from making these connections but on the other hand, is one in which this set out to create them—one being our stem is held to be Christ himself, who very own Wheaton College. Here at Whea- is the objective center of all knowledge ton, we simultaneously affirm that Christ whether you recognize him or not. is the center of everything, and also that “all truth is God’s truth.” The farthest The salt and light reaches of intellectual knowledge, scien- tific exploration, and artistic expression of Christ can flood are valuable precisely because we affirm, the world with as the poet Christian Wiman put it, that “there is no permutation of humanity in meaning and taste which Christ is not present.” instead of being kept This, then, is what the mission of Wheaton is: to equip students to bust tightly under the out of our crusty Christian shells and Christian bushel as create those vital connections between Jesus and what it means to be alive to- a sort of cloistered day, so the salt and light of Christ can flood the world with meaning and taste cluster cuss. instead of being kept tightly under the For some Christians, this can have Christian bushel as a sort of cloistered unfortunate consequences: In affirm- cluster cuss. ing that Christ is the source of all val- That sounds nice, but what does ue, some discount the value of anything it look like to actually build these con- not directly related to him, or else isolate nections? I submit that it looks a lot like themselves out of fear of the unknown. Wheaton graduate Rob Bell. When Bell As Bell puts it in his book Velvet Elvis, started his church Mars Hill in Michigan doctrines which were meant to be used fifteen years ago, he decided to launch as springs toward action, exploration, with a year long series on Leviticus. and full life are often instead used as He took the book notorious for being bricks to wall off the “Christian” from the the death of cover to cover Bible read- “unchristian”, the “spiritual” from the throughs and made it compelling. Exact- “unspiritual”. ly how compelling? Well, within a year, With Jesus severed from crucial Mars Hill had moved from a high school parts of the human experience, Christian to a 3,500 chair building. Within five art, scholarship, and overall effective- years, attendance was 11,000 a week. 3 At this point, Bell could have played I don’t want to say that being cau- it safe. He had a massive, loving con- tious when handling Bell’s claims is un- gregation. His books Velvet Elvis, Sex warranted. Any and all interpretations God, etc., were neatly stocking shelves of God’s word ought to be scrutinized, of church book stores across the coun- especially those which, like Bell’s, carry try. And, he had the respect of mainline some pretty big implications. That said, evangelicals (in 2003, he did a three day the fact is that Love Wins facilitated a chapel series here at Wheaton). But that fresh and necessary encounter with the same compulsion Bell felt at HoneyRock living truth of Christ for many Christians as an undergrad to create new and need- around the world, including myself. I ed connections kept eating at him, and want to suggest the sort of spiritual wres- he turned to take on the perennial ele- tling and question asking that occurs in phant in the room of Christianity: hell. Love Wins is what it looks like to take the In 2011, he published the now infamous Love Wins. In it, Bell asked a number of Many are upset with vexed questions about Jesus, heaven, hell, and death. He wrestled through Bell for having the contested passages across the scriptures audacity to step into to fight against what he saw as an overall “toxic” common Christian perspective on controversial arenas the afterlife: with God, but maybe “It’s been clearly communicated to many that this belief (in hell as con- God isn’t. scious, eternal torment) is a central truth of the Christian faith and to reject it is, in blueprints of connection given to us by essence, to reject Jesus. This is misguid- the scriptures and actually take the risk ed and toxic and ultimately subverts the of building a vibrant and powerfully rel- contagious spread of Jesus’ message of evant Christ-centered worldview out of love, peace, forgiveness and joy that our them.
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