Hang on.

Just hang on
Hang on, you know
Until the day is bright and it's all better

Hang on
Just hang on, you know
Until the place where you can remember to think, to feel

The place where it can be different
The place where hope is real

And colors aren't in danger of losing luster
And shapes aren't in danger of losing form
And songs aren't in danger of falling flat
And rhymes aren't in danger of dying young.

Hang on
Just hang on
Because Jesus is there
Waiting to make it all new
Wanting to make it all new
For those who ride hope to tomorrow
And just hang on
To Him.

Bright and Scary.

I’ve been doing a lot of driving, usually up and down Memorial Drive, next to the Charles River, black like glass.

I’ve long told myself that I like to drive there because I love Boston, and this is me enjoying the city. But it’s really because I love water, and dark winding roads that are split by yellow lines, and tall, beautiful trees that cover the road and disappear into the sky.

In short, I love driving on Memorial Drive because it reminds me of where I grew up, not where I think I like to live.

I drove Memorial Drive again tonight, and it was a good drive. Usually, I drive because I’m conflicted, and I need my hands turning the wheel and the music going to help my brain calm down. The past two nights, I’ve driven because I’m free, and I need time to sit there and love it, and to tell God thank you even though I don’t know how I came to be at ease.

I have big decisions coming in my life, big choices that have to be made. I didn’t how to make them before, and I still don’t know how to make them now, but the difference between driving in angst and driving in freedom has been just a few nights, and some well-placed words from friends, and some pure grace from God. I have long sought and prayed, and it appears that this time the road’s bends are going to end a different way.

The crazy thing about tonight was that, when I left a friend’s home and took to the darkened streets, a thunderstorm was coming. I’ve always loved thunderstorms — we get really good ones up where I’m from in the Adirondacks, where the air is thick and hot and sticky and then suddenly starts popping out big, wet raindrops. It was like that tonight, and I put the windows down as the drops began to fall.

The best part about thunderstorms, though, is the lightning. When real lightning comes at night, oh so close, it lights up the entire sky. For that brief flashing second, everything is like day and perfectly clear. It’s awesome.

I drove toward home, but when I got there, I turned down Memorial Drive instead, slipping along the curves in the dark night with the raindrops falling. The lightning was striking, more often and more often, and the whole river was being lit up. My path down Memorial Drive was getting me closer and closer to the source, closer to where I could see the white arcing down, closer to where it could be really dangerous.

It was so bright, and so scary. It was just like the freedom I just found. In a minute, everything is so clear and you just want to run into it, but at the same time, you know you’re flirting with something that could go very badly very quickly.

But I had a different card in my deck tonight as I drove down Memorial Drive. When you’re driving toward lightning and you think to yourself that you wouldn’t mind if your car got hit or something, because you’d just find a way to repair it, that’s a good sign that you may finally have peace. And I do have peace. I’m driving toward lightning, and I have all the peace and wonder I’ve ever had when I was a kid or a carefree teenager or a person who knows she’s not bound by expectations or what she could lose.

The thunder is loud, and the lightning is outside now. My only wish is that I could get in my car and drive straight toward it, right away.

Testimony.

I was baptized Tuesday, May 21. Long story short, I was scared of putting my head under water when I was a kid, so I stalled on getting baptized, and then I didn't do it when I was older (and slightly less afraid of water) because I was embarrassed because I was older. I thought about it a lot, though, and decided that being obedient and getting a little wet was the least I could do for a really amazing God. This is the story I told at Ruggles Baptist Church on Tuesday, when my pastor from Reunion Christian Church baptized me.

I’m a writer, and I’ve always been a writer, and no matter what place I live or what job I have, that’s who I’m always going to be. I think, all the time, and I love to tell stories and talk things over with people. The way I see and understand the world is through the lens of words.

The reason I want you to know I am a writer is because that’s the simplest way I can tell my story. I could have brought any number of poems or lyrics or essays or novels up here, but there’s only one story I like to tell anymore. Rather than trying to describe my life and the hundreds of times God has done something in it, I want to tell you about Newbury Street, and darkness, and the place where I learned that it wasn’t a mistake that I turned out to be who I am.

I moved to Boston chasing dreams, like many people do, but in the grind and demands of life, things became very dark. I remember having been here for a few months and walking the streets, alone among crowds and staring up at what should have been beautiful buildings. Instead, my heart was heavy, and everything I had come here for — to share hope, to talk about Jesus, to show a lost and dying world that God made sense — that was all empty to me. I knew the truth; it set me free; so why was I wandering? Worse yet, nothing had meaning. Nothing could interest me. For the first time in my life, I couldn’t write, because I had nothing to write about.

I got in contact with an old professor of mine and told her I had no reason to write, and she and I talked in very academic terms about being “distanced from the source” and all these other big phrases that basically said that if God wasn’t real to me, nothing in life would be, either. That was nice to know, but it didn’t help. She then suggested she send me a chapter of a book she was writing called How Literature Helped Save My Soul. That is a fantastic title, so I agreed.

When the chapter arrived, I went to Newbury Street for my customary cup of coffee. The chapter was about Jane Eyre, and how this professor related to Jane Eyre, and how God had used Jane Eyre to teach this professor when she was a teenager that just because she was different and quirky and artsy and smart didn’t mean that she was in some way wrong, or that God had made a mistake. Instead, it meant something even better — that Jane could have a connection with God that few others could experience.

When I read that chapter, something inside of me died, and I was overwhelmed with a feeling that, despite being saved since I was five years old, I had never felt before. I remember writing in the margin of that printed-out chapter, my hand shaking, “God loves me.” God loves me. I wasn’t a mistake, and this wasn’t just something people had to tell me. God was telling me He loved me. For the first time in my life, I knew it was true.

Love isn’t the only thing I’ve discovered in this city. God has come and found me again and again, and He’s taught me that words like peace and joy have real meaning, too.

But the funniest thing that has happened since that day on Newbury Street has been that the professor didn’t heal me, persay. I still don’t write an awful lot. But that’s because, whenever I sit down with the guitar or the pen or the typewriter or the computer, I often find myself sitting there and just smiling at the wall like an idiot. How can you capture that? How can you put God into words? Sometimes you just need to let it all go free.

When we are no longer bound by the chains of who we think we have to be or the way we have always defined ourselves, Christ can become big in our lives.

Colossians 2:10 says, “You are complete in Christ.”

And if we are complete, then we can revel in 2 Corinthians 5, which tells us that, now that we know God’s love, hope, peace, and joy in a personal way, we can tell others what we’ve come to know so well ourselves: “Become friends with God. He’s already a friend of you.”

That’s what I want you to remember about this today.

What Is Freedom?

When I woke up Saturday morning, my lingering feeling was this: Freedom.

On Thursday night, the most tense events Boston has seen in decades began to unfold in the city’s surrounding suburbs. Police had been investigating the Monday bombings at the Boston Marathon finish line all week, and on Thursday, they finally released footage of who they deemed to be the suspects.

The tape was grainy, the photos not exactly clear, but it was enough to know that if anyone had seen these two guys — who looked to be no more than local college students — they would quickly be caught.

Still, in a week that had been one big, long chunk of mourning and disbelief, no one was ready for anything to happen. Things had unfolded so slowly, and even those who watched the video three or four times before heading to bed Thursday night figured the pieces would begin to come together slowly, here and there, before an arrest was made.

Instead, the suspects shot a police officer at the MIT campus in Cambridge, carjacked an SUV, and drove into the night, leading police on a chase that wound through local neighborhoods until it devolved into a bomb-throwing firefight in Watertown in the middle of darkness.

On Friday morning, residents of Boston, Cambridge, Watertown and several surrounding suburbs woke to the news that one suspect had been killed by police, but the other had escaped — driving over the other suspect, his older brother, in his haste — and was somewhere in the area. Residents of those towns were told to stay indoors — no, commanded to — as Boston, for the first time in history save for extreme weather situations, told its citizens that they were not to step foot outside. A manhunt was on. The city had been shut down. Everyone was to stay put while the cops did their jobs.

The locals were only too happy to obey. While a typical Massachusetts resident will forge ahead through 12 inches of snow, danger is something else, and Monday showed just how dangerous these two were. With the police clearly on edge about the entire situation, and with them having already chased the culprits for some eight hours, there was no question everyone would stay home.

But as Friday wore on, it became difficult. While people can plan ahead for a snowstorm, packing away food and such, an impromptu day in the apartment gets old fast. While the news was coming in rapidly for hours, with more details surfacing about the suspects, that soon slowed. Cabin fever set in, with questions: If they haven’t caught him by now, could they?

Around 6 p.m., the lockdown order was lifted by a downcast police chief, and that was where the fear that had eased away earlier in the day came back. They were admitting they didn’t have him but telling everyone to go back on the streets. If it wasn’t safe before, why would it be now? Everyone was fine being brave and returning to their regular lives on Monday and Tuesday, but that’s because the bombs had gone off, the victims rushed to hospital, and the debris cleared. This danger was still in process.

I decided to take a walk. I wanted to do something, and I especially wanted to do something where I could come back and find that maybe something had changed. I knew my neighborhood was safe, but my feet and eyes needed to help. A quick swing around a few blocks confirmed it: People were out, and music was playing. It was quiet and eerie, a few stray raindrops falling and a storm coming in, but it was safe. Even the wail of sirens across the river, and the many red and blue lights, didn’t shake me. The entire police population of Massachusetts was here. They just had to keep working.

But I did wonder what we do now. If this kid was still out there with his guns and bombs, what do you do? It’s brave to go out after an attack and just keep living, but it’s foolhardy to charge into an area where danger hasn’t yet been contained. I felt complete confidence where I was, but I was already thinking of what areas I would avoid, and how many days it would take before we turned grumpy on the cops and asked them why they hadn’t nabbed this guy right away.

By the time I returned home, however, I learned that the recent batch of sirens I heard were fresh for a reason — shots had been fired in Watertown, and they had found the suspect again. Within three hours, which flew past like minutes, they had him in custody. Danger averted. Life restored. Heroes praised. Celebration commenced.

I did another swing around the neighborhood then, this time to see the people light on their feet and smiling. Crowds bubbled up around Boston — huge, cheering gaggles of people. Bars were packed; impromptu parades were held for the cops as they drove home.

That was it. They did it — we did it. The story had ended the way it should. All the cliches about Boston proved true, and our officers were truly the finest.

One of my roommates turned to me in this and asked about the patriotism showing up on the TV. She asked why this was a victory for America, and whether people were right to be waving flags and saying the usual pro-U.S. things they say at a time like this.

I tried to explain that this is a victory for America because the point of terrorism is to paralyze life, and to alter regular, everyday democracy. She was concerned that this kind of patriotism is what gets people so mad at us in the first place, and I concurred, but I said that stopping it in the face of something like this would be wrong. For all the cheesiness — and, let’s admit it, misguided or cheap patriotism — at such a time, people have the essence of it right. People who attack America and its ideals are attacking the ability to be free — to create laws, to spread good, to have democracy, to glutton ourselves, to spend hours of our days watching sports, to defend our amendments, to be uber-American, all the time.

It’s hard for me to explain how I grasped the American-ness of this moment, and why it was right to celebrate the U.S., but let me just say this: When September 11 happened, and everyone talked about what terrorists were trying to do and how you counter that by going back to normal life, I didn’t really get it. I lived through September 11, at an age where I comprehended what was going on, and I read news and analysis every year after. It was only that to me, though — test cases, and information.

But on Friday, I lived the threat of terrorism, and I lived the American response. Fear and danger are not tolerated in this country. Our law enforcement is geared to go crazy when terror tries to dominate us, and to take it down. They aren’t just defending our homeland, and the ideals and values of this country. They’re also protecting us — little, insignificant us, the ones who want to hop on a train or walk down the street without fear. I still believe America is that place because of what I saw this week. The people who protect us do not mess around.

I discovered freedom in the most real way Saturday morning, when I went to the corner store and bought The Boston Globe and a Coke and then walked down my street, through a park, across a busy road (I jaywalked!), and next to the Charles River. I looked across the river and watched dozens of cars zooming down Interstate 90 and Storrow Drive, and I glanced behind me and saw the newly rebuilt Boston University bridge, and the beautiful Prudential Center Tower (it casts it shadow over Copley Square) in the distance.

No one in Boston had to think to himself or herself, “I’m going to go out today and be brave so the terrorists don’t win.” We’re from Boston. We’re workers. How many days have I come home tired and stressed and thought, “I just want to lay down, or cry, or read,” and instead, I move on to the next thing and just keep working? That is Boston. That is a distinctly Northeast spirit. We don’t work to make a statement. We work because there’s things to do, and we’re Americans, and we’re going to keep doing them until the job is done. That’s why we were back at work on Tuesday, and those are the people I saw driving Saturday. It’s less a gigantic statement we’re all struggling to make and more the way of life that we will not let die.

I don’t know what’s behind terrorism or what people are thinking or what America is or what they’re trying to do to it. I don’t know how our patriotism plays into the terrorism equation. I also don’t know that it matters.

But I do know that Saturday morning, I was super-patriotic. I wanted to give out high-fives and talk about it and jump around and shout. I knew what had challenged us Friday, and I knew what had been done to overcome it. All this stuff I read for years — I understand that on a firsthand level now. I got this crazy sense of what it means to be an American, and why that’s not bad. I was smiling. I was ready to go again.

I was free.

Catch him.

The old bait-and-switch, perhaps?

Did the cops call the press conference to get the suspect to let his guard down, and then pounce on him when he came out?

We'll know soon enough [update, 9:03 p.m.: WBZ Boston just reported that the homeowner left his home after the lockdown was lifted and saw blood on the boat in his backyard; he called police, and that is why they closed in on the suspect so soon]. But in the space of time when the lockdown was lifted and I went out and stretched my legs, this is what happened. Yes, they got him:

What activity can I do that I can go and do it and come back to see they've caught the guy?
— Jen Slothower (@JSlotNESN) April 19, 2013

I'm gonna take a walk.
— Jen Slothower (@JSlotNESN) April 19, 2013

If you expect #Boston ease up, you are not aware of how we treated Bill Buckner for 18 years after a baseball rolled between his legs.
— Garytt Poirier (@Garytt) April 19, 2013

Result of my walk: Tons of cops and ambulances. Teenagers talking about Cambridge Rindge & Latin. One awesome house blasting Neil Diamond.
— Jen Slothower (@JSlotNESN) April 19, 2013

@mikecolenesn Be safe be safe be safe.
— Jen Slothower (@JSlotNESN) April 19, 2013

I saw a whole bunch of cops and ambulances going toward Watertown, but I just figured it had been like that all day. First time outside.
— Jen Slothower (@JSlotNESN) April 19, 2013

Come on, guys. We've been behind you all day. Finish the job. Get him.
— Jen Slothower (@JSlotNESN) April 19, 2013

If this works out, we're having Patriots Day again tomorrow, right?
— Jen Slothower (@JSlotNESN) April 20, 2013

Proud of our cops, proud of our local coverage. Local TV has redeemed itself today, and I'm going to be thanking officers for some time.
— Jen Slothower (@JSlotNESN) April 20, 2013

@mikecolenesn Never doubted they would rise again. They've never failed on local in these past few years.
— Jen Slothower (@JSlotNESN) April 20, 2013

Anyone else just realize what time it is? Glued.
— Jen Slothower (@JSlotNESN) April 20, 2013

Suspect in custody #watertown
— Laura Krantz (@laurakrantzmwdn) April 20, 2013

TV slow to confirm. I'm ready to jump.
— Jen Slothower (@JSlotNESN) April 20, 2013

Congrats to the FBI, Boston police, Watertown police, state police. You killed it. By not killing the suspect.
— Doug Kyed (@DougKyedNESN) April 20, 2013

Sounds like this is it. We won't see it, but we can believe it. Well done.
— Jen Slothower (@JSlotNESN) April 20, 2013

In my head all week. Boston!youtube.com/watch?v=4ASJBX…
— Jen Slothower (@JSlotNESN) April 20, 2013

I wrote earlier this week about what happened Marathon Monday, why Boston can still be a city on a hill, and why Friday was far more scary than anything else this week.

Here's some good links I've found today (no rhyme or reason for why I included them, other than they were helpful at the time).

• Anything by The Boston Globe. I've never been more proud of the paper I've stuck with since I moved here. [Live blog] [An intern who knew the suspect]
• The New York Times. We're not paralyzed, but "dragnet" is a good description. [Main Story] [a solid map]
• Deadspin. Say what you will about this site, but they were great at aggregating the details and calling out the morons today. It's not the first time they've done a great job at some form of journalism. [Posts Tagged "Boston Bombings"]
• NBC News: One of the best stories from the early morning.
• One of the saddest parts for me has been the conflicting reports between the evidence and recollections from people who knew the suspects. It's hard to reconcile the accounts and know what to think. [AP: Father's View; Boston Herald: Uncle's View; L.A. Times: Conspiracy Theory]
• The suspect's social media accounts. [Twitter account]
• Details on the two brothers.
• Instagram chronicles it all.

My backyard

I used to worry that I would leave Boston without ever really knowing my neighborhood.

When I lived in Lynchburg, I knew nothing outside of my college campus, how to get to Wal-Mart, and where to go if I wanted a long, winding drive on a sunny afternoon. That’s the way I wanted it.

When I return to my hometown of Schroon Lake, I’m always surprised how little I know of the Adirondack region besides the roads I always traveled as a kid.

When I moved to Boston, I decided I would discover my city. I drove the streets of Cambridge (where I live) and walked the avenues of Boston (where I worked, went to school and enjoy my free time).

Now I can say that this all happened in my backyard.

Here’s a map that gives you an idea of how the manhunt that started Thursday night and continued through Friday connected to me. It’s purposefully understated.

MIT area: This is where the 26-year-old police officer was killed around 10:30 p.m. Thursday. I had dinner in that area of Cambridge at 6 p.m. Thursday. I then drove down Cambridge Street and looped back into the Kendall Square area as I tried to unwind from a long and stressful week. The shooting was at the corner of Vassar and Main streets. I walk there all the time and drove past it Thursday night. The police were searching on Cambridge Street. That’s the first street I drove down Thursday, around 8 p.m. I saw the restaurants and stores that were being shown on Friday morning’s TV coverage.

Cambridge Rindge and Latin: This is where the second suspect, the younger brother, graduated from high school and was a wrestler. It’s a 15-minute walk from my house and next to the main branch of Cambridge Public Library, which I frequent to read and check out books. Finding a parking spot is hard if you miss the afternoon window and get there after Cambridge Rindge and Latin lets out, because the street and big park-like area in front of the library are filled with teenagers. I walk past them all the time and think, “Man, they must think I’m old. These are high school kids.”

There’s also a Starbucks almost directly across from Cambridge Rindge and Latin that I basically live in. It’s right next to the Broadway Marketplace grocery store. If you get a nice seat next to the window, you can look to your left and see Harvard’s campus and to your right and see the beautiful architecture of Cambridge Rindge and Latin school.

A lot of kids from the high school play at the YMCA in Central Square where I go to play basketball after work. Some of them, innocently enough, asked if I went there, too. God bless those kids.

Shell station: This is at the corner of Memorial Drive and River Street. I pass this Shell station every single day on my way home from work — River Street is how you get from Boston (or Allston or Watertown) into Cambridge. It crosses the river, hence its name. It is parallel to Western Avenue, which is how you get out of Cambridge. I regularly stop at this gas station and buy milk, orange juice, candy or a New York Times. The shopkeeper and I are on friendly terms.

This station is where the suspects carjacked an SUV, or ditched the guy that they carjacked the SUV from. It has since been cordoned off with police tape. We saw photos of police searching the station Friday morning. It is a five-minute walk from my house — just a few blocks.

Western Avenue/Arsenal Street: Police reportedly chased the suspects in the carjacked SUV into Watertown. That means they drove down Western Avenue (how to get out of Boston) across the river. This road becomes Arsenal Street, which leads into Watertown. Along the way, the suspects were reportedly throwing explosive devices out the window. A four-mile stretch was shut down Friday morning, with police reportedly searching for more explosive devices.

That is the exact route I drive to work every morning. It’s a five-minute drive with no traffic, two minutes if you don’t hit the lights. It slows down considerably during morning rush hour, especially when tractor-trailers decide to park on half of the street. School buses have also made me late to work before. That’s the way you go to get to where I work, though — one straight route.

The shots that everyone saw on national TV on Friday morning — Arsenal Street, the surrounding areas, the lights, etc. — is as familiar to me as my bedroom.

Arsenal Street Mall: This area is where police gathered Thursday night and Friday morning after chasing the suspects into Watertown. This is where all the TV cameras congregated, and where most news gathering happened. They fanned out from here into the Watertown neighborhoods.

This is where I get coffee or lunch with my co-workers. We walk across Arsenal Street and down its sidewalks.

480 Arsenal St.: This is the address of NESN, my company. This is also the address that I woke up to Friday morning as the epicenter of the chase and manhunt.

There’s a lot I can’t say — just know that this is where all the cops and TV cameras were, and the street addresses given out later where they were reportedly looking for suspects — those are right behind NESN. That’s where my mind and heart was for most of the morning.


More people contacted me Monday asking me if I was OK than have on Friday. That’s likely because people don’t know the geography around here. Today has obviously been much, much scarier. We’re inside, with our doors locked. This is our backyard.

It’s more than my backyard, though — this is my neighborhood. This is where I work and live.

This is where I walk up and down the river, and this is where I drove last night to blow off some stress. This is where I buy my newspapers (I’ve dreamed of being able to walk down the street and buy anything since I was a little kid), and this is where every inch of my life happens every moribund day.

“Boston” has never referred to the land from the North End down to Jamaica Plain and Dorchester. You tell people you’re from Boston even if it’s the suburbs, because we’re all part of Boston – the city limits just can’t hold the amount of people who live and work around here. Watertown, Cambridge and Somerville are part of Boston’s transit system. We’re all in one town.

These are my neighbors and my friends. So today, of all days, pray for Boston.

City on a Hill.

Some saw marshy land. Others saw three big mounds. Most saw frightening weather, dangerous creatures, threatening forests and little hope that any new society could be formed, or that God-honoring life would ever prevail.

John Winthrop saw Boston, and he called it a City on a Hill.

Boston had three hills already, so the moniker fit, but Winthrop meant it for something else. He was nodding to all the symbolism that a new group of settlers striving for freedom for their faith could want.

“Ye are the light of the world,” Matthew 5:14 says. “A city that is set on a hill cannot be hid.”

Winthrop, the governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, wanted Boston to be that city.

They looked for that city on Monday, the people without hope but plumb with fear.

They had seen it from above, from the sweeping view of the Prudential Tower, where the big Boston Public Library leads to Copley Square, with long Boylston Street and its shiny Apple store sneaking up on the left side.

They had seen it from the ground, when they looped in and out of the streets in the Back Bay, never knowing what curious brownstone they would find down this public alley or that.

They had run it from the south, watching the scenery grow from the trees of Hopkinton to the commerce-lined streets of the Back Bay, the stray statues and signs of the city’s great history appearing along the route.

But that city was gone Monday.

People don’t come to Boston for comfort. They didn’t come for it in the 17th century, and they don’t come for it now. Boston is a city for serious people, where the best of the best are so good that they critique even mere excellence. Boston demands champions of its sports team, presidents from its suburbs and hills from its runners.

But Boston isn’t just about crafty settlers fighting to survive, or idealistic freshmen thinking they’ll put this postage-sized city — from Paul Revere’s house down the Citgo sign — in their pocket. Boston was founded as a city of hope, and it’s that hope that can’t be forgotten as the minutes crawl away from a day everyone wants to forget.

The story of the original settlers, and the Founding Fathers, is often reinterpreted today. Schoolchildren get one version, and politicians give another, depending on how they’d like to defend the Constitution or advance propaganda.

But whatever the political views, or the fascination with tales of whether Revere or Sam Adams are as noble as people have made them to be, the reason for Massachusetts being settled in the first place is not contested. People came to this land for freedom — freedom from tyrannical rule, sure, but really freedom to practice what they believed to be truth.

The first residents of the Massachusetts Bay Colony believed in hope: “A hope that makes us not ashamed” (Romans 5:5). They believed in peace: “A peace that passes all understanding” (Philippians 4:7). They believed in grace: “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Corinthians 12:9). They believed in a God Who keeps His promises: “For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us” (Romans 8:18).

From this original belief, and the specific doctrines to which these settlers held, has grown not only a varied city but also a vibrant state and a powerful nation. The new land began with the idea that there was a God worth counting on, and that the words He gave — hope, truth, peace, grace — had real meaning in real, difficult life.

Boston has morphed over the years into a city of its own. It’s now known for tolerance and diversity after a hiccupping couple of centuries during which its citizens battled in real-life case studies over religious tolerance, racial turmoil and increasing societal demands.

It has great pride in its universities and sports teams as well as some of the best research in the world in numerous fields. It has birthed unique political events, and it continues be a forbearer in matters of religion, even as faith in the city appears largely disfigured from what first landed on its shores.

But in becoming the city it has become today, as different as it looks, Boston has not necessarily failed to be the city it set out to be.

Boston is still a city on a hill.

Boston is a place that millions of people look to for inspiration, opportunity or guidance. It is the destination of teenagers’ dreams, it is the fulfillment of minor leaguers’ promise, and it is a haven for countless endeavors and ways of thought.

In establishing the Massachusetts Bay Colony, Winthrop moved to create a city that would be a shining light to the world — a place that would speak of what could be, and that would invite new generations to make a fresh start. Centuries later, Boston does not run — save the blue laws — on puritanical rules. But it has done just what Winthrop envisioned: It has become a city that creates a space for people to see the goodness of God reflected in His creation, namely the people He created and the joy, hope and excellence with which they live their lives.

On Monday, people saw their city knocked off its hill. No longer was Boston a place to gather the runners from many nations for what many of them call the best race in the world. No longer was the marathon a proving ground for everyday men and women who wanted to inspire their communities and raise money to heal everyday pain. No longer was the city a spot where people could celebrate the beauty of God’s creation, and the good that remains in a world much wrecked by hurtful actions, mistakes and decay.

When the blasts shook Boylston Street on Monday, they took more than a race away — they also robbed the city of the hope and joy it was reflecting, and it left many to wonder whether God had disappeared, too.

A major theme — no, the only theme — of the Bible argues urgently that this cannot be the case.

Bad happens, the Bible teaches, but God redeems. Man fell in the Garden, but God provided a way to rise. Mistakes tear apart relationships, but God provides a way to bring them together. Entropy racks the world, but God promises a new creation — and He promises that it can start right now, on this earth.

But in that theme lies one very disconcerting fact: Every seed must die before it grows.

And that is how we arrive at that nasty philosophical point that is often given to try to dull the pain, but that seems horribly wrong and unnecessary. Why must the unthinkable happen for people to band together and triumph far more? Why must there be death to provide a rich life? Why must people have pain to see God in a new way?

John Winthrop can’t tell us, and even Jesus asked for a lot of faith when reconciling the wreckage of this world with the reality of fallen man and the promise of a patched-up future. The Christian doctrine, while understandable on paper, always faces the biggest hurdles when it comes to people’s gut.

But, whatever your creed, they were onto something when they stood on those principles to start this colony that became this city. Whatever your beliefs — whether you see good from God or not, and whether you think Winthrop and company had it wrong all along — know this: The tenets on which they founded this city, and the grand faith or ambition that Boston could always be a sign to the world of resilience, hope and a better tomorrow — that has never passed away.

“Therefore let us choose life, that we and our seed may live by obeying His voice, and cleaving to Him, for He is our life, and our prosperity,” Winthrop said in 1630.

First responders rushing to the scene. Bystanders scooping victims from the blood. Citizens helping stranded runners. Police doing their jobs. The entire state standing in defiance, and promising to help and fight back.

Boston has chosen life. It may be living by many different creeds, and in a very different age, but Boston is still reflecting the goodness, joy and hope of the God for which this colony was made. Whether God is acknowledged or not, His redemption is being lived in this city, as hope swallows up hate.

Even in the darkness, Boston remains a city on a hill.

Boston.

“Were you at the marathon?”

“No.”

“Are you OK?”

“Yes.”

No. Yes. No. Yes. No. Yes.

Those are the words you fire off in the heat of the afternoon, as the news rushes in, as you try to figure out what happened. Those are the characters you type, hoping they’ll make it through a suddenly communication-embargoed city.

Cell lines are down. Text messages are failing. News is hard to judge.

No. Yes. No. Yes. No. Yes.

My roommate is running in the marathon. Do they have a list of the runners who have finished, so I can have some idea where she is?

No.

I’m listed as her emergency contact. We joked about it the night before. “Sure — I’ll tell my boss to let me leave work so I can come peel you off the course when you flop over,” I told her. She laughed back — a good sign she was ready to tame the mental beast of this one as well as the physical, after her first marathon had thrown her for a loop.

Now, real emergency. Real, real emergency. Horrific emergency. Do I have her mother’s phone number?

No.

The co-worker had come over, the Sox having wrapped up a win in very 2013 Sox fashion. Did you hear there was an explosion at the marathon?

No.

“Very 2013 fashion” — 2013 won’t be owned by anyone else now. It will be owned by singed blue and yellow, by the tattered streamers over the plaza I walked through Sunday. A mother from my church wanted to show her children the finish line. We walked down Boylston, past those shops. We saw them unfurl the flags. “Can you tell what countries they belong to?” I ask the children.

No.

I could tell Germany and Australia. I could tell South Africa. We stood in front of the finish line, looked up at the grandstands, pointed at the library. “Have you ever been inside there?” I asked.

No.

“It’s beautiful,” I say. “It’s like a European castle, with this big courtyard and these giant lions.” A library built to be the finest, to hold the finest, in a city built to be the finest, to hold the finest.

What I left out is that this entire area is one of my favorites, the beautiful church and the beautiful square and the beautiful Gothic light posts hanging out. I would have coffee over there so many times on my long, midweek days off as a sports freelancer. I went into Marathon Sports back there to help my runner roommate pick out racing clothes. I would walk this side of Boylston, that side, around the library and through the square, on my many trips from Park Street through the Back Bay to the Fens, all on foot. Boston is a walking city. Boston is a running city. Have you walked it?

No.

It’s spring now. We’ve started it twice and stopped it twice, our nice days engulfed by that tattered edge of April that won’t less us move on. Boston folk are used to the cold, the rain, the winter, but after the messy last few months, don’t tease. Spring should be here to stay.

On Monday, real spring was here, at least in the minds of much of Boston. Twitter flooded with Boston Marathon well-wishers, and I was clicking on things I never click on, caught in the spirit. I remembered working for the daily paper that covered Hopkinton, and the runner profiles we churned out in the weeks leading up. I remembered a pair of Stoneham citizens I interviewed who were running in memory of a brother. I remembered the feeling I get when I step out of the Cambridge YMCA on a cold day, with no coat and just shorts as the heat from my basketball playing fights off the cold. The runners would be feeling that way today, no matter what April threw at them. They would conquer it in mass, gliding on the asphalt, whether spring was ready to stay or not. Could it be any more perfect?

No.

And then it struck, the details that I didn’t want to try to put together as soon as I knew — just moments after it happened — that something horrible had happened. The historicity, the fact that it was my city, the stats and figures and explanations — I don’t want to know. I just want it to stop. Will it stop?

No.

There was crying on the phone with my mother, longer text messages to the brothers since we couldn’t get through to each other on the phone, and finally, jogging up the steps to my Cambridge home, where I opened the door, ran the length of the apartment, and hustled up the final set of stairs to see her there, real, in person. The roommate. There was a dinner of salmon and asparagus — what was supposed to be my little feast — that I made for her that night, that I made with delicacies I had bought at a ship-shape rate at a Boston institution, Haymarket, just two days before. There was lounging in front of the TV, watching 30 Rock, doing what you do when you don’t want to talk about it, read about it or hear about it anymore. Would it stop?

No.

She gave me her parents’ phone number. I gave her the number of mine.

I looked away from photos, knowing so many were so worse off than me.

I wandered back to my computer a few times, scrolling through Facebook to see how everyone was doing. A former colleague from the daily paper, with whom I had complained about marathon coverage many a time, was celebrating his first non-Marathon Monday at JFK Library (you know the rest). Friends from college had friends running Boston. Buddies from graduate school, and pals from my current life, all checked in. I had seen the pictures, the horrible pictures. So many people were hurt, so badly. Was anyone I knew hurt?

No.

And then it started. The outpouring. The boasts that Boston was different. The cheesy memes that said you don’t mess with Boston, with the mascots of its four main sports dressed for battle and staring down the camera. I smirked at that one. The earlier ones — the ones where we act like only in Boston would first responders rush to the scene so well, where something unique about us is what made this day different than just a tragedy — those were hard for me to believe. Really? Really, in the face of this, could we know such things? But this, this silly little picture, touched a nerve.

It was then that I realized what was so revolting about this whole thing. They attacked us — whoever this was — on Patriots Day, on our day to celebrate the incredible history this little city has had. They attacked us when the charity runners were going through, when the families were gathered together. They attacked us on our first day of spring, on our day to stick our noses up to the cold and say that we will have sunshine from now on. They attacked us in Boston, a city where the dirty looks and crankiness are so common and so us that a day outside its cynicism — albeit the kind of cynicism that only comes from chasing after excellence, and greatness, and worth — makes me long to be back in its safety. You think you can come in here on Patriots Day and take away spring and hope and promise?

No. Not in our city.

My friends were changing their profile pictures to the Boston skyline, but mine is already set on a cityscape of the Pru and the John Hancock Tower, shot straight down the Mass. Ave. bridge, with a sticker-covered pole framing the edge. That is my gateway, taken on a perfect spring day, as I walk the hundreds of Smoots into the city and hang a left on Boylston to trek wherever I can go. Are you going to mess with that? Are you going to mess with our city?

No.

Were you at the marathon? Are you OK?

I answered the text messages, but I don’t know what’s going on more than anyone out there. It was a day of turmoil for me, so much more than can be captured in scattered thoughts.

But humanism and Boston bravado aside, I know this. We live here because we all believe in something bigger than ourselves. You don’t come to Boston for a comfortable life, or to just paddle along in an OK career. You come here because you want to be something, to see something, to do something, to go somewhere.

That’s why we're cranky. It’s also why we run.

And wherever this goes, it’s also why we’re all getting up Tuesday, and looking to see what we can do to help, to heal, to move on and move forward. That’s what marathon runners do, after all.

We will clean our streets. We will lift our broken. We will shake our heads at the sources of it all.

But most of all, whatever our story of Marathon Monday 2013 is, we will know how to answer the questions.

Is Boston a city on a hill?

Is this nasty, unconscionable act going to be answered?

Will its people keep running?

Yes.

So, I think Rob Bell’s latest book is perfect

So, I think Rob Bell’s latest book is perfect

... as a tool for evangelism.

If you’ve read this far, you’ve fallen prey to a trick that controversial pastor Rob Bell uses to hook all kinds of people, on topics ranging from sex to social justice to Hell. He hits you with something inflammatory, something black and white, to draw a response, an outrage, an audience. But I’m starting to wonder if that’s all a gimmick to get people to read, because if Bell’s latest book on Heaven and Hell is actually about what I think it is, then the last thing I think Bell wants is definites.

He’s really just trying to get people to listen.

Take Sex God, for example, Bell’s incredibly fine work on Who God is, what love is, and what that means for Christians or just basic relationships. Anybody who’s read the book knows it’s about how relationships are only anything when balanced out by God — how sex and God go together and aren’t enemies. Anybody who hasn’t read the book is all in a tither, thinking Bell wrote something about a god of sex.

Sex God is a very even, nuanced, Biblical approach to love and relationships, but you would never know it from the title. You think it’s supposed to be some apocryphal mess, the way he set it up. But that begs the next question: If he hadn’t set it up that way, would anyone have ever read it?

And that’s the problem with Love Wins, Bell’s latest book that tackles Heaven and Hell and has managed to get a lot of Christians — rightfully so — upset. When’s the last time you saw a basic, very Scripture-passage-filled Evangelical book get talked about? What — Chuck Swindoll’s not on the Today Show? Whyever not?

So, Bell got the whole world looking. Unfortunately, it’s for all the wrong reasons, and Love Wins has serious repercussions outside of any good it may has caused.

I would like to cover two areas: (1) The good of Bell’s book and (2) the bad. As for whether he has inexorably harmed the church and should be denounced, I will simply say this: We, as Christians, are responsible for the Crusades, the Inquisition, burnings at the stake, a lot of the Holocaust, turning away widows and orphans, saving could-be-aborted babies only to leave them in homeless shelters, refusing to give medical attention to foreigners until they accepted our Gospel, contributing to the oppression of women, scarring our families, and, above all, failing to be Jesus to the people around us every day. We’ve all messed up, some bigger than others. But before we shoot down another Christian, let’s make sure that we’re not screwing over the people around us by not showing them a good picture of Christ. And let’s leave the judgment questions to God, and do as the Bible says, which is return evil with good (insert several hundred Scripture references here).

I will discuss points where I think Bell has made missteps, but I will not condemn him. And, in the spirit of evil overcoming good, I will first ask, what good can we draw from this?

My piece opened with a charge against Bell of creating a lot of hoopla around a controversial topic, probably with him hoping that many people would get a chance to see the Gospel. That is laudable, but unlike Bell’s other scandalous entries (e.g. Sex God), he doesn’t back this one up with mainly orthodox views that are simply told more creatively. He’s got some doctrine problems. But that is Point #2.

For those unfamiliar, Bell is an engaging pastor who has a 7,000-member church in Grand Rapids, Mich., that grew out of ambitious reframing of the Bible. That is, Bell took what has been taught in the Christian church for a couple thousand years and put it into today’s language. As Paul was Greek to the Greeks and Roman to the Romans, Rob Bell has been a truly postmodern Christian to the postmodern Christians, which is not a light compliment. Ask any young person in the church today, and they can give you a hefty list of ways the church doesn’t seem to make sense with the world they see around them every day. And I’m not talking about “drums in the church” and “whether you can wear jeans.” No. I am talking about serious, serious, “Jesus told us to reach the people around us, and I don’t have a clue how, because my church never taught me that.”

Bell follows the call of “in the world but not of it,” showing how real Christianity can spread in today’s culture.

I could throw labels around or go into examples, but I think you either know exactly what I’m talking about or you’re clueless. If you don’t know, a guy like Rob Bell will only confuse you more. If you do know, go buy some Rob Bell books right now.

Bell does not pretend to be a doctrinal textbook writer. He is very clear that his approach to teaching the faith is not about supplanting the Bible, or lists of theology points, but rather expanding them or rephrasing them in a way we can understand. C.S. Lewis did this when he created dialogue between devils in The Screwtape Letters, when he retold great Greek myths to explain God in Till We Have Faces, when he described how Jesus Christ came and found him in Surprised By Joy. Jesus did it, too — they were called parables.

Now, every adventurous Christian writer will get his criticism, especially from the doctrine stalwarts who are terrified that if we change one detail, we have to start throwing out whole chunks of systematic theology. (I just read a book where a writer tried to do an expository storytelling of St. Paul’s life — and not a very good one at that, I may add — and I found notes in the margin referencing a Christian leader who repeatedly said, “Not in the text. Not in the text.” Well, of course. If we regurgitate only the text, we might as well just xerox the Bible, because all Christian books in some sense are an interpretation or exposition of the text.)

I think that much of Christianity is not called the Bible; it’s called growth. God set up the parameters in the natural world and in His Word; Jesus Christ came to save us; the Holy Spirit convicts and guides us. Throughout all of this are millions of different people and situations where God guides every single person into a deeper understanding of Him. Sometimes He even uses this scandalous thing called the body of Christ, where — hold on to your hats, kids — sometimes one believer will share with another believer how God has worked, or how a Scripture passage comes across to that believer in a way that, believe it or not, is not explicitly “in the text.” That’s right. Verses can be taken different ways and applied to different situations, and no Bible teacher would argue with this one. That is what good teaching does: It starts from the core of truth and finds applications. We make a doctrinal core, but God teaches us and leads us in many different ways.

What creative or expository writing then does is take a specific point in teaching and find a way to craft it to a specific audience, to get that audience that may not ever see it that way by a simple reading to understand it. Will some details be blurred? Of course. But the good writers never promise to give the complete picture, and they never say to toss out the Bible. What they are doing is creating different entry points to the same piece of truth.

That is what Bell is the master of with today’s world: creating different entry points to the same piece of truth. He takes Biblical equations (e.g. truth and grace balance) and weighs down one side until the reader gets it, then goes back and weighs down the other. He takes cliches and stories heard dozens of times and backs up, runs over to something you would think would have nothing to do with it, and works his way in backwards until you suddenly see that this something that had nothing to do with anything actually has everything to do with a Biblical concept you’ve never really gotten before.

Better yet, Bell is an original writer, in the sense that he doesn’t necessarily fashion his points as a reaction to someone else. We’ve all read those horrid Christian writers who are so busy explaining why someone else is wrong that they can’t give us a point on why they are right. Bell is calm, and subtle, and does not feel the need to explain everything the church is doing wrong — and that’s probably because he realizes that everyone is shaped differently, and that what is so wrong to someone could be a reaction to someone else’s good intentions. He presents his ideas as options, things to be discussed. He doesn’t attack people. And because his points are presented as considerations, my guess is that he wouldn’t mind if you left them aside if they didn’t help you (much as C.S. Lewis would often encourage his readers to do). If you need an alternative, Bell’s message is, try looking at it this way.

This is who Bell is, for those unfamiliar. He quotes the Bible a lot in his writing, and he cites his “concept” points, too. Are all of them doctrinally sound, and good for systematic theology? I wouldn’t say that, but now I must reiterate: I don’t think that’s his point. I think most of his work is not meant to establish a base, but rather to open possibilities. Here’s another way to look at that. Here’s a new angle on that long-established principle. Here’s some color for your ledger-line theology exam. Here’s a person behind that Bible character.

So, read with care, but be ready to care about a lot of things you never realized before.

That’s why I say that Bell’s book is a perfect tool for evangelism. Put away the Heaven and Hell objections for a moment and think about the type of thing Bell is doing in this book.

What are people’s main objections to Christianity? I’m not sure what you’ve heard from the unsaved people you’ve talked to, but let me give you a quick list of responses I often hear when I talk to people around Boston — on the subway, in the newsroom, after church. “I don’t think God can be good, not with the way I see people suffer in my job at the hospital every day.” “Religion? Let me tell you about when I was a kid. I was taking communion in the Catholic church, and the priest ....” “If Heaven is a place that would leave out my friends, then it doesn’t sound like a place I’d like to go.” “What kind of God just looks for ways to screw up people’s lives? Hasn’t He done enough?”

OK, all right. Um, we’re not talking about the same thing anymore. I was talking about Jesus, but I’m not sure what they’re talking about, right?

Now, we as Christians can whine all we want about people misrepresenting God. We can label them “liberals” or look down our nose at other denominations that have messed stuff up. But really, do we have anyone to blame but ourselves for the way people see God? It’s a fact of evangelism, and one that we shouldn’t be complaining about. The Bible says people will avoid the truth and misrepresent God. And it still tells us to preach the Gospel. To every creature.

So, what do we do? Well, we can keep trying to share Christ the way we have for years. We can get upset that people just aren’t getting it. You know, go into the subway and hand out tracts telling people they’re going to Hell. Maybe start a Christian university that pays politicians to enact some Christian ideals. Perhaps we can send out little posses from our church that do nice things in the neighborhood and then tell people about Jesus.

Or, we start to think about what real people are like.

When did you come to Christ? What changed your mind? What was the splinter that led to the crack that ripped your heart wide open so Jesus could come and do His work?

What are your objections to Christianity? What are the things you still struggle with?

On your darkest nights, what is your beef with God? Who is that person who comes to your mind every time you fail? If you could reverse one event in your life, what would it be? Which of the three grandparents that died when you were 9 would you bring back?

We as Christians are, praise God, sanctified, but that doesn’t mean we instantly understand God or stop struggling with sin. Every day, we fight the same battle of the mind and heart that unsaved people do. We just have a whole lot of God’s help.

So, I ask again, what’s your beef with God? What made it OK to finally come to Him?

Unsaved people are people just like us, and meeting them exactly where they are is the only way to start a path toward Christ. The things of God, and His promises, are going to seem strange and fake and flat-out untrue to them. We can’t wait in the church for them to come to us. We can’t give them a three-step plan to Jesus when they are 5,000 steps away from even knowing what the word “saved” actually means. We can’t sing glory hallelujah Heaven when they just want to know why the pain won’t stop.

And that is why I think Rob Bell is brilliant. Hell is pretty high on the list of people’s objections to Christianity, right? So he tells them they don’t need Hell. You don’t want judgment, condemnation? Fine, toss it out, and take Hell with it, he says. You want Heaven and gold and little bunnies in green grass? Take it. Let’s talk about Heaven, he says. Let’s talk about how beautiful and perfect it is and how much you want it.

But then he asks what they’re going to do with it.

For all the critics of Rob Bell’s book, I hope you made it to the last, little, seven-page chapter, because that is the redeeming factor of this book. For all the miscues (hold on, they’re still coming), Bell still hits a winner at the end. He gives Scripture passages that talk about real judgment and real separation from God. He leaves the ball in the court of the reader.

But when he leaves the ball for them, the decision for them and only them to make, he’s done it in a way few other Christians have: He’s taken away all the barriers.

Think about the objections to Christianity, and where people would be if those were taken away. What would they say then? For the science people, if the Creation objections were taken away, what would they say? For the abused people, if the hurt was taken away, what would they say? For the I-don’t-like-Hell people, if Hell was taken away, what would they say?

Deep down, we’ve all got this thing that’s telling us something is up. It’s stronger for some, more defined for others. But when we stop being reactionary, and explaining the reasons we don’t like something or don’t want to follow something, all of the sudden we have to act. If — to be extreme — death was two minutes away, what gut feeling would you take care of? If your child, or your best friend, was looking at death two minutes away, what would you tell them?

We’ve all got some idea of God and what is true and what is good. Romans says that. Bell knows that. So, he says, “Please, lower your weapons. I know that much of Christianity can be farcical and contradictory, even mean-spirited and cruel. We have been misrepresented, but we have also been perfectly represented as the slowly healing sinners we are. But please, without these things you find offensive and wrong, what do you think of God? What do you believe? Have you taken time to take care for your soul? Will you at least start to explore?”

Will you at least start to explore.

Most unsaved people in the world today are on a winding journey back to God, and we Christians are merely the helpers that arrive here and there to help them take this step or that. But the most abused, the most hurt, the most skeptical are often in the saddest position of all — they have stopped walking. They do not try to understand. They have shut off the lights, turned around the car, closed the mind. The hurdles are too big. They cannot consider it.

Our job as Christians is to bring people to Christ, whether they are three steps away, 5,000 steps away, or have refused to budge. If we continue to present the Gospel the same way, or — worse yet — allow dangerously wrong misconceptions of Jesus to linger in their minds — that may be why we aren’t reaching them. If they won’t budge on the road that you see so clearly between them and Christ, why not lead them through a path that goes through the forest instead? Why not open a different window and give them another view? Why not hold their hand and carry them a bit farther?

Now, Bell’s doctrinal points aside, if any unsaved person picks up that book and makes it to that last chapter, we may have won a victory of some sorts. Because they, in reading what Bell has presented, will have read about Heaven. They will have read about Jesus. They will have read about love. And then, in the end, they will be told to get off their rear end and do something about it.

I’m not advocating for spurious doctrine, and the end never justifies the means if we willfully do wrong. But I will say this: I have had (unknown) wrong ideas of God’s love before in my life, but the funny thing about love is that you never want to stop exploring it, because it’s love. And then you see the truth, and it’s still love. And God peels back the layers and changes you and shows you all this stuff you would have never taken before because you were so selfish and arrogant, and it’s still love. And you, a little love junky, keep going back for more.

Remember how you came to Christ. Did you know everything about doctrine? Did you know what kind of decision you were making? (It was a big one.) Did you have even a hint of this One you were giving yourself to? Probably not, for any Christian — ever — is the answer to those yes. God gives us enough to bring us to Him, and then He goes all God on us.

For people who make Hell their excuse for not coming to God, Bell does not let them beat around the edges and avoid what unsettles them. He takes away their excuse and asks them what they will now do with God.

So now, instead of stagnants, we have seekers. Any doubt that once they start looking, they’ll find Him?

With this, I conclude Point #1, in which I suggest that some good can come of Bell’s work. First, he talks in today’s language, and paints pictures people can understand, bringing many to the Gospel who would not have dared to come near it before. Two, God is mighty and sovereign and works through idiots and heretics as much as saints (although this is not preferred). Three, I bet you’re thinking a lot more about what Christians actually believe, huh? Huh? And four, nothing is ever perfect, and nothing is ever finished. The book is already out. How can we use it for good?

Now, the bad.

First of all, I understand Bell is trying to attract a lot of people to his book and reach more people with clever marketing, but do we really need the hyperbole? What about all the Christians he’s alienated? Would some disclaimers, some humility, some moderation help? I noted before that C.S. Lewis would encourage his readers to leave his points aside if they did not help the reader better understand something, but Bell does not do that. I think that is his purpose with this style of writing, but he never explicitly says that, and, by being a pastor, he sets himself up as an authoritative source that some take as a definitive end point for their Bible learning. Very dangerous.

Second, also on his approach, I understand the good of weighing down one side of the equation heavily so that we really, really understand it before mixing in the rest. As a Christian growing up in the church, I fully know the danger of Bible teachers who can’t teach a freaking lesson on grace without reminding students that God judges them, too. (Sometimes we really need to know what just grace is, OK?) But I fear Bell has left out too much of the counterbalance here, or not laid enough disclaimers for his readers to know there is more information than what he has given. He ignores some very important points.

Third, Bell talks an awful lot about exploring and Christianity having room for many views and God being way bigger than our minds, but he gives a pretty definitive, narrow conclusion in his book. Is God big enough for people who don’t want a Hell or but not big enough for people that think righteous justness is part of His character? Bell wants to pull the boundaries of God in ways that make sense to his human views of love and fairness, but he does not spend much time addressing that maybe God is quite loving but tough to completely comprehend.

The Bible talks of a mystery, and exploration. Paul was a big proponent. But it’s not carte blanche, willy-nilly search and do whatever you want. At some point that type of poking around becomes heresy.

I have extensive notes on some of the doctrinal snafus I encountered in Bell’s book. Some I took with, “Well, we don’t know that, so it’s a possibility I can consider,” but quite a few, and many of the heavy ones, I had to say, “Yeah, that’s not what that verse means” or “You’re leaving out several verses that balance that argument.”

For example, he cites the Isaiah passage where it talks about all people of the earth meeting in Egypt to praise God, and he says that must mean the enemies of God, too. But I’m pretty sure that the rest of that passage talks about God destroying His enemies, so maybe the enemies aren’t there praising God because they’ve been destroyed. Just a thought.

I’d prefer not to attack or be reactionary, so I’ll just list other areas I thought were under-explained in case people are curious: the cut-off date for salvation (are the gates of Heaven just wide open forever, until everybody filters in?); the judgment or condemnation for people who do not have consequences on this earth corresponding to their sinful actions; why, if we’re all on a long journey to God, the Bible talks about a specific point of belief, where justification takes place and sanctification begins; the importance of accepting Christ specifically and not just basking in God’s love generically; how Bell deals with human nature — i.e., none are righteous, none seek God, none left out there on their own will choose to come to God, even if convicted by the natural things of this world that they are wrong; the passages in the final chapter that Bell quotes (talking about severe separation); whether God indeed is so beautiful if a world without God is not so horrible (this is a big one); Bell’s entire premise that Hell is basically standing outside of Heaven and looking at other people having it good and you not having it good; a complete sidestep on what is true good, true bad, true evil — and especially if there is no condemnation and no cutoff, what we are really missing?; Bell saying that with Hell, God “becomes a different person” when we die, when really I think it may be more of a different role, much like Biblical parallels of God being our Father; the Bible verses talking about a place created for the devil and his angels (a guest room, perhaps?); not whether God could create Hell, as Bell wonders, but whether God could make a place absent of Himself, which is a much more valid question; Bell’s entire obsession with whether God is “able” to save people — isn’t the question here actually one of will and character, and not ability?; if God is too good to create Hell, then why did He create people who make Hell on earth (Bell’s main idea)?

I have Bible references and deep philosophical constructs, but we don’t need that here.

What I do want to do is make one more comment on the purpose of this book. As I needled through all my critiques of the case Bell was laying out, I found myself wondering whether this book was, in fact, written for Christians.

Crazy, right?

But think about it — how much more beautiful would Jesus be if we were talking more about His goodness? How many people sneer at Christians because we act like have the ultimate ace card by having a Hell?

Bell’s point that Christians emphasize Hell too much is, I think, extremely valid. For our theology, we need a Hell — mostly because that portion of orthodoxy explains the antithesis of God, the point of everything. Hell is what happens when we have removed Him from life.

If condemnation is what happens when you reject God, then the place of condemnation is a place without God. That means that every inch of you that was made good by God, or any part of this world that you loved because it had a hint of God or reflected His goodness, is gone. That selfishness you fight every day? That nasty temper that flares up when you’re hurt? That rage that makes you just always want what you want so much? Well, that’s going to be out of control without God there, because any good and any hope you had of not being completely yourself — a disgusting, corroded, polluted creature — is gone if God is not there. You will continue to devour yourself, step by hideous step.

So, whether Hell is a literal place where you burn or a figurative place where you are simply without God, decaying from the ravages of sin for all eternity (or perhaps, as some have suggested, until you destroy yourself to the point that you are no longer human), there is an effect of not having God, and it is the same as the punishment for rejecting God.

The only way God would allow us to have complete, unadulterated Hell (as defined as life without Him) is if we chose so, which is why you only get Hell if you reject God. The consequences on earth, the bummers of sin nature that we have right now, are all watered down by the goodness of God that still pervades this world.

So, we need Hell if we have any kind of God Who is good or righteous, because something that rejects a God Who is really God in the true sense of the word should be separated from God if they are so un-God to reject Him. (Because God, in the true sense of the word God, can’t be around things that are grotesque by rejecting Him and His goodness, because He’s God.)

As for cutoff dates and eternal separation — well, that’s where doctrinal division lines come in that are worth discussing, but not needed to support the point that Christianity sort of needs a Hell if it’s going to have a God. (Personally, though: How can it be Hell if there’s no cutoff or separation?)

But just because Hell is part of our doctrine does not mean that it’s what we should be putting on our billboards, which goes back to why I was wondering if this book is written for Christians.

I would agree with Bell that Christians need to stop being obsessed with Hell.

First, it’s a downer. I mean, come on. Second, it’s a cop-out. Here’s why you should choose my religion — you could get burnt up! All right, that’s weak. Third, and most importantly, it’s so beside the point. Why are we fixated on flip side of a bad decision rather than the God of the universe? Why are we trying to motivate people with fear?

According to the Bible, God is sad that Hell has to be. It’s an unfortunate consequence. The idea of the cosmic killjoy who likes torching people like a bully burns ants on a playground with his magnifying glass is not the Biblical description of God. God does not need Hell or enjoy its purpose. Condemnation is a byproduct of our decisions, not an attribute of God.

Do people who fixate on Hell even know God? I mean, seriously — if they have a real, beautiful relationship with Jesus, how can they not be exploding with it? Why on earth are they thinking about dungeons and dragons?

Who takes the guy of their dreams home and stands there telling their family all the annoying things he’s not?

We need to have an answer when people want to know if there is a Hell, and heck yes, it’s a wonderful motivator for people who aren’t urgent about seeking God or making right choices. But it’s a really poor way to evangelize. It’s really taking the focus away from what the Gospel is about: Christ. (This may be a surprise, but we were created for fellowship with God. Heaven and Hell are actually aftereffects.) For some, harping on Hell may be a way to God, but for others, I suggest that it may actually be horrifically dangerous — these people may do a list of things to get out of Hell, think they are safe, and never once consider what it means to accept Christ or know God. And that is precisely the thing that actually gets you headed toward Hell.

One of the strongest parts of Bell's book, and a chapter I would hand to any soul on this earth, Christian or not, with no caveats, is his bit on Heaven. He paints a picture that we would all do well to paint for those who cannot imagine Christ, although they already yearn for Him.

Bell describes my Jesus, my God, according to His Bible, His version of Heaven. He describes justice and love and goodness. He describes right. He describes beauty.

He connects the God I met through the beauty and good of this world with the God I dream to meet when we have faces.

And then, the little genius, he asks what kind of people could be allowed in that beautiful place. Rapists? Hitler? Nah. Probably not.

What about you? Would God let you into that place?

With that, I bow my head, and lay open my hands, and cry the way I did the day God found me on Newbury Street in Boston, Massachusetts, while reading a chapter about Jane Eyre. That was the first time in my life that I actually knew God loved me. That was the day I realized that these things I had been chasing, this intellect I had been accumulating, were little reflections of the Joy that is God.

I remember laying in the dark after campfire services as a kid and as a teenager, thinking about the agony of Hell, and having little chats with God to double-check that I was saved. It was a strange farce, this weird uncertainty as I looped down the checklist like the evangelist had told me to.

I remember hearing people talk about Heaven, and being reunited with God, as I looked at the coffins of my grandparents and my childhood basketball hero and saw only black, feeling only that monstrous pit in my chest.

I remember glimpsing the light in a friend’s eye as she told me about a real God she knew, a God that gave her hope and joy, words I knew I didn’t understand.

And I remember Newbury Street, and crying over Jane Eyre. And I remember, without the threat of Hell or ever having to throw a stick into a campfire to dedicate my life to God, that I would do everything I could from that day forward to tell everyone I knew that God is, indeed, real. He loves us. He wants us. He is behind those doors we open looking for something else. He is strung throughout our favorite music and hidden in our favorite books. He is the good we see everywhere in this world, and He is giving us these tastes until we know to come to Him.

I came to Christianity because I knew I was supposed to accept Jesus into my heart, maybe because of a fear of Hell. I came to God because I finally understood Who He was through glimpses of Heaven.

People hate Christianity because Christ-followers are called to die to self. They see the sacrifice, the loss of humanity.

What we don’t tell them enough about is that if they push this Jesus away, all the good from Him that has clung to different parts of their life will one day be gone, too. God doesn’t want to take their good; He wants to connect it to the Source that makes it so good.

Yet many Christians just blabber to them about Hell.

Rob Bell says he doesn’t like a Heaven where some are “in” and some are “out.” I don’t even think I’m in, because whatever was me died on Newbury Street. Something new is walking around Boston. And that smiling girl sees Heaven everywhere.

As soon as we are “in,” God starts to peel apart what was us and makes it something new.

There is no Heaven and Hell. There is only God and not God. Chances are, most people are running hard after bits of God that they’ve seen, and they don’t even know that it’s Him. We need to tell them, in ways they can understand.

We have been placed on this earth to find every way possible to show them the path to Heaven. Soon.

Shades of Brown

When I first moved to Boston, I wondered if would ever understand the area: How these people thought, where their convictions lay, and why they supported what they did.

Sixteen months later, I think I can say I do understand quite a bit, and that's why I want to comment on the Scott Brown election.

The election of a Republican to "the seat of Ted Kennedy," in "the bluest of blue states," has jolted the nation, and many are saying it's the end of the Democrat's upswing and a new surge of support for Republicans.

But, as with most political issue, this is not red or blue. There are shades of purple, or in this case, Brown, here.

A proper understanding of the state will help with realizing what really happened when Brown won, and it will aid anyone looking to make definition assertions for elections in the future.

First of all, understand that Massachusetts is still as Democratic as ever, and this vote does not mean that Bay Staters don't want health care or don't support Democratic ideals. That's the last thing you can draw from this election. Instead, consider this: Democrats outnumber Republicans in Massachusetts three to one, meaning that you can count on a 75% blue vote to 25% red. So, in order to even that up, all you need is one-third of Democrats to jump ship (not the entire state) to even up an election...and that's not even counting independents.

Furthermore, Democrats and Republicans in New England run in varying stripes. Yes, Massachusetts has been electing Republican governors like crazy in the last half-century (as duly noted by all the fast-breathing media voices). But those are extremely moderate Republicans, and it's because even Massholes know that they need some kind of balance in government (or so my Democratic friends tell me).

So, it's not like this attention was once-in-a-lifetime. Statistically, it could happen. And the main reasons it did, and the ones that should be scrutinized going into future elections where Republicans hope to pull upsets, are two-fold:

1. Bay Staters are liberal, but they're not blind.

Massachusetts-dwellers have seen the mess that's been happening in Washington as the Democrats try to push health care through, and they're not happy. The senator from Nebraska got free Medicare for his state, and the Maine senators have been courted more in a week in Washington than they were in all of high school (reference Google images). It's corruption, and although Boston love corruption as much as the next sin city, this corruption hasn't resulted in much good for anyone. The bill that has been produced is a mess; it's not very likely to help people; most people oppose it; it's super-expensive.

Forget Ted Kennedy's legacy; I think most Bay Staters were happy they had a chance to shoot
down this albatross. This isn't what Ted wanted, some think.

On top of that, NEWS FLASH: Massachusetts already has universal health care. So, this is not a vote against liberal ideology; it's a message that this form of liberal ideology isn't sufficient.

If the current health bill passes, Massachusetts residents would see their health care costs increase, and, worse yet, they'd have to start shelling out money to welfare-ize the tobacco-chewing, french fry-eating other (read: Southern) states whose governments are so conservative that it's going to take serious money to get health care plans going.

It's simple math, and Massachusetts voters didn't see why they should have to pay for having the foresight to do this idea a few years ago.

[Side note: The Massachusetts plan has yet to be financially profitable, much less balance out. That's a bit of a harbinger.]

[Another side note for red-staters: You know who the governor of Massachusetts was when his administration pushed health care through? Mitt Romney. That's right, as in I'm-running-in-2012-and-likely-speaking-against-ObamaCare-as-the-crux-of-my-campaign Mitt Romney. I'm telling you, Massachusetts politics isn't as clear-cut as you think.]

2. Martha Coakley blew it.

Now, my red-state friends have been saying, "It doesn't matter if Massachusetts was voting against Coakley; they were still voting for someone!"

Well, yeah, but let me explain the concept of "the lesser of two evils" here.

Martha Coakley led by 30 points in the polls one month before the election. Martha Coakley blew three other decent senatorial candidates away in the Democratic primary months before the special election and had the majority of observers wondering why she was still campaigning at all. Martha Coakley was to Ted Kennedy what Cape Cod is to...well, cod. Martha Coakley was endorsed by Ted Kennedy's widow, a blemishless figure in the Massachusetts lexicon whose last public appearances before the endorsement included her standing outside all day thanking the thousands who came to Ted's wake.

They're not calling her "Chokely" around here for nothing.

How could she blow it so bad? Just think of the worst possible things you could do in a campaign, and she probably did them.

Falsely accuse your opponent of not helping rape victims? Check. Suggest that Curt Schilling, the man who bled through his sock to lead the Red Sox back from a 3-0 deficit against the New York Yankees and break an 86-year curse, was a Yankees fan? Check. Go Beacon Street on everyone, looking down your nose at your hard-campaigning opponent and ask, "What am I supposed to do? Stand outside Fenway Park? Shake hands? In the cold?"

Yes, Martha, that's what you were supposed to do.

Completely out of touch. She also suggested that there are no terrorists left in Afghanistan.

I don't care if you hate George W. Bush, if you think the wars over there are a mistake, if you're anti-Cheney, anti-Palin, anti-involvement. You're still scared about America being threatened by terrorists, especially after somebody tries to bomb the country on Christmas and the woman who's running for your Senate seat is taking the day off (and assuming Afghanistan is full of poor, lovely, peaceful poppie farmers).

In summary: Massachusetts is more purple than you think; Bay Staters are still liberal but want sane liberalism; and Martha's campaign is now the biggest choke job in New England's history, supplanting even that game against the Giants in 2007 (I won't utter the words).

The lesson I take from all this, though, is that as much as I want to explain this race and say what effect it will have on future voting, we can't really know until those races come up. There's a lot of time until then. Sure, the Democrats have ticked off enough people to get a backswing.

But isn't that what always happens?

Here's my point: Instead of Karl Rove saying there's going to be a Republican majority forever (2000ish) or pundits saying the Democrats are in charge for a while (uh, 12 months ago?), why aren't people focusing on what the people are actually saying?

The election of Scott Brown was not a mandate for right-wing Republican policies. The guy is an environmentalist and supports Roe v. Wade. Yeah, that's right.

(Although his quickness to shout about the availability of his young daughters does make me think of several Christian college campuses where I have lived.)

The election of Scott Brown was a message from a liberal state that the Democrats had gone too far, overplayed their hands a little bit.

I think it was the same with the 2008 election: People were sick of the Republicans doing whatever they wanted and forcing their way on people.

What do people really want? It's in the middle, of course...a shade of purple. And instead of declaring Republican mandates and Democratic mandates, let's back away from swinging from one side to the other and let the balance stick sit for a minute, waiting to see where the bubble slides to. On some issues, the American people may prefer a more liberal approach. On others, it will be conservative issues.

(It's safe to say most Americans are not happy about health care, but many Americans also want a liberal-like equality when it comes to controlling the financial sector. Purple.)

Finally, I want to take a shot at the national psychos who have been trying to pigeonhole the Massachusetts election: Get your facts straight.

I think the Boston Globe did a great job of covering its home turf well, and much of what it reported lined up with what I was hearing from my friends (a mix of conservatives, Republicans, and "I vote for whomever has the less annoying adds").

But the national media (here's pointing at you, Fox News and MSNBC) once again played partisan and blew it out of proportion. And unfortunately, many people I consider level-headed took the bait.

It's not red state versus blue. There are layers here, and it's worth the time to look at the layers.

[I will note the Time magazine article especially, which was mostly correct and had a great headline ("Mass Mutiny") but incorrectly reported that Brown's daughter was a four-year starter on the Boston College basketball team (she still is, not was) and engaged in hyperbole when talking about some voters drawing Brown's nickname in a snowbank in a photo caption. Oh, and they acted as if Brown's early advertisements comparing himself to John F. Kennedy were a good idea when anyone within a 200-mile radius of Boston will tell you they most certainly were not taken well, and were stopped a month before election day.]

Scott Brown's win was a big one, and it had big implications. But in a world of Roves, Palins, Pelosis, and Reids, the sane people cannot lose sight of the other 300 million people who don't necessarily want to dump their lives into the farce that is politics, of all its manipulation and bargaining and half-accomplishments. They just want their actual concerns to be heard among those with the power and the money.

Brown kept saying it was the "people's seat," not Kennedy's. What I'm interested in is how this new senator will help the Bay Stater I have recently become.

We're a state, and a nation, not of red and blue. What will Brown do for the purple?

It smells like Heaven, and old sandwiches

Tonight was my first full shift at the Boston Globe sports desk, a night filled with taking high school scores, fetching page printouts, and losing a battle against the encroachment of crumbs on the "Hawk" desk.

But it was the greatest night ever.

After my shift finished around 2 a.m., I walked past the amazing pictures of Boston life hanging on the newsroom walls, down the escalator surrounded by snapshots of the old typesetting process, out the doors emblazoned with the gothic "Boston Globe" flag in white and into a night that is too cold for summer. As I walked around the front of the building, I looked up and saw the printing presses humming away inside, behind the two-story glass windows. I stopped.

For five minutes, I watched the newspapers fly through the press, going from giant white rolls to line-smeared beauties, in and out and under and over and ahhhh. It was so beautiful.

I don't know what is going to happen to print, or to all those forest-green-and-gold Boston Globe delivery trucks that pack the left side of the parking lot, but I do know that I've reached the point of no return. I'm no longer the fan of newspapers, I'm part of one — a big one, a proud one. Sure, half of the Globe's main floor is full of empty cubicles where many workers once sat. Yes, the newsroom is dingy, and there's a terrible creak on the part of the floor I have to traverse every time I take the page printouts to the slot editor.

But it's a paper! It has a guy called the "slot" editor! It has photos of Babe Ruth in its sports area! It has the U.S. Open on TV at night! It has crazy old men calling in at 1 a.m. to find out who won the Sox game! It has proofers and reporters and editors and girls who come up from the pressroom around midnight to deliver the first edition, all smudged up and pretty, with its full buffet of the day's news.

A buffet — that's what newspapers were always supposed to be — a one-stop place to find out a little bit of everything going on in life. But today, with specialized sites and up-to-the-minute news, the buffet seems old and outdated.

Think about it: who wants to read a huge, easily crinkled sheet smudged with ink? And who wants to work in a newsroom with a college kid's bylined story from six years ago taped to the side of a computer monitor? Why does it matter what some sports writer says about how Fed won tonight? And does anyone except those drunks from Southie care what the Red Sox score is, enough to not watch the game but then call the sports desk to hear whether Boston won?

I don't know, and I can no longer try to answer those questions, for I am partial to newspapers now. But I do know that I love this buffet of a newspaper. It smells like old sandwiches at the Globe, but to me, it smells like Heaven, too.

I'm not sure whether everyone else would love that hole like I do now, with its old file cabinets full of media guides for every single college and professional team, with its wide-open newsroom that has cubicles and reporters' heads for as far as you can see, with people like Cheryl sitting on the sports copy desk, telling the new "night hawk" (their name for my position) how it is (that people aren't going to stop reading the paper or cancel their subscriptions because the new girl's recording on the Globe's score phone line (617-265-6600, call on Thursdays) sounded dumb to herself), with a proofing printer that the editors hope would have a completion percentage near Tom Brady's, but is actually more like Rex Grossman's (40% — my observation) in spewing out full-page prints of the next day's paper on time.

I'm a fan. I'll take the Globe as it is, from its fight to stay what it used to be to its place on my doorstep every morning. I'll take the cold weather, the actual frost on my windshield on an early September night.

I'll take Boston's mess of roads that still aren't finished, and the cops using my tax dollars by sitting on those roads at two in the morning while some blue-collar guy tacks on a street sign. I'll take the drive home, the way 93 whips you around and shoots you into the city, under the buildings with blinding lights.

They don't even need to pay me. I can't wait to go back.