First published in the Baptist Times 10 June 2011
'The truth I have now come to realise ...' begins Peter, in response to Cornelius' request to 'tell us the message God's given you for us.'
It's a great opening line - a personal response to a personal request for a particular person to come and speak to a household of Gentiles - kingdom rejects, in the theology of the time.
Peter could have explained God's message for mankind by expounding on the history of the chosen people, backed up by relevant scriptural texts. It wasn't lack of knowledge that held him back. But this was a new opportunity - new faces, and the touchpaper of new faith just waiting to be set alight.
When Cornelius was praying to a God he didn't know yet, he wasn't looking for a theology, and God didn't send him one - he sent the rock-like, wobbly, brave, doubtful, faithful, fearful, courageous Peter. And Peter, bless him, responded: 'I am the man you are looking for,' and walked through his fears about non-kosher contamination all the way to this Gentile's house.
When I finished reading Rob Bell's recent book, 'Love Wins,' I thought it might speak to a few of my friends who are atheists or agnostics. So I put the link on a social network site with the teaser: 'If you've ever wondered how on earth a God of heaven allows hell .....'
I never found out what my friends thought, because two Christians used the site to launch a debate about universalism. For an atheist or might-be believer, the finer points of the argument were as clear as mud. The truth they would come to realise, probably, was that Christians enjoy mud-slinging and arguing.
Followers of the early Christians commented, not, 'See how well they sustain an argument!' or, 'See what impeccable theology they have!' but, 'See how they love one another.' The truth they had come to realise was that Christians had what they were looking for - love and more love.
Steve Chalke's 2003 book, 'The Lost Message of Jesus,' caused a similar furore, with theorists and theologians one-upping each other. The arguments became denouncements, respect for fellow Christians flew out of the window, and by the end no one was sure what the author had actually meant, though they could quote the more pungent one-liners used to rubbish the book.
The grit in the oyster shell was that neither Steve Chalke nor Rob Bell was expounding a theology to be accepted or argued with, but erupting from the heart of his own experience: 'The truth I have now come to realise is ....!'
Peter knew the Old Testament and there was not, as yet, a New Testament. If he had sat down with the qualified scripture scholars of his time, he would really have had to fight his corner to prove, through reasoned arguments quoting chapter and verse of the Bible of the time, this truth he was exploding with .... 'that God has no favourites! Anybody of any nationality who fears God and does what is right is acceptable to him!'
Farewell, Rob Bell? Fly away, Peter.
But Peter hadn't arrived at his contentious theory by analysing scriptures, but by walking through faith, cynicism and challenging experiences, miracles and failures, to encounters with people who were never going to find favour with the theoretically right.
Through Rob Bell's and Steve Chalke's books there are echoes of Simon Peter's excitement with God. These are not theories, theologies or arguments. They are personal realisations erupting inevitably from countless encounters with disgusting, hopeless, unlovable, amazing, time-consuming children of God, who have no idea who God is but need love.
And the truth I have come to realise is .... that if Rob Bell or Simon Peter or Steve Chalke or Cornelius or I or you can love these people whether or not they shape up and behave like Christians playing by the book .... then God is not less compassionate than us.
