It's Henri Nouwen's Fault

Last updated on: July 17, 2014 at 2:59 pm by Morgan Guyton

It's Henri Nouwen's Fault 2014-07-17T14:59:53-05:00 Morgan Guyton

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

My family is staying at my wife’s cousin Kent’s ranch in Texas. Kent has the kind of library you might expect from a Lutheran pastor including quite a selection of Henri Nouwen books. I grabbed Creative Ministry and started flipping through last night. Then it hit me: Nouwen was the one who first made me a “heretic.”

Long before Rob Bell got big, I was an emotionally troubled 24-year old kid in Toledo, Ohio who stumbled into the mostly lesbian congregation of Central Avenue United Methodist Church. There was a Bible study offered for people who were struggling with depression. It was based on Henri Nouwen’s book Life of the Beloved. It was through that Bible study in the safe shared vulnerability of a circle of fragile, rejected people that I got saved for the fourth and (thus far) final time.

Nouwen’s central claim in the book is that our fallen human condition results from our failure to recognize (in a holistic and not just cognitive propositional way) how much God loves us. To Nouwen, accepting the gospel of Jesus Christ amounts to embracing God’s love as the basis for our identity. Prior to our liberation, we are imprisoned by the need to prove our worth to others (what I have come to call self-justification) which either causes us to despair and fall into depression or to take refuge in a nihilistic hedonism or to develop an artificial shell of self-assurance that makes us cold, ungracious people.

Nouwen’s gospel was the first viable alternative I had found to the predominant evangelical gospel I was raised with: that God is (literally) mad as hell at humanity and will spare you from His wrath if you somehow prove to Him that you believe that Jesus “died for your sins” and/or that He’s the “Lord of your life” (depending on which Romans verse you give the most weight to). God’s primary concern is not reaching out to us in love but defending His honor which is the underlying purpose of His grace. For many of my teenage and young adult years, I assumed that this was the only possible gospel and the reason I couldn’t accept it was because I was a sinful rebel who would repent when it finally made sense to me, which I begged God to help me with.

Nouwen gave me a positive alternative to the wrath-centered gospel which basically involved a shift from understanding salvation as God’s change of mind about whether or not to punish me to viewing salvation as my liberation from a self-imprisoning state of mind which was punishment enough in itself. I really think this distinction is the major fault-line in the present American evangelical identity crisis, which is not really a debate between those who defend the doctrine of hell and those who reject it, but between those who need for hell to be God’s juridical punishment and those who see it as a self-imposed eternal exile that we choose when we refuse God’s advances.

After reading Nouwen, I got further corrupted by John Wesley, Karl Barth, Gustavo Gutierrez, Elsa Tamez, and Jurgen Moltmann, among many others. But Nouwen is probably the reason why when I read Rob Bell’s infamous “heretical” work Love Wins, I said, “Yeah, I already knew that.”

What makes Nouwen an especially insidious “heretic” is that the Christlike gentleness of his nature oozes out over all of his writing. He’s basically about as opposite you could be from Mark Driscoll and still be a man. So if you’re trying to come up with a personal blacklist of writers who might corrupt you from the dominant gospel of pop-evangelicalism, then definitely put Nouwen’s name on that list. If on the other hand, you’ve come to a point where what you learned in Sunday school just doesn’t add up for you and you’re starving for an account of the gospel that really is good enough news to give your life to spreading it, then definitely check out Life of the Beloved, the Wounded Healer, Return of the Prodigal Son, Reaching Out, and Creative Ministry (which I’ll probably blog about tomorrow), or anything else with Nouwen’s name on it.

Previous Post

July 4, 2011

I Too Sing America

Next Post

July 6, 2011 Why Nouwen is Better than a Bowl of Chocolate Ice Cream, Part 1

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category Advent Beauty Will Save the World Bible Big Picture: Ephesians Bloggers Book Christian salvation and the Beautitudes Culture Daily Office Danceable Homiletics Deadly Sins Deep Roots: Genesis Devotions Dominican Republic May 2011 El Principio Misericordia (The Mercy Principle) Five verses God tattooed on my heart Fundraising FutureGospel Good Biblical Words Henri Nouwen Interview Jennings' Christian Imagination Jesus inside the beltway Jesus Is My Candidate Jesus vs the Pharisees Jesus vs. Plato Journey to Eternity Looking Back on 2012 Love Actually Monday Merton Monday Merton Music Occupy the manger On Earth As It Is In Heaven Original Sin Podcast Poetry Politics Prayer Psalm 119 Radical Jesus 101 Reviews Sermon on the Mount Sermons Spanish Bible study Special Series Spiritual but not religious Synchroblog Theology Things that made me think Thomas a Kempis Ugliness Into Beauty Uncategorized Viaje Dominicano 2013 Walking in the Valley (Lent) Welcome: It's More than a Mat Wild Goose 2013 Wrestling

Select a Month March 2022 January 2022 December 2021 September 2021 April 2021 September 2020 August 2020 July 2020 June 2020 May 2020 April 2020 March 2020 February 2020 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012 April 2012 February 2012 January 2012 December 2011 November 2011 October 2011 September 2011 August 2011 July 2011 June 2011 May 2011

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

Which prophet bought a field to symbolize hope for Israel's future?

Select your answer to see how you score.

Jeremiah Hosea Ezekiel Isaiah